Originally posted by IUP24
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His refusal to use his bench past January ultimately just wore his starters down to nothing by the end. That team was dang lucky to get out of Round 1 (and probably shouldn't have). They got past Round 2 pretty easily because that was probably the one team in the Atlantic that somehow actually shot the ball worse than they did.
Ousmane Diop, Jaheim Bethea and Kyle Polce should have been in the rotation all season long. Even in limited roles, it would have helped keep people fresh while at the same time engaging them in the program and developing them.
Joe's won with very small rotations just about his whole career, but there was something different with this team. Most of Joe's teams have all gotten much better in February. This team got much, much worse as the season went along. The (mostly narrow) winning masked many of these issues to the outside world. If fact, you could tell who on this board actually watched every game because those were the people not all warm and fuzzy about what they were seeing night after night.
This group was nowhere near an elite team down the stretch. I could easily point out 6-7 games they could have -- or, should have -- lost. They found ways. I'll give them that. But, it's no secret this wasn't a strong PSAC this year. Let's keep in mind this 32-2 team had major struggles with hapless Gannon, was in a war with hapless Edinboro inside the KCAC, needed a miracle comeback to win at Clarion after getting blasted for 32 minutes, etc. The timing was good for this team. In a strong PSAC year, they'd have probably lost 7-8 games.
What happened in mid-January? We can only speculate. But, that's about when it started to become a one-man show. The crisp offense we've come so accustomed to seeing vanished -- and warped in to some hybrid version of AAU meets Playground. One could say that happened because they couldn't make any deep shots. But, they kept chucking all year, anyway. Night after night of 5 for 34 from outside. Two of the alleged best deep shooters on the team (Dillard and Stewart) were rarely given shots. It was the most predictable offense I've ever seen. They ran the same inbound plays game after game. They ran the same 'last shot before half' play at least 17 times this year. They were so easy to scout but nobody else in the PSAC had the power to match-up with them. But, of course, we saw what happened when a hungry, deep team finally got them.
Maybe there's a reason Joe cleaned house. Just sayin'
We can't really make any assumptions until we see who these next three players are going to be. Three good transfers and they may come out of this stronger. Three high school players and, well, it's a rebuild. I surely don't think he's going to waste Ethan's last year on a rebuild.
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