Playing for metrics or end of year health and success

BCClone

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Not exactly sure.
1. This isn’t football, everyone in college runs the same man defense with slight wrinkles like Iowa State or Houston.

2. Do you think TJ doesn’t have the 2nd team practice how they run defense?
Defenses are FAR from the same.

2. They do, but way less reps.
 

moores2

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We’ve seen Nojus play some, do you think he looked Big 12 ready this year?
I mean he played against Auburn and Marquette. Did he look ready? Not quite, but even a few minutes in the first half to get his feet wet as we continued into conference season may have prepared him to step up in March when injury bug hits. We aren't asking for these guys to play 12+ minutes, but even getting 5-6 while getting guys an early breather can be a huge confidence boost.
 
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3TrueFans

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I'm not sure how that question is relevant to a discussion on whether or not bench players should get more minutes in blowouts.

In any case, he was needed for a couple of minutes in the non-blowout 2/22 Houston game. It seems that anything that could have helped him prepare/improve for that call would be beneficial.

And...gasp...sometimes coaches regularly put developing players like Nojus into tight conference games for a minute or two, often towards the end of the first half. I've seen Self do that a number of times, and I've admired him taking a little risk to help the player develop...but that's just me.
As I said, he's a freshman and he played 10 minutes a game in November, I think that's good minutes for someone who won't play later in the season.

There's no world in which he was going to be a guy that played even 5 minutes a game in conference play this year.
 

moores2

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It can happen.

But really a team playing an 8 man rotation with a bunch of guys around 30 minutes per game is incredibly normal. Stirtz averaged over 39 mpg and Mascari just under 39 mpg for Drake. Purdue blew a bunch of teams out all year and their Big 10 player of the year played 37 mpg.

You could play Nojus, Kelderman, Watson, you name the additional bench guy as much as possible, and this team isn't going any further. Gilbert got hurt in the first conference game at CU while the game was close. Tamin, not sure exactly when it happened. Maybe it was garbage time, maybe it wasn't. I don't remember.

The chances you avoid an important injury by trimming off a few minutes per game is not really that high. The odds that you develop someone outside of the rotation into a rotation-worthy player that can offset an injury enough to advance further in the tourney are also very small.

The idea that TJ grinds down his guys like Thibs doesn't seem to hold much water. Gilbert averaged 31.6 mpg and Tamin 30.9. The top 100 minutes guys in D1 are all above 34.5 mpg.

Injuries can happen. And I'd prefer in blowouts to sub earlier or steal minutes during the buy games. But I just don't think any of these things would've changed the outcome of this season in any material way.
It is less about trimming injury potential and more about creating depth for if and when injuries happen to allow those guys to come in with confidence.
 
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AllInForISU

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Right. January is conference games as well. So what I'm trying to figure out is what the drop off is in result to?

My guess? The offense is predictable and the beginning of conference you don’t have as good of a scout on a team.

They haven’t, under TJ, ran a complex offensive strategy which makes it easier to guard as the season goes on.

I think it’s been noted, the top minute getters on this team were barely over 30/game. This IMO is less of a fatigue thing and more of a scheme thing. Playing more people doesn’t change the fact that the offense is very vanilla.
 

AllInForISU

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It is less about trimming injury potential and more about creating depth for if and when injuries happen to allow those guys to come in with confidence.

I don’t feel like that was an issue. Any player that came in during conference play (in the regular flow of the game excluding garbage time) looked prepared and confident to do their job. Even Kelderman, who probably never expected to play, did as well as we could possibly ask of him.
 
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3TrueFans

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I mean he played against Auburn and Marquette. Did he look ready? Not quite, but even a few minutes in the first half to get his feet wet as we continued into conference season may have prepared him to step up in March when injury bug hits. We aren't asking for these guys to play 12+ minutes, but even getting 5-6 while getting guys an early breather can be a huge confidence boost.
Not quite? As in he was almost ready?

He took 1 shot in those two games and missed it, and had 3 turnovers.

He was not ready this year, but he got 10 minutes a game in November on a top tier basketball team as a freshman, that's pretty good.
 
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ClubCy

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It is less about trimming injury potential and more about creating depth for if and when injuries happen to allow those guys to come in with confidence.
You can’t create depth magically if the players arent the caliber needed.
 
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moores2

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I don’t feel like that was an issue. Any player that came in during conference play (in the regular flow of the game excluding garbage time) looked prepared and confident to do their job. Even Kelderman, who probably never expected to play, did as well as we could possibly ask of him.
No Kelderman did not look ready at all to come in and play during the conference tournament. Were we watching the same games?
 

moores2

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Not quite? As in he was almost ready?

He took 1 shot in those two games and missed it, and had 3 turnovers.

He was not ready this year, but he got 10 minutes a game in November on a top tier basketball team as a freshman, that's pretty good.
And why did those minutes magically disappear? You can't tell me that he wouldn't have been more ready to play by getting 5-6 minutes a game during conference season.
 

3TrueFans

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And why did those minutes magically disappear? You can't tell me that he wouldn't have been more ready to play by getting 5-6 minutes a game during conference season.
Because they were needed by the people that were going to play. I think he could have played 35 minutes a game all non-con and not been ready for conference play.
 

Die4Cy

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Game time environment is the first 35 minutes of a game not the final 5 against a bottom feeder team.

If Nojus couldn’t figure out how to play defense against Tamin, Curt, and Keshon in practice, an extra 5 minutes against Jackson St isn’t going to either.
This reads like an indictment of recruiting freshmen altogether. I know many schools will be looking at going that way and only building annually from the portal. But we can't do that here. Players need time to develop to contribute. The immediacy of roster building needs to allow for some room for that.
 

SoleCyclone

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And why did those minutes magically disappear? You can't tell me that he wouldn't have been more ready to play by getting 5-6 minutes a game during conference season.
It's a good question because at that time he and Heise were playing the exact same minutes with some games Nojus being the better offensive player. Even through Heise's struggles for the next month Nojus never got on the floor. My only assumption is TJ wanted Heise's defense and rebounding as our offense at that time was enough to get us over the top. But zero floor time when Heise looked bad was interesting
 

Big_Sill

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Literally every cyclone fan would take a lower seed to be healthy, but the point is that the OP is making an assertion that giving more minutes to Nojus and Rock would have CAUSED them to be better players and/or prevent injuries.

This literally isn’t true. Giving Nojus extra minutes against northwest Alaska state for the blind won’t magically turn him into a big 12 contributing level player.

Nojus and Rock aren’t playing because they aren’t as good at giving a chance to win. This entire thread is “PUT IN TILLER.”
I know, its not as simple as OP made it.
 

syclonefan

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So @syclonefan Do you think they Street ball and just run the Iowa State offense and defense all the practice?

The backups don’t. How it happens even in HS and confirmed by former bench folks.
Do you think the second teams only job is to run scout team or do they do other things in practice as well?
 

BCClone

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Not exactly sure.
Do you think the second teams only job is to run scout team or do they do other things in practice as well?
Other things but they spend more time running scout reps than our own reps. If you don’t know that, hit a practice some time.
 

3TrueFans

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It's a good question because at that time he and Heise were playing the exact same minutes with some games Nojus being the better offensive player. Even through Heise's struggles for the next month Nojus never got on the floor. My only assumption is TJ wanted Heise's defense and rebounding as our offense at that time was enough to get us over the top. But zero floor time when Heise looked bad was interesting
Hindsight tells us that Heise was the one that was ready between those two, but Heise had played enough college basketball for the staff to make an educated guess that of the two, he would be the one playing in January and beyond.
 

AllInForISU

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No Kelderman did not look ready at all to come in and play during the conference tournament. Were we watching the same games?

I said he looked as ready as he could have, he looked fine (as far as a walk in goes) on offense but physically cannot do anything on defense no matter how many reps he had. And even if they went 10 deep, Cade was never seeing the floor.
 

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