A Sea Of Red

Ok, I'm not going to say conference tournaments are not important because they are. However, if you were coaching, how would you go about it?

I admit I'm a stats geek and this type of stuff intrigues me. This has nothing to do with the schools that are mentioned but rather the situations.

The reason I ask this is because of two players: Flynn from Syracuse and Singler from Duke.

Both teams were getting in the NCAA before this weekend. However, both made their championship games. Flynn for Syracuse played 144 minutes in three days and Singler played close to 120.

Is it worth it to potentially kill a player's legs to win a conference tournament when there's the national tournament a few days later?


Look back to 2005. Duke was a #1 seed. They had a great team. They were led by JJ Redick. He averaged 22 points per game throughout the year. In the ACC tournament, he played 118 minutes in three games and Duke won the tournament. In the NCAA tournament, he came out and had games of 7 points, 16 points, and 14 points while shooting 26% from the field before his team was upset in the Sweet 16.


So here's my question: is it worth it to play guys that many minutes in short tournaments? How would you go about it?

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You stick to what you have been doing all season. Flynn played that many minutes because he had too, Syracuse ran out of players. Singler has played big minutes all year long...the difference between Singler and Redick is that Singler is above average physically.

What about Sheyer? He played I think 114 minutes. He's a shooter. If his legs aren't there come tournament time, was it worth it to play him that much?

Also, what you have been doing all year has had a 3-4 day break between games. When these games are pushed together this closely, there is no recovery time, meaning the recovery time afterward is that much longer. Should you change it up because of that? I'd really like to see some type of figure on how long it takes to recover after that much strain in that period of time as opposed to the regular recovery period. Maybe I'll ask Coach Gillespie that tomorrow.

I get what you're saying jon...but momentum is also important, and you don't want to mess up the flow of things that have worked so well all season either

its a tough call, but I would go with going all out to win the conference championship and hoping the momentum continues through the national tournament

The games don't start until Thurs/Friday. That's plenty of time to rest. Now on a macro scale, if a player has been averaging 39 minutes since November, I would definitely look for him to be tired. The tournament is just white noise.



Here's another tournament based question: in a league where there's a true round robin schedule, and an at large bid is already a lock for these 2 hypothetical teams, who is the true league champ: the regular season champ or the tournament champ?

thepostman wrote:I get what you're saying jon...but momentum is also important, and you don't want to mess up the flow of things that have worked so well all season either

That's exactly why I made this thread. I don't know how I would go about it. I would be conscious of the wear and tear going on by playing that much but I would want to win. I'm really going to be watching Sheyer and Singler to see if their shooting percentages take a drastic fall or not? I never really thought of this til watching that game earlier today.

LUconn wrote:Here's another tournament based question: in a league where there's a true round robin schedule, and an at large bid is already a lock for these 2 hypothetical teams, who is the true league champ: the regular season champ or the tournament champ?

I have always and will always say the regular season champ. There is a larger body of work to go on. In a tournament, one and done setting, anything can happen. It's just like statistics - the larger the sample the more true to form the results will be.

ok, how about with an unbalanced schedule?

LUconn wrote:ok, how about with an unbalanced schedule?

Depends on how it's unbalanced. For example, the ACC plays everyone at least once. The Big East doesn't play everybody if I'm not mistaken.

SuperJon wrote:

thepostman wrote:I get what you're saying jon...but momentum is also important, and you don't want to mess up the flow of things that have worked so well all season either

That's exactly why I made this thread. I don't know how I would go about it. I would be conscious of the wear and tear going on by playing that much but I would want to win. I'm really going to be watching Sheyer and Singler to see if their shooting percentages take a drastic fall or not? I never really thought of this til watching that game earlier today.

yeah...now on the other hand if you have a player with a minor injury (i.e. Ty Lawson) I think you rest him if you're a lock for the national tourney like UNC was...if Lawson had that same injury in the national tourney hey plays

but resting players for the sake of it and not going all out to win just doesn't sit well with me if your guys are healthy...that would be my take on it

If you aren't going to play to win the game then don't even bother playing it. doing anything less than that is a disservice to your players and an insult to the opponent.

flamesbball84 wrote:If you aren't going to play to win the game then don't even bother playing it. doing anything less than that is a disservice to your players and an insult to the opponent.

No one said not to play to win. I was talking about how to play to win but still keeping an eye on wearing guys out. If that's even possible...

SuperJon wrote:

flamesbball84 wrote:If you aren't going to play to win the game then don't even bother playing it. doing anything less than that is a disservice to your players and an insult to the opponent.

No one said not to play to win. I was talking about how to play to win but still keeping an eye on wearing guys out. If that's even possible...

I think it just depends on the situation, really. Louisville NEEDED to win the Big East tourney to cement their status as a #1 seed...like Duke needed to win the ACC tourney so they wouldn't be bombarded with questions and people starting to doubt them already.

UConn, Pitt and UNC could have cared less what they did in their conference tournaments...and why UNC decided to rest Lawson.