ECU has caught multiple of injury breaks this season with opponents missing some of their best players, but perhaps no bigger one than today. This was a depleted Temple that didn't have the 15ppg scorer who lit ECU up for 33 and 26 points last year. Not only that but their brilliant coach benched the 19ppg 3rd leading scorer in the AAC and only played him 26 minutes. He had 18 points in 26 minutes and had he played his normal 35 minutes a game he averages, this probably isn't even a game. At home this was probably one of the easiest games in conference play ECU will have.
Even with Battle and Dunn playing their usual 67 minutes on average this isn't a good team. They were 200+ in NET coming in and coming off a loss to a 300 ranked MEAC team. To say this is a disappointing outcome is an understatement. It's almost as bad as SC State when you consider how little Dunn and Battle played and how bad this team was even at 100%. It's not like they were hot from the field either shooting 36/26/66 percent.
This is the ECU team I expected sadly, and it's decided to show up a few times now. The one thing I will say about Schwartz is he didn't mostly didn't screw around at least. 5 guys all played 31+ minutes. He cut most of the BS out of the rotations and was playing to win. I still don't get why he insists on starting Bayela and then playing him 5 minutes, but I take it as an overall positive he only played him 5 minutes.
That's still a problem though because it put Walker at a disadvantage. He came in at the 16:04 mark in the first and 18:36 in the second and then played nearly the rest of both of the half with only a combined 3 minutes of rest. That's not how you set a player up to succeed if you are going to play him 31 minutes. If you werent' going to rest him anyway you could start him and get 37 minutes out of him like some of the others. It's just makes no logical sense to start a guy and play him 5 minutes and he's done it multiple times this season now.
People will say not a big deal, and make the typical excuses they have for years but that's exactly the kind of inefficiencies on the margins in coaching that lose you a 2 point game like last night. Getting 5 more minutes of Walker vs Bayela, or at least a 6 more minutes of a rested Walker to make a play would have helped close that gap. He was one of the best players last night and causing them problems with 6 steals.
I liked that he played most of the best players 30+, but that's about the only thing. I'd still rather see Diboundje than 14 minutes of Bayela and Debaut. They didn't kill ECU tonight but there is plenty of evidence they do on average. It's to the point now Diboundje can't even play free or without looking over his shoulder if one turnover gets you benched. Meanwhile Debaut had averaged 1 turnover in 7 minutes a game coming in and is the most turnover prone guy on the team by a mile. Did we not see Diboundje try to make a play and fight for the rebound and dive on the floor just before? I thought the rebounding was what was being challenged.
I've seen some teeth-gnashing about why Tabbs isn't playing the last few games. I think what people need to realize is he hasn't played well for ECU and he wasn't good the last time he played for Boston College, after his first knee surgery. The last time he actually played like a positive player was literally 2018, and the first two weeks of 2019. Four years ago.
I talked about this in the preseason extensively and had no expectations of him even starting much less being the savior type many have hyped him up to be. Boston College was 2-10 with him on the court, -18.2 net rating, 13.2 PER when he came back. He had one of the worst defensive ratings you will see (115.8) before another knee surgery didn't go well and he miss another year, What are people really expecting here? I hate to even have to point it out because I think it's great he's even been able to play at all. People have put way too many unfair expectations on him. I wouldn't mind seeing him play a few minutes and a chance, especially for Bayela but this was mostly to be expected.
There is probably still some chance he could be deployed as a break glass option if/when things get so bad. I wouldn't have thought a winnable game like last night was the appropriate time though when Schwartz was riding his core group so hard. There may be a throw anything at the wall phase coming that we see Tabbs but that wasn't the game you sit the core guys.
