I think both sides have some good points here.
History says Prohm (and college basketball coaches in general, save for hack-a-thon guys like Huggy Bear) play 7-8 men in their rotation. The season and games are short, players are in good shape, so put your best men forward as much as you can.
At the same time, Prohm has never had an Iowa State team with this kind of depth and flexibility. His first team had five great starters and two marginal bench guys (a developing Burton and maybe Cooke) with little after it. His second team had an okay bench, but really nothing after Jackson, Bowie, and Weiler-Babb. I think last year had a good starting five, actually, but virtually nothing on the bench to chew up minutes in a competitive manner.
Our marginal guys now (Lewis, Griffin, Conditt) are probably better than the marginal guys we had in the past (Carter, Ashton, Holden, Long, Beverly, etc.).
So we have never seem a Prohm team at Iowa State with the option to really go even much to eight, much less nine like some people are nominating here.
Good problem to have -- like
@bozclone says, we do have nine men who have proven they can contribute at a high-major level. Lewis had a
really good game against San Diego State, too, so do not give up on him, if not this season but maybe the next one.
I do not remember the last time that happened to have a fisc with so many options that are viable choices. We are still going to have injuries, foul trouble, and fatigue. I could see all of those nine end up with significant playing time, but eight makes sense, as well.
So we will see.
