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One other thought on this, and it goes to Reed’s philosophy. Do you play the OOC games to really try to win them, or do you play them to prepare your team for the PL schedule? If you told me that Reed is playing the OOC schedule the exact same as he plans to play in the league, same sets offense and defense, whittling down to finalize your rotation, then I guess I can’t complain too much. But, if you are really trying to win the Baylor game, you have to know that you only win it by slowing down the tempo, and trying to grind out a low scoring win. You are not going to push it up the floor and try to win a high scoring game. Yet, that is how we played. We are going to play that way in the league, but you can’t play a super athletic team that way.
Goes back to my prior point several threads ago that Baylor was a throwaway game, which LU65 didn’t like me saying. But, Reed treated it like a throwaway game, because you can’t expect to win with his thought process in that game, especially shorthanded. Anybody would know you are not going to out athlete or out tempo Baylor on their home floor. If I asked anybody on the board, can Lehigh win a game against Baylor in the 90’s, you would have said no way. If I said can Lehigh win a game against Baylor in the 50’s, you would say maybe. Of note, Bucknell beat a big team with a game that capped at 70. Certainly not a slowdown game, but not a helter skelter pace that Lehigh played at vs. Baylor.
My thought is, this season, when you have potentially your best team ever, you try to win every game no matter the competition. An at-large is unlikely, but you still need to have the best RPI in case of ties in the league. And, you know Bucknell has the much tougher schedule. So, if you are playing to win a game against Baylor, you slow it down, limit possessions, and the best way to do that on defense is by playing zone. The only argument I can see for not playing zone is Duke last season, when you played man, and won. But, Duke was not huge outside of the one Plumlee, not nearly as athletic, and Lehigh had 2 additional big bodies in Adams and Manieri.
So, I think if you really want to win these OOC games, you have to mix up the formula a bit. Tempo, defenses, etc. If you don’t really care about the games, and are simply fine tuning for the league, maybe you play it differently. But, again I think personnel and matchups have to dictate how you coach. You can’t just throw out the ball and say play no matter the game, no matter the competition.