I waited a day to post my thoughts, so here goes:
Most bball teams struggle in the early season. Even Donovan's teams looked sloppy and suffered inexplicable losses at times--and those were with the benefit of full practice sessions and preseason exhibition games vs widely overmatched competition to get them ready for bigger games. Add to that the fact Army had worked out the early season jitters already and had 3 games under their belt...well, the early struggles make a little more sense.
After the first 5 minutes, we comfortably outplayed them, even if it remained close with them hitting clutch 3s throughout the game.
My main positives were that KJ looks like he's still one of the best players in college basketball (he hit a timely 3 to put the lead in comfort territory late); and several other talented freshman from last year look like they've taken the soph leap (Mann was one of our best players, Payne looks improved, and while Lewis struggled for most of the game...had a decent stat game when I looked it up). Appleby was another who looked like a liability in the first half, but had a big part in our eventual second-half victory. Castleton looks like a good transfer pickup and had a number of timely rebounds to extend possessions. Making 9 of 10 FTs at clutch time was huge--especially since we were so bad at it in the first half.
Biggest negative was that we were extremely slow in our defensive shifts and gave up tons of wide-open 3s (that Army's players usually hit). Clean that up and this is a blowout.
