Playing Time

Here is an email I received from Doug Porter, the Head Women's Basketball coach at Olivet Nazarene University. He is a system coach that  uses eighteen players during a game. Coach Porter has been extremely kind to me over the years and he has given me permission to post this email. His use of 18 players in a game that provides a total of 200 minutes of playing time is remarkable.

"Good thoughts about how many players to use.


We’ve been using an 18-20 player rotation the last few years at Olivet, mostly due to the University wanting me to carry 18 players instead of 15. My preference would be to keep 15, with 2 or 3 units, but our experience four years ago made me leary of having too few on the roster. That year we started with 15, but had one transfer out in August to play at DePaul, then had four suspended the last month of the season for violating policies, and lost four others due to injuries as various points. By the time Senior Day rolled around, we had SIX on the roster, forcing us to play the last 8 games of the season using a 2-3 zone and running only situationally. Yuch!

In H.S. ball, you do have the luxury of being able to move players between Varsity and J.V. so you don’t get caught with too few. But I’ve been a reluctant convert, ever since our “disaster” year, to playing 18 players between 6 and 20 minutes per game throughout the first half of the season. Evan is totally right that as the season progresses you discover who can play, who can’t… who has heart and who doesn’t. The trouble is that I never know ahead of time who that’s going to be, but we love the system process of discovery/evaluation.

Case in point: One of Evan’s Galesburg HS graduates is a freshman for us this year, and despite her walk-on status has turned out to be a really tough kid who’s vastly exceeded my expectations because of her heart. And I have no doubt that her experience with the system in HS helped her make the jump to our program a little smoother.

So, since I don’t know ahead of time who will become a “player,” I still like starting with a large squad of 18, and then “winnowing” down as the season progresses. (They still all play, but everyone earns or “unearns” PT as the season unfolds.)

Right now, we rotate in 18 players for our first 15 shifts, then go to our top ten the rest of the half (usually 6-8 shifts).

Here’s the payoff… in our game at IUSB last Tuesday, we were close with 4 minutes to go (up 2?), but then we hit Shift #16 and threw our top ten kids at them back to back the rest of the game. We’re fresh, they’re worn down, and we win by 13. As long as we don’t foul too much and give the opponent too much rest, “condensing” your roster the last 5-8 minutes of the game is a great tactic.

Doug"

Thanks Coach Porter