Well, that sucks...

On the topic, i am not remotely convinced that Ira Lee makes such an insane difference. Sure, we could actually hold our own inside more than we do now, but i think this is a difference of maybe a couple wins. Ira Lee being present doesnt mean we would have game plans and team cohesion all of the sudden.

He's been on the bench.

I never saw Ira Lee play, and I know that he plays a position in which we are desperately in need of help.  However, over the course of 3 varsity seasons, he has averaged 3.0 ppg, 3.0 rebounds per game and 0.3 assists per game.     I recognize that Moyer had comparable stats prior to coming to GW and averaged nearly a double/double, so Lees numbers could changed at GW, but I would hardly assume that Ira Lee would have been a significant game changer for a team that is so deficient in so many areas.   No matter how badly a team is outscored and outrebounded, someone still has to get the points see 2020-2021 James Bishop) and rebounds, and Moyer was hardly a game changer for GW, and I strongly suspect that Lee would not have been the difference in turning this train wreck of a team into something competitive.   But fantasies are nice and generally harmless.

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

I never saw Ira Lee play, and I know that he plays a position in which we are desperately in need of help.  However, over the course of 3 varsity seasons, he has averaged 3.0 ppg, 3.0 rebounds per game and 0.3 assists per game..... I strongly suspect that Lee would not have been the difference in turning this train wreck of a team into something competitive.   But fantasies are nice and generally harmless.

     Well said. It's really a huge leap to assume Lee would be a difference maker, except to possibly shore up a very shaky interior. He also had suffered several injuries at Arizona State.
   If correct and no reason to doubt it at the moment, don't get why Ira would leave now, though, unless he doesn't like cold weather, which might be understandable, given this winter. He seemed to be into the team on the bench.
 Maybe he developed an app and couldn't put enough time into not practicing, as we've seen before. At worst, he'd be getting a free graduate education.
  This happening would indeed suck, as we hold a roster spot open for a year with no gain (the specialty of the house) and wind up with a painfully thin, oddly built team.
  It really puts a new light on the whole "if we had a healthy Ira Lee" argument, which was quite understandable, but way hypothetically optimistic.
 

Yes, Ira Lee is gone. He would have helped big-time this season but I think in general the prospect of 2 years in graduate school to play one season was ultimately not what he wanted. 

With all due respect to Ira, did it really take him over four full months to conclude that he did not want to go to school for two years in order to play for one?  For four plus months, he was sitting on a 2022-23 scholarship that could have been offered to someone else during the early signing period.  For four plus full months, he was being counted on to contribute to next year's team, implying that certain recruiting decisions may have been made or not made with this in mind.

There is either more to this, such as Ira watching what the team has been going through this season and deciding he wanted no part of this, or this strikes me as a move that could have and should have been made months ago. 

A team I'd like to see top 6:

Ira Lee
Ricky Lindo
Jamison Battle
JoeBam
James Bishop
Brayon Freeman

Losing Ira Lee, meant this team in th end added Adams and JoeBam and lost Battle and Moyer.  Having done that and not having Ira Lee, it decimated our FrontCourt

  Its not hard to see why we appear to have moved laterly this year and not forward.

This is really why you need a base of core HS recruits to build around.  

I hate to be seen as agreeing with "The Dude", but (having watched some Arizona games over the last few years) I have to believe that this year´s team would be noticibly better with Lee on the court and healthy. Good enough to be an A-10 title contender? Probably not, but certainly better than what we saw in that JCC gym in Naples or out in the L.A. suburbs. At the same time, he is a college grad who might not want to hang around a campus any more and waiting in DC until next season to play might not have been his cup of tea. A case of "what could have been".

LSF, I’ve seen him play a lot. 

Forget the averages - he’s a very good player who brings a lot of things we don’t have.  That said, he’s not going to turn a 275th ranked teams into 125 by himself. But I don’t think there’s any question his injury was a major setback and he’s the player we could least afford to lose.

Really a shame we aren’t getting him next year, but I don’t think anyone can really judge a 23 year old college grad negatively for that decision.

FQ, exactly