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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 2993867, member: 1131"] I was at the game and saw the UConn bench play together for 5 minutes at the end of the first quarter while Geno was “suggesting” to the starters that they ought to play hard. (By the way, to my eyes the starters were playing hard in the first 5 minutes of the game, but they certainly weren’t playing aggressive defense as they did in the last three quarters and as Geno had probably game-planned for them to do.) Watching those 5 minutes of bench play led me to this conclusion: If those 5 players were someone else’s starting 5, and were backed up by an appropriate bench of their own, I think they would be a good team in WCBB — probably on the bubble of being a Top 25 team. They have 3 very talented but raw players: ONO, Batouly, and Mikayla. And they have two less talented but very seasoned and savvy players who know the offense and the defensive expectations: Kyla and Molly. They play hard. They have reasonable size (6-4, 6-2, and 6-2 in the front court), and they have speed and energy in the back court. They are in excellent physical shape to play 30+ minutes each. I think that if Geno had started in October with these 5 as his starters (i.e., if the actual starters this year were not on the team for whatever reason), and they had the same kind of bench as you find on most WCBB teams, I think that they could finish 2nd or 3rd in the AAC and make the NCAA tournament as an 8th, 9th, or 10th seed. Obviously, these five players aren’t as a good as they would be if they were being coached like starters and getting starters’ minutes. But it would be interesting to see how good they could be if they were. [/QUOTE]

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