Not a matter of off night. More like they are still figuring out how to play together. I thought they looked a lot better against Xavier than they did the first game against Akron. Probably shouldn't have been ranked in the top 25 as this team will take some time to gel, but I do like the individual players on the team.
Some of the positives:
Wheeler is starting to find his role in the offense as a guy who can stretch the defense with 3's.
Meechie is able to drive and shoot, but still looks a bit out of control at times
Branham can definitely get to the basket, but missed a lot of easy ones last night.
Kyle Young looks healthy enough to be a contributing factor
Liddell is Liddell. Best player on the team by far, but basically at the ceiling now of what he is going to be.
Some negatives:
Too many turnovers. Again I hope this is just them figuring out how to play together.
Defense wasn't really great. This may be an ongoing problem. They kind of just got lucky that Xavier went cold for awhile.
Rebounding was atrocious. I'm hoping this is fixable.
The team looks way too reliant on Liddell for everything. Hopefully others will step up more as the year goes on.
Zed Key looks a little confused on how to handle his increased role. Hopefully he will grow into it after sporadic minutes and a clearly defined lesser role last year.
