Kentucky has been all over the place this season, and Mark Pope continues to bang on the "fatigue" drum. He isn't entirely wrong. If you take 3 key contributors off any team in the country, they would not be the same team. But having a kid play 36 minutes every 3 or 4 days isn't asking a whole lot.
But Pope is adamant that his numbers show that it is just not possible to keep up the rotation that Kentucky is forced to play.
BBN is tired of the fatigue excuse, but Mark Pope brings the data
While BBN is tired of hearing about the fatigue issue, Mark Pope spoke in-depth on what it actually means when he says fatigue.
"It's production numbers. It's kind of a tool that gives us a summation of their contribution on the court. It's their offensive efficiency plus their defense efficiency and a couple other metrics in terms of kind of showing us how guys develop as they go from one minute to two minutes, three minutes to four minutes to five minutes, six minutes all the way to 10 minutes consecutive play. And so it's one of a number of things that we consider as we work on guys' rotation."
So, he isn't actually saying that they are too tired to keep playing. He is saying that the numbers show when they hit a certain stretch of minutes their performance drops. And that may be true, but there are other things to think about.
What happens if the bench production is lower than what the starter would be even at a reduced performance?
You never know what you are going to get when you make a substitution. Jasper Johnson has been up and down, Trent Noah has been having issues with his shot though his rebounding has improved recently. Brandon Garrison is borderline unplayable at times. The only consistent performer is Mo Dioubate and he is limited offensively.
Substitution pattern matters for Kentucky basketball
The one issue that BBN has pointed out, and rightfully so, is the substitution pattern. Mark Pope will often have four substitutes on the floor with one starter. This happened again when Texas A&M made its big run on March 3rd. While everyone may need rest, they don't have to have it all at once.
Pope could easily allow Oweh and Moreno to rest while Aberdeen plays. Oweh comes in, and Aberdeen rests. He could bring players in off the bench right before media timeouts and use his timeouts more as rest stops.
There are plenty of ways to do it, and Pope knows it's the time of year when excuses won't work. But has all the confidence in the world in his team:
"I like where we are. I like this group. I like the fact that we just got punched and pummeled and beat up and got up and experienced and we're a veteran, warrior of a team that I think is poised to have a chance to make a real run here because of everything we've experienced this season. It's winning time right now. So we'll get a little deeper into rotational minutes and do the best we can there and just piece it together."