I think the team was very well-conditioned. Players I talked to said they had never been pushed so hard on conditioning. It had to have been the depth.
Hauck commented on lack of depth from the get-go. Also, he said after the first game that they had probably made a mistake playing too many players for too long, tiring them out, and then not having them with enough gas at the end. But they hung on in that game.
My guess is that due to lack of depth in certain positions, they weren't able to sub as much as they wanted to, to head off this late in the game problem. Recall that Hauck used to essentially platoon 2 teams on defense in his first stint.
As you know, I really can't imagine the the 4th quarter/late game problem was that the coaches forgot to coach as the game went on. Also, I noticed in the quarter by quarter opponent scoring stats recently that the Griz didn't give up many points in the 3d quarter this year. But, man, the 4th quarter was awful.