I think taken at face value your criticism of Malcolm and the takeover/hero mode is completely warranted. However, consider our major offensive strategy which is to isolate and perhaps set a pick for one guy, when a team is behind there is not much team strategy about how to get back into a game, and it seems fair to think that your best hope is to feed your player who is hottest, and or your player who is most abel to crat his own shot, which is Malcolm. In other words, dont hate the playa.... hate the game
I agree with you on this. I honestly don't think our players this year are selfish. I just feel we don't know how to play at all (poorly coached). I like Groce, but there is no reason we are as bad as we are. Obviously, we don't have a lot of defenders, but we do have some. Our best year with Groce was with Brandon Paul, D.J., Griffey/Bertand, etc.. Why was that our best year? Because D.J., Brandon, Nnanna, and Abrams could all defend while being coached well from the past. The biggest thing offensively is that we had Paul or Abrams that could consistently create and we had shooters. Groce was the perfect person to take a previous team that were coached well, but did not play well together. Groce had the uplifting persona to get them going.
Since then however, we have no identity . Our lack of playmakers, 2 way players, and identity have killed us. Ever since Egwu masked our defense, we have no defense.
Let's really ask is Malcolm, Maverick, Finke, TJL, Tracy, JCL, etc.. known as selfish people or players. The only one I really see jacking up shots is Leron or on occasion JCL. However, JCL is a shooter, and I don't think Leron is naturally selfish. In the past, I felt Rice, Starks, Nunn, Cosby etc... could be selfish.
Really, the downfall is that Groce's system offensively relies on drive and kick players. When you don't have multiple drivers with multiple shooters, our offense lacks. For example, with his first year (multiple shooters in Griffey, Paul, and Richardson) while being excellent defensively. This year, Hill is the only multi-talented player, Abrams is struggling, JCL is really a shooter, and our only 3 point shooter is Finke at the big guys. However, defensively, who is good in our first unit. Hill can be solid, Abrams can be but past his college prime, JCL is okay, and then Leron works hard, but is not really a defender and Morgan is definitely not. Kipper as a Freshman is our best defender, but is not ready yet, TJL is not really, Tate can be solid, but attrociously offensively, and Thorne is too slow now. DJ and Aaron I feel are not in there enough to really know.
I look at our offense and see that we pound the ball into Morgan and everyone stands around. I don't see active cutting players moving. Then when Maverick is out of the game, Hill is trying to take over, but others are standing around. When TJ is in the game as a Freshman, you see the ball moving and see him hitting Finke, you see JCL moving, you see Maverick posting, you see Hill taking turns. However, I don't see that as a Coach-led inspiration, it comes off more that we have a true point guard that really understands the game. We hit offensive runs, we see cuts. The only problem is that we are so bad defensively when we get behind that we can't ever catch up.
If it was me, with this personnel, I would say try to outscore opponents. It's our only way unless we do some multi-positional out wing-fest you and out-hustle with a line-up of:
TJL
Hill
DJ
Kipper
Leron
or
Hill
JCL
Kipper
DJ
Leron
This would allow for speed, possibly defense, and athletes with a scorer in Hill or the facilitator in Hill and the shooter in JCL. We need to try something, but he won't. He will cling to one last hope that the players will figure it out in spite of him not utilizing ball movement as a space shooting team.