Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 5009405, member: 1673"] The Bird season was ‘00, my error that I referred to her as unquestionable #1 in the country that year. Big Rig was effectively third team that year, as I said. That means ten players were used before her, all extending leads by their minutes played way before the end of the game. Indeed, a game against Georgia, a top team at the time, was behind 30 points before the end of the first half thanks to at least ten players all extending leads playing beautiful basketball. Gardler was part of a 10-11 player rotation in a later year. She was sometimes the 7 - 9 player in but I singled her out because she was unheralded, lower down in the rotation, yet came to the rescue against Rutgers when the team had injury and foul issues. But I digress with her. You have moved the goalpost. In much of your posts I see reference to a seven player rotation. Now 8 or 9 falls within your bounds of a shorter rotation? I understand the logic of a shorter rotation providing greater reps for building chemistry within that rotation. I’ve argued that myself. Yet in a program like UConn you occasionally can get players like Bird, KJ, Cash, Williams, Jones, Schumacher, Sauer, Ralph, Hansmeyer and Abrosimova all healthy and all on the same team at the same time. Aside from the insurances provided by a deeper rotation, if it can still extend leads playing Auriemma’s brand of beautiful basketball, what about the consequence to chemistry from not playing someone like the senior and former starters (and highly ranked recruits) Sauer and Hansmeyer until mop up time? Which three of those players do you sit and not think you’ve affected the chemistry, and thus the performance, of the team as a whole? The men’s team had close first halves during tournament time, but no close games overall except for St. John’s (and even that was not in doubt). They clearly wore teams down even though using the freshmen Stewart or Ball during the year meant extending the rotation with freshmen that were not quite as good as the first seven. You can win with seven, you can win with six. You can hurt yourself with a rotation of 8 or beyond, but you can also help yourself and the make up of some rosters virtually require it. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach