Exhibitions – Lessons Learned – The Rotation

Ken Pomeroy just published a newsletter talking about the value of exhibition games in college basketball.

“We’re a few days away from the season starting but we’ve already had a bunch of contests with all of the trappings of a regular season game. By Sunday, there will have been over 200 exhibitions played with real refs in front of real crowds, with real fans and (for some games) real TV coverage and real post-game media scrums. Even real fights and technical fouls. And in another case, three rotation players suffering game-ending injuries.

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But most people dismiss the exhibition game as a contest void of information on the team level. Remember last season when Kentucky beat Purdue and Cincinnati won at Michigan? Clearly proof that exhibitions are meaningless, the preseason-haters will say.

On some level, that thought makes sense. Exhibitions should be a time for coaches to experiment, give all of their bench players some run, and let the starters take it easy, if they even play at all. That’s how it works in the NBA. But all available evidence points to the opposite at the college level. Starters get major minutes, and teams regularly run out a rotation that they’ll be using when the games start. Coaches, players, and fans obviously care about winning these games.”

So What Have We Learned?

We have detailed stats from 2 of our 3 exhibition games, Mississippi State and Lenoir-Rhyne. Two wildly different teams, Lenior-Rhyne is Division II and preseason predictions have MSU finishing in the bottom quarter of the SEC. So drawing conclusions based on those two are iffy, however, as KP suggested, I think we saw the rotation.

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This is the substitution pattern for the first 10 minutes of each half versus Mississippi State.

Understanding the table – the player subbing into the game replaced the player above them in the table. Roles on the court adjust accordingly. For example, the first substitutions were Hammond for Edmead and Yalaho for Evans. Adams switched…

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Publish date : 2026-10-27 19:43:00

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