“You play too many guys”

Having to shorten the rotation due to injuries may have been a blessing in disguise. The guys know their roles now.

No serious contender is going to have more than 8-9 guys tops that have regular playing time/rotation. Any more than that and it gets convoluted - players don't get into a rhythm, etc... Factor in Pope's substitution patterns don't make a lick of sense most of the time - I'm surprise we see the breakouts from some of the players that we do see.

The injuries are a blessing in disguise for Pope. He can't play too many players now and the player's roles are more defined. No deferring to the other guy because there is no other guy. Now will he focus his next roster on getting the elite players and some backups like this year's top teams? Or will he spread it around to everyone again and not have enough elite players like he tried to do this year? Injuries happended but there were no elite players hurt except the one that we took that was already hurt.

Settling the JQ and JL questions once and for all has been an elixir for this team. Could use Kam but his absence is allowing CC to grow in leaps and bounds. For the first time all year, I like my team.

I remember this. Cal bragged around the time he started platooning that John Wooden told him he played too many guys and then compared the difference of his teams to Dean Smith’s and why he did it. Wooden died in 2010 and Cal didn’t really start using a heavy rotation until after that, and even then only did it for a few seasons until he was back to primarily using 7-8 guys. I’m saying this to say that I think Cal was full of it and just trying to brag.

helpmerondo said:

I remember this. Cal bragged around the time he started platooning that John Wooden told him he played too many guys and then compared the difference of his teams to Dean Smith’s and why he did it. Wooden died in 2010 and Cal didn’t really start using a heavy rotation until after that, and even then only did it for a few seasons until he was back to primarily using 7-8 guys. I’m saying this to say that I think Cal was full of it and just trying to brag.

Cal, full of it?? Nonsense!

It's pretty frustrating though that the head coach at UK needed injuries to get here. He couldn't tell that playing 12 dudes and jerking around minutes was screwing up confidence, roles, etc? I looked back at the Mizzou game to see what happened.. Chandler played 5 minutes in that game. What a weird weird season. Hopefully he doesn't make the mistake again and invests more money in fewer assets moving forward. We would've been perfectly fine with Hawthorn and Potter as the 9th and 10th men vs. the 14th and 15th.

But, when the injury bug bit, and bit, and bit...players were able to step up because they had played meaningful minutes 😉.

Yes, yes, yes, yes..... Give Pope some credit for moving on from his best instincts to try and salvage the season. Hopefully he has learned a lot about trying to feed 12/13 guys.....and I think some grossly underestimate how hard it would be to flip your model midstream and put survival over ego. And of course the injuries have helped (finally), although they would need JQ to reach anything close to their ceiling. I think some have also underestimated how badly Pope must feel looking guys in the eye and basically saying "I know you're not doing what we said we thought you could do, and I still think you can, but I just can't get you the minutes you deserve right now." For Pope I'm sure that feels like breaking a special covenant....a betrayal....and he's had to try to accept and navigate all that as well in the middle of a season while still keeping the spirit of the team relatively intact. There are scores of players all over college bball who were averaging 3-6 points a game and sometimes not even getting in games who are now regularly scoring 20 or more for good to very good teams. You cannot get comfortable (and better) without playing....and playing real minutes consistently over 8-10 game periods.

Give a poor kid some money and watch how fast he spends it and it turns out bad. Not the perfect analogy but it’ll do the job. Pope wanted to recreate the 1996 team but that was a unique team that will never be duplicated. Play your 7-8 guys, have some bench pieces you’d like to develop over time and help build your culture, and ball out with those dudes moving forward. 9 guys will get game action regularly but the lion’s share needs to go to 7 of them with 8 and 9 suffering the occasional DNP-CD. Hard to find guys ok with that but they do exist. The roster formula for Pope I think is different from pretty much every other elite team we’re trying to become…UConn is probably the closest. Believe he’ll focus on retention and development and I HOPE that means he can really narrow the list of targets and put all of his recruiting attention on like 2-4 dudes depending on need. To quote Paul Rudd in Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “The less you do, the more you DO.”

I think a big part of this is just the time elapsed. It's hard to say, but it's possible this team would be hitting a similar stride even if the other 3 were healthy. It's more a credit to the guts of the guys they have left. Not the point, but I also think it's clear how important Trent Noah is to this team. Sounds maybe weird to say but he's integral to the glue in terms of attitude, physicality, doing the little things. Many of those things have been missing in their losses. Brandon Garrison playing mean makes an undeniable difference as well. Those 2 things were hugely missing to start the year, and that's the bigger story IMO.

jccatfan said:

Settling the JQ and JL questions once and for all has been an elixir for this team. Could use Kam but his absence is allowing CC to grow in leaps and bounds. For the first time all year, I like my team.

kams abscence is felt defensively on the wings. Out the 3 lost he is the one I would want back.

Glad to see some folks agreeing about having too many real guys. Hopefully that will slow the requests to ADD more midseason.....which would take us back immediately to where we were.

I agree with this, but I don’t know if Pope has learned anything, he’ll probably once again over compensate for injuries. I’ll be very concerned if we go into next year with more than 10 guys who we think could get legitimate playing time. 9 is the magic number today imo.

DaDirtyLeb69 said:

kams abscence is felt defensively on the wings. Out the 3 lost he is the one I would want back.

Kam is huge on both ends of the floor for this team. Noah was huge in the Arkansas game, but he doesn’t always have that kind of impact. He didn’t do much in the game last night in his 7 minutes on the floor. However, not having Kam has allowed CC to find a new groove shooting the ball too.

Dizzle79 said:

Kam is huge on both ends of the floor for this team. Noah was huge in the Arkansas game, but he doesn’t always have that kind of impact. He didn’t do much in the game last night in his 7 minutes on the floor. However, not having Kam has allowed CC to find a new groove shooting the ball too.

honeslty Kam was just so versatile. imagine now a Aberdeen Oweh chandler Kam and Moreno small ball lineup. That sounds like A fun lineup.