I can acknowledge what the team has gone through this week emotionally is hard, but coming off the biggest win of the Schwartz era, I don't know how to categorize this as anything but laying an egg. It wasn't that they lost a road game, it was how they lost to the 198th NET team on the season. This while having two career type games with a 27 point 5-8 three-point shooting Felton game, and a 18 point, 10 assist, 4 steals on 8 shots Jaden Walker game. There were players that played exceptionally well in this game, and I'm not sure ECU will ever get another game from Walker like that again. The team overall shot well above their average but wasn't close to capitalizing, losing by 16 points. All the hustle and effort that produced a dominant 46-27 rebounding effort vs Cincinnati was almost reversed in this one 42-29 SMU.
ECU isn't good enough not to outwork teams on the glass and expect to win. It's been the only thing this ECU team is above average at the entire year (70th nationally in rebound rate). You bring such a weak effort in the one aspect of the game you normally control it's not good. It wasn't like SMU just came out and had a hot shooting night. That was pretty much ECU that seem unphased and even have a good offensive game and still lost big by giving up easy points or fouls off second chances. It's frustrating because a lot of rebounding is effort. Schwartz wouldn't ride certain guys otherwise but then there are games like this that highlight why.
I thought some of the benching and comments in the media were a little overboard for Dibounje or Asuar at times earlier in the season when ECU was still outrebounding teams solidly. Frankly, because Johnson and other plus guard position rebounders were sucking a lot of them up. At some point, you are competing with your own teammates for the same boards. You can kind of overlook that when it's the case.
This game wasn't really that, and you aren't helping the cause if you have 4 rebounds in 31 minutes playing directly under the basket or 2 in 26 as an important frontcourt ancillary rebounder. That's weak sauce when they have shown they can perform when motivated just this week for the "paint it purple" game. Maybe you could write it off some if SMU was even a good rebounding team you ran into on a wrong night, but they are 281st in rebound rate and ECU didn't even keep it close. Certainly, some of that game is attributed to ECU's weak SOS vs SMU's but not -13 on the boards. It was just a weak effort and that was disappointing.
