Chuckie, in my opinion the strategy of going inside early failed because, as was pointed out, they didn't foul and, I think, it contributed to our shooters not getting in a rhythm the first half. I figured we'd need 8-10 threes to win this game and we just didnt' get 'em. But, NO WAY we beat them going inside as that is THEIR strength. Their bigs are much bigger and much more physical/tough than ours.
I think it would have been smarter shooting threes early to get our guys going. If you watched the Big East game, Louisville was like 1-8 from three the first half and down against Syracuse. They stormed back hitting their threes in the second half. I think that could have been our formula. Better to win the game than one half!
Caspy,
We DID have the correct strategy early. They had their big man up high guarding DJ and we tried to exploit that by going down low. We consistently had a 7-9 point lead for most of the first half because of this. Where it started coming apart was late in the first half when they realized Keely was killing them down low and on the short jumpers. Akron adjusted and we didn't. You could see it all changes late in the first half.
The second half was more of the same. They started closing up shop down low and worked the perimeter. We never adjusted or IMO really ran any good set plays to open up shots. Yea we had a few, but many were contested and we just weren't hitting the shots because of it.
That's been the story of many games. We come well prepared for games and usually have a great first half. However, when the other teams sees what we are doing and adjusts to stop it, we very often don't react well, whether it being coaching adjustments or the players themselves.
It happened last nigh as well, but we had put WMU in such a big hole early, they just couldn't get over the hump. Akron was good enough to weather our good start and with their adjustment, blew right past us in the second half.