Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Both of you (and many on the Boneyard) want Geno to "settle" for Jana, whatever her level of development, seemingly just because she is 6-5. This is because you believe that her size (again, with little attention to her level of play) will be needed against the big teams that UConn will supposedly face in March and April.
Do you remember the Texas game about a year ago? Geno, apparently against his better judgment, started Ice and Aaliyah in that game to counter Texas's size, and it didn't work at all, because Ice at that time was just not up to the challenge. By the fourth quarter, he took Ice out and played four guards with Aaliyah (with Paige as the de facto "4") and they did much better, causing as many problems for Texas defenders as the Texas bigs posed to UConn when the Longhorns were on offense. After that game, "Aaliyah+4" became the starting lineup for the rest of last season, and Ice came off the bench to back up Aaliyah.
Now both of you, along with
@Rowdy831 , are adopting the view that "Sarah+4" is an untenable lineup in the NCAA tournament, because of opponents' presumed size. But isn't this disproven by the fact that "Aaliyah+4" was in fact UConn's lineup in last year's NCAA tournament, and that lineup got with in one basket and one referee's call of the NCAA Finals?
@oldude , whom I usually agree with, says that Aaliyah could match up with opposing star centers, but Sarah can't. I would love to see a statistical comparison of senior Aaliyah vs. freshman Sarah, and I bet that Sarah would look better in that comparison than many here think. I don't think we know what Sarah can or can't handle, but her performance against Tennessee showed that she was quite able to deal with their size (which isn't all that great, nor is South Carolina's). But the question is whether she would do better than Jana against those opponents, and everything we have seen of Jana recently suggests that Sarah would do better. Neither of them is probably going to stop Lauren Betts, but who would do better against her? I think Sarah would.
That's why we are not seeing major minutes for Jana against Big East opponents. Geno has already decided, or is on the verge of deciding, that she isn't going to be UConn's starting center in the NCAA tournament, and he is trying to give major minutes to the Sarah+4 configuration that he expects to take into that tournament, for as far as it will go. I think his judgment about this is correct.
It is not true by definition that taller always wins in basketball. I'm old enough to remember the 1970's Celtics who had 6-9 Dave Cowens as their center, going against Kareem and the other enormous centers of that era, and doing so with reasonable success. The Celtics kept 7-1 Henry Finkel on the bench as Cowens's backup, which is where he belonged because of his limited skill.
In more recent times, what about 6-9 Adama Sanogo being very successful against 7-0 Kalkbrenner and other centers of similar size on the men's side?
And I remember an NCAA game in Stef Dolson era when Geno had to take Stef out in the fourth quarter against a Georgetown team that was very fast but had no one taller than 6-1, and UConn came from behind to win the game with some fast play by 5-4 Laurin Dixon.
It's not ideal to play at a height disadvantage, but it is much more problematic to play at a skill disadvantage, which is what the heavy use of Jana would produce.
