And for the record I don't dislike MM. I've never met her. She's one of the best coaches in wcbb. But for years some fans have pointed to how well she uses her bench, getting her young players experience, in contrast to Geno who gets constantly criticized by some for playing 6 or 7. But when given the chance she chose to play a short bench for 2 years, bringing in a 2 year transfer. Now she is paying for it. The injuries are just making a bad situation worse. They aren't the principal factor, no matter how hard the Irish apologists spin it.
The stats are my evidence
2018 - starters average mins/game
33
30
32
28
31
total average starter minutes = 154
2019 - starters averaged
34
29
34
34
26
total average starter minutes = 157 mins/game
MM ignored her bench for 2 years.
You never know what you'll "come back to" after a chock-full Thanksgiving weekend.
Thanks as usual for your provoking post. I can see how you arrived at your assessment of MM's management of the bench in 2018-2019. I'm not sure "ignored" is the word I'd employ, but she decided "not to use available sophomore and freshman personnel -- for various reasons -- for sure; at least as I saw it develop. And one might make the argument it came back to bite her this year, but you never quite know the reasons behind "retention" and "transfers."
However, I don't think MM was ignoring her bench players at all in the 2018-19 season. Unfortunately, the number of available players on the bench kept getting on crutches. It started with Brianna Turner taking the entire year off to rehab the ACL injury suffered against Purdue in the NCAAs.
Then, spunky Mychael Johnson blew out her knee during practice. She would've been a combo guard who played tough defense.
Still, in the early part of the season, there were four players getting ample court time:
- Transfer guard Lili Thompson was averaging 27.1 minutes in the 14 games she appeared in before succumbing to an injury;
- Freshman Center Mik Vaughn averaged 13.2 minutes in the 6 games she played before her knee went.
After losing those two players, MM relied on two players from there on in:
- Grad Student Kristina "Koko" Nelson averaged 15.8 minutes per game for the whole season, spelling Jess Shepard and Kat Westbeld; and,
- Frosh Danielle Patterson played 12.5 minutes a game, primarily at the forward position.
There simply were no other scholarship players left to mix in that season. In fact, walk-on guard was gettting floor time in the latter part of the season and during NCAA games. If Johnson, Thompson and Vaughn had not been injured, they would've played: Johnson played the previous season and Thompson and Vaughn were getting minutes.
Here's the stats from that year:
