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[QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 4525446, member: 405"]
He might be inspired to play better. He attacked the defensive boards when he first came in with about 8 minutes to go in the 2nd half.

My point is that Boeheim's past benchings and post-game comments have chased kids away. A lot of them in recent years. Not all were going to be stars, sure, but they had been plugged into our system and were learning to contribute.  I hate to lose kids after you begin to see some actual development from them.

Benny's getting every chance.  Bell is getting every chance.  If this had been a couple years ago, neither one might have played again after about the 3rd or 4th game.

But schools send players to schools, and expect that their kids will get a fair chance.  When you get kids from big programs or prep schools or AAU clubs, you want that kid to succeed, because then you have a better chance of getting the next really good kid from their program, because the last guy did so well here.

That's how it works.  I don't feel like Benny "owns" a spot, certainly not compared to certain guys in recent seasons past.  But Benny, Judah and Taylor all played together in AAU, and Taylor and Copeland both played at IMG.

When we had a couple guys have bad experiences from Oak Hill, we stopped getting as many guys from there.  But then we also had that group from Team Final (?) that had Rakeem Christmas, Cooney and MCW, something like that.  Maybe another guy, too.

Groups of guys want to play together, and they want to see each guy get to contribute.  That's what keeps guys from going in the portal.  They feel like part of the group, and that they have a fair chance to contribute.
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