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Mostly, the “tale of 2 halves” is a mental thing, and also a big factor is 2nd half adjustments.
Mental thing: hard to not slow down your aggression when you are up 25pts. We’ve seen this countless times all across the ncaa over the yrs, right? Its something coaches caution their teams about nonstop, but there’s a human nature letdown.
2nd half adjustments: Steve Alford or any coach will try something different on both ends of the court, sometimes it works, sometines not.
Also in blowouts, when the bench guys get in, our efficiency & execution goes down, will the other team is still goung hard, and the gap shrinks.
Some of this is coaching profession respect for losing coach, not run-up the score, and also getting “practice minutes” for your bench guys against live opponent.
If the starters stayed in as a unit, they’d get chewed once or twice by Self…and you’d have seen Selden, Perry, etc, hang 100+ on poor UCLA. But Self knows he’ll need rested starters to try to win this thing against top20 Vandy.