I'm not expecting miracles, but there are some positives compared to last season. Adding Adam Jacobson to the staff, with his head coaching experience and ties to the region, is significant, and it's already paid some dividends with the addition of his niece and also one of the best players from his team last year at Western Colorado (Maves).
I like the fact that unlike last offseason, where the only addition from the portal who had actually done much of anything at the college level was Hughes, now you add Wells, Maves and Green who have all shown that they can at least play at the division II and JUCO levels. Wells also really addresses one of the team's big weakness from last year--turnovers. Maves is a shooter and scorer, and shooting was a problem last season. Green is an athlete and a good defender at the 4.
Piekny, Hillesheim and Harris all showed flashes last season, and I expect they'll all be in the rotation again.
Duchscherer is a wildcard. I have no idea what to expect from her, but she's an athlete and it would have been a huge deal to have landed her four years ago. I'm sure she'll be in the rotation, but how effective she'll be is an unknown.
Smith is the one freshman who absolutely has to play. Aside from Green and maybe Duchscherer, there's just no other size on the roster, so she absolutely has to be relied upon to play fairly serious minutes immediately.
I do like this freshman class, and wouldn't be surprised if more of them than just Smith eventually work their way into the rotation. Fricke has had injury problems, but she's a tough kid and can knock down shots. Jacobson put up numbers in southern California, which is obviously high level competition, and Sonnenberg had a very impressive high school career at Frazee.