Currently LU has 3 of the top 6 players in the MVC in minutes played per game: Doyle, Thomas, and White.

This style of play has led to 2 things in the last 3 years: injuries to players and losses because of end game fade outs by worn out players.

Aggravating this is been LU’s short rosters:

2011-12
Only 12 scholarships were given and only 9 scholarship players on the active roster (Stanley injury; Payne and Hill transfer redshirts).
And 4 of LU’s top 5 minutes per game men missed a total of 21 games do to medical problems (Averkamp, Gibler, Hicks and Crisman). That’s a short roster with worn out players.

2012-13
Only 9 scholarship players on the active roster (K. Williams and T. Williams injuries; Doyle transfer redshirt; and King freshman redshirt).
And 3 of LU’s top 5 minutes per game men (Payne, Averkamp, and Crisman) missed a total of 17 games do to medical problems. Again, a very short roster with worn out players.

2013-14
Only 12 scholarships were given and only 11 scholarship players on the active roster (so far)(the initially impressive Tanner Williams, for the 2nd year in a row, is still recovering from his operations on both knees).

In pre-MVC play, it would be nice if LU would spread the time around and develop the new players.

The Coach has worked very hard giving the very talented Milton Doyle playing time (which may have cost us the 2 losses in Portland with his 7 turnovers in the 1st game and his 1-11 shooting in the 2nd game). But he should be also resting him more, rather than have him among the MVC’s minute leaders. I also agree with those who compared him to Al Fred Rick the Great (although Al was 30 pounds heavier & played power forward). Both in their freshmen year were full of energy & took a lot of bad shots & had a lot of turnovers. But I am looking for great improvement with time as happen with Hughes. Still I am happy the Coach is working with him.

I am also glad Freshman Jordan Pickett got some playing time in Portland. We need more back up for White.

Our young forwards, Osborne & O’Leary, have gotten good minutes in playing center, but in Portland, O’Leary only got 15 minutes at his natural forward position and Osborne got no minutes at forward.

The Coach has given little attention to our two 6-10 centers, red shirt freshman Jerome “Cobra” King and Sophomore JC transfer Cody Johnson. King has performed well each time out in the total of only 26 minutes he has gotten to play in LU’s 7 games (10 of the minutes against Rockhurst). King may have helped us in the 2 losses at Portland where their tall thin centers were out jumping our fowards-at-center in the battle of the boards. Johnson is adjusting to Division 1 foul calling but has been improving.

LU has played small to start the season, sticking with 3 guards & at times going with 4 guards (which it did for 8 minutes in the OT loss to UC Davis). It seems like we are preparing to play Division II and lower Division I teams at their own level, rather than to play the bigger MVC players at their level. I think that is bad preparation for the season.

And that is the final point: big guys consistently playing against little guys usually results in the little guys getting hurt.

A PS: hats off to Devon Turk whose shooting kept us in the UC Davis game and gave us the winning basket in the SIU Edwardsville game.

Go Ramblers!

Well done, Wolf. These are important numbers even if there is room for argument over their implications. Like a lot of other old guys, I keep thinking everyone ought to be able to play 40 minutes if called upon. But when I get down near the court and can virtually feel how damn hard these guys are working when they're on the floor, I know that minutes are important in so many ways.

That's pretty good research, Wolf. Hopefully they can spread minutes around more in the coming weeks. I'm probably not a great comparison, but my freshman year I played about 31 minutes/game and was worn down by mid-January, with nagging injuries and got a nasty case of the flu. Went from 210 to 185 before getting back up to 205 by conf. tourney time. Not as worried about White or Thomas but you think about that with Doyle - he struggled shooting over the weekend, were his legs shot? Need to keep guys more fresh. Mark Lovelace used to say for the frontcourt you wanted two starters going 25 minutes, one off the bench for 15-20 and another 10-15.

Re: playing small lineups, I suppose it must just be Porter's thinking that playing that way gives them the best chance to win. But he loves to ball screen so much that I feel you've got to have some more size out there to accomplish anything with those screens. I think we all want to see King and Johnson more but it may just be that they aren't good enough to be out there. Still a pretty small sample size, but in 20 minutes on the year the 6'10'' Johnson has zero rebounds. That said, if you're going to play small...you've really got to get out and run.

I'm no expert, but I wonder whether coaches or parents sometimes push young athletes too hard, which may result in injury.

I have no evidence to substantiate this, but I'm thinking of Derrick Rose in particular. His two knee injuries were both non-contact, and I wonder whether all the basketball he played and training he did growing up may have over-strained and damaged the structure of his knees.

Hey, at least we are atop the MVC in SOMETHING.

WE'RE #1! WE'RE #1!