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Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 3943697, member: 9844"] I think many have issues with the thought of replacing a starter who has been good, or reducing a player's time even if she improves, or going from a very good backup to irrelevant from no fault of your own. But in a competitive world it is what it is. In essence Anna was a badly needed recruit in a down year for Uconn recruiting, and all things considered she had a pretty good year. Then they upgraded with players better than her. Take players like Mir or Piath. Not superstar recruits but still elite recruits that would have playing time virtually guaranteed at all but a dozen or so programs. I know I will get grief for this, but their best opportunity for playing time here was this year. They did pretty well, maybe meeting expectations for a freshmen year for Piath and probably exceeding expectations for Mir. Both players could be substantially better next year and get fewer minutes than the limited ones they got this year. The normal progression is get your feet wet as a freshmen, and continue to improve and get more time in subsequent years. That is normal, but our roster the next couple of years is no more normal than a year of Covid. If you constantly are trying to upgrade the good players you just recruited with the next year's class, you can improve the team of course, but the days of being able to project who the team will be a couple of year's out is pretty much gone with this kind of a roster and approach. Next year even with Anna's departure, we should have 13 players capable of being good players in a rotation of a championship contender, but in a system that usually uses only 7 or 8. Even if Geno expands that to 10, some previous starters might lose their spot, some good bench players in the rotation could be out of it next year, some players who were not relevant this year may continue to be so next year despite significant improvement, and some highly recruited players may never achieve more than a Pulido like role here. The extra year of eligibility is unique this year, but the expected immediate eligibility of transfers and growing popularity of grad transfers means that the durability of rosters for all teams will be lessened quite a bit, but even more so when a team has quality starter level talent on their third string. That is probably more of a revolving door year to year plan, than a long term one. Maybe now we are recruiting more for next year, than the next four years, at least for kids outside of the top 4 or 5. [/QUOTE]

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