A couple minor quibbles amongst your fair points. I think Brimah is about as good as could be reasonably expected offensively after what we saw of him last year. He makes some post shots now - jump hooks with both hands, etc. and can hit face up jumpers. He's been pretty good at the line, too. All of these are pretty big steps forward. He's tripled his scoring average (although the Coppin State outlier inflates that), and he's at least an option on the low block - last year, he never got post feeds at all. But I do think we could have expected a better rebounder at this point - something in the 6-7 range and not 4 - and a little better discipline with fouls.
Hamilton has been up and down, but he has made a few corrections early on. He doesn't leave his feet to pass any more like he did numerous times against WV, and he doesn't go to the spin move in the lane when D is collapsing - that move was effective for him early until it was scouted, and then he started losing the ball when he couldn't see the help as he was spinning. Early in the year, he had some really lazy passes on the perimeter with no zip on them that were stolen, and I haven't seen those in a while. He's still not great at reading the help defense reaching, but as he builds experience, I think he'll get a better sense for that and protect the ball, but you're right that he's repeatedly had the ball stripped by help defenders and he needs to get better at it. His turnover count was high yesterday, but I can live with a couple of them - particularly the one he had pushing the ball in overtime after his defensive rebound, which was mostly unlucky - if he got through that one last seam like he almost did before a desperate Temple reach, we'd have gotten something good in transition. I want him to push the ball there - he's been very effective all year pushing on his own rebounds and we weren't getting anything in the halfcourt. He also got one trying to throw an inbounds pass to Brimah, but he was out of options and we were low on timeouts. I'd rather have the 5 count than a live ball turnover, but easy to say from my couch.
With Boat, several folks are calling for him to play at maximum intensity from the tip every time, but the tradeoff is that there's a certain game management responsibility that someone of his importance has, now that Bazz isn't around. You can't go balls to the wall for 40 minutes at both ends and have enough in the tank for plays in winning time. Yes he's incredibly fit, but you can look at Ricky's title game performance in 1999 (who was incredibly fit himself) - he was balls to the wall at both ends in the first half and was flat out exhausted in the final minute of the half. Missed a front end while gasping for air and gave up seven points to Langdon on two possessions by being slow on close outs. And that was 20 hard minutes, not 40. Second half he reverted back to his stopper role and took it easy on offense and had enough left to make the plays on D in winning time. There's a reason Jordan facilitated all the time in the first quarter, and that Kobe didn't want to waste energy chasing Ray around on defense or that LeBron would often switch onto the toughest defensive assignment at the end when it was needed. They understood game management. You also don't want to come out too aggressive until you get a sense for how the game is going to be called. A stupid hand check foul or bumping the cutter foul early, and you have to rachet down the intensity on someone else's terms, instead of turning it up on your terms when you sense your team needs a lift. If you're Terrence Samuel - you give your max on D every minute you're out there - or if you're Boat last year and know that Bazz will handle a lot of the late game management, you can afford to push yourself past the fatigue point. I'm not saying allow easy blow bys or be lazy, which he's done a couple times and is a fair point, but 94 feet of intense defensive pressure on every dribble from the tip isn't a good strategy for your most important offensive weapon, if you need him to make the plays at the end.
