Gopherfan84
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2012
- Messages
- 4,536
- Reaction score
- 3,281
- Points
- 113
I couldn’t care less if it’s fair to Ben or not. He’s doing what the majority do. If we suck next year then go after depth again. Right now we’ve lost one guy in our deepest position. His injury doesn’t make me think we should’ve added another front court guy. If you want to question not bringing in a guard I can hear the arguments and it’s fair to be reasonably concerned but the staff obviously wasn’t. Sometimes I wished they just scholarship Ramberg and Purcell so people would get over it. It’s obvious if you can find 13 playable guys who won’t wreck the locker room if they don’t play them you do it. It’s not that simple or every program would still fill all 13. Most don’t anymore and there is a reason.Houston lost their best 2 players, went to the final 4 last year. Baylor lost Cryer/JTT half way through, still had a great year. St Louis lost Perkins and had a few other injuries, made the final of the conf tourney and were still relevant. And before you reply "Well they are better programs than we are its not fair to Ben!" Thats the coaches job!! He is here to sell the program, sell the players on wanting to be here and sacrificing for the team. If our only card to play is "well look we had no one else so we let Peyton Willis shoot whenever he wanted, you can be that guy!" we arent going anywhere.
And its not about getting a direct player who would play 0 min but could step in and give us 100% of Fox or anyones production, its about not being totally stuck when they are out. Not having to play 5 guys in a conf tourney because you look and no one can function off the bench. I agree with the concept we have our best depth at PF/C but now we are counting on TT who looked like a fish out of water last year and a freshman. And sure you can play JB and DG 35 min each in a game, but if they do that all year you see what happens, they are dog tired in March and we lose to Nebraska/PSU.
If this is worst case scenario I also think we need to be on the line with anyone left in the portal as we just had a big role open up.
Bringing up last years depth to this year is also a pointless exercise. Two years ago we had 2 returners and 2 prep recruits. We had to fill the rest with transfers. That’s why there was no depth. This year we have 3 returners and 4 preps. One of those returners is an all B1G level scorer too. It’s just not the same conversation or problem. Right now we have depth.