A monumental misstep by Steve to not hire Kyle and get 4 years of AJ. Especially considering Kyle is a very good assistant with strong Midwest ties. One player of that caliber can have a major impact in college basketball. AJ next to Tyrese in 2019-2020 might of been good enough to keep CSP's head above water for a couple more years...
That is an interesting counterfactual to consider.
Freshman Green would have been in a crowded backcourt of --
Haliburton
Horton-Tucker
Shayok
Weiler-Babb
Wigginton
I am not sure who Green surpasses as a freshman on that list. Then again, maybe the staff doesn't take Haliburton if they have Green in pocket. The 1.5 years of Haliburton before the injury were pretty good, so you might lose that, but then again you might get 4-5 years of Green out of the deal.
I know after that year things become more complex because Kyle Green is probably recruiting much of the roster from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin instead of bringing up players from the Southeast. I am just going to roll with this counterfactual to see what the team might have looked like instead.
Sophomore Green is probably something like --
Haliburton
Bolton
Green
Jacobson
Young
Green is certainly an upgrade on Nixon and a nice fallback option at PG once Haliburton is injured. Not sure if you still land Bolton with Green around, though, and not sure if the above team (even with Haliburton healthy to the end of the season) is enough to push for the tournament. They win some games, though.
Junior Green --
Green
Bolton
Coleman-Lands
Johnson
Young
The guard corps is much better, so I doubt the team goes 0-19 against the Big 12 again. Then again, the roster is just depleted, inexperienced, and unable to gel given the crazy offseason that COVID afforded them that year, so I would imagine they would have still sucked. Maybe a few wins is enough to keep Prohm from being fired or Kyle Green's midwestern recruiting kicks in before then to restock the roster.
Senior Green (assuming Prohm is still fired) --
Say Kyle is retained by TJ and AJ stays to play his senior year for his dad. I would imagine not much else changes save for probably no Brockington and AJ instead has that featured role in the offense.
So AJ helps. An elite guard goes a long way in college basketball. But the roster and program was just so screwed by the end of the Prohm tenure that I'm not sure he could salvage it by himself. Kyle Green might have been more critical in the long term if he could have brought some regional talent into the program, coached up the big men as he did in Cedar Falls, and been the defensive coordinator. The good/decent Prohm teams could score but couldn't stop anybody, so maybe that could have been fixed or at least marginally improved.
We'll never know. AJ just would have made an impact at the position of relative strength of the program (the guards) when what those rosters really needed is some real Big 12-level big men.