Another game, another non competitive loss. When you only have one playable point guard on the roster and he misses a couple of games its pretty bad. With covid, twisted ankles etc, this should have been planned for better. Small has missed a couple of games, but the teams shouldn't have this much of a problem at point guard vs this level of 150th type teams.
The two primary "point guards" replacing him in LaCount and Walker had 10 turnovers vs 7 assist. LaCount also couldn't guard anyone nearly fouling out with 4 fouls in 17 minutes to go along with those 4 turnovers. Walker was 1-7 shooting to go along with his 6 turnovers. You aren't going to win games with those kind of numbers at an important position. The 3rd primary guard, and the only one actively trying to create offense in Felton went 5-20 and 1-11 from three. I can't blame him much when he's a role player being tasked to try to generate anything because there are no creators to break down a defense without Small. It's not what he's capable of.
Diboundje is the only other semi offensive hub on the team and player capable of getting his own shots or past anyone on drives he initiates. For some reason he only played 23 minutes in this game like this despite having 14 points and even rebounding well for him with 4 rebounds in on 23 minutes. He only had 2 fouls as well so that wasn't it. This is the kind of things I don't get. With Small out this is the best offensive player on the team probably, at least at creating quality shots.
Debaut started over Ausar and played 22 minutes vs 10 in this game. I can't even hate on this move as he simply has been better lately. This also kind of speaks to the state of the program when Debaut is actually a top 7 player. The bigger issue is if you are wanting to keep Ausar longterm, it's probably not helping on that front. This goes to the problem as well of unhappy players and what you got to do to keep them happy.
Sometimes in a season like this one is turning out to be it's probably just better to keep the "future" and important players like Ausar happy. It will be hard enough to keep them anyway without benching them. At least with Diboundje he can't transfer for free. The coach is playing a game with in a game here too. Ellingsworth playing in the first half when it was competitive meaningful minutes in game 20 after playing 1 minute all year was weird. He was ok, but I wonder how a guy like Ausar takes getting about the same playing time in this game.
I saw on that other place that the same Dooleystan spouts some form of "we sacrificed the season when we fired Dooley". It's complete horse shit. There was nothing to sacrifice when he couldn't crack the top 180 with All ACC talent even once in 4 seasons. He was doing nothing with or without Newton, and the same guy admitted we didn't have UConn money. He'll keep trying to sell this crap over and over like he has every week for 10 months now.
The facts are a rookie first year coach has taken Dooley's scrubs to about the same standard in reality Dooley was in 4 seasons. Its still not as bad in year one as he was with Gardner. Where this season was sacrificed was not attempting to recruit a player that is ready to play at this level this season with a portal and 1800 older players available.
