Is Depth Something that is Over-rated in College Basketball?

[michaelgrahmstylie]

Our guys are winning, improving, despite only having 7-8 guys in the rotation. I am beginning to rethink this whole notion that depth is key. What do you think?

[prhoya]

Jan 18, 2020 19:50:22 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

Our guys are winning, improving, despite only having 7-8 guys in the rotation. I am beginning to rethink this whole notion that depth is key. What do you think?

Depth is nice. Class and position balances are the key.

[michaelgrahmstylie]

Jan 18, 2020 19:53:42 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Jan 18, 2020 19:50:22 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

Our guys are winning, improving, despite only having 7-8 guys in the rotation. I am beginning to rethink this whole notion that depth is key. What do you think?

Depth is nice. Class and position balances are the key.

Yeah, i hear you, but I think we may have had too much depth. We had guys complaining about minutes, couldn't seem to find the right chemistry, and getting players lost and underutilized in the shuffle. ie. Allen.

[michaelgrahmstylie]

Also, I am looking at Villanova. What do they play--an eight-man rotation? Wright has those guys playing lots of minutes, building chemistry, and becoming comfortable with taking shots from anywhere on the court. Jump shots, might I add.

[saxagael]

Currently, we are running a mostly 7 deep team and it isn't enough to give players a break. Foul trouble or injuries make it really tough. One long wing in Pickett has no back-up or relief, so we go smaller and get burned. There is an extra big and guard and potentially another big. Most teams running 7 to 8 have their depth at guard and wing. But, they also actually have 10 to 13 decent players through scholarships. Hoyas are stuck currently with 7 scholarship players, which hurts.

Hoyas win some games against decent teams, but the Big East is deeper. If the goal is not winning in top 3 or 4 of Big East and not making the tourney, 7 or 8 may work fine. But, I don't think Georgetown or its fans have that as a goal.

[mdtd]

Depth provides better practices, more energy, room for sickness, hot hands, spark plugs, spot minutes and more. I think depth is something that needs to be used more. When used correctly, it's excellent. Being able to go 9 deep is huge. Having guys who can step up when a star isn't having a good game is gigantic. It's something that will be huge when used correctly.

[hoyainla]

Jan 18, 2020 20:09:23 GMT -5 saxagael said:

Currently, we are running a mostly 7 deep team and it isn't enough to give players a break. Foul trouble or injuries make it really tough. One long wing in Pickett has no back-up or relief, so we go smaller and get burned. There is an extra big and guard and potentially another big. Most teams running 7 to 8 have their depth at guard and wing. But, they also actually have 10 to 13 decent players through scholarships. Hoyas are stuck currently with 7 scholarship players, which hurts.

Hoyas win some games against decent teams, but the Big East is deeper. If the goal is not winning in top 3 or 4 of Big East and not making the tourney, 7 or 8 may work fine. But, I don't think Georgetown or its fans have that as a goal.

I disagree that we only have 7 guys. Tim has shown me enough that he could be in a rotation getting 5-10 minutes which is all the 8th guy at teams like Nova and Creighton give. He just has 2 guys that play his position in front of him so he’s not needed. As for Wilson I have no idea where he is because we haven’t seen him since the summer. He didn’t look completely lost over the summer though. It does seem like the plan was to redshirt him and since he has the same problem as Tim of no real spot then why waste the RS. We just have bad position balance. If Tim or Wilson we’re a wing with similar capabilities they would be playing and we would be much better off for it.

[bamahoya11]

I don't see how a team that currently sits at 12-7 overall, 2-4 in the Big East, and 7th of 10 teams in the league, serves as evidence that depth is "overrated." If anything, the quick uptick in play after the departures, followed by a return to the median, shows how hard these sort of losses are to sustain over the long haul. You see this in all sports -- when a star player goes down, there may be a short period of equal or even greater play. As months pass, that gets harder to sustain. Over years, the problems compound if there isn't balance across a roster.

Now, plenty of folks have had things to say about the players who left. I don't take any position on that. I have no idea whether they were good for the locker room, bad, or indifferent. What I do know is that the staff needs to find and retain talent. It's one thing to lose players to the NBA -- in that circumstance, it speaks highly of a staff's ability to get players to the next level. And of course, all teams will lose seldom-used players, who transfer for playing time elsewhere. When we lose key contributors, though, I view that as a failure at some level. Perhaps the players weren't the right fit. Maybe the player didn't hold up to their end of the commitment. I don't know; I just know that the most consistent programs find and retain talent, especially if that talent is not headed to the NBA. It's the most important thing most college coaches do. Recruiting isn't just about stars and numbers, but about who will fit into a system and a locker room.

We have a scrappy team this year. They (and we) should be proud of their efforts. It also speaks to Ewing's coaching ability that he could withstand these losses and coach some winning basketball. I don't see, though, how this sort of depth is sustainable long term.

[michaelgrahmstylie]

Well, maybe we should attempt to define depth. I am certainly not saying that a seven-man roster is okay. What I am saying, though, is maybe the coaching staff should look at playing, on a consistent basis, no more than 7-9 guys so that they develop cohesiveness and intuition on the court--a feel and a knowledge for what each other is going to do almost instinctively. That's the type of ball we are being forced to play now. I think we are doing a great job. Of course, we don't want to be in a position that we find ourselves with only seven scholarship players. That's not lack of depth; that's lack of players.

I thought, coming into this year we may have had too many players with too many of them at the same positions. Neither Mac nor Akinjo, in my opinion, were pure point guards.

[tashoya]

Need 8 guys, minimum, as credible rotation players with little drop-off, IMO. 9/10 with a slight drop is ideal. 9/8/7 should be fighting for minutes or match-up selections. We're at a legit 7 now. We're one off-shooting night for one perimeter guy, one flu, one foul trouble game away from a solid drop-off. Barring those things, the guys that are rotation guys know that and there's an added pressure knowing that's the case. Knowing the guy filling in is a hit to the team means the guys that are rotation guys play less free and easy. IMO, that is hurting us. That can be offset a bit by someone that's in the rotation making a leap offensively (please, Jamorko, you're that dude), but it's a big concern at the tip of every game.

[michaelgrahmstylie]

I thought Pickett had a great game today. Our faith expectation for him seems to lean more towards him being an offensive threat, but he is really becoming an all around player. I, too, am one of Pickett’ greatest fan.

[the_way]

Ask Roy Williams at UNC.

Our guys are rising to the occasion and banding together with valiant efforts and some wins.

However, if we had the depth Ewing planned to have at the beginning of the year, we win yesterday's game instead having a tough contested loss.

We have a solid group of guys, but some quality reinforcements wouldn't hurt either.

[Bigs"R"Us]

We had the personnel on paper to be a top-20 team. Too many factors worked against us.

[drquigley]

Jan 19, 2020 1:59:04 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

I thought Pickett had a great game today. Our faith expectation for him seems to lean more towards him being an offensive threat, but he is really becoming an all around player. I, too, am one of Pickett’ greatest fan.

I think it depends on what you consider a great game from Pickett is. A great game from him would be a disappointing game from any of our BE opponents who have quality power forwards. I agree he has improved this year but he has a long way to go before he is mistaken for Saddiq Bey or Bryce Nze.

And this depth discussion suffers from the same false equivalency. It depends on the quality of your bench not the quantity. If we had LeBlanc and/or Gardner instead of Muresan I'd agree that a 7 man rotation would be fine.

I'm beginning to love this team's guts but can't ignore its shortcomings since the transfers. Was at yesterdays game with 7 friends. They all agreed that in the last 5 minutes our guys looked gassed.

[EtomicB]

Jan 19, 2020 13:07:11 GMT -5 drquigley said:

Jan 19, 2020 1:59:04 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

I thought Pickett had a great game today. Our faith expectation for him seems to lean more towards him being an offensive threat, but he is really becoming an all around player. I, too, am one of Pickett’ greatest fan.

I think it depends on what you consider a great game from Pickett is. A great game from him would be a disappointing game from any of our BE opponents who have quality power forwards. I agree he has improved this year but he has a long way to go before he is mistaken for Saddiq Bey or Bryce Nze.

And this depth discussion suffers from the same false equivalency. It depends on the quality of your bench not the quantity. If we had LeBlanc and/or Gardner instead of Muresan I'd agree that a 7 man rotation would be fine.

I'm beginning to love this team's guts but can't ignore its shortcomings since the transfers. Was at yesterdays game with 7 friends. They all agreed that in the last 5 minutes our guys looked gassed.

Nze?

He's averaging 6.8 points & 6.6 rebounds so far in conference play.

www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/bryce-nze-1.html

Pickett is averaging 11.3 points & 7.0 rebounds so far in conference play.

Sure he's not Bey but Pickett's numbers are very similar to Jermaine Samuels who's averaging 11.6 & 5.6 in conference play.

Paul Reed is the best PF in the conference imo especially since I think of Bey as an Sf/wing so other than Reed Pickett holds his own pretty easily.

[iheartdurenbros]

Jan 18, 2020 20:02:27 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

Also, I am looking at Villanova. What do they play--an eight-man rotation? Wright has those guys playing lots of minutes, building chemistry, and becoming comfortable with taking shots from anywhere on the court. Jump shots, might I add.

Even though Jay Wright only plays 7-8 guys, he always has guys on the bench. If the plan is to try to red shirt someone, he can always put him into the rotation if someone is out for any length of time. He also has positional balance and balance between classes so that everyone steps up when they are ready to step up. They also are practicing so that there is a good B team.

The thing about this year -- I know that things could not have continued the way they did before December 2. The team simply was not playing together. Having a point guard truly willing to share the ball has truly made a huge difference. So we are taking our lumps this year, but I kind of doubt that they would be playing as cohesively as they have been.

I'm very concerned about the damage of these transfers moving forward. The obvious is that we take a step back in recruiting. But it also means that next year Jamorko and Jahvon will be senior leaders with Mac the only junior behind them to provide leadership. And our second-year players will all be centers. To be clear, I think there is real potential with those players, but we still will have nearly half the roster getting used to playing with Coach Ewing. It's too disruptive to keep doing this.

[Bigs"R"Us]

As of now, there is no way we are better next year. We lose Allen, Mosely and Yurtseven. Need to add a few good pieces or we are looking at the bottom quartile of the league.

[TC]

Jan 18, 2020 19:50:22 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

Our guys are winning, improving, despite only having 7-8 guys in the rotation. I am beginning to rethink this whole notion that depth is key. What do you think?

I take the opposite position when I see the starting point guard collapse after playing 35 minutes with the flu. But that's just me.

[michaelgrahmstylie]

What I do know, based on comments by Ewing, is that guys do not want to come and not play significant minutes. Let's face it, these guys all want to be on the court. If they don't feel that their numbers are being called often they leave. Example, Akinjo.

[TC]

Jan 19, 2020 16:51:37 GMT -5 michaelgrahmstylie said:

What I do know, based on comments by Ewing, is that guys do not want to come and not play significant minutes. Let's face it, these guys all want to be on the court. If they don't feel that their numbers are being called often they leave. Example, Akinjo.

You'll do a 180 so fast your head will spin if we lose someone to injury.

You can do a 7-8 man rotation. You shouldn't have only 7-8 players you can use on your roster.