ECU - A tale of two halves

I got to the game and was elated to see a fairly large crowd, similar to BYU. That elation didnt last long as we started flat. We were not even playing defense well and only hitting 4 late 3's kept us from being down double digits at half. Honestly though, I was not really worried. ECU is not a great team, they have a very good PG, a good shooting guard and a promising young big but overall, they are a .500 type team with ZERO bench. They have one road win since December 3rd (at lowly SMU). We DOMINATED the first 10 minutes of the second half. It was ugly, they had exactly ONE bucket in that span... uno... we had them smothered.

Once again, we were outrebounded... weird. Maybe it was all the bricks they were laying, dunno. One thing is crystal clear to me now. We play a ton better when Ben does not try to play PG. He needs to remove that mindset from his brain. He is a 2 guard who just happens to be handling the ball. Tonight is EXACTLY what we need from him. He took 16 shots and 8 FTs and doled out exactly one assist. PERFECT. I would take 20 shots and no assists from him each and every night. At UCF he had exactly 6 shot attempts and 6 assists and we know how that worked out. He is not a PG, he is a scorer and a player who can handle the ball but he cant run the offense... maybe because we dont really run much of one at times. At any rate, Ben needs to be the MAN, not the PG.

We need to play better to beat Houston but I think we will. If we win out we will likely be #2 for the CUSA tourny, which is as good as anyone predicted. Barring a monumental collapse, we are in the NIT. I just hope we can get hot and make some noise... we'll see.