I think you could not play Lammers and AD effectively together and play the high post cutting offense. Having AD in the low post gummed up the lane for the cutters.
If you had shooters it could have worked. You could have had Lammers in the high post, AD in the low post and shooters around them. Force the defense to react to Ben and AD and then have open looks on the perimeter. The fact Lammers couldn't shoot his jumper for most of the season really hurt as well. If he was shooting the mid range jumper like last year than you could also have done the high-low post offense.
I think they did it partly because as Lammers was sort of a shell of himself for alot of the season, AD was the only one that was producing points among the bigs.
Cole and Moses weren't ready to play earlier in the season - Pastner mentioned that after one of the early ACC contests that he would not put them in because they weren't practicing hard enough and didn't understand yet how much effort you have to give.
I still think AD was a better choice from the get go than Moses. Moses right now has no real skill level and mediocre at best hands (possibly due to needing strength). They tried to play AD as a stretch 4 early and that didn't work really well, but once they put him on the block he was much better. Watching him in warmups, he has the best post game on the team. Easily the best footwork in the post.
Moses needs to be developed as a slashing 3/4 combo forward - sort of like Muhammad was. Nothing in Moses' numbers suggest he will be effective on the perimeter. 30% FG, 6% 3FG, 54% FT. All those suggest a poor shooter. Ballhandling is below avg as well. If he actually turns into a solid shooter that will be a huge bonus.
I do think to their credit, the staff was constantly trying to modify the offense based on who they had available and what they were capable of doing it. Some things worked, some didn't. Even with all the injuries and strange lineups the offense was a fair bit better than year one. Going from OEff of 100 and 259th overall to Oeff of 104.2 and 192nd overall. The big issue was a big change in defensive efficiency. That should have been expected to some extent with alot of young players, but the injuries made it worse. Losing Heath and Heywood cost you little on offense - if anything it was a net gain, but defensively they did really well. Tad was always an indifferent defender which is disappointing as he had the skills to be a really good one. JoshO is a mediocre defender. Not horrible but not great either. Lammers getting hurt also has a negative impact as his rim protection was a much lower level than last year. It was obvious he did not have the same lateral motion.
I'm really interested to see what offense they run next season because I think it will be different than alot of the last 2 yrs. Probably closer to what they were running in Jan when AD was getting alot of touches, but more uptempo and with more players capable of shooting. That type of offense should help Moses some though. The couple of big games he had early was him running and overwhelming less athletic players near the basket. So upping the tempo and having multiple guards that can make passes should help him.
I think Cole will continue to improve at a nice stead pace and develop into a solid rotation type player by his JR yr. The form on his shot looks solid (he hit 33% 3FG in ACC games, not great but not awful). He was getting more aggressive late in the ACC season, but his strength is not near what it needs to be. He plays smart, doesn't make a ton of mistakes.
Looking forward to turning the page to next season,