Look no further than Kane's one and done season. Ejim made a huge step forward and Niang made his presence felt right away. The expectations for that time were very low and we were picked to finish near the bottom of the conference.
Georges was a sophomore that year. We already knew he was going to be dang good after his freshman year, and he definitely developed quickly by then.
Naz's leap as a shooter and Monté coming online quickly were the true revelations of the year, along with, as you noted, Melvin becoming a beast.
I do not have much for expectations next year. At the very least, to feel good about the season, I would want to see from the players and coaches...
-- Jackson have a great senior year and winning some individual honors
-- Wiggi and Lewis, while maybe frustrating or inconsistent at times, definitely giving us that, "watch out, these two are going to be
really good soon" feeling
-- NWB becoming a quality Big 12-level starter
-- Solomon developing more diversity and "independence" (i.e., not always needing the guards around him to create) in his game, and also developing some of that mean streak as a trash man on the boards that served Hogue and Ejim so well
-- hopefully something out of Lard and/or Long
-- a team that, absent the W-L record, at least feels like it is improving and is capable of giving even very good teams scares, especially in Hilton
-- one that also improves over the year and maybe has a youth movement
If we have a year like Fred's first year...
DG/Jackson -- senior guard finally getting a chance to shine
SC/Wiggi -- young guard you know will be a monster soon
Anderson/NWB -- versatile wing (though we keep NWB another year!)
Ejim/Young -- young post improving each and every game
JVB/Brase -- stretch big man that surprises some people
...where we lost a lot of games, but had fun doing it, came really close in many of them, and looked like we were going somewhere, I will be very happy.