...his effort isn’t consistent and as we saw last time we played them, he had a good 5 min run in the first half and sandwiched by 2 very unremarkable stretches. With SMC if you go to the wrong mix of players and have a bad matchup somewhere on the floor, they’ll make you pay quickly. Last time it wasn’t just one player that hurt us that way it was several. Worthington, Seljaas, Hardnett all had really bad stretches on D where they allowed SMC easy scores, you can add Dastrup and Childs to that as well (late 2nd half neither could guard JL down low).

We need to continually mix things up and constantly force SMC to adjust. I do like the thought of Dastrup getting a lot more minutes and playing out top on offense, especially if he can hit an early shot out there. It will pull JL out of the key and open up more room for Yoeli to operate down low. If Bennett doesn’t like having JL that far from the basket then he’ll have to put him down low on Childs and risk getting him into foul trouble.

In the late 2nd half of last game SMC started dropping more guys into the paint giving Childs no room to operate. Instead of kicking it out to open shooters like Seljaas, Haws or Bryant, Childs tried going 1 on 3 and forced a lot of really bad shots in traffic and closed out the game shooting 1-8. We need lineups on the floor that will prevent SMC from crowding the lane and force them to defend all 5 guys we have on the floor. Haws, Seljaas and Cannon can’t be afraid to shoot if we want to win this game.