I think it was a mixture of inexperience and indiscipline that got him into this situation.
The inexperience was not to recognise the warning signs of a downwind approach - groundspeed vs airspeed, difficulty in maintaining his intended approach angle and early loss of ETL with associated higher power settings..
The indiscipline was not doing a proper 5S recce and taking time over establishing the wind direction and best approach - he could have flown a dummy approach each way if he was unsure but chose to push on with his 'mental model' of the conditions.
If you are a low-time pilot with friends on board for goodness sake err on the side of caution - he could easily have totalled himself and his mates.