I think JWF, Brown, and Chukwuka, were all significantly better versions of themselves in 2018-19 than what we saw in 2017-18. All three of those guys showed significant growth in almost every meaningful statistical category, and IMO were better in the subjective “eye test.”
Ellison is a more difficult evaluation because we didn’t have any other games at Pitt in ACC play to compare. He certainly didn’t turn out to be the player he was hyped to be in his sit-out season, but I don’t see too much evidence of it being due to a lack of development versus the expectations that were set based on his status as the most athletic standout on an otherwise supremely limited 2017-18 roster.
Edit: I was curious, so I dug into Ellison’s stats a little more. To be honest, though he didn’t really “improve” compared to his two years at St. John’s - which it would have been surprising for him to put up *better* numbers in a tougher conference - he was pretty much the same player statistically at Pitt that he was at St. John’s. The only exception, as we all saw, is that his three point shooting fell off a cliff to 10% compared to the ~30% three point shooter he was earlier in his career. Had he shot roughly to his career average, our evaluation on his 2018-19 season would have probably been different. But otherwise he was pretty much the same player he was at St. John’s even with the step up in competition.
