Geno usually has only 7 or 8 players with significant playing time. Will he put more emphasis on developing a deeper bench? A deeper bench helped Adama not be worn out by tourney time. I hope Geno has 10 players with more than 15 minutes per game and no players more than 30.
I hope for something similar to that. Geno doesn't usually go that deep but the 16 championship team might be a model. We had the top 3 picks in the WNBA draft, but they were only at 30 minutes a game or so, including Stewie in her senior year. Several things made that possible.
First that was one of the best teams ever, and they had early blowout wins in all but a hand-full of games, making it much easier to give extended minutes to the bench. If the games were significantly closer, obviously the starter minutes would have gone up. As far as our team this upcoming season, I see a much more dominant team than the past few years, but not at the level of 2016. Far more blowouts to give the bench more time, but not like 2016.
A second factor is how much the play falls off going to your bench, or the gap between your starters and the bench. The 2016 team had two future WNBA players on the bench in Napheesa and Gabby. It is easy to give your star starters a bench when you can do it with another star. But the next two off the bench were clearly way better than average backups as well, in fact as good as most average team's starters in Natalie and Saniya (both of whom were also drafted). By the time we went 10 deep we had Courtney who was still good enough after she transferred to be a starter in a power 5 conference. This year's team could have similar depth going 10 or 11 deep as well.
Third is how the team plays. If there is an emphasis on pressing and fast breaks, that needs a deep bench to pull it off, and a willingness to reduce somewhat the minutes played by your top players. That is the trade off, but you are also wearing out the opponents top players too, so against a team with a weak bench it seems like an obvious choice to me. That is something that could range from becoming our style we use against most teams, to a far more selective strategic used against just a few. The more we use it, the more rationale for going 10 deep.
A possible headwind to the extended bench is the schedule. Ours is front-loaded with difficult out of conference games. Could this team be ready for a big rotation from the start? Maybe, but if not there is still the possibility of expanding some roles after they get more comfortable in them during the less challenging conference schedule, and be ready to add more pieces to the rotation by the time we hit the tournaments.
