Rotation

[Maroon Shower]

While it is clearly never a bad thing to have a full compliment of players, it does bring up an interesting question: How is Tubby going to distribute minutes? He already plays his best players (I'm specifically thinking of Damian Johnson) less than almost any other team in the Big Ten. Now he'll be faced with trying to get court time for 12 guys (if you include Jon Williams) who have previously been in the regular rotation. Who's going to get the squeeze? Any thoughts?

[GoGoGophers]

I am also real interested in how the next 3 games are going to play out. Tubby is going to have some tough decisions to make re: the rotation heading in to the MSU opener.

- A healthy Carter has to get alot of minutes, right? I'm guessing this will really cut in to JAS's time (a good thing, IMO.)
- TB has earned a good chunk of pt with his overall play (again, my opinion). Where do these minutes come from?
- Frosh bigs or Williams? Who gets the starts/most time?

With everyone getting healthy, these will need to be sorted out over the next 2 weeks.

[BBShopGo4]

Who would have thought we'd have this issue!

Go Tubby! Go Gophers!

[MinnMarchDTF]

After watching Marquette go down to Tennessee last night in large part due to depth, I'm so glad to have depth on our team! I can't wait for next year when we have depth, great talent, and experience!

[Maroon Shower]

If you add up the average minutes/game for all of our players, we are 29 minutes above the 200 minutes/game available, 25 if you take away Payton's 4 minutes/game. I agree with GoGo that JAS's 19+ would be the first way I would cut into that gap, but have a sinking feeling that Busch, Bostick, and maybe some of Carter's minutes would be the first to disappear. Tubby seems to have a great deal more faith in JAS than I do.

I also tend to feel that Damian (25/game) and the freshman bigs (19/game for Colton & 17/game for RSII) need to see more of the court. It's great to see the up-tempo, full-court D the Gophs play that is enabled by keeping everyone fresh, but it's difficult to go into Big Ten play with a rotation of 10 or 11, let alone 12. I'm looking forward to seeing what Tubby does against Louisville.

[Gopher4Life]

Save one minute per game for Payton. He's worked his tail off and become a vital cog. I think one mpg is written into his scholarship agreement.

[dingo]

i agree let payton be our Club Trillion member...

(If you havent heard Mark Titus who plays with Ohio State started a blog this year called Club Trillion (http://www.clubtrillion.blogspot.com/) in which he bloogs about Ohio State hoops. It is called Club Trillion because his goal is to play one minute a game and have no stats while he is in. There for his stat sheet looks like a trillion. I have been following it all year and is really funny but it has gotten quite a bit of publicity on Bill Simmons podcast BS report (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index), With Leather (http://withleather.uproxx.com/), and CNNSI Hot Clicks (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/extramustard/12/18/marisa-tomei-is-still-hot/index.html).)

If you have a chance give it a read.

[figi]

Who would have thought we'd have this issue!

Go Tubby! Go Gophers!

Many of us felt that this would be an issue before the season started, There is no problem in the back court. We just don't have that many big guys on the team. But, at the guard positions ther are many good players who want to be number one. That is why many of us could not understand the heavy recruitment of Verdell Jones last fall. Call it a good problem or call it a bad problem - getting Jones would only have added to it. With everyone healthy one can only wonder how the losers will react. Since these are mostly young guards ( Shamala the only senior ) we will have to wait and see how things work themselves out. With one, maybe two guards coming next year, I'm thinking red shirts are a possibility.

[ChemEGopher]

I think JAS has played his way down to Payton's level. I know he dropped 20 against CSU (the one game I missed so I can't imagine how he did it) but if he isn't going at least 3/4 from 3 pt. range every game he isn't valuable enough to have on the court. He is a liability defensively, doesn't get rebounds, and can't create anything on his own offensively. I get the fact that he is a senior and leadership does count for something, but everytime I see him walk out for the starting tip instead of Westbrook I can't help but cringe.

[Gopher4Life]

>>I think JAS has played his way down to Payton's level.<<

I get a kick out of those who still compliment Monson after watching him bring the program to its knees. As I see it, we still have a few excellent D-II players on our roster. That should change with one more recruiting class by Tubby.

[PigAxeJug]

Im thinkin we use this type of rotation:

C/Iverson/Williams
PF/Sampson/Carter
SF/Johnson/Hoffarber
SG/Westbrook/Bostick
PG/Nolen/Joseph

Add in: Put in abu shamala when were lost (leadership) or we need some better outside shooting.
Add in: Put in Busch when we need some more hustle,and we need some shooting and offensive role player.

[WolfontheProwl]

Depth is very important and some of our guys are not going to see regular minutes every night. Guys like Busch, JAS, Williams, and it appears Bostick at this points will be used more in certain matchups or against certain type of styles than others.