airpolice,
taking into account the situation at the apex, low, slow and out of energy... not a good time to roll the aircraft without being really sure of what's happening with the energy
People use 'energy' far too liberally; here you mean airspeed. And at the apex of the accident manoeuvre the aircraft was not 'out of energy'; it had 105 KIAS and the data in Appendix H shows that with 80 KIAS it was possible and straightforward to execute an escape manoeuvre. However, if someone has not been trained to fly this and has not practised it then I fully accept that they may be very circumspect about trying it!
With respect to departures and spinning, I have only had two departures in a T7 and both because the handling pilot (not me!) allowed the rudder to float. One was during a full flap stall, and a 1 turn erect spin resulted, and the other was during a -1g full lateral stick roll, during which a developed spin did not occur. In both cases centralising the rudder and stick effected a recovery. The only inadvertent inverted spins that I have heard about were as a result of a centralised recovery from a nose high, low speed unusual position recovery, and I suspect that the rudder may well have floated due to sideslip in both cases.
mrangry..
In a 1/2 horizontal/Cuban 8 (rolling on a down 45 line), elevator and rudder are used to maintain a straight flightpath. In an escape manoeuvre, even on a down 45 line, in order to prevent a potential departure the rudder needs to be restrained at neutral and the elevator used to maintain close to the zero lift angle of attack (in practise neutral elevator/trim position). It is important that this subtle difference in control strategy is understood by anyone flying minimum speed loops at low level.