Following UConn’s listless loss to Tulsa on January 14, coach Kevin Ollie felt the team needed a change. His solution was to remove guard Rodney Purvis from the starting lineup in favor of freshman Jalen Adams — who begat senior Omar Calhoun the past three games.
The Huskies have played 11 games since the change, going 8-3 in that span. So, has it worked?
Adams has seen his scoring numbers go up. He is averaging 8.5 points per game dating back to the Houston game — the first to follow the switch. He’s shooting 49 percent from the floor. Compare that to the 11 games prior when Adams averaged 5.9 points on 38 percent shooting. He has also given Sterling Gibbs a reprieve from ball-handling while on the court, resulting in slightly more three-point attempts for Gibbs.
Yet Adams has only seen about an additional 90 seconds of playing time per game — a number somewhat skewed by his peculiar benching against Temple earlier this month.
On the other side of the coin, Purvis has seen his numbers dip since being relegated to the bench. He’d been playing over 31 minutes per game. That average has decreased to 25.6. Purvis has also seen a decline in his efficiency from both two-point and three-point range — exacerbated in the minds of fans by some notable missed layups. His scoring total has dropped to 10.8 points after the benching from 14.9 points per game in the previous 11 games.
The positive news for Purvis is that he has reached double-figures in scoring in seven of those 11 games, and the Huskies won the other four.
With the numbers above in mind, let’s look at the combined averages of Adams, Purvis and Calhoun across those two 11-game spans:
| MP | FG | 3P | FT | A/TO | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11/27 – 1/24 | 68.1 | 46% | 36% | 69% | 4.9/4.3 | 24.5 |
| 1/17 – 2/20 | 66.6 | 44% | 32% | 79% | 4.3/3.7 | 24.0 |
As a trio, they’ve arguably performed worse since the shakeup. Even if those numbers don’t tell the whole story, watching the Huskies perform over the past month, it doesn’t appear that much as changed. When dealing with talented athletes, there are always going to be egos and emotions in play. When taking a drastic step like benching your leading scorer (which Purvis was at the time), the pay-off should be worth it.
If you’re itching for a fight, there’s an argument to be made that Adams was improving anyway. He was deserving of more minutes but that didn’t require benching Purvis. The chance of getting inside Purvis’s head and sapping him of some productivity wasn’t worth the risk when it would’ve been easy to tinker with the rotation without altering the starting lineup, leading to countless articles and tweets about Purvis being demoted.
The counterargument is that the team needed a kick in the ass and this was as good a move as any. Adams is the future of the team and it’s better to throw him into the spotlight and see how he handles it. Purvis is a professional (because let’s be real, they are professionals) and he’ll adapt to do what’s best for the team.
Regardless of which of these sentiments you prescribe to, the numbers would indicate that it basically doesn’t matter. The key — as always — will be to play the hot hand until it goes cold.
What do you think?
[democracy id=”2″][democracy id=”3″]
