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Message: [QUOTE="Mister2, post: 2614106, member: 8504"] PhillyCoach: I take your basic point that UCONN did not need to fill a 5th starter slot with MW as it did with Kia and KLS, and in that sense it has made life somewhat more difficult for MW. However, you can also look at it in a different way: how much more difficult life would have been for Kia and KLS had they not performed well enough to hang on to their starting roles. In the case of KLS, she was not the first choice for the 5th starter, not even the second choice if I remember correctly. I believe Geno first started Gabby, then Pheesa, then KLS. The competition for that 5th starter was intense. Had KLS not performed well in practice at the time, I doubt Geno would have hesitated at all to benching her. You are also on point that, at critical moments in a close game, Geno is not going to sub out KLS (or any of the other 4+1 starters for that matter) for MW. However, even in close games there will often be stretches of time the 7th player could come in and make a significant contribution and impact the game. In other words, a player's impactfulness on the team does not depend on whether she has the starting role. A good example of that was Butler last season: she never started, but without her contributing the kind of meaningful minutes she had, UCONN would surely have lost a game or two in the regular season. Ultimately, I think our disagreement is fairly small. You tend to put more emphasis on the circumstance a particular player faces; I tend to put more emphasis on the player's ability to alter that circumstance. I don't think my emphasis is asking too much of a top recruit. [/QUOTE]

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