Manning did just about everything he could in that game. He put 4 different guys on May. He stopped us from taking quick shots and we got plenty of open looks. When it was clear we weren't hitting outside shots we were using the pick and roll to get into the paint.
Sometimes games just boil down to whether kids perform or not. Dinos had 4 wide open, toes-on-the-line 3 pointers and hit none of them. Add together all the minutes from Devin, Dinos, McClinton, and Leonard - you get 2 buckets and 10% from the field.
I love Wilbekin's shooting as much as anyone, but he was a liability on defense last night and was just getting killed on drives to the basket. He just doesn't have any length once guys go by him to challenge shots. When he's covering true point guards it's not a big issue, but he couldn't guard May and he couldn't stop their scorers. Blame Codi all you want, but he's still the only guy on the team who can lock down his man and score. He just didn't have any help and had to do too much. All the Rountree praise is great, but he was far from perfect and 2 of his 3 buckets came on blown defensive assignments for uncontested layups.
We shot some absurdly poor percentage in the 2nd half - maybe around 20%? Manning went offense for defense at every opportunity, and we somehow still had multiple chances to tie the game with free throws. We missed half of them instead. Went from down 7, put on a surprise press, got it to free throws twice to tie and couldn't make them. You go through that just to have Devin and Rountree give back-to-back, pathetically weak 3 point plays.
This was the opposite of the blown timeout. Despite the worst performance of the year offensively and some incredibly poor individual defensive performances, we had multiple opportunities to tie the game at the end. Instead we go 2/6 from the stripe at the end and lose.
Just hit the stupid free throws and we probably pull out a win despite our horrid play. The discussion today would be much different - it'd be about how a good coach can orchestrate a win despite his team playing horribly.
Honestly, while it's easy to crush Devin and his zero points, at least he was facing a legit big man and triple teams all night. My goat of the game goes to Dinos. Where is that game 1 Dinos? 1/5, open all night because of the attention to Devin, too content to settle for 3's, couldn't finish through contact, missed big free throws down the stretch, 3 points in the 2nd half. Dinos has to step up if teams are going to play Devin like that.
