Something's been bothering me over the last few days: keeping starters in. I understand it if it's a close game- the seven-point match between Maryland and St. John's comes to mind.

But in a flat-out blowout, for either side? For the sake of this attempt at analysis, I'll define "flat-out blowout" as a 20+ margin of victory with a 15+ margin at the half.

Rutgers pasted TCU by 34, holding a 19-point lead at the half. Yet no Scarlet Knight starter played less than 34 minutes, and no bench player played more than 8. Writing as a Rutgers fan, I would have given up ten points off that 81 for ten points against Tennessee.

(I had USC here, but Kiriyo informed me that the reason only eight Women of Troy played was that there were only eight Women of Troy in uniform, which seems like a logical reason to play a short roster.)

A subset of these games is the "close at the half, complete obliteration in the second half" type.

LSU trailed Washington by three at the half but came back to win by 23. In that game, Seimone Augustus played 39 minutes and Scholonda Hoston 36 before her ankle injury. (Strangely enough, Coach Chatman managed her bench far more efficiently in her first round game against Florida Atlantic, which ended with a nearly identical final score.)

In the Utah-Arizona State game, the Utes and the Sun Devils were tied at the half before Utah won by 21. Key players Shona Thorburn and Kim Smith both went the full forty for the Utes.

Virginia Tech led Missouri by seven in the first half before blowing it open in a 31-point victory in first-round action. The Tigers kept star LaToya Bond in the game for 38 minutes.

Purdue led Missouri State by five at the half in their first-round game, winning by 21. Missouri State star Kari Koch played 38 minutes. (All due respect to the program at Missouri State, but shouldn't the state of their last star warn them about a player going too hard or too long on the court?)

Now that you've been drowned in examples, on to trying to figure out why.

*A lack of players- Tennessee fans defended Coach Summitt keeping rotation players in the game against Army because they only *had* nine players. Cal was forced to ride their starters in the first round because they were shorthanded.

*Senior privilege, especially in elimination games- for example, the starters who played heavy minutes in blowouts for Virginia Tech were seniors Dawn Chriss and Kerri Gardin; especially without a home crowd to give them an ovation, a coach may prefer to let their seniors finish out their careers on the court instead of on the bench.

*Pride, which would be why losing teams keep their top players in longer- they hope to either pull it out with their starters or to go down fighting as hard as they can in order to maintain an acceptable margin of defeat.

*Accumulation- in a close game in the first half, a player might go 20 minutes, so that even if her coach pulls her halfway through the second half, she has still logged 30 minutes.

What bothers me most about this trend is that it is most often critical players who remain in the game. This makes me wonder if it has to do with the distribution of talent over the last few years. Old habits die hard; coaches may be unused to having a full, solid rotation, instead recalling the times when they had one top-notch player, if that.

Running up the score may also be a reason, but I'd prefer not to think that any coach of a team worthy of being in the NCAA tournament would feel the need to do so. Isn't being in the tournament in the first place reason enough to be respected?