The announcers kept praising Coleman tonight for some reason. Sure he scored 12 points, but how many points did he give up on the defensive end by not being in the right position in the zone? Not to mention he rarely jumps for rebounds. If we are going to have a center not knowing where he needs to be in the zone, I'd rather it be Chukwu who will at least jump for some rebounds. Wisconsin out rebounded us 40-25 and they had 14 offensive rebounds. Can't win many games with those margins.
Roberson is another key player we need to getting the team on track again. 1 point and 6 boards against South Carolina and 0 points and 2 boards tonight. The only reason to play him right now is that he knows how to play defense on the wing. Other than that, he brings nothing to our offense and he isn't crashing the boards like he used to.
Look at it this way -- Battle, White, Gillon, Thompson, and to some extent Chukwu are all new to our zone this year. Howard, Lydon, Roberson, and Coleman have at least some experience with it in games coming into this season. When Roberson and Coleman aren't doing much on defense, we are really only playing two experienced Syracuse zone players (Lydon and Howard). Considering Howard is only playing half the games and seemed to be in the dog house in the second half tonight, we really had just Lydon who knew what the heck he was doing out there tonight on defense.
If we want to be a tourney team and make a deep run again, we need to have a lineup of Howard, Battle, White, Roberson, and Lydon lead us there. Gillon can be a serviceable 6th man off the bench and could be key late in close games, but I don't think he should be playing more minutes than Howard or Battle.