I don’t think this loss is as bad as everyone thinks it is. Umass Lowell is a pretty good team. Not great, but pretty good, and better than our team from last year. Obviously we play better competition than they do, but they were 24-8 last year and we were 13-18. They finished with a net ranking of 118 and we finished with a net ranking of 177. They had a 5-0 record in quad 3 games and a 24-5 record in quad 3&4 games. We had a 2-3 record in quad 3 games and a 10-4 record in quad 3&4 games. They would have been a tourney team last year but they lost to Vermont in their conference tournament. They went to the nit and we didn’t. #12 is clearly better than Rodney Howard and #2 is like the version of Deivon Smith that everyone wanted Deivon Smith to be, because he has the quickness of Deivon Smith but with way better skills and he can actually shoot and score. The guy with the fro can pretty much match any of our perimeter players, and he can drive to the basket better than all of our players.
We have improved our roster from last year, and I think we could have and should have beat this team, but UMass Lowell is pretty good and probably would have beat our team from last year going away. The only thing that might have changed the outcome in a hypothetical match up last year would have been whether Pastner’s zone defense would have made a difference.