Depth
- Thread starter NUCat320
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Overrated. 7 players is all you need. Can even withstand an injury at some point.
It’s a 40 minute game without back to backs. Played by very young men without meniscuses that have been chiseled from jumping like the wall at Shawshank was chiseled by Andy’s little tool.
Gonzaga played 7 guys last season. While 7-10 would be in the rotation at NU. Why? Because if you play your best players more, resting them just enough, it’s better than playing your 8th player 10 minutes.
It’s a 40 minute game without back to backs. Played by very young men without meniscuses that have been chiseled from jumping like the wall at Shawshank was chiseled by Andy’s little tool.
Gonzaga played 7 guys last season. While 7-10 would be in the rotation at NU. Why? Because if you play your best players more, resting them just enough, it’s better than playing your 8th player 10 minutes.
From the "30 seconds of analysis" department:
Per Kenpom of the top 20% (72) of teams who played their bench the most, 6 teams made the NCAA tournament and 3 made the S16 (St. Peter's, Purdue, Texas Tech, Memphis, Iowa, Texas Southern). This quintile includes NU.
Of the bottom 20% of teams who played their bench the least, 21 teams made the tourney and 9 made the S16 (Miami, UNC, Arkansas, Villanova, Michigan, Duke, Providence, Kansas, Gonzaga).
In total, by quintile:
Top 20: 6 (2 top-4 seeds), 3
2nd 20: 16 (4 top-4 seeds), 1
3rd 20: 12 (0 top-4 seeds), 0
4th 20: 13 (3 top-4 seeds), 3
Bottom 20: 21 (7 top-4 seeds), 9
Per Kenpom of the top 20% (72) of teams who played their bench the most, 6 teams made the NCAA tournament and 3 made the S16 (St. Peter's, Purdue, Texas Tech, Memphis, Iowa, Texas Southern). This quintile includes NU.
Of the bottom 20% of teams who played their bench the least, 21 teams made the tourney and 9 made the S16 (Miami, UNC, Arkansas, Villanova, Michigan, Duke, Providence, Kansas, Gonzaga).
In total, by quintile:
Top 20: 6 (2 top-4 seeds), 3
2nd 20: 16 (4 top-4 seeds), 1
3rd 20: 12 (0 top-4 seeds), 0
4th 20: 13 (3 top-4 seeds), 3
Bottom 20: 21 (7 top-4 seeds), 9
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Not sure what all the hubbub is about regarding going deep into the bench. It's pretty standard to play maybe eight regularly. Only 40 minutes in a game, five players at a time and one ball.
Two of your "Top 20" are unknowns from weak conferences.
So if you limit it to higher levels of competition, you are really talking about 4 teams making the tournament and probably 1 making the Sweet 16 (Purdue).
Still, an excellent post. Thanks!
Tell CCC, who sometimes has gone ten-deep by the second TV timeout, and just about always removed an actual NBA prospect before the first.
Suppose anyone will have the cajoles to bring 'Fire Collins' signs to the games? That would be fun - suppose the NU safe space police would remove such a fan. Can't let something like a sign distract the genius from his job - losing bb games the best he can.
They don’t let any signs in the stadium. Of course you could bring them on to the field during a football game and the safe space police for sure won’t stop you. Just make sure you face the correct way to caught on camera.
Why would any of this be surprising? I would be shocked if the results were different any time in the History of the game.
The key factor that is not accounted for is the quality of the starter compared to the Bench. If you have 5 studs starting you will play your bench less. If you are a dominant program maybe the drop off isn’t much, but for most other GOOD teams the drop off can be sharp. If you start 5 guys that aren’t markedly better than your bench players, guess what, the bench will play more and you are LIKELY to have a poorer record.
NU had two legitimate B1G starters last year. The difference between 3-10 was not great. Of course, they will be more interchangeable.
We got Bob pontificating about us only having 9 scholarship players now. Maybe we should clue Bob in that this might be a good thing based on the 30 second of analysis here? We got PWB complaining that MN needs to get on the floor more because what can it hurt? Point is every team is different and playing 5-7 guys until they drop is fine if they are indisputably your best options. Teams with the best players tend to play those best players (starters) more.
I realize we had an un-NU injury free-ish season this year. When one of the bigs blows out a knee or shoulder - going with a four or five guard lineup?
I think you know the point I was making Bob. Some say we play too many people, some say we have unused scholarship’s.
Come on! No love for the Shawshank reference?
I read somewhere that basketball players reach their 30's and the meniscus is basically gone. I kind think of it as every time they jump is like Andy Dufresne going at the wall. Slowly but surely, it damages it.
I would expect Nu to field a competitive squad using at least 12, if not all, of the schollies. Yes, CCC ran out too many players regularly while failing to offer meaningless (most of the season in retrospect) minutes to BB and MN to prepare for next year. So, sure the funny might be one way to cut CCC's ability to mass substitute is to reduce the roster size. Doesn't make anything about the program appear in a brighter light.
One thing that is very interesting about Cappy's breakdown of success vs "depth of rotation"...
The teams with short rotations are definitely over-represented in the tournament and even more so in the Sweet 16, which requires winning against quality opponents.
If "depth of rotation" didn't matter, the five groups would be equally represented.
It supports the notion that when you play too many lineups you prevent the players from learning how to succeed as a 5-man unit - which hinders your ability to win close games or advance in the NCAA tournament.
Or maybe its as simple as "If the coach can't figure out who his best players are, he's not going to win close games."
For the vast majority of teams, the difference in players 4-10 is slight.
The teams with short rotations are definitely over-represented in the tournament and even more so in the Sweet 16, which requires winning against quality opponents.
If "depth of rotation" didn't matter, the five groups would be equally represented.
It supports the notion that when you play too many lineups you prevent the players from learning how to succeed as a 5-man unit - which hinders your ability to win close games or advance in the NCAA tournament.
Or maybe its as simple as "If the coach can't figure out who his best players are, he's not going to win close games."
For the vast majority of teams, the difference in players 4-10 is slight.
I disagree with your premise. Duke has five studs starting and about five studs sitting. Five stars up and down the roster. They got 37 bench minutes last night. Their starters averaged 32:36 apiece.
Paolo Banchero — NBA bound but a freshman — played 37 last night and averaged 32 this season.
Pete Nance only played 31+ minutes seven times this season. Pete Nance is waaaayy better than his teammates.
Good coaches figure out their best players. They let their best players play together, and get better together.
Bad coaches can’t figure out who their best guys are, or are too indecisive to settle on who they are.
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First, I agree that Nance was our best player and I would have kept him out there until he dropped in B1G games.
Second, I am not positive what you are disagreeing with. You just said Pancho was NBA bound and played 37 minutes. That makes sense to me if the bench players are not NBA players.
I think you know full well that CCC gets roasted for playing player A over Player B. All the experts on here call for Berry when Roper struggles. Williams when Beran struggles, Young all day in the game, even when he is getting destroyed in one end of the court! Then they argue for the exact opposite 2 games later. It’s comical. You might say figure it out, but it is hardly that simple when pretty much every player has weaknesses to go with their strength. I only thing that is obvious NU’s Pete was the best player and Boo was the second best. Then there is a huge drop off.
look, I would have replaced CCC after the results of this season. It’s going to happen a year late, but this constant questioning of EVERY thing is mind numbing around here. I am not pleased with that season and will say CCC did a poor job based on the W/L record. Therefore, make the change. I also think Red Auerbach would have difficulty being in the top third of the conference with this squad. There is a reason Coaches give different looks when they are clearly overmatched.
Your premise is that it is clear all the time who the best players are and who is not. I’m saying that it’s not clear — and good coaches are capable of being decisive…picking a top 8 and going with it. #9 and #10 and #11 are bench-riders and injury subs and ‘break in case of foul trouble.”
For NU, 10 guys played in 27 or more games. For Duke, the number was 9…
But, for NU, the #10 guys in minutes played (Simmons) played 312 minutes, while the #7 guy (Roper), played 586, which was almost exactly the same as the #6 guy (Greer, 596).
For Duke, the #10 guy (Jaylen Blakes) played 82 minutes, while the #7 guy (Theo John) played almost 5x as much, 409 minutes, which was about half the #6 guy (Mark Williams, 870).
Duke picked a primary six, two more bench guys, and nobody else.
Sort NU or Duke or Villanova or Penn State by minutes — and you’ll see very different spreads for NU versus the other. (PSU here because he’s a good coach who learned from an excellent coach). Pick your best guys and play ‘em.
And then alienate all of your bench players in the process. Did we really get hurt by playing players 7-10? Who knows, but I highly doubt it, and it just as likely helped. I think Collins used the depth to try to offset talent limitations - his top 5-7 players are not as good as other teams’.
You can do any great analysis you want and there are 2 or 3 guys who will cover their eyes and ears and tell you that you're wrong.
They never respond with anything of substance to actually debate what you said.
Imagine somebody thinking that Collins' merry-go-round of substitutions was actually helping the team.
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Could have been. Now he is the guy that blew our first and only dance with amateur acting out antics. Then went on to destroy the program to a point from long ago. Not a legend, a villain.
Lmao There’s never been a “program” for him to destroy. A handful of NIT appearances scattered over 70 years is not a legacy, it’s a ceiling. A sad one that traumatized NU fans cling to like it means something. What Collins did deserves a statue; given our grand institutional limitation, it won’t ever happen again. (That is, unless the tournament expands the field to 100+)
So that's it? Seasons will come and go, empires will rise and fall, but Northwestern will never again make the NCAA Tournament while such a thing exists? Even though we just did it 5 years ago with a team of solid but hardly star-caliber players?
Yep, we need to actually ACT like we want to win instead of riding our high horse of academic superiority into a bottom of the B1G every year! This isn’t Women’s LaCrosse and very few give a hoot about the prestige of that parchment.
I agree that there's no reason to be so exclusionary, and think we should let in a wider range of players, but the idea that our academic standards are forever preventing us from recruiting enough talent to make the tournament was rather conclusively disproven in 2017.
Crazy how st Pete, valpo, butler as a few examples all have had crazy success. Sure, they don’t have the admissions restrictions. And I’m sure all the top talented bball recruits were tripping over each to go there. Could identifying talent, developing talent, coaching up a team play a role? Nah, it’s all about the admissions.
Collins put the pieces together for one golden season where we smashed through our ceiling and made the tournament. But the ceiling is back in place. It doesn’t matter who the coach is — If things don’t change, we’re going to keep struggling. In fact, it might be worse than ever. Between the portal and NIL, the landscape is getting harder for NU to compete.
The transfer portal is an advantage for NU. Or will be when we get a new coach.
When guys like Ryan Young walk away from the program, that reflects where we are, but not where we will be.
Talk about distorting things.
Collins inherited a program that had been competitive for 4 years, reaching the NIT each year, before injuries torpedoed the final Carmody season. We have reached a postseason tournament once in the 9 years after Carmody, despite the significant upgrades to our facilities.
The only statue they should erect to Chris Collins is a public service message to NCAA Athletic Directors about the dangers of hiring guys who have never been a head coach at any level.
This is true. This is the reality of today. No media interest - we are a big ten program - does that reality exist for any of the others? We had growing success. The program had been arrow up til the coble thing. Fine, new coach and new energy. Until it died.
Again, I was dark ages. My favorite NU memory was Baldwin switching hands for a three when I was a senior. The program has fallen worse than any ncaa sanctioned program. But we still have the chef. Wtf.
If every program had the defeatist attitude we do, no one would ever get out of being mediocre. Oh, this is just the best we can do.
You can either be stuck in the 20th century or believe there is a world of better possibilities out there. The next coach makes the tourney twice in 9 years, 1 or 2 more NIT's and the defeatist might think what the F was CC doing.
It's not easy. Stanford has had a lot more success than us, but had also had significant struggles. We have handicaps. But this is not the NU of the 20th century. BC, for as much as I am not a fan, improved things. CC made the tournament without the administration/Ryan yet having poured millions into the program. Without even being a decent coach.
You can either be stuck in the 20th century or believe there is a world of better possibilities out there. The next coach makes the tourney twice in 9 years, 1 or 2 more NIT's and the defeatist might think what the F was CC doing.
It's not easy. Stanford has had a lot more success than us, but had also had significant struggles. We have handicaps. But this is not the NU of the 20th century. BC, for as much as I am not a fan, improved things. CC made the tournament without the administration/Ryan yet having poured millions into the program. Without even being a decent coach.
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Every program doesn't have the obstacle we face. Literally the only programs I can think of are Stanford and the Ivy schools, and the Ivy has the automatic bid so the academic concessions they do make end up having a massive impact on the success of the program. (Because at the end of the day, talent is paramount to success).
While your comment is cute (and kudos to you), it's also completely unrealistic. Being optimistic alone won't solve anything. But just to be sure, I'll happily give you odds for the rest of our lives: You send me $100 at the beginning of every season. If NU makes the NIT I'll send you $300 and if they make the tourney I'll send you $600. My guess is that I'll make *a lot* of money.