Minutes questions from Last Night

[HoyaSox04]

These are the MIN from last night:

Bowman - 40
Wallace - 39
Green - 37
Cook - 35
Owens - 29
Hibbert - 19

Reed - 1

Now, I'm not complaining, but what happened to a rotation of 8-9 people that I feel is very necessary to have in college bball? Granted, some teams can win with 6 man rotation, as we did last night. But do you think there's any particular reason we went to this rotation? You all know I'm a huge Ramell fan, and would love to see him out there (although DJ has impressed me quite a bit) - just wondering if anyone knows more than I do.

[SSHoya]

I believe that JT III when at Princeton had a way of having different minutes for different players depending upon the opponent and the game situation. I think he also changed starting lineups based upon his assessment of opponent as well. I think he may have mentioned this at his meet & greet with the HHC prior to the seasons as well. I wouldn't necessarily draw any inference from what he did at Pitt for the rest of the season.

[the_way]

You play who can play. We won, stop complaining, cuz thats what you are doing.

[A2Mich]

I dunno, but I feel like this is a weakness that could be exploited as the season moves along... Is our bench just not good enough to get any minutes?

[HoyaSox04]

Oh, no way, we won? Shut the hell up! I thought ESPN was lying to me.

Hey, way. Dont accuse me of complaining - no where in my post am I complaining. I asked a question, and a got an answer from SShoya (thanks for that SS). I think its obvious that we have other people on the team who CAN play - I was just wondering if someone had heard it.

So shut up.

[SFHoya99]

A2Mich said:

I dunno, but I feel like this is a weakness that could be exploited as the season moves along... Is our bench just not good enough to get any minutes?

It is a weakness that will get exploited, no doubt. I expect some of the players to tire, and some games where a coach is smart enough to attack Hibbs and Green immediately.

That said, what can you do right now? I wouldn't have given up the Pitt game to maybe do better in a later game.

[the_way]

I would think so man. Hey, I'm kind of shocked too. I thought Cornilio was rated high coming in, I thought he would get more playing time than Hibbert starting off. Tyler Crawford doesn't get any minutes. Ross a DNP for last nights game. Hey, we are not there in practice. JTIII would play guys if he felt they could contribute on the court. Apparently guys aren't doing it in practice to show they can do it in the game.

[GIGAFAN99]

1 word: Shooting.

You need different things to beat different teams and last night we needed shooters. Ross and Reed are drivers. They might get more minutes in different games, but last night Reed was too small to guard Krauser, and we needed shooters on the floor so he wouldn't have made an impact.

That said they both should get minutes versus UConn. Williams is talented but vulnerable to pressure as a freshman when he tries to do too much.

[HoyaSox04]

I think it could be a problem that our bench is pretty thin. After Reed and Ross, who really has proven themselves? I cant see Tyler logging serious minutes, and that's about it. Sead/Amadou/et al are, while not exactly useless, not people who I think will be out there come crunch time in the BE.

Although, Duke has done pretty well with basically 6 players in the past, so who knows.

[jerseyhoya34]

You go to war with the army that you have, not the army you want to have. This is the case here. When GU had rotations of 8-9 guys in a legitimate sense (in other words, not last year), you'd see guys like Vic Samnick and Lee Scruggs coming off the pine. There are no such players on the bench for this team at this time. I think JT3 is right on the money by not pretending that there is such a player on the bench.

Sure, maybe one of them gets into foul trouble or whatever. Well, we just played one of the best frontcourts in the Big East, if not the best, and it didn't pose a problem. That said, I still see it as a weakness for our team to not have a deep bench, but every team has a weakness or several weaknesses that cannot be fixed adequately by anything that the coaches can do. So, you take those weaknesses as they are and play with them.