Jmsdawg, I have watched almost all of Rickea's 52 games at MSU like you probably have. What I saw was that Vic came up with a system that was great at playing to Rickea and Jessica Carter's strengths while hiding their weaknesses. That's great for winning and Vic is good at winning, but it does come at the expense of player development.
Last year Rickea's offense was mostly limited to coming off screens and shooting open midrange jump shots or driving to the basket. She's very good at those two things. This year NMP wanted Rickea to expand her game by shooting more 3's and by being the type of SEC star player who can make things happen by winning one-on-one matchups. As we saw this season, Rickea isn't very good at those things. Was this a case of NMP knowing that it might mean taking one step back to move three steps forward? Or was it a case of putting a player in a position to fail? A person could take either side of that argument.
Likewise with Jessica Carter, last year her offensive role was mostly to take dump off passes when the dribble drive created penetration or to score on putbacks. This year NMP wanted to get to ball inside more and let Carter operate around the basket. Unfortunately, it appears that in her first two years at MSU Carter never learned any post moves other than taking fade away jumpers and that's the move she reverted back to almost all the time this year when playing against a decent post defender. (BTW, I know Johnnie Harris and Vic have a great reputation of developing post players, but can anyone think of a MSU center who actually had good moves in the post? Not Teaira, not Carter, not Zion Campbell, not Yemiyah Morris. It's just my opinion, but I think that reputation is overblown.)
Anyway, maybe you are right that Vic will want Rickea at Texas next year. One thing that will be different in Austin is that if discipline is a problem he'll be able to take a stronger approach in dealing with it. While he did pull Rickea out of the starting lineup 6 times at MSU, she still got a lot of minutes in those games because he needed her scoring. With the recruiting class he has for next year those minutes can be covered by other players.