I think the entire season hinges on Grayson's ability to lead the team a la Quinn in 2015, regardless of the freshmen's talent. We have 2 players who have more than 1 year of experience on the team, and one (Vrank) might not get much time on the court. This is a horse that is beaten to death, but I think it's fair: Strong on-court leadership is a difference maker in college, and the trend is clear from the last 8 championship teams in the recent one-and-done era (for time's sake, I'm starting in 2010, but could be argued that it began a few years before that) that you need both elite talent and veteran leadership/experience, which I am using # of scholarship upperclassmen as a proxy for.
Team / # of scholarship upperclassmen
2017 - UNC, 7
2016 - Nova, 6
2015 - Duke, 3
2014 - Uconn, 6
2013 - U of L, 8
2012 - UK, 4
2011 - Uconn, 4
2010 - Duke, 5
Obviously this is super quick/rough analysis, and there are better ways to do it (% of minutes played by upperclassmen, % of usage, etc.) but I will leave that to SMTTEM and other people who are better at this sort of analysis. Nonetheless, all of these teams had 3+ scholarship uppeclassmen on the team, and the teams with the fewest upperclassmen had generational levels of elite talent (Duke in 2015, UK in 2012, 2011 was a weird year but Uconn had Kemba who had enough leadership/intangibles for 2-3 players), and Duke's #s are low but as are weighted up based on share of scholarship players.
I can only hope we break this trend...
*Edited for spelling