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You’re right, of course. I was engaged in a reverie instead of a focused analysis. But I wouldn’t have said the Aubrey lineup was a bridge, since it wasn’t necessarily leading to a pre-ordained end. That’s why I spoke of all these lineups as experimental, until he got to the Nika lineup. That seemed to be the one he liked best.While I agree with all your points #, I don’t see how they are germaine to the simplistic lens I described above.
A starting lineup is the coach’s best guess of the optimal five given the available roster
Also, I tend to give a privilege to the first one, though clearly there are notable exceptions. He spent the summer and the fall working on it. I take that to mean he thought Nika wasn’t ready for the job in November, but his assessment changed and he reconsidered the structure of the lineup.
I find it interesting that he went with a 4-guard lineup that season too. He only had 11 on the roster including a walk-on, though Saylor arrived in the spring. But this 4-guard lineup was by choice unlike last season. He tried Aaliyah next to Liv against Providence and opted against continuing with it. Admittedly these were initially big guards when it was Paige Evina and Anna, and subsequently Aubrey, who is arguably not a guard. Each around 6’. Only Jesuit was 5’10”. And then he went even smaller with Nika instead of Aubrey.
I go into these side alleys merely to try to understand the nature of Geno’s thinking when he turned to Nika. He didn’t just replace a player. He revamped the lineup, going from a big guard to a power forward to a small forward to an even smaller guard. Another less precise way to put it: he went from a 4-out offense to a 3-2 to a smaller 3-2 to an even smaller 4-out.
This is clearly not a perfect analysis by any means. Maybe it’s useful as a thought experiment.