Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 4527402, member: 9844"] Since everyone is covering the differences between lineups with different players pretty thoroughly, I wanted to point out how having so few players hurts us in other ways. We can say well that player would have done better than this one, but I think we sometimes forget that every player being used for heavy minutes will be better with a bigger rotation. If we add Azzi and Caroline later, Nika, Lou, Aubrey, Aaliyah and Dorka can all be more productive when they are on the court. Much of that is not being fatigued. At these minutes they can't be 100% all the time. They have to pick their spots, learn to conserve energy in spots etc. Lou in particular is playing under the handicap of being the opponents defense focus. If Azzi is in the game, she will draw that attention, and with Caroline we should always have two major three point threats instead of one on the floor most of the time, so yes spacing matters for the others too. Turning to Geno, his hands have been tied in so many ways. When you only have one bench player you want to use (Ayanna) and then only as little as necessary, your game management and practice schedules are totally disrupted. He can't call timeouts for strategic purposes very often, he has to have them managed at intervals to give his players rest to avoid substitutions. He can't insert players for strategic purposes off the bench or make multiple moves because if it is a rotation of 6 your resting player has to be ready to go back in before you can take another one out. Practices are not as effective because you have to limit time to preserve energy for the games, and you may not have enough players to even do 5 on 5. So it is far more than just this new healthy player will be an upgrade over who we are using now. The players we are using now will be better when rested, have more opportunities when we can spread the floor and have more options for opponents to worry about, we will have better practices, and during the game Geno can take timeouts, and make substitutions strategically, and press and fast break more if he wants to. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach