My thoughts as well. HCTM (and staff) have done a good job upgrading our talent level, but has it been good enough to compete with upper echelons of the BIG, which is where we need to be in order to make it to the dance? I don't think we're quite there yet, though I concede part of it may be coaching and development.
That said, we did just finish a great season by most standards, and one of the interesting dichotomies of sports is that fans tend to think a season is a failure if a great season is followed by a quick loss in the post season, even though you are basing the overall success of that season off of an extremely small sample size.