Late in the game? He was awful the entire 2nd half.
I thought the whole reason coaches sat on the sideline to begin with was to influence the outcome of the game when possible. While the players need to ultimately win the game, it is the coaches job to try to coral momentum, enforce maintentance of proper fundamentals, and make heady substitutions, sometimes in order to send a message. In tonight's game we saw none of the above. In the first half our defense was coming up WITH the screener, taking away the drive, and making switches (sometimes doubles). That completely dissolved in the 2nd half and I saw no evidence Hoiberg made any attempt to address it. I find that completely inexcusable.
I also didn't like the fact that he didn't corral Scotty, and to a lesser extent Royce in the 2nd half. When you aren't getting any calls (which was ridiculous but that's another issue) you can't RECKLESSLY drive the lane. Seriously, how many horrendous lane shots, bad passes, and outright turnovers did he have because of this? I'm not even sure I can count that high. Royce also started getting reckless in trying to force too many passes instead of letting the game come to him.
The last 2 games have provided a lot of encouragement as we have played two halves, against two good teams, both on the road in which we played pretty good defense, had good offensive movement, and really got after the ball. It's also the 2nd straight game our coaching staff has failed to keep on our players enough to ATTEMPT (key word there) to do the things that got them the lead in the first place. That has to change.
If we clean up these issues, and they ARE correctable, we can be a tough out almost anywhere. Since I didn't bring it up before the officiating was abysmal. The charge on Royce, the non foul on the Ejim "travel", the call down low on Booker were just 3 of the ridiculous calls I saw in the 2nd half. Meanwhile we only had the benefit of 1-2 calls (Royce should have got called for one while Ratliff also got dinged for a minuscule touch foul in the 2nd). It really ****** me off that Christopherson was getting mauled, while Dixon and Pressey received every touch fould imaginable. Wiht that said our senior guard needed to recognize how the game was being called and make the adjustment. He didn't.