As I have stated on here previously, I think the Zips too often get caught with 4 guys on the floor standing still watching LCJ on offense. However, that is now part of the game in the college shot clock era. I heard an interview of Bob Huggins a while back where he was lamenting the evolution of college basketball offense. To paraphrase Huggins, college basketball has become 15 to 20 seconds of teams running their offense, which doesn't work because every opponent has watched hours of tape of that same offense, followed by a pick and roll or isolation with your best athlete trying to make a play. If you watch the Zips, that's what often happens. They come down, you have motion through the offense, no progress is made and the ball ends up back in LCJ's hands to make a play. To our good fortune, he has he ability to do so most of the time.
LCJ is actually much more of a facilitator this year than last, on a team that arguably has fewer playmakers. The approach of most teams this year has been to body him up, try to keep the ball out of his hands, focus primarily on him on defense and run him off of the three point line. That tells me that the coaches in the MAC do not believe too much of LCJ is a good thing for them. As for last night, they gave up 91 points so I'd place the loss more at the feet of the defense than the offense.
At the end of the day, it was one loss against a very good Toledo team, a team that might well be 2-0 against the Zips if Toledo's coach didn't have a brain fart in the first game. Time to focus on playing Brimfield on Friday.