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Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 4538206, member: 9844"] The 40 rebound reversal is very hard to comprehend along with the inability to finish inside vs. dominating inside the last game.. I have to think fatigue is a major factor here. I know Creighton doesn't play traditional low post bigs, but with Caroline back, Geno stuck with a 6 player rotation keeping Ayanna on the bench. That doesn't help much regarding fatigue. Caroline might play more minutes than Ayanna would, particularly in the upcoming games, but with a 6 player rotation your team will be tired period. Considering the benefit that just two or three minutes each half by Ayanna could provide, getting starters minutes maybe just down to the lower 30's, could make them more effective, even if Ayanna's personal production is just mediocre. Geno must think that Ayanna is unplayable, basically joining Amari and Ines as players who are only included in his gameplan when he has absolutely no choice, or the game has been decided. I pretty much expected that to be the role for Ines, and was not terribly surprised that Amari has not yet earned his trust yet, but with Ayanna it really surprises me. I can't see what practices are like, but I haven't heard negatives about her approach or effort, and even though she is raw as could be, and makes a ton of mistakes, you can also see potential there. Maybe she would be terrible if he played her more, I don't know. But I think most of us can see with our own eyes that these girls are gassed and running on fumes. It is not the Nika, Lou, Aubrey, Aaliyah and Dorka that we know, instead they are all significantly worse players due to fatigue. Now with Caroline back for maybe 20-25 minutes a game or so, with another 5-10 from Ayanna you could get the starters to 34-35 minutes a game, and increase the effectiveness of all the starters. It could be Amari instead of Ayanna if Geno thought that would be better option, but at least for minimal minutes, we need a 7th player in the rotation that is a big. Think about it, a 40 rebound turnaround from plus 32 to minus 8, and our two bigs completely dominated Creighton inside last time, but this game had trouble finishing at the rim. Also remember that bigs don't usually play as many minutes anyway. There are plenty of star bigs that don't even play 30 minutes a game, much less near 40. The conditioning of our players is remarkable and a testament to them, but there is a limit to everything. I'm not buying the he has no choice argument. There are two big candidates on the bench that may be pretty big disappointments at this stage, at least by Uconn standards, but despite their mistakes I believe they would be starters on most of the division 1 programs. To me that is good enough for one of them to get 5-10 minutes spelling players that have shown over quite a few games, that they are nowhere near their normal production playing the extremely heavy minutes Geno saddles them with. At least try it, and if that totally fails ok go back to his 6 man rotation, but the 6 player rotation is not working, and hasn't been for some time. You know what they say about trying the same thing over and over and somehow expecting different results. OK I have vented enough for now! [/QUOTE]

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