Originally posted by JonathanW:
I too think the platoon will be back (next game). But I too, don't care for the 8-man rotation. Why? Because we have a really good top 5, but not significantly better than teams like Duke, Arizona, Wisconsin. Our big advantage is the 2nd 5 (even after the Poy injury), and that we can wear teams down going in the 4-5 minute blocks.
Agree completely. If UK cuts their rotation, then I'm afraid Duke is now the favorite to win the whole thing, with UK in a tossup between these other teams you mentioned to see who else might be in contention.
The problem here is that by cutting the rotation, Cal is now in a situation where his core guys need to be able to function like a well-oiled machine. Because you know that teams like Wisconsin etc. will be doing just that come March. But in order to do that he needs to keep cutting the rotation because each additional body he plays beyond the starting 5 makes it more difficult to be cohesive and have everybody have a defined role that they excel at.
So it becomes a question of whether you want to utilize your bench freely (with the downside being not having a particularly cohesive unit) or concentrating on a core group (with the downside being the bench is demoralized and likely not dependable going forward along with becoming much more susceptible to issues like injuries, foul problems etc.)
The reason I liked the platoons so much was that you could have your cake and eat it too. What I mean by that is UK could not only play most of their bench (thereby not only making use of this team's greatest strength and advantage over their competition but also keeping people happy and involved), but if Cal developed them right, he would have not one, but TWO well-oiled machines.
Having two completely functioning units, potentially with different game plans and styles of play, would make it virtually impossible for an opposing team to successfully game plan around.
For Cal to throw that away I think is a serious mistake, which is why I have been so alarmed by how he handled the Ole Miss game. After all the talk of Camp Cal and how they spent most of their time scrimmaging 5-on-5, I was actually hoping to see Derek Willis in one of the platoons and have UK go back to playing two full platoons, which has been demonstrated to be effective this year. Instead he's decided to go the other way, which to date has not resulted in any increase in execution (either offensively or defensively) but actually the opposite.
To me the fact that UK was unable to gain separation from Ole Miss during the time when Cal was liberally substituting and trying different lineups was not a fluke, but entirely predictable. Even though many of the games since Alex has been injured have been blowouts, the separation generally occurred early in the game when the platoons were still largely in place. The more Cal meddled with the lineup and went away from the platoons, however, the less effective UK as a whole has become IMO and you can see that in the margins.
If UK continues down this path of cutting their rotations, they can still win the title, but it's going to be much more difficult and much more subject to chance IMO. I would expect this team to struggle during the regular season, just like last year's team struggled during the regular season (and was dependent on heroic shots & unexpected contributions from bench during the tournament just to get where they ended up). Because frankly I don't know that this year's core is any better than last year's core players. (if anything they might be worse since they really don't have reliable scorers like Randle and Young).
