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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 5329770, member: 12088"] I agree with everything you’re thinking here as well as your forecasts of who the starters will be. But I think my earlier post did account for KK and Ash’s experience with the read and react system. This gives them a competitive advantage in practice which is where they’ll earn playing time. But it’s not a ‘get out of jail free card’ or an inside track. [B]I realize I’m splitting the proverbial hair[/B], but the point about earning minutes in current practices rather than in previous seasons is an important one for a few reasons, not least of which is team morale. Everyone starts the season with the same shot at earning minutes based on what they’re doing now in competition with current teammates. And if they don’t win the competition and don’t start or get major minutes they’ll understand exactly why this happened and what they might do to change it in subsequent practices. And I think I agree with your suggestion that Serah is likely to start. It’s not special circumstances [B]because[/B] of what she did at Wisconsin or [B]because[/B] we have a perceived weakness in the frontcourt. We are simply expressing confidence in the supposition that she’ll win a starting spot and our confidence is based on the talent and skills she’s demonstrated elsewhere. But if Jana or Ice can outplay her in practice, they’ll win the starting spot. If she can’t shut down their offense and if they can shut down hers, she won’t start over one of them regardless of what she accomplished elsewhere. I just don’t think that will happen. I’d say the same thing about Sarah or Azzi and would have said it about Paige. I don’t believe anyone is going to out-compete Sarah. But if they could, they’d play ahead of her. Clearly Geno takes chemistry into consideration too and not just scoring or defending head to head, but this is part and parcel of the read and react system. Geno actually made a joke about this in a presser during Paige’s sophomore year when she was trying to come back from injury. When someone asked if she’d start right away he said, “Of course, she’ll have to earn her playing time,” and then started laughing. It turns out she didn’t start right away and had to ease her way back into game competition. But it was obvious to everyone that Geno was simply getting her ready to start in the tournament. He knew even then that the team couldn’t go far without her and I’m sure all her teammates knew it too. There were no hard feelings. Edited to add: I agree with [USER=7511]@oldude[/USER] that performance in games counts too. The pressure of games is a factor in the competitive assessments Geno makes. In that sense, I’d almost say that games are an extension of practice. And I’d agree with [USER=44]@CL82[/USER] that we mainly know who will start and the first off the bench is interesting question. I’d phrase this a little differently as, we have a good idea who the main 7 or 8 will be, though exactly which 5 are on the floor at the opening tip is less clear to me. The constant for me is Sarah and Serah and Azzi. But those other two spot seem to me up for grabs among 4 or 5 tremendous players. If he wants to go small play KK together with Kayleigh they might start. And if he wants to go big he might feature Blanca at the tip. And if he thinks more perimeter shooting will matter in a particular game then Ash might get the nod. [/QUOTE]

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