The performance of our players was ___ than I had expected

The sentence "The performance of our players was ___ than I had expected" requires a comparative adjective because of the word "than," which signals a comparison. The base adjective is "bad." Its comparative form is "worse," and its superlative form is "worst." Option B, "worse than I had expected," correctly uses the comparative form "worse" followed by "than" to make a grammatically sound comparison between the actual performance and the expectation.

• Option A, "bad as I had expected," uses the positive form "bad" with "as," which is used for equality, not for showing one thing is inferior to another.
• Option C, "worse than expectation," is grammatically incomplete; it should be "worse than expected" or "worse than my expectation."
• Option D, "worst than was expected," incorrectly uses the superlative form "worst" with "than." Superlatives are typically used with "the" and imply the highest or lowest degree among three or more items, not a direct comparison between two.

Correct comparative structure is essential when using "than" to compare two elements.