Not so sure playing dortch and nwuli significant minutes is the answer. Zrno is pretty much the only offensive threat besides Francis, Minnesota focused on making those two uncomfortable and that's all she wrote. Although Lino Mark is making me a believer in his ability to finish at the rim. Powers is growing as well...it's a severely limited roster..
It’s not a “severely limited” offensive roster. Rather - it’s an offense that has a massive hole in the front court game which creates vulnerabilities against certain schemes. It’s most noticable on days when our outside shots aren’t falling early. The timing matters for us, because if teams are forced to extend the D to tighter to the perimeter Tariq can make them pay.
We’re not a great shooting team, but we’re not “awful” either. We have 6 guys shooting 33% of better from deep. We’re actually pretty decent vs. man coverage, especially against teams who don’t have elite on ball defenders. A competent (even average) offensive center or power forward would make a huge difference for the offense.
The D is simply a train wreck and makes the paper offensive metrics worse than they would otherwise be if we were even average at D. Just so few opportunities to push pace and score in transition before the D is set.
I will stick with what I said before the Minny game. I think our team would improve significantly on both ends by targeting enhancements to the D - especially front court. I think if we didn’t have to overplay interior coverage to avoid lay up line easy of scoring, we wouldn’t be as bad ith the perimeter D. Our holes make it a pick your poison type situation and Pike probably isn’t wrong with the strategy of thinking our best chance is a team going cold from deep. If we don’t overplay the interior, we can’t stop anyone down low.
Maybe I'm confused as to what you're saying..are you saying he should play 2 of the guys you say are fast over zrno and ogbole? Or do you just mean for certain stretches of the game when you feel speed is required?
