1. They were not mentally prepared. Part of that is on Pope and part of that is on the players themselves. They were also unprepared for the physicality that Duquesne played with and Pope even admitted it.
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2. IMHO Pope made some errors with the lineup and it appeared that he treated it as just another regular season game. The starting five was awful to start the game. That should've been the last we saw of that group all together on the floor that game, instead Pope ran them out together to start the 2nd half and that went about as well as it did to start the game. In an elimination game, you don't have the luxury of "sticking to the rotation".

3. And it's not like the poor beginning of the game and beginning of the second half hasn't been a pattern for quite a few games.