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Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 4703853, member: 9844"] The optimism regarding our ability with the existing roster, to compete for a championship, or the examples of past successes with smaller lineups on occasion is valid, but it still is Plan B in my opinion. Our Plan B could be very good, but a Plan A with two very talented 5's like Ice and Jana potentially doing a very good job at C, while every other position dominates with talent and depth, had more upside than we have after Jana's injury. Can we be very good?, of course, whether we go with the next tier of bigs, or go small ball, but our ceiling as to how good we could be if everything developed as hoped, has been lowered somewhat. Having a great C sized player is very rare. There are very few, and most teams can only dream of getting one much less two. But some of the true national contenders, think South Carolina and Stanford, have had an abundance of outstanding bigs in general, and not one but two future pro C's. Boston and Cardosa, and Brink and Betts were almost unbelievable combinations at the 5. Their backup C was better than all but a few Division 1 starters. Most of the season we can dominate more ordinary teams with small ball if we have to, and the Big East won't present many, if any star big 5's, but the ultimate road to a championship is likely to face one or two of them, and that is where not having Jana could make the biggest difference. Hopefully Ice can hold her own in those kind of match-ups, but she is only 6-3 and doesn't seem to be a big leaper, and we don't have a proven C sized backup unless Amari improves big time, which is possible but time will tell. [/QUOTE]

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