FSU coach leaves best players home from ACC tournament

Which makes me wonder just how upset the ACC execs can be in private, considering they probably just picked up another at-large bid.

Also not the same thing, but they do this in Europe a lot. If there's a cup game Wednesday and a league game Saturday, one lineup is full of kids and the other is full of starters, depending on which one is more important to the club.

 

On the contrary, I think conference tournaments should still mean something. And did the players left behind agree with this?

 

Well, we all know that in the world of big-time basketball, winning your postseason tournament is a MUST to be invited to the NCAA tournament.

What with all those at-large berths reserved for the MAACs, Summit Leagues, Big Skys, et al, it's just difficult for a Roy Williams or Jim Calhoun team to sneak into the postseason.

They really ought to do something about that. It's getting tougher and tougher to get a second team in from the Big East or the ACC these days.

Anyway, this is women's soccer. So I've got to go with spnited on this one.

 

Good question on whether the top players were OK with this. Even better question: Was the administration OK with this?
Imagine you're a reserve who gets to start in this instance. You know why it's being done. Your coach thinks the event is trivial. You suspect the coach would rather spend the time practicing or doing anything else. How bad do you want to win? Are you afraid that putting out maximum effort and winning will be the "improper" result in the minds of the coaching staff?

 

There's no difference in this than a bench player playing in garbage time.

The coach considers the conference tournament to be garbage time. What's the big deal?

 

The big deal is that in garbage time, there's no chance to impact the outcome of the game.
If you play reserves from the start -- especially in an unpredictable sport such as soccer -- they've got the theoretical opportunity to win the game.

 

Forget that. Let the stars stay home and do what they should be doing. Going to class.

 

Now that people know the best players won't be there, the attendence and TV ratings are going to be way down.

 

So you're saying you'd be OK with it if North Carolina, Duke or Kansas, for example, did this and completely bagged the game by playing just their walk-ons and scrubs in the first round of their conference basketball tournament, since they'd already guaranteed themselves an NCAA berth?

 

About 15 years ago, in one of the local high school cross country leagues for some reason the final dual meet was scheduled on the Wednesday after the league meet, which was on Saturday.
The league's commissioner in cross country (one of the school's ADs, who also happened to be a football coach) sent out a memo to all the coaches that said "Each team is expected to field the best team physically possible. The practice of holding runners out to keep them 'fresh' for future meets is unethical."
Sure enough one school which was undefeated going into the final dual meet held his best runners out of the league meet, which was basically the equivalent of a league all-star game, having no bearing on all-league honors or class or state meet qualifying.
That coach ended up getting a letter of reprimand.
The main problem, of course, was the scheduling. There should not have been a dual meet scheduled after the league meet.

 

The game is meaningless. Who cares? Certainly not Florida State.

 

Roy Williams has said in the past that he doesn't really like the conference tournament and doesn't mind all that much if his team loses early.