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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 5317576, member: 12088"] You’ve done it to me again, [USER=10435]@BBallF[/USER]. Now you explicitly say you disagree with me, but on the point you cite you’re actually agreeing with me. Yes, the final rotation will not be settled until February — I feel like I’ve said that a few times already. Before then, it’s typically tinkering and experimenting, and that will certainly be true this year too. My only conjecture here is that the experimentation will be even more variegated (!) than previous years, and this will be especially marked in December and January. Does the context of the entire team impact Ice’s role? Of course it does. Who’d deny this? All of us have been sketching those aspects of the context we think will be particularly significant for Ice. It’s perhaps worth asking why February is the decisive month. I suspect this is an inflection point because it leaves enough time to build tournament chemistry. Geno doesn’t need to settle on a rotation before then and can continue experimenting. Last season’s team only came together according to Geno after the Tennessee game. This is when he saw that they all “loved each other.” The main difference I expect to see this season is how deep the final rotation will be. Last season it went 8 deep. Will it go 10 deep this season? On the one hand I kinda expect to see exactly this. On the other hand, my very limited experience coaching youth leagues tells me that substitution patters are a lot harder to manage with larger numbers. [And in case I need to define what I mean by rotation, it’s the portion of the roster who gets more than 10 minutes after January. This is an arbitrary number only intended to capture the difference between garbage time and contested time in games.] A second difference I am looking for is whether there will be any surprises in that rotation. I think most of us anticipate the usual suspects in the final rotation: Azzi Sarah KK Ash Jana Ice + newcomers Serah Blanca and Kayleigh. That makes 9. But could Morgan or Allie or Ayanna or Carol or Kelis, or even Gandy also challenge for rotation spots? Add just one of them and you have 10. Could more than one force their way into the rotation? A few people have suggested that Ayanna could take Ice’s spot. I don’t know what to expect about this conjecture, though there is a lot of overlap in their respective skill sets. The main difference I see is that Ice is mainly looking to refine existing skills in a third season while Ayanna needs to develop skills that were still pretty ragged the last time she was healthy. But they’re both very strong and good rebounders. Ayanna has a significant speed advantage especially when it comes to running the court in transition, and neither one is a great low post scorer. Ice is brilliant at setting screens, a skill that is all too easy to overlook. I write all this thinking you will agree with it since it seems all quite uncontroversial. In fact, I think we’ve been in agreement about all the substantive questions in this thread. Perhaps the problem is that I’ve been unclear. That’s what led me to write such a tediously long post. [/QUOTE]

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