I’ve been very happy with BU. I think he’s done well in roster construction, developing a good culture and making tactical adjustments year over year.So if we came back and won that game, how many people here would be saying “great job by BU and staff for sticking with the game plan!”
My guess? Everybody.
When you do feel like you out-talent a team, and can win individual offensive and defensive matchups, and you’ve seen your guys do it over and over again, you generally won’t deviate too much from what you’ve done. You expect to break through because you’ve done it before. It’s literally what got you there. Hindsight is 20/20.
But to nitpick for a moment, I’d prefer to not rely on simply out-talenting teams game in and game out. I thought we were overly reliant all year on our guards’ ability to fight over the top of screens. Especially since we mostly played with 4 guards and Kofi, I would have liked to see more switching on screens (or hedging if Kofi’s man was the screener). Relying on guards to be able to fight over every screen is being overly reliant on talent in my opinion (as well as exhausting for the players). It almost cost us both of our wins against OSU because we were unable to stop Washington. And Loyola, despite having inferior talent, was able to beat us with good execution. We scored on three straight possessions in the middle of the second half against Loyola but didn’t chip into the lead because we couldn’t get a single stop.
I hope this is an adjustment BU makes for next season. Even if our primary approach to defending is the same, hopefully we have some different wrinkles we can go to depending on matchups. In a single elimination tournament, you have to be able to adjust in-game when Plan A is not working.