The defense and rebounding is gonna be a real work in progress - the backcourt isn't great at keeping guys out of the lane and Edey is gone. If you ranked our best defenders, I'd argue that we lost 4 of our top 5.
With that said, I really like the talent and Painter adjusts to personnel. Just need some guys to develop into two way players and find lineups that can hold up defensively. Like Furst should help defensively, but can he regain some semblance of confidence offensively to make that a net positive? Can Colvin take steps to be focused defensively game in, game out? Heide should play a ton, and this is an area where I could see Harris finding minutes.
I do think TKR will be pretty good next year, both as a low block scorer and doing some of the short roll kind of stuff in PNR.
I'm most intrigued by a Smith, Colvin, Heide, Catchings, TKR lineup...but the defensive question marks are real.
With all the moving pieces, it'll be interesting to see how we handle what looks to be a pretty tough non-con schedule.
