I think it's also clear that Hofstra's focus was on Omar yesterday. He didn't get almost any clean looks, they bumped him off his drive pretty much every time, and hoped the rest of the matchups would work out for them. Omar has a tendency to drive the ball and try to get to the line when he's not involved in the offense, and he wasn't getting calls on the drives. Despite the foul trouble both teams had, the officiating seemed pretty loose both ways.

I loved seeing Tarpey foul Gustys hard early. (Flagrant/technical was the right call there, but the refs missed the retaliation call) Gustys was never really a factor aside from a couple of offensive rebounds swatted back. That's a credit to Sean and Jack.

I told my dad during pregame warmups, "not that it means anything, but Malinowski and Dixon are hitting their threes". I think Daniel should have been looking for his shot more. He hit a couple big ones, but passed up a couple of looks he would have taken a couple games ago.

As said elsewhere on this thread, we lost the game when they went small due to Gustys' foul trouble. After the first bad possession, I think we should have called a timeout (easy to say now) to get the team on the same page for how to run the offense. As it was, the team was trying to force it inside and we stopped running anything like an offense.

I have no problem with the last shot. I wish Cohn had set up for the shot a little better, but it was a wide open look with time left for a rebound. Long range shots especially can have long rebounds, but it didn't happen this time. I'm sure we talked over the offense during the long timeout before Hofstra's last possession, too. The team looked like they knew the plan after Hofstra made their shot.

In games that close, it's easy to find little things throughout the game. Fact of the matter is that the whole thing played out with our guys having a pretty good chance to win, but it didn't happen. I was worried that Sean was using up all his FTs against JMU; I'd have traded two from Saturday for two on Sunday.

Why couldn't Hofstra shoot this bad from 3 yesterday...

Man UNCW is choking so hard

The three consecutive days of intense tourney play finally caught up with Hofstra and their depth-shy team. UNCW's game-long soft press also helped wear the Pride down. End result was that Hofstra was gassed--and looked it...final minutes of regulation and the OT...the tank was empty. Their star had nothing left late in the game...his shooting was flat and he played poor defense in the OT.

Kind of wish we had soft-pressed Hofstra, make them work harder, with our depth on Sunday afternoon.

Watching UNCW's excited celebration at the end makes you wish for our guys to do this one year. Oh well,
with the coming of Knight and Pierce, both of whom everyone believes in the basketball offices, will have a very big impact on our program, perhaps next year we'll be doing this.