If you could combine Mark Pope and Kenny Brooks into one super-coach, BBN would have the perfect rotation manager at the helm of Kentucky basketball. But right now, fans are watching a fascinating experiment in extremes.
Both coaches are in their second year in Lexington. Both have had success and challenges. And now both are currently struggling with the same fault: minutes management. They just come at it from completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
Mark Pope: The hockey line problem
For the men’s team, the issue is a paradox of plenty. Mark Pope wanted to spread his minutes around for this year's team; a wave-after-wave approach was forming. 5 guys go hard for 3-5 minutes and then get swapped out by 5 more who do the same. That didn't really materialize, as injuries have caused minutes to be ramped up.
It has actually forced Pope into a pretty good rotation of 8 guys with a few right around 30. But it has cost him some recruits.
Back when Derron Rippey Jr. was a Kentucky lean, his dad said that his son wanted to go somewhere where he could get a lot of minutes. That just isn't what Mark Pope envisions, and Kentucky was cut from his list soon after.
Most big-time players want to play big-time minutes, and hearing that they are going to come in and be a part of something isn't what they want. Lamar Wilkerson chose Indiana over Kentucky because he said he didn't want to just be another guy at Kentucky.
Kenny Brooks: The iron woman problem
Walk across campus to Memorial Coliseum, and you see the exact opposite problem.
Kenny Brooks doesn't trust his bench at all. In the recent loss to Georgia, Josie Gilvin played a total of seven seconds. That is coming off a Thursday night game in Tennessee, where the Vols pressed the whole game, and his rotation went like this:
Tonie Morgan- 39
Asia Boone- 31
Jordan Obi- 36
Amelia Hassett- 39
Clara Strack-35
Lexi Blue-17
Kaelyn Carroll-3
Against Georgia it looked like this:
Tonie Morgan- 40
Asia Boone- 36
Jordan Obi- 38
Amelia Hassett- 38
Clara Strack-28
Kaelyn Carroll- 13
Lexi Blue- 8
Brooks admitted after the game that his team "ran out of gas" in the fourth quarter. It has become a theme during their three-game losing streak. They fight hard for three quarters, but because the starters are playing 38-40 minutes a night, the legs are gone when it matters most. We wrote about how it happened in the Final Four against LSU when he was at Virginia Tech.
Brooks’ fault is that he refuses to trust anyone outside his core. He would rather play a tired starter than a fresh reserve, and it is costing them wins in the final minutes.
Both coaches are dealing with roster limitations, Pope with injuries, Brooks with a lack of depth because of the Teonni Key injury and Clara Silva transfer, but they have to find a middle ground.
Pope needs to be willing to let some guys run 35 minutes when his roster is full. Brooks needs to be willing to sacrifice a little "perfect execution" to get his starters a 2-minute breather, so they aren't running on fumes in the fourth.
Right now, neither coach has found the "Goldilocks" zone, and until they do, the minutes management debate isn't going away.