In hopefully no offense, all 5 of these takes from a hoops perspective are 100% wrong.
1) Merrimack is in the mid 240s on Kenpom, this is not a program in the 320s or 330s like past year's schedules. The program where Derkack literally came from, has a guard that can score IF he's on a team with players willing to play off of him attacking and scoring....any good game plan is willing to allow a PG to take and make tough 2 point shots. The current roster RU is also deciding to play, by not playing shot blocking options Dylan Grant and Bryce Dortch, will give up points on drives....Martini and Hayes are not here to play defense.
2) Clark is a very good guard and capable of scoring....I don't know how 1 player taking 20 shots as a PG and RU closing out on other 3 point shooters is bad defense. Would you rather Clark take and make 2s, or give up a ton of 3s??
3) The zone offense is only as good as the way the defense plays.....if you are Merrimack and playing a "matchup zone", where you actually stay attached to Hayes and Martini, that means a canyon of space is created inside. So, you cannot play Martini at Center over Lathan, because Martini is not effective playing the 5, as he is shooting stationary 3s......playing Ogbole 19 minutes was necessary, unless you wanted Clark from Merrimack to score even more points.
The only problem with playing Ogbole over a more effective player like Dylan Grant or Bryce Dortch, is because there has to be "some" development of Ogbole, so he's hopefully better in his limited minutes in January and February....it is simply an experiment of seeing how a player does, with more minutes. There's nothing wrong with the zone offense, if Ogbole wasn't clumsy or awkward and traveling or losing his balance near the hoop. Any reasonable improvement and he has 12 points on layups instead of just 6, but someone has to defend the paint against drives.
4) See above on collapsing in the paint....a team has to decide on staying attached to Martini and Hayes OR taking their chances on Lathan and Ogbole scoring. Ogbole and Lathan did a great job, drawing fouls, which is actually good offense. RU should have fed Lathan more, he was 5 of 6 from the line, but only played 18 minutes. Lathan playing 26 minutes and Ogbole 11, probably shifts the score by around 6 to 8 points on the scoreboard.
5) You cannot blindly score in transition, if the opposing guards are trying to score in the paint, 75% of the time....either Clark made shots and we rebounded, but Merrimack abandoned crashing the offensive boards and we're COACHED to immediately retreat after all shot attempts. Any reasonably well coached team would take that approach to the game.
All in all, it is surprising to see how fans view a game as if there's no game plan by an opponent. Just because a game has an inferior opponent in size, skill or talent, doesn't mean that opponent cannot win games....isn't that what Pike and RU has done for the majority of his 8 or so years at RU, by having lesser talented,.lesser skilled offensive teams, defeat clearly better opponents at the RAC, with a thought out game plan??
This is the style and roster constructed to highlight the skills and talent in place.....this is how the players recruited in 2024 and 2025 classes, want to play more offense and freedom to create and score. It is also how RU needs to change away from only focusing on defense and finding offensive players who can create their own offense, when they have options to do so.
I believe what we saw was a staffs goal of knowing they need quality minutes out of Ogbole and literally stress-testing him into making mistakes and hoping he can improve and cut down on them later. 10 to 11 minutes from Ogbole helps on defense once we get into B1G play. OR we play Dortch at 185 lbs and Grant for those minutes and abandon having any size other than Lath
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