Weaknesses exposed tonight -- not tough enough, poor defensive execution, not mentally confident or prepared, etc, etc -- are symptoms of teams we've seen since 2015. And, more than anything, and he has to admit this, is his own system and philosophy coming back to sabotage the entire mission. It's extremely difficult and a near monumental challenge to form a true, championship caliber team when you have a major exodus on your team happening EVERY year. Yes, we are young and inexperienced, as we will be next year, and the year after, and the year after that. It's hard already to get the proverbial stars to line up in you favor to win a national championship, but doing it his way makes it even more of a near impossibility.
One huge noticeable difference in tonight's game: men guarded us and got really physical, imposing their will on us; our kids guarded them and could barely stay on our feet and were caught a step or two slow all night, imposing no will on them. It looked like we did not have any kind of defensive game plan whatsoever. The unfortunate part of tonight is that THAT is who we are and THAT is most likely not going to get much better.
Back to the drawing board...