Roster sizes trending down means balancing chemistry with opportunities for women

Lindsay Gottlieb was watching warmups in Maples Pavilion ahead of USC’s soon-to-be upset of Stanford earlier this month.

What struck her as she looked at Stanford was not anything that Cameron Brink or Kiki Iriafen were doing, but the size of the Cardinal roster.

“It’s the smallest,” said Gottlieb, USC’s coach. “I said to myself, ‘I’ve never seen such a small Stanford team.’ (Tara VanDerveer) usually carries at least 15 and it was very notable. Part of it, is she lost some (players) last year and can’t replace from the portal the same way that everyone else can. I thought that was really interesting how thin her bench was.”

When it’s happening at Stanford, people take notice.

But shorter benches are becoming the norm for many teams in college basketball right now.

Season-ending injuries might have shed a light on this trend — WBB.Blog has tallied more than 80 across major conferences already this season — but a lot more is going into the movement to smaller rosters.

Arizona has faced a perfect storm this season. Coach Adia Barnes made a strategic decision to go down to a smaller roster. Then two players left, and three had season-ending injuries, leaving the Wildcats with eight players. On top of that, for three games leading into this weekend, Arizona was down to seven as Kailyn Gilbert was out for undisclosed reasons.

Arizona (12-11, 4-7) rolls with eight players into Monday’s game against No. 10 USC (17-4, 7-4) at 7 p.m. at the Galen Center in Los Angeles.

Trending smaller

Looking at rosters across the country, many schools carry 12 or 13 players. Some schools like Notre Dame and South Carolina have done this for years. Notre Dame won a national championship in 2018 with eight players, and most teams only go with a rotation between seven and nine in games.

Other schools, like Louisville, Baylor, Indiana, Michigan are seemingly new to going with fewer players.

Digging deeper, COVID-19 and what’s come out if it — the new transfer rule (no more sitting out a year) or the extra year of eligibility given to players or name, image and likeness (NIL) — has completely changed how everyone operates. Still, in talking to three coaches, Gottlieb, Arkansas’ Mike Neighbors and Barnes, having smaller rosters aren’t a new thought, it’s just that now more are turning to that strategy.

During Barnes’ 13 years as a college coach, including five years as an assistant at Washington, she’s seen “the shift” in roster sizes.

“What you’re noticing this year versus like five years ago that’s really small rosters,” Barnes said.

For her own program, Barnes said recently that she thinks 12-14 players might be the sweet spot, with the last two being walk-ons. That’s because managing 15 people who all want playing time can be a headache.

“You’ve got to keep 10 of those 12 very, very happy in their roles,” Neighbors said. “You get more than that, and they start pulling the people the other way, and now your boat starts going the other direction.”

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That’s a real concern for all coaches. There have been issues this season, most notably at LSU early in the season and then this week at South Carolina, as freshman Sahnya Jah was suspended indefinitely for conduct detrimental to the team.

Gottlieb said, “Everyone’s got stuff.”

However, for coaches, it’s not as simple as adding players who understand what their role will be, because “everybody wants to play; that’s the reality,” Barnes said.

12 is ideal

Neighbors has been at his alma mater, Arkansas, for seven years after leading Washington for four season, during which time the Huskies made the Final Four. He was a UW assistant with Barnes before being elevated to the top spot when Kevin McGuff left for Ohio State.

He currently has 14 on his roster (including a few walk-ons) but agrees with Barnes that 12 is ideal.

“I don’t know if that’s a model that’s going to continue to change with the changing variables that we’re dealing with, but for the last 10 years, I felt like that was the number,” Neighbors said.

“It goes back to something my very wise Papa told me one time. He was not a religious man at all. I don’t think he ever stepped foot a day in the church. But he said, ‘Boy, Jesus was the greatest leader ever and he couldn’t keep 12 dudes happy. What makes you think you can?’”

Gottlieb has been at USC for three seasons after being the first Power 5 women’s basketball coach to become an assistant in the NBA for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Before that, she coached at Cal for eight seasons.

Women’s basketball has always carried 15 scholarships. Gottlieb said that there has always been a “philosophical struggle” because “you don’t want to take scholarship opportunities away from women.”

“We used to be asked back in the day when UConn was so dominant, only a couple programs were so dominant people talked about, ‘Well, should we cut the scholarships to 13, so the Stanfords and the UConns — these dominant teams — don’t have two kids sitting on the end of the bench that can help everybody else,’” Gottlieb said.

“We’ve all probably known it’s impossible to keep 15 people happy. That’s a lot. … I think it’s always been a fine line and distinction between having enough good players to feel like you have enough depth, to feel like you can withstand injury, to feel like you have the pieces you need and not have too many where it’s hard to keep them happy and can affect team chemistry.”

There are many moving parts to roster construction, and as Neighbors, Gottlieb and Barnes have said, this does not operate in a vacuum. External factors are having an impact.

It should be noted that with fewer players on these rosters, more scholarships are going unused and fewer athletes have opportunities at Power 5 schools. Everything is more competitive, especially with the extra year of eligibility for veterans who played during the COVID-19 year.

Does a coach take a graduate student from the transfer portal and have them play ahead of a freshman? Does a coach decided not to take experienced transfers to play their freshmen? Something that Barnes decided to do this season as part of a rebuild. Others have tried to find a middle ground, while even others aren’t bringing in transfers.

With coaches trying to find that right balance and athletes empowered to leave a school if they aren’t getting the playing time they want, women’s basketball is now inching closer to the men’s game.

“My friends in men’s basketball (used to) say every single guy on every roster thinks they’re an NBA player, and if they’re not playing, then you’re impacting their career and they’re going to leave,” Gottlieb said.

“Women’s basketball was always maybe about a little bit more than that the degree, staying for four years. Now, we’ve moved a little bit in a different direction where there’s more opportunity in women’s basketball. I think some people feel like immediate playing time or immediate success is not happening, you’re more apt to see movement. I think coaches are now more conscious of that than they used to be.”