It's the defending national champs (and not a terrible bet to repeat as same) playing in a tournament game against a team that played a tough game last night and is just happy to be there. It's going about the way you'd expect.
WRT to the defense, yes we are an atrocious defensive team. It has been apparent since the first exhibition game. We cannot or will not play anyone straight up. All the defense amounts to is trying to get turnovers and get blocks, and personally I think the block numbers are a sign of what's wrong with the D, not a good thing (because if we stopped the ball or stopped people playing straight up, the block opportunities would not be there).
I hope/expect that next year Clark will provide tougher on-ball defense, we will have a legit post defender, and Owens can go to the stretch-4 spot he belongs in, which in turn would move Yakwe down to guarding guys he would have a shot against.
However, no argument at all that despite the personnel issues our effort and fundamentals could and should be about a zillion times better. My hope/guess is that the staff just decided to spend this year working on offense and next year they will spend more time on D.
