Not that anybody who needs to hear this is going to listen but...
When Pastner was hired a lot was made of his recruiting reputation. What a lot of people ignored was that his recruiting reputation was about the energy he put into recruiting which was likely to pay off down the road but less likely to lead to great recruits right away. That's pretty much what has played out. Here are the 10 highest rated recruits and transfers Pastner has brought in by their 247 rating.
Michael Devoe - .9819
Dallan Coleman - .981
James Banks - .9762
Miles Kelly - .9635
Jordan Usher - .9422
Jalon Moore .9305
Kyle Sturdivant - .9274
Jose Alvarado - .8994
Saba Gigiberia - .8928
Kristian Sjolund - .8916
By the way, those would all be higher rated than all but Tadric Jackson from what he inherited just to give you a perspective of where we have come. The bold are expected to be back on campus next year, and all but Mike have at least one year left after that. Point is the talent level is clearly on the upswing and not in a minor way.
As far as this year goes, we aren't really losing to bad teams in conference. We're losing mostly close games against the top half of the league. We're about one piece away from being where we want to be, and you can say that Pastner should have seen the loss of Banks coming and prepared. But the piece we are missing is a solid back up post player who can give Moses a breather and contribute somewhat reliably. That isn't Banks. We had that with Cole before he transferred. So instead we're a tough out that is a piece away. That's certainly better than we were the vast majority of years prior to last year in recent history.
As far as next year goes, we'll still be starting an upperclassman duo in Devoe and Sturdivant and likely a senior in Moore along with them so we'll still be well experienced. We might very well start another junior on top of that as well. And the one piece who is likely to start that isn't experience, Coleman, is physically ready for ACC play this year, a great shooter, and a well rounded player who likely will be able to contribute even if his shot isn't falling. Now some will argue that most of those players haven't proven to be starters or are freshmen so you can't rely on them, and I ask where do you think great uperclassmen come from? They don't just magically appear. Either they were great as freshmen, or they developed from guys who hadn't proven it yet. The other argument, which is amazing to me, is the lack of faith in coach Rev in developing our two bigs, three if you also consider Meka, to be ready for next year. After what he has done with Lammers, Gueye, Banks, and Wright I don't know why anyone would doubt that, but hey, its probably easy if your looking for things to go wrong.
The question is how long it will take that group to settle into it's new roles and develop the new dynamics needed for success. It may take a year, or it may take a couple games in the out of conference. There's no real way of knowing, but from a roster standpoint it'll be the most talented we've had since the 2010 year and still has a good bit of experience to go along with it.
