The day after I am sticking with my analysis from the game thread:
Too much Obiagu, not enough Champagnie, Moore's absence hurt us.
Obiagu is not a big man who we had to be concerned with on offense - I thought we did a good job overall doing what was necessary on him at that end of the floor. The problem that he posed is that Coach wants the team to get offense going to the rim instead of being 3-pointer happy. That makes sense since it is the 3-pointer happy games that have dug us into holes. However, if you're going to do that against a 7 footer who's a shot blocker, you can't do it by having your 6 foot tall guards drive and shoot. You can drive and dish, you can stop and pop, but you cannot, cannot take it all the way to the rim. So the Obiagu problem was largely self-created - if our guys had stopped for jumpers in the lane, or dropped the ball to a teammate off the drive, Obiagu would have been less of a problem. Dunn took a few jumpers, there were a couple of decent interior passes, but overall that was a problem.
Not enough Champagnie was in part good defense by the Hall, in part the ball not getting to Julian enough, and in part Julian just not making shots that he usually makes and that we need him to make to win.
The absence of Moore actually does not relate to either Obiagu or Mamu. As noted above I think we did a fine job on Obiagu and Wusu and Earlington also did a good enough job on Mamu to win the game. The problem was Rhoden - with the others deployed on Obiagu and Mamu, there was nobody to make things difficult for Rhoden and he just burned us. If Moore had been available he would have been the obvious choice to make Rhoden's life more difficult. And in a game that could have gone either way, that made a difference.
All in all the team fought hard, a 4/5 game went about the way you would expect a 4/5 game to go - which to some extent proves that they did indeed deserve to be in the 4/5 game.
I hope the season continues in the NIT, it would be great for this squad to get more experience (and even better if they won that tournament.
I'll save my comments on coaching and what the team needs for next year for other threads.
