Bye Platoons, it's been nice.

[ZZBlueComet]

Hello 8-man rotations, with the occasional Marcus Lee sighting.

Aaron with 40 tonight, wow.

 

[Raroyder]

Yep. I guess we see what they've been working on over this break. Trimming the rotations down. It's pretty obvious, it wasn't the "lack of energy" from the 2nd platoon that made this decision. There have been countless times this season where one platoon got yanked because of a brief "no-show".


He is trimming the rotation down to 8. Let's hope it's for the best, Coach seems to know what he's doing. There will be growing pains with this though.

 

[wildcatsboston1984]

Let's wait and see what happens the next time we are winning comfortably. Will he stick with the 8-man rotation today or will he platoon? We all know the platoon system ceases to exist in tight games, and other than the first few minutes, this game was tight all night long.

 

[Aike]

Tonight was EXACTLY as it's been all year. Cal platoons until it looks like we're in a fight. Then he plays who he wants.

There is no indication that anything has changed, and if we are rolling A & M, you will see 9 guys split minutes.

 

[Raroyder]

Originally posted by Aike:
Tonight was EXACTLY as it's been all year. Cal platoons until it looks like we're in a fight. Then he plays who he wants.

There is no indication that anything has changed, and if we are rolling A & M, you will see 9 guys split minutes.

Cal continued to platoon against Columbia and Buffalo in the first half, so this is incorrect. Do we need to be reminded of the halftime scores of those games?

 

[Aike]

Originally posted by Raroyder:

Originally posted by Aike:
Tonight was EXACTLY as it's been all year. Cal platoons until it looks like we're in a fight. Then he plays who he wants.

There is no indication that anything has changed, and if we are rolling A & M, you will see 9 guys split minutes.

Cal continued to platoon against Columbia and Buffalo in the first half, so this is incorrect. Do we need to be reminded of the halftime scores of those games?

Well, in the past several games then. We've been playing just like this for a while. We also get a "goodbye platoon" thread every time we play a relatively competitive game.

 

[Raroyder]

Originally posted by Aike:

Originally posted by Raroyder:

Originally posted by Aike:
Tonight was EXACTLY as it's been all year. Cal platoons until it looks like we're in a fight. Then he plays who he wants.

There is no indication that anything has changed, and if we are rolling A & M, you will see 9 guys split minutes.

Cal continued to platoon against Columbia and Buffalo in the first half, so this is incorrect. Do we need to be reminded of the halftime scores of those games?

Well, in the past several games then. We've been playing just like this for a while. We also get a "goodbye platoon" thread every time we play a relatively competitive game.

Yep, but the fact is he's just continuing to trim it down and fine tune the rotation. I have no idea if this is the right call or not, he is the coach. But it is definitely a different substitution behavior than before. He has increasingly played more minutes to certain players over the past several games, in an increasing fashion. It's not the same way we've played, hence the growing pains.

By March, some players may be averaging 30-35 minutes a game, like Aaron and WCS. That's well above current averages

 

[Aike]

With Poythress out, Lee is clearly the 9th man.

He played 12 minutes vs. UNC. 17 minutes in the blowout against UCLA. 10 minutes against UL and was a virtual non-factor tonight.

So, the recent track record is that he is still getting close to half the minutes in blowouts, still sort of "half platooning" in the other games. In other words, Cal starts out platooning but tightens his leash as the game reveals itself to be fairly competitive.

In truth, we don't know what to make of this game completely. It was our tightest game that really mattered (all league games matter), and Cal's leash was shorter than ever.

I think Lee will still play plenty, and I expect us to have more big wins than tight games the rest of the way. I don't see many other teams shooting the ball like Ole Miss did tonight.

You might be right that Lee is getting cut out, but I expect him to still be in the mix.

 

[know1]

The platoons ended about game 4.