I watched the replay of this game after watching it last night. It's pretty obvious what needs to happen right now. First, we need to play the our size team longer. Woods, Crawford, Moore, Thompson, Brown with Sarr, maybe SJM, Okeke, maybe Melo, all getting run. Moore scored our first 4 points of the game. His size is the difference, particularly against mid-majors. Then we subbed in and ran a lineup of Chill, Wilbekin, Donovan Mitchell, Sarr, and Crawford. That lineup was awful and we fell behind. Sarr is going to be fine. It's his first game, but damn he's fluid for his size.
Chill is size limited. Wilbekin is size and speed limited. Woods is speed limited. We cannot have three of those in a game, let alone two. We absolutely get smashed, even by Liberty talent. Wilbekin, our Sr, got lost multiple times on the perimeter leading to 3's.
Bottom line is we need to use our size. Donovan Mitchell hasn't shown he's awful yet. He's fluid. He can guard the perimeter. We cannot commit to this 4 guard thing. Manning has to realize this or we are doomed. 9 minutes into the game, we were down 4. Doral had 6 of our 10 plus a great bit of D on his man. And he probably only played 4-5 of the 9 minutes.
I did notice that we sometimes just swapped guys on the perimeter even when there isn't a pick. I have no idea if that is intentional or what. But it resulted in guys being wide open on the perimeter. And it wasn't even big-small swap. I noticed one situation where Chill's man started up top and went to the right perimeter. Crawford's man went from right perimeter to the top. Chill let his man walk free. Crawford was down on the block. Everyone else was matched up. End result was that guy just posted up at the 3-point line and hit a wide open 3.
We also just missed a TON of wide open 3's. And I mean WIDE open. Rough when you're relying on experience guards to his those shots and they don't. Chill is offensively trying to do way too much, forcing drives and pushing bad passes.
Okeke has the size and the hustle. He needs to play more.
Moore and Sarr are going to be players. But we really need to rely on our size more, particularly against teams like this. We need to focus on the process and just get better and get our lineup down. Manning is seeing what a lot of these guys can do. If we figure it out, we'll be a better team. The parts are there.
