[Cactus Jack]

Something that confuses me with the defensive issues is, and I could be wrong, but didn't we bring in several defensive players of the year?

Butler and Williams definitely were that in their previous (albeit smaller) conferences. Oweh was possibly on the Big XII All Defensive team. Everyone else aside from Garrison was probably viewed as an average defender at best. Brea was 6th man at Dayton because of his defense.

The defensive stats I'd listed were also only in conference play and we've had a pretty tough stretch there. Plus just scoring lots and playing at a really quick pace will lead to giving up a lot of points and really high "counting stats" like fouls per game, etc.

I think that Pope corrects some of this over time as he's able to bring in a different level athlete, but it's late January and we basically are what we are at this point in the season, especially as we have to give Perry more minutes in Kriisa's place.