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Message: [QUOTE="DoctahLexus, post: 5410897, member: 6798"] This teams depth behind the prominent names is a recurring issue this year. To have Hiltz Thomson Leo and Rhoa playing at varying levels of hurt makes a tough day at the office on offense not surprising. UNCs offense struggled in a similar way with prominent guys playing gimpy. Still though, we have a guy like Deere who is healthy, has experience this year at both attack and middie, and we still only roll him out there on man up?? We really could not afford to have him even on the second middie line where he started the year while we put a guy like Hottle or McCarthy on the first line to give some of our injured guys more of a break? Hiltz as a decoy of sorts on attack ensures that there will be three longpoles on the attack unit and no double polling of the midfield. But is it worth it to put everything towards preventing a double pole on the midfield when 2 out of 3 starting mids are playing hurt and not looking like themselves? Again, even if he gets a short stick, Deere is a guy with experience at attack who has proven he can have an impact offball and in two man game plays with guys like Spallina. Would it not be better to have a healthy third attack out there? Hiltz had a goal but he looks like he cant even rotate his body without pain. His other two shots were very weak, and on his goal he just flicked his wrists with no body rotation. He had a couple other bad plays where his injury was clearly holding him back. He did not even look healthy enough to be a reliable offball threat. The pros outweigh the cons by putting a guy like Deere out there. The fact we did not use our one healthy and proven depth piece at either attack or middie for 4 quarters is ridiculous. Puts too much pressure on a freshman Anderson who has shown why his playing time was limited to begin the season. Puts too much pressure on Leo English and Rhoa who we have been running into the ground all year. The crazy thing is that we still could have easily won this game if we took care of the freaking ball better and limited the transition play from Duke. Been noticing since the Colgate game that we are struggling to prevent transition looks when teams push it. In the run where they stretched the lead they had freaking 4 goals in transition. We are lucky they didn't score more there. Totally unacceptable, but a part of that is the fatigue that comes from us not trusting our depth. English made some bonehead plays/turnovers throughout the game, but it is hard to blame the guy given how insane his usage is. Just a total nightmare with our depth being a weakness to have all these injuries at the most crucial time of the season. Losing Levine is a nightmare. The guy has been quietly having a killer season at ssdm. Just have to dig deep for the UNC game and please use every guy who can play and is not walking wounded. If we can pull that out and get healthy enough come tourney time we can still keep this train rolling. I worry depth will prevent us from achieving down the stretch in the tourney. But part of that is on the coaches for insisting on running some of these guys into the ground and not trusting our healthy fresh legs in spot minutes. Fatigue and dumb plays is completely inevitable if you run guys into the ground. [/QUOTE]

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