What is interesting, is that Travis at least in terms of nightly usage engaged a larger portion of his bench than he had in some time. A lot of us were used to complaining about him not giving players 8-9-10 deep on the bench. He utilized his bench more effectively than he did in years past..
Depending on the week:
6: Sawyer (Mostly nightly usage 10-20 minutes)
7: Williams, G (5-10 minutes a night)
8: Nap (5-10 minutes)
9: Henderson (started off low, with a lot of DNP's to getting all of Williams minutes)
10: Jones (Saw a lot of run at the end of the year after getting a ton of DNP's.)
If you are 11-15, you aren't going to see a lot of minutes regardless of program. Pretty rare that teams go into their bench that deep on a nightly basis. Travis never has been a mop-up minutes guy. He'll run out those 11-15 kids in the last 90 seconds or so, but if you understand how college programs run most of those players would never classify those as meaningful minutes. Great to get on the floor, but they know going into games that their chances to play are next to none.
So if you are going to have those guys on the bench, you want guys who can buy into that role. Travis will keep around walk-ons for that reason because their effort never changes in practice and aren't a shit-heel at the end of the bench with bad body language. Hard for scholarship guys not get into a world negativism and start counting the minutes until they can get the heck out of the program and onto greener pastures. Serious ego check.
Not all of us can transition like that at any age. I didn't handle well going to from being an every day baseball player throughout my career, to watching everyone else get all the accolades while you sit on the bench. For me it was my last year playing ball. I look back it jokingly now (setting a record for consecutive innings sat for the Missoula American Legion team) but I wasn't a very good human that year. If they can't contain their disappointment or agitation it isn't generally reflective of any one thing, and they think they might be able to contain or hold it in but they can't. Staff knows it, crowd knows, their team mates know it.
As a coach, you try to combat that type of stuff but it is difficult. You gotta win and you know you aren't going to keep every one happy all the time. It isn't good riddance to bad rubbish, and I don't fault kids for thinking at age 20 they can transfer elsewhere to be in a more prominent role. Sometimes that isn't at all what happens and it isn't comeuppance, and they don't realize how good they had it. Kids have a choice to accept the role, or they don't. I can tell you if they can't, most coaches would rather have them to move on and good coaches are blunt and up front to players about those things.
