Rest

[Clarence]

Coreect me if I am wrong, but if we win Tuesday and West Virgina and Pitt win this week, we will have the fifth seed wrapped up no matter what happens against ND on Saturday.  If this is the case do you think Buzz gives EW, JC, and JF extended minutes against the Irish to rest the legs of our regulars?  I know it is senior day and all, but our starters have logged a ton of minutes down the stretch. 

[Jacks DC]

Doubtful.  Buzz doesn't strike me as the type who would be willing to risk a loss that would put any doubt in the minds of the committee if we coupled it with a loss in our BE tourney opener.

[YoungMUFan4]

not to mention it's senior day

[NavinRJohnson]

No chance. Still have a seed to worry about, and that doesn't really fit our MO.

[TallTitan34]

In several places I've seen that as the season progresses, Buzz is giving the team more of a mental workout than a physical workout to avoid fatigue.

I assume this would continue reguardless of tournament positioning.

In years past, Marquette has struggled big time in February.  I always attritubed it to fatigue.  Last year I attriubuted it to losing Dom and having a tough schedule in February.  I believe this team just went 6-1 for the month.  Hopefully Buzz has this rest thing down to maintain the teams energy one more month.

[Ari Gold]

Buzz should play them as long as the game is competitive (I am gonna go out on a limb and say thats the strategy for every game). I don' think college basketball works quite the same as the MLB or NFL. College basketball seems to put a lot more weight into momentum, especially in Feb-March. Crean even tried to manufacture momentum scheduling Florida Gulf Coast a few years back?  The guys will be playing home games all this week so they don't have to face any rigors of travel between now and the BET on the 9th. Plus they'll have a good 65+ hours rest between the end of the ND game and the tourney. That should be enough to recoup.

I say play em til the game is in hand/out of reach.

[Nukem2]

I'm sure Buzz will treat the game the same as any other BE (or, NC for that matter) game.

[vealdogs]

Remember what happened to the Arizona Cardinals when they rested their starters on the final regular season game. I mean, uh...

Put the pedal down Buzz! Pitter-patter let's get at 'er this week!

[The Pickle]

In years past, Marquette has struggled big time in February.  I always attritubed it to fatigue.  Last year I attriubuted it to losing Dom and having a tough schedule in February.  I believe this team just went 6-1 for the month.  Hopefully Buzz has this rest thing down to maintain the teams energy one more month.

Buzz is a genius if this is what he is doing...

[flash]

These are 18-23 year old college athletes, not worn out old NBA vets, I'm sure Buzz gives them a break here and there for rest, but fatigue and lack of energy has not been a problem for us as far as I'm concerned this year.  I hope we have the pedal to the medal for the rest of they year.

[MauraDay]

Let's worry about winning Tuesday before we worry about anything else.

[Marquette84]

In several places I've seen that as the season progresses, Buzz is giving the team more of a mental workout than a physical workout to avoid fatigue.

I assume this would continue reguardless of tournament positioning.

In years past, Marquette has struggled big time in February.  I always attritubed it to fatigue.  Last year I attriubuted it to losing Dom and having a tough schedule in February.  I believe this team just went 6-1 for the month.  Hopefully Buzz has this rest thing down to maintain the teams energy one more month.

If there was a poster child for a team that would be fatigued, it would be Syracuse.

Last year Syracuse
--played their top six players 3185 minutes in conference play (compare to MU's top six going for 2556 in 2006, 2676 in 2007 and 2745 in 2008).
--played four games in the BET (including an OT game against WVU, followed by the 6OT game against UConn)
--played 2 overtime games in their last six regular season games.


The results? 
Four straight regular season wins
Conference tourney runner up
Elite Eight



For comparision, here are the big east regular season minutes from the BE eilite eight teams:
Pitt:  2953 (one tourney game)
VU:  2966 (one tourney game) final four
SU:  3185 (four tourney games)
UConn: 3043 (one tourney game) final four
UL: 2758 (three tourney games)


Compared to the top six players for MU in each of the last five seasons:
2006:  2556
2007:  2676
2008:  2745
2009:  3189 (includes James with only 15 games--would be about 100 higher if he played all 18 regular season games)
2010:  3002 (through 16 games--equates to 3377 for the full season)


So here's my contrarian conclusion--fatigue is not only not a detrimental factor, playing more minutes actually appears to be correlated with playing well down the stretch.

I'm not concluding that an iron-man rotation is the secret to a deep tournament run, but there are too many teams that played their top players a LOT of minutes--including many extra minutes in the BET--to conclude that there is any value in resting players late in the season.

[Jacks DC]

Great post.  I agree that resting top players during games has minimal impact on how well they perform in future games (except when you have a condensed schedule like a conf tournament).  As someone else pointed out, a 21 year old highly conditioned athlete should not have much trouble playing 35 minutes of basketball twice a week.  I think the more important aspect of depth is being able to play as well in the last five minutes of a game as you did in the first five (ie, Hayward knocking down his first four threes and then missing his next seven including the would-be game winner).

Also a coach can control two key factors that are probably more important than game minutes - tempo and practice intensity.  Last year's Mizzou team took advantage of the fact that they could go 9-10 deep by playing an up tempo pressing style.  Syracuse, which plays a zone, doesn't need as much depth.

There is a great article in the last issue of ESPN the Magazine (Pujols on the cover) about Texas.  It basically picks apart their substitution pattern and suggests that by spreading around the minutes so evenly they do not get into a flow and their game plan lacks clarity due to so many different personnel groupings.