That’s crap. We started the season ranked. Didn’t lay an egg in non-conference. Hang on for double digit win against Cuse. Beat Maryland on the road. Beat Illinois. Started 3-0 in conference. All while being ranked.
The team got used to not having to play constant, in your face defense to win. The shots were falling. Then suddenly they weren’t. We were completely lost and couldn’t seem to adjust. It took time to find our way. The injuries to Cliff and RHJ didn’t help. But then we got back a solid defender in Caleb who is a versatile player and made it possible to play a broader range of defensive sets. As he found his legs and everyone else got healthy, we seemed to settle in on defense to get back on track. Then suddenly we start out the NW game with cant miss shooting. We fall back into our old ways letting an offensively challenged team find rhythm and score 18 in a hurry. But this time instead of hoping our shot would come back (which it didn’t), we relied on the defense to gut out the win.
Not sure how any of this had anything to do with rankings?