Despite having a solid opportunity to win today, the lucky breaks went to England, and we ended up losing 89-79. The game was actually much closer than that, until the final minutes, when England pulled ahead slightly and then padded their lead with many FTs (as our team went into extreme fouling mode).
Jim Tharp had another nice game, leading the team with 16 points (on 14 shots) along with 4 assists. Unfortunately, in general, our offense sputtered a bit, and was unable to hit enough key jumpers when we really needed them. One thing that hurt a bit was a first half injury to Joe-Max Phillips, but on the whole, it felt like a somewhat random down game for our team.
Having fallen to 2-2, we are now in a tough spot. We may need to run the table (not easy) to achieve a 6-2 record and a good position for the playoff round. If we end up 5-3 (more likely for us) then we might still be alive (depending on how other teams do), but we would likely be in a tough situation. Even 5-3 is no guarantee, but hopefully some of these very close games will start turning into victories this season.
Next week, we play Nigeria on the road (1:30 PM server time), and this is the first game this season where we should be able to overpower our opponent. In any case, it will be a change from what we've been seeing every week so far, and from my point of view, I don't mind that at all right now.