Comments on: Big Ten Geeks: Inconvenient Truths http://btn.com/2013/01/18/inconvenient-truths/ BTN.com is the official Big Ten sports site of TV's Big Ten Network. Sun, 19 May 2013 22:11:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Mark Johnson http://btn.com/2013/01/18/inconvenient-truths/#comment-145910 Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:26:15 +0000 http://btn.com/?p=97514#comment-145910 I’ve always been a little on the fence on the depth issue for MSU as well . . . one theory is that Izzo demands that guys go really hard, especially on D, and that requires enough depth to give the starters enough of a breather to maintain effectiveness. I’m not sure I buy that explanation because it implies that Matta, Ryan, etc. allow their guys to loaf, which I just can’t buy. Another theory is that the defensive system takes more energy to run effectively. I guess that’s possible. I’ve always kind of thought there’d be a team that came along at some point to buck the trend – that depth is, to date, correlated with success, but that it’s a spurious correlation – or at least not important enough to be strongly predictive.

I agree that our big lineup is the best to roll out there. Payne and Nix were having some difficulty working together at the beginning of the season, but with Payne showing some range on offense, they should be able to use him in the high post and he and Nix won’t be getting in each others’ way. Payne has difficulty guarding smaller, quicker players on the perimeter though. I think it was that defensive vulnerability that squelched the bigger lineup earlier in the season.

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