As I said before the game, we needed to run even after a made shot by Duke. Half court offense was always going to be a problem. We needed to be tougher on defense. They got a few too many easy layups without being punished. Of course, when JB went down and DJ got 2 early fouls, we had to stay out of foul trouble and preserve available bodies.
I hope that we saw signs of Paris coming out of his 4 game funk. If he plays like he did last year, and Mase comes back healthy, we will have a lot of fire power. JB can then focus on playiing D and rebounding---and just let the offense come to him.
I loved what I saw from Evans. He is so naturally aggressive. Boothe played a good game. I don't know what his numbers were, but I thought he did so much to help the team today. He handled pressure and he drove and dished it off several times. Coker looked great. I hope he can produce like that against Cuse and UCONN. If Hardy could have hit a few from outside, things might have been a bit different. I think over the course of the season, people will see what kind of shooter he is. He did go to the basket strong a couple of times.
The play where DJ drove and put up the alley oop for Brownlee is a play that Norm should make the team watch on film, and practice, until they can do it in their sleep. Too often, the bigs have just stood by and watched the guy going to the hoop. Duke ran that play several times against UCONN last week.
We need to learn not to let up after playing 30 seconds of excellent defense. Force the shot clock violation as much as possible. All in all, we played a great game for 30 minutes and poorly for 10 minutes (in two separate stretches) against one of the best teams in the country. Let's try to build some momentum off this loss.