As far as Norm's original question....I think the answer is very clearly no...it is not the same time. I think there are a number of reasons for it.
IMO.....
1. Confidence. As the losses mounted, some of the care free play goes away. You second guess yourself. Clearly not playing the same.
2. Health. Not a big fan of the injury excuse. But I think even when we got Ed back, despite a few wins, we never had the same chemistry we had when he went out to begin with.
3. Roles. Think we struggled to define roles for guys. Playing time for McVeigh, Roby, Horne changed periodically. Between MJ, Jordy and Ed down the stretch, their roles changed. We struggled to push the right buttons down the stretch. I think this impacted the chemistry of the team.
4. Defensive Philosophy. Very clearly an issue here and a flawed approach to things. It hasn't just been this year, but really mounted down the stretch.
5. Added scouting. Big 10 is full of good coaches. Early on, a lot wasn't known about some of our guys and what we would do. Down the stretch it became very obvious that we aren't a good shooting team. We also aren't a great interior post team. Big 10 coaches can exploit that. Combined with the fact that we are easy to defend and aren't very good defensively....that's not a good recipe.