And what do you tell the parents and administration two years down the road, when there are no seniors in the program, and not one kid with V experince.

 

.... Well, I guess the parents and administration will blame the coach for not developing players....

I can think of 2 schools in NKY in this situation. The one school has maybe 6 that will be contributors at the varsity level. The other 5 will play JV and never start a varsity game in high school. I used to think keeping 10-11 would be good, but you can only put 5 on the floor at a time.

 

and completely stifle the underclassmen from getting valuable experience that will help the team in the future.

.... Well, I guess the parents and administration will blame the coach for not developing players....

 

IMO you develop your players in 7th-9th grades. Once they get to 10th grade if they dont have the skills to compete its too late. Sophomore year is a big year for development but at that point you better have potential to contribute for the future or the coach is going to recognize that and cut you.

 

In a case where you have 11 kids who were sophomores last year and showed that potential, do you cut everyone else out hoping for this one big class to take you to the promise land?

Fleming County had 1 Sr and 1 Jr last year. The Sr hardly ever played and the Jr didnt dress Varsity. Whats the point if they arent gonna play. The Sr skipped practice 1 day and the coach seen him the next day asking where he was at. The player replied why come if Im not gonna play.

I can see the other sides argument, Powell County was pretty successful with it a couple of years back. However they have struggled a bit since then.

I would never want to keep a junior who I didn't think had a big chance of contributing as a varsity player either that year or for sure the following year.

 

I wouldn't want a junior who was not going to contribute as a senior taking up PT that I could be using to develop a sophomore.

 

It would be terribly difficult to keep 11 seniors happy the following year, unless you employeed a Chinese Fire-drill system of substitution.

 

In 2006-07 we (Brossart) had 8 stand-alone seniors - we were extremely successful. Meanwhile the juniors/sophomores were playing JV ball and when those seniors graduated it took about a half-season for the incumbents to acclimate to varsity basketball in what we would call a "rebuilding year." They had a great second half of 2007-08 and are now seasoned veterans for the 2008-09 campaign.

 

I think each case must be judged by its individual merits.

Add that the soph class will disappear also. The only way I would advocate keeping any more than 7 in a class is, that you are dead sure that class will win you a regional title. You are in essence putting all of your eggs in one basket.

IMO if your sophomores bail just because they weren't getting varsity time, then they didn't have the dedication to stick with it in the first place.

 

Let me ask you this: Which scenario would you rather have?

 

A: Play all 11 juniors, this year or next win the region, quarterfinals or better at state, down the next two years

B: Cut some of the juniors, develop the other classes on the varsity level a little more, solid record each year, no region title.

 

I reiterate: Put your best players on the floor.

Having 11 good players in any class would be a nice problem to have. Some smaller schools would love this problem as some have trouble finding 11 total that can play varsity!

IMO if your sophomores bail just because they weren't getting varsity time, then they didn't have the dedication to stick with it in the first place.

 

Let me ask you this: Which scenario would you rather have?

 

A: Play all 11 juniors, this year or next win the region, quarterfinals or better at state, down the next two years

B: Cut some of the juniors, develop the other classes on the varsity level a little more, solid record each year, no region title.

 

I reiterate: Put your best players on the floor.

 

Read post 13. I do say if you are dead sure you're going to win a region, then go for it. If you do it and come up short, then shame on you. You have set your program back.

If the worst junior is better than the best sophomore I can't see justifying cutting the junior or juniors depending on the number that should be kept. 7 seems to be that number. What if the talent drop off between the juniors and sophomores is so bad that the sophomores don't deserve varsity time when they become juniors? Do the talent-less sophomores now become the fault of the coach for playing his best players? You can use practice time to develop the younger players, but they don't have to play varsity. We have 5 freshmen that will practice with varsity and will see some jv time, but I will be surprised if they dress varsity, but they practice with/against them every day. Most good programs begin in little league anyways. By the time kids reach high school, everyone who has followed that class has an idea of who is going to be great, good, or average. Every now and then a kid may surprise people, but if there was a junior class that had 11 good players on it, I think the whole school/county is thinking state title 2 years in a row. You always play the best players. If you haven't been developing the kids before they got to high school, then it doesn't matter who you put on the floor.

To me 10 is probably max.(how would you rotate more than that & I wouldn't play any on JV) but why would you keep seniors if the jrs. are better, just to say you did? Am I missing something that says every class should be represented regardless of talent? As far as affecting the sophmores varsity experience, they will play also......if they are better. You can still give varsity experience to a soph if they progress, it only serves notice to the 8-9-10 jrs. that your senior yr. is not a given. Overall, too much talent is a nice problem to have...........!

Eleven is way too many. What will happen when they become Seniors? Do you keep all eleven and have basically four spots for the underclassmen? You almost have to if you kept them as Juniors. Weed them out as Juniors and let some of the underclassmen get some playing time. If not, then your program will suffer in a couple of years.