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Message: [QUOTE="Gurleyman, post: 5236575, member: 175"] Even the roster construction had some elements of bad luck. We could probably afford either Diarra being hobbled or Mahaney and Nowell not panning out (at least this year - maybe Nowell will pan out in the long run). But all of that was a perfect storm, and then we threw in our best wing ballhandler being out six weeks, and getting a lesser version of him when he came back (our veteran leader going off the rails for a while wasn't ideal either). Now, the best teams overcome the little hardships along the way (last year, we lost Castle and Clingan for a while, won at St. John's without Alex, etc). But last year, it felt like it was always sort of one thing at once (other than Kansas, when Spencer was limping while Castle was out) and we had more than enough pieces where we could move people around and overcome it. To be honest, we almost overcame it this year in due time. The version of Aidan that ended the year was good enough to spell Hass and Solo for 10-15 minutes a night and get us a couple buckets, and Liam in closer to top form might have been enough to have us firmly in contender status. I still can't get past all 3 of our shooters being off, all 3 of Florida's being on, and us still being up 3 at the last media timeout. It wasn't like we hung in there by playing out of our minds. We almost won with our C game on offense. [/QUOTE]