At best we might speculate that the crew ‘should’ have been prepared for some abnormality. Depending on reporting, briefing, etc, the crew could have formed an inappropriate mindset of expectation.
When encountering the inflight malfunction - we don’t know what they actually saw, only our speculation on what we know of the MCAS discussion so far, and not discounting alternative situations, - the crew could easily have considered the wrong problem, or even the right problem with difficulty.
Our view of the outcome of either circumstance might be the same - we don’t know.