... I’m struggling to think of an elite college team that does it. Help me out with that.
I agree with Shades. Not a good idea to fool around with different starting lineups based on matchups. I think players like knowing what their roles are. ...
Good point, Shades. I think that you're probably right in the sense that in practice very few college coaches meddle with the starting lineup on a per-game basis (except of course in case of injury, or a rookie rapidly developing to take over a starting role). There probably are a few that selectively modify starting lineup based on opponent characteristics, but I can't specifically name any either. I think it's a matter of a desire for consistency, including consistent roles that players can get used to and feel comfortable in, as TripleDouble points out.
At the same time I would guess that there might be at least a few coaches that do so. And I guess the main thrust of my point was not so much to accurately estimate how much that practice might be used at the college level, but more to argue that doing so should be the perogative of the coach. They should have that available as a tool, which they may or may not choose to use (and I agree that most coaches probably don't change starting lineups as a tactical or strategic tool).
... Last year, Stollings did that a bit with her starting post player and I always thought she was out-thinking herself when she did that. ...
I know that many GopherHole WBB posters were hugely annoyed by Stollings practice of seemingly randomly switching-up which of her top-three posts started the game in her single-post system. I too would admit that I was somewhat perplexed in trying to figure out how she made that choice. But allowing her to make that decision as she saw fit (perhaps as she saw it to be the best fit for the game plan) is one aspect of her coaching that I would strongly defend as her right to choose. As former coach, she should (and did) make such decisions on the basis of trying to win games, not just to assuage the desires of us (more basketball-technical) fans. Perhaps in some games she might have been just trying to win the jump ball. In other games (e.g., against a team with a big/strong center) she perhaps felt the need to start a tall/strong/physical post player like Fernstrom or Lamke. Perhaps in other games (e.g., against a team with a shorter center) she preferred to start a more agile/faster player like T. Bello or Edwards. In any event, I strongly believe the coach should make such a choice if they feel it might benefit the game outcome, while at the same time granting you all the right to be crabby about either the choice per se, or about the fact that the end result lacked consistency in starting lineup. Bottom line: we're trying to win games, not please fans.
What I think is more important (toward winning games) is not starting lineup per se, but rather the entire rotation (which I imagine is tricky to devise). And the potential flow of the rotation through (if needed to win a given game) an appropriate mixture of 4-guard/1-post and 3-guard/2-post systems. What I like about Whalen is the fact that even though she's initially (based on talent available)focused on a 3-guard/2-post system (and I count Pitts as a guard here, in spite of her nominal SF position, just because she's closer in height to the guards than the PF and C postions), she's not afraid to switch to a 4-guard/1-post system temporarily as part of the ebb and flow of the rotation. We've seen that already, where she'll sub in a guard for a post or vice versa. Indeed, doing so might become even more important once Hubbard is healthy and back in shape and back in the rotation. That's essentially because we need more guard minutes to take advantage of Hubbard's shooting. So I expect to see the rotation flow back-and-forth between 4-guard and 3-guard once Diva gets back in the mix.
And to me it machts nichts whether Hubbard comes back as a starter or off the bench. Starting (or not) only has a minor impact on her total minutes via the rotation. Rotation is king, not starting. And I think that the current players are rather mature in the sense that they are all buying into the team goals and specifics that Lindsay is teaching them, and are all willing to sacrifice personal goals/minutes/ego in deference to the team goal of winning in the B1G and NCAAs.
Having said that, if I had to be pinned down for the purposes of this survey, I would guess that Iggy's intuition is wrong, and Hubbard will not replace Lamke in the starting lineup. That amounts to a guess on my part that Whalen will stick to a 3-guard/2-post starting lineup. Under that assumption, I don't care whether Hubbard or Brunson start or come off the bench - they'll both get their minutes at some point in the rotation. But let's assume (for the sake of being specific) that Hubbard comes off the bench (which she certainly will do initially). Then under all these assumptions, my prediction is that Hubbard will be first off the bench, subbing in for Lamke in lieu of Kaposi coming in. So the first rotation not only brings in Hubbard, but also switches from a 3-guard/2-post system to a 4-guard/1-post system (at least temporarily, til a later rotation substitutes a post for a guard).
One of the reasons I like Whalen so much as a coach (extra especially in contrast to Stollings) is that I'm confident that she will not hesitate for one minute to employ such seemingly exotic rotations. In contrast, Stollings would prefer to live and die by the 4-guard/1-post system. Actually, if anyone recalls, in her first game or two as Gopher coach, she tried a 5-guard system - which she immediately had to abandon, since we got our butts kicked.
I recall vividly the Michigan State game from last year. We started and played 4 guards and 1 post as usual, and two of the guards (Carlie and Destiny) got in foul trouble. Stollings had to sub-in her next-best player in her pecking order, which was a post player - so that for relatively large portions of that game she played two-out-of-three out of {Fernstrom, Edwards, T. Bello, and a few minutes by Kaposi}. The posts played amazingly in their two position-slots (presumably without having practiced that configuration very much), scoring 29 points and hauling down 14 rebounds. We won. I claim that we won that game quite by accident. If it were not for foul trouble, we would not have been forcibly switched to a 3-guard/2-post system for a significant fraction of the time, which gave us the rebounds and points to win the game. In the post-game debrief, Stollings seemed rather befuddled as to how we won the game, although she did confess that "well, we got a lot of rebounds." In later games after that game I found myself almost wishing that the guards would get into foul trouble, because Marlene didn't seem to learn the lesson offered by that game, namely that "two posts at least part of the time makes for good basketball outcomes." And we later lost several games that would have been winnable if we had only played a 3-guard/2-post system for at least some non-trivial fraction of the game.
We're in good hands with Whalen. She won't make that mistake. She understands what wins games, at a significantly higher level of basketball IQ than Stollings.
The Lynx never fluctuated starting lineups to match up to opponents. I’m not sure why Whalen would think it’s a good idea. If you’re good, other teams have to worry about matching up to you. The only time the Lynx starting lineup would change during the season is if there’s an injury to a starter. ...
Again, perhaps you're right - coming from the Lynx and thus not having any tradition of switching starting lineups per game, plus very few college coaches do so, probably Lindsay will stick with her 3-guard/2-post system at tipoff, with Hubbard either in or out (probably out initially, perhaps in later in the season, e.g., for playoffs).
But also note that, at least in my opinion, there are significant differences between the WNBA game and the college D1 game, which make it almost always a negative thing to micro-manage starting lineups at the WNBA level, whereas doing so might conceivably be a useful tool at least once in a while at the college level.
There is considerable parity between the 12 WNBA teams, thanks to the effects of the draft. The difference between this year's championship team and last year's might quite literally be the existence of the WNBA MVP (Stewie) on the champion team, plus an ill-advised trade of a probably future all-star center from the Lynx to the Storm.
Then too, each WNBA team has a uniformity in the sense that each team has a highly qualified starter at each of the positions: PG, SG, SF, PF, C. So each team starts a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, and a center. Thanks to the parity, not to start a single player at each of the standard five postions would act as a negative factor, and probably enough to turn a would-be tie game into a loss. So it generally makes no sense for a WNBA coach to start (to use a crazy example) two centers, since the second of the two would be much less qualified. You might occasionally see them play two power forwards instead of a power forward and a center, if they want to "go small." But that's about it, other than the fact that there is a bit of a modern trend (which Lindsay seems to espouse) of playing two equal guards that rotate point duties (we'll call them shooting point guards, or SPG).
At the college level, there is a wide variance in capabilities among teams (all 365-ish of them). And there is also a wide variance in the height of players on the teams, expecially the height and jumping ability of centers and/or power forwards. Thus, given any "next" opposing team, you may be playing a short un-skilled team, or a short skilled team, or a tall un-skilled team, or a tall skilled team. There is thus at least some motivation to adapt the rotation (and thus in the extreme, to also adapt the starting lineup) to the specific opponent, as part of the game plan. The fact that this is not done very often, probably mostly reflects the level of confidence most coaches have in their "standard" starting lineups.