Depth ratio: a bad omen?

Many people, myself included, have offered the concern that the Nix/Sherman/Herzog situation (and by “situation,” I mean lack of productive minutes) is going to eventually bite the team. The perfect place to have this happen would be the NCAA tournament. What if some tall team starts giving Green and Roe serious problems? Perhaps even more important, what if Green and Roe gets into significant foul trouble and Nix or Sherman is pressed into service in a tight game under a huge spotlight?

Who knows, perhaps this team is an exception, but this could be a problem somewhere down the line.

I too worry about the longer term impact of Sherman and Nix are not getting a lot of run. Between every conference game being tight, the paucity of dominating big men in the B11 this year, and some of the usual developmental ceiling issues you see with freshmen, they just are not getting much court-time, even having played Minnesota and their big front line twice. Northwestern was obviously a tough matchup for either of them, given their system and the ability of their big men to shoot and cut. While it is always the case, what match-ups we get in the tourney may shape our fate more than usual this year.

None of those other teams got to 9-0 in Big Ten play, so we’re in uncharted territory there as well. Generally speaking, we’ve done worst in the tournament when we’ve had the poorest Big 10 seasons. Barring a major fade down the stretch it’s looking like we’ll finish well up in the Conference standings this year.

2005 seemed like an underachieving year because we finished 3 games out of first, but we only lost 3 Big 10 games. It just so happened that Illinois went undefeated. In a “normal” we would have won at least a share of the conference title at 13-3, but that team had the misfortune of being primed during the same year as one of the best teams in Big 10 history.

That, while I expect a few losses in Big 10 play, the upcoming half of the schedule will tell the tale. If we lose every game we play against Purdue and OSU, plus lose in Madison and Champaign-Urbana, I don’t like our chances for a long tournament run much. If we split with Purdue and win at Illinois, plus handle OSU at home, I think that will be a good sign.

It featured 10 guys who played at least 22% of the available minutes. The roles of Draymond Green (27.8%), Marquise Gray (23.8%) and Korie Lucious (22.6%) are being played by Derrick Nix(20.9%), Garrick Sherman(19.5%) and Austin Thornton(12.6%) respectively on this year’s team (which also features Tom Herzog as Idong Ibok). In fact, the top two guys last year (Lucas and Walton) played significantly more than the top two guys this year (Lucas and Green), but this was more than offset by the faith Izzo had in guys 8-10. So the real issue seems to be, was the extra rest that the front line guys (i.e., the rebounders) got last year an essential component of our deep run in the tournament? Because our offense is so strongly driven by rebounding, on both ends, I have to be a little worried. One wrinkle, however, is that the emergence of Summers as a rebounder on this year’s team distributes the primary rebounding burden over four of the top seven guys (Green, Roe, Morgan and Summers) where last year’s team relied mainly on Suton, Morgan and Roe for boards, spelled, of course by the excellent bench.

He didn’t hit one last year playing more minutes. Our back court should be fresher going into postseason play because no one back there is playing as many minutes as Lucas and Walton did. Although we have less depth up front this year it doesn’t seem like any of those guys are playing outlandish minutes. They’re all playing fewer minutes than Morgan and Suton did two years ago. If Green’s knee starts really giving him trouble then we may have a serious problem though.

Was that Suton and Morgan were out (or effectively out) for stretches last year, so Izzo was forced to distribute those minutes. That would skew the numbers somewhat.

I can’t help but feel he will get more playing time as soon as his free throws start falling more consistently in games. Since he usually doesn’t go for dunks, opponents can just deploy the “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy when he’s in.

Defensively, he’s much better than Sherman or Herzog so I think as soon as he can show he can be a scorer he’ll get more time.