Their small forward would have eaten his lunch. Hood does a better job than Ravern on defense by a long shot, and will get better as he gets older and stronger.
Diggs scored a lot of points for that team last night and that was with Hood playing decent defense.
I have to fully disagree with you, or anyone, wishing we had Ray-vern back for any reason.
We have Steele, Hood, Bost and maybe D. Smith who are reasonable 3 pt shooters, but that team had obviously scouted our team (unlike some of the patsy teams we play to open the season in years prior) and implemented an aggressive, extended,perimeter man-D that didn't allow our guys to get off any clear 3 pt attempts. This is usually where Stans counters with his Jamont move. This year it will fall onto Dee or Deville "creating" as in penetrating andgoing from there. However with Sid/Lewis, Moultrie/Sid, Moultrie/Lewis in the game most of the time the other teamis able to crowd the lane and provide helpside D to stop this penetration. Stans then has to counter by taking out one of the big guys to open up the lane (most people think he is just bringing in another 3 point shooter, but the bigger effect is to clear out the lane a little bit so that Dee or whomever can drive more effectively). We saw this in the final 4-5 min of the game, but by then it was too late. A better answer is to implement an offense with plays andteach/coach the players to run said offense. Good luck withthat.
Wealso play sloppy as a MF.There were easily 5-6 instances of boneheaded sloppy passesresulting in EASY baskets for that team. When you spot agood team like that 10 points over the course of the game, there is no way we are going to win many of those games. Not looking good right now.