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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 5166286, member: 12088"] I generally agree with your assessment. But this one remark leaves me wondering. Yes, some freshmen are ready to play at a D1 level. But this may not be the same as being ready to play for UConn. When I watched a few Michigan games what I notice is that they run quite simplistic offensive and defensive schemes. Swords and Olson are having excellent seasons, but Michigan isn’t fully competitive as a team because of the way the team is organized. USC looks to be another case of this — great talent but not sophisticated offensive and defensive schemes. USC has great athletes, freshmen among them, and they were able to expose a flaw in our lineup, a temporary flaw, that had disappeared by the second half. We probably won’t play them again this season, but if we were to, I doubt the result would be the same. This was their problem last season, too. We beat them handily then while running 3 freshmen — the final score looked close because of FT shooting woes. Geno has always known how to play freshmen when they’re ready, and not just because injuries forced him to. And a few have been ready to get substantial minutes right away, like [B]Paige, Sarah, Christyn, Maya, but also Nykesha, Carla, Shea, Svet, Tamika, Asjha, Swin, Diana, Ann and Wilnett, Charde, Renee, and of course Tina[/B]. This list is incomplete, I expect, but it shows that Geno hasn’t really ever been opposed to playing freshmen. He is cautious about placing excessive demands on kids who aren’t ready for them, especially since his read-and-react schemes are very demanding and take a while to learn. [/QUOTE]

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