People said the same thing they year Syracuse went to the Final Four. Players playing too many minutes. They ended up playing in the Final Four.
Battle may have a bad shooting game (most players do) and Howard may have a play where he doesn't sprint in the zone (sometimes lapses happen), but I won't blame it on tired legs. Because it's not that difficult playing 40 minutes on 7 days rest with a ton of timeouts in the game.
There's some validity to that.
I remember when we made our run to the championship game in 1996, when we played Kansas in the elite 8. We had the best low post player in the country, but Kansas had Pollard / LaFrentz who were both 6-11 [interestingly, Pollard ended up being the much more productive NBA player], and much better depth than we did. Our guys fought hard, and in fact Wallace / Otis Hill outplayed their far more ballyhooed counterpart big men. But toward the end of the game, our guys seemed close to running out of gas.
But at the end of games, lots of fouls happen, lots of timeouts, etc. So while our guys had expended a ton of energy getting to that point in the game, they got more "breaks" / "rest" then you would expect down the stretch even though they weren't sitting, due to the numerous stoppages of play, TV timeouts, etc.
I personally wish that JB would use the bench more, and like it when he [infrequently] uses an expanded rotation. I 100% believe that our players would benefit from getting even a few minutes of rest per half. But the reality is that these guys really have to go more like 36 -- not 40 -- due to the fact that games bog down so much at the end. Foul trouble is probably more salient an issue than fatigue, to be honest.
