Ratings, stats and pp100 don't look that bad in terms of shooting %, assists, turnover, steals and defense in general. However, Croatia got 21 offensive rebounds out of a possible 41, more than 50%...not gonna win any game that way, unless you shoot much better than the opponent. I wonder if the high number of fouls is also due to being completely dominated on the boards (ie. fouls on putbacks).
If they had around 25% OR% which is more reasonable, that's 10 possessions switched to us. Given the FG% from both teams that's more than a 20 point swing, so we'd have been neck and neck as the rest of the boxscore suggests. And that's a conservative estimate because if many shooting fouls did come on putbacks, we would have been slightly better off as their FT% was still better than their FG%.
It's really odd anyway, since we got dominated at every position (except maybe C, where it was bad but not completely lopsided) and it seems like Needham was defending the SG which should have resulted in more balance on the (defensive) boards at least at that position. I guess these games are not on neutral grounds.
Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/30/2020 10:56:13 AM