Biggest disappointment of this season became evident tonight

My biggest disappointment was Minnesota didn't permanently cripple dinkison.
 

I have no problem defending the premise that refusing to play bad players is smart.
Had Ben put in the other players and the deficit would have expanded, Ben would have been blasted for playing them and giving up on a chance at victory.
 


If I have an abscess tooth and I need to get it pulled, yes I do. It's not an ideal situation to pick a dentist at random but when you have a desperate need, you make do.

It's kind of like our bench. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need those guys to log minutes but the alternative was the proverbial tooth ache of trying to win with 5 players.
Do as I say, not as I do.... actions speak much loader than words.

If you play someone who doesn't cut it in practice, what message are you sending to the team and all future recruits? You better work hard to improve your game, but if you don't I will still let you play? Kind of removes all of the incentive for players to give it their best. And who do you give the favored playing time to? The ones who have talent that are not listening or the ones who try to listen but do not have the talent? Either way you undercut your standards and will never get to the ideal world because your culture now shows that the standards are optional.

And again, this is total speculation.
 

Had Ben put in the other players and the deficit would have expanded, Ben would have been blasted for playing them and giving up on a chance at victory.
With all due respect, I don't think that would have happened. He wouldn't have been blasted for playing any of his starters 38 minutes rather than 40.
 


How come Reusse and Barreiro aren’t ripping into Ben and his team? Ben guaranteed the team would not come in last. This is what Barreiro’s show is based on - destroying the local teams when they fail to deliver.

FWIW, Reusse said the Gophers won More games in the B1G than Reusse expected before the season. Reusse said he predicted 2-18 and the Gophers went 4-16.

that doesn't mean they were good, but they were not as bad as some people predicted.
 

Do as I say, not as I do.... actions speak much loader than words.

If you play someone who doesn't cut it in practice, what message are you sending to the team and all future recruits? You better work hard to improve your game, but if you don't I will still let you play? Kind of removes all of the incentive for players to give it their best. And who do you give the favored playing time to? The ones who have talent that are not listening or the ones who try to listen but do not have the talent? Either way you undercut your standards and will never get to the ideal world because your culture now shows that the standards are optional.

And again, this is total speculation.
Yep, I think this is fair. That said, if we don't have ANYONE who performs at practice enough to give anyone a breather, that's a coaching problem too.

Ben's refusal to play his bench this season is really my only nit on the season. I don't blame him for the record, I liked what I saw, but I believe not playing anyone else was a mistake regardless of the situation. I understand the different potential reasons but at the end of the day, FOR ME, playing 5 guys in a game was a bad decision.
 




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