I've settled down a little bit but I think this was perhaps Hoibergs worst personnel management game of the year. I have been perplexed by the minutes of Thomas and Nader all year and at times they have proven me to be wrong. We couldn't rebound. Ok, but when we see that we aren't rebounding, shouldn't we maybe have BDJ in the game seeing as he is probably our second best rebounder? Maybe there was something behind the scenes but like I have said numerous times, he can defend and rebound like no other person on the perimeter. Nader is all over the place and Thomas just isn't going to cut it there. I know we were struggling to score and I know Thomas was hitting shots, but we needed to shore up the boards without Hogue and Niang in the game and we had a poor lineup for doing that for a lot of the time.
The other thing that has been driving me nuts in Niang. It's been like this for three years and I suppose expecting change is maybe too much but the guy doesn't take as much pride as someone in his position needs to. He is constantly out of position and beaten to the ball. I know offensively he is a great player but he's such a liability defensively and on the boards that I think whoever the three is has to be a guy who can shore that up.
Blaming this on defense and rebounding seems misguided as our offensive output was crap but Hoiberg talked about rebounding himself. You can't allow that kind of Oreb rate and expect to win games in March. I don't know, just listening to these guys talk about how shocked they are tells me maybe they didn't think UAB could beat them and maybe didn't take them seriously. Of course, I'm a bit overreactive now so maybe all of this is bunk but all of these things have bothered me all year.