I disagree. Anyone that plays defense (most of the time) like Charles is anything but an unselfish player. Unselfish players play one-way. Cooke was a preseason All Defensive Team pick so its not just rose-colored glasses doing the talking. Its Cooke's peers.
Who else was going to score tonight? Cooke did what he had to do: try to jumpstart something. It didnt work -- which makes it no different than anything else anyone else (other than Kyle) did. All of his teammates sans Kyle were lawn ornaments. His teammates let him down as much as he let them down. At some point when nobody else can make a 2ft layup, your best player has to have the ball and try to do something with it. What was the alternative? Keep feeding it to our guards and bigs so they can miss more layups? Hoist more treys from Kendall? Let Crosby take over? The ball in Cooke's hands was the best option out of a list where none of them were ideal.
It didnt work. Were this game called by the Findlay refs,
UMass wouldnt have had a single player left on the court by the 8 minute mark of the second half. Unfortunately, the Flyers did not adjust to the caged zoo animal octagon the zebras manufactured and UMass embraced it with open arms. Game. Set. Match. Have to credit UMass for getting after it, playing maul-ball, and outhustling us. They deserved to win.
UD wins two games w/o Cooke and all of a sudden the guy is a chump and entirely unnecessary. We didnt lose tonight because of Cooke. We lost because we got outplayed and outcoached from head to toe. Nobody gets a free pass.
And who's to say Cooke was 100% anyway. Hes been gimped with a bad wrist for almost 3 weeks and banged his tailbone up.
UMass had their moment. They will lose 5 of the next 7 and nobody will remember who they are in 3 weeks. Dayton will do what Dayton probably does and self-reflect, figure out how to rebound from it, and find a way to climb back into form. Not many teams get off the mat better than we do.
Sometimes you have to take some bad medicine to get healthy. Tonight was one of those nights.
