1) 12 points is not much, so playing Normal would have made it a lot close. But there's no way of knowing if you would have won
2) Why would you play a different offense? His 1-3-1 zone left the inside less guarded, and your 19 offensive rebounds helped you stay close, I imagine. Against a better team, it's often a good idea to try and slow down the pace, so for an inside offense it would have been Low Post instead of LI. But I think your choice of offensive tactic was good. Maybe defending 3-2 would have stopped his outside shooting some more