for starters we have Kolby Lee, Connor Harding and Gavin Baxter (incoming freshman) who are 3 and 4 star talents (Baxter is an ESPN top 100 player iirc) and will make some contributions for sure next year. Baxter is an interesting talent at 6'8" with a 7'2" wingspan and a plus vertical leap (a true dunking machine). He has nice range to the 3pt line and will give BYU an interesting piece to use at the 3 or 4.

Lee is huge (talking Brad Waldow size) and was rated a 3 or 4 star depending on which recruiting service you look at. He is good around the basket and will help BYU with depth in the post.

Harding is 6'5" wing with a nice all around feel for the game and decent hops. I think his game is still developing and he'll grow into a nice player at BYU and a good complement to Baxter.

We also possibly get Emery back (my gut is uncertain on this tho) and while his game has peaked already, he was a missing piece to the puzzle this year. With our perimeter players hesitant and uncertain about shooting, you don't have that problem with Emery (quite the opposite actually). He's naturally confident and would provide a really nice spark (similar to Dastrup) off the bench.

Andrus adds depth to the front court and a little more height. BYU had him, coming out of AF, rated higher than Tyler Rawson (who went to SUU and then Utah) and so he hasn't scratched the surface yet on what he can contribute. Rawson had a nice career with Utah, hopefully Andrus can step up as well.

As for returning players being the same, sometimes you see players peak early (Emery and maybe Haws) but usually you see them progress over the 4 yrs they're here and become significant contributors by their 3rd and 4th years (Noah Hartsock, Brandon Davies, Jimmer, Tyler Haws, Anson Winder, Lee Cummard, Elijah Bryant, etc). I don't know if TJ has peaked or not as a player but my guess is he's not quite there. Neither is Elijah or Yoeli. I think we'll see both players show significant improvement. Also Payton Dastrup.

Bringing back many of the same players in no way means we'll have the same team. Jimmer went from avg 7 pts a game his freshman year to 16 as a soph to 22 as a junior and finally 28 and becoming the NPOY. The difference between Jimmer as a junior and Jimmer as a senior who could drop 40+ pts on a future NBA MVP candidate (who had major defensive help from teammates) is huge. It's very narrow thinking to assume bringing back the same players means that everyone will stay the same and not progress or improve.