I get it we want to point blame, but let's not make this about Smith's decision making. This can be an argument about other things, about strategy, but about decision making, I don't know, who knows if one of the freshmen would have committed 4 turnovers? What happened was very, very out of the ordinary.
I don't agree that Smith was there for defense, or any other reason other than he was, on paper, more seasoned. To me Collins went with the more seasoned players he had on hand. We can argue that minutes wise Smith is not seasoned, which is true, but he's been with the team for longer than the freshmen.
Here's what, in my mind we can question, without knowing if alternatives would have turned out better:
- USC was pressing, double teaming full court and 1/2 court on Nick. When Leach was out it was risky to not put another better ball handler in. That would be KJ. Anyway, we did not suffer from it because USC could not figure out they needed to take the ball off of Nick's hands (or simply could not do it) in the full court press. We saw what happened when the ball was in Mullins' hands, we were lucky to not have a turnover and had to call timeout.
- Smith made a lot of mistakes and was not yanked (I am not counting the last 12 seconds). I get it, each mistake looked so dumb and exceptional you think no way it happens again, but it did! Maybe he should have been pulled? There's often a double standard on the leash players have, with the youngin having a very short one. We saw how quickly Ciaravino was benched 2 minutes into the game. We see how badly he gets yelled at compared to others: growing pains.
- Should KJ have been in for the last 120 to 90 seconds based on free throw ability? Smith is a 75% shooter, Mullins is a 67%. KJ is 83%. The others, FT% or not, Berry, Nicholson, Martinelli, you are not benching them unless it's defense/offense.
