How will WSU react to Severovas quitting?
By Marc Katz
Dayton Daily News
FAIRBORN | The way it looks now, the loss of Vova Severovas — who left the Raiders Thursday for unexplained reasons — doesn't mean much.
He wasn't playing many minutes, and not at all in the last game for which he dressed, against Miami.
But by the end of the season, the hunch is Severovas would have been a big part of whatever the Raiders achieve in this second season under coach Paul Biancardi.
A year ago, the team broke down into two groups — four seniors and five freshmen. Two more players were added as walk-ons.
When senior Braden Bushman suffered a chest injury early on, he was taken out of the lineup and replaced by freshman Alex Kock, a "recruited walk-on." Kock became the third freshman in the starting lineup, joining point guard DaShaun Wood and Severovas, a tough rebounder who had to play against players much bigger than himself.
Although Severovas is sometimes listed as being 6-foot-8, in reality, he's about 6-6.
After 10 games as a starter, he became a sixth man, being replaced in the starting lineup by Drew Burleson, who provided more offense.
This season, Burleson stayed in the starting lineup with the other forward position going to 6-7 Ohio State transfer Zach Williams.
Biancardi likes to use three guards in the lineup regardless, but at times he must go to a bigger lineup. Zakee Boyd, a 6-5 guard, is usually the first man off the bench because of his shooting ability, and his increasingly good defense. Severovas was the first big guy off the bench.
However, freshman Jordan Pleiman, a 6-8, 220-pound rebounder who can move under the basket, began seeing more and more playing time, and Severovas less and less.
Still, the Raiders had an eight-man rotation, one more playing significant minutes than last year, when the seven most used in the lineup began to tire at the end of the season.
Without Severovas, the rotation drops back to seven players, although 6-7 freshman Parysh Munroe appeared for six minutes in Saturday's 81-70 loss to Akron.
Biancardi is going to have little choice. Without Severovas, he is going to have to use Pleiman more, and begin to get Munroe into the mix.
While most Division I teams have a seven- or eight-man rotation, Akron used nine players for 10 minutes or more, seven for 16 minutes or more. That's a lot.
It's also a way of keeping players happy. No matter what players say about winning, what they really want to do is play. Sitting the bench on a winning team is not as much fun as playing on a winning team. Playing and losing isn't much fun, either. Sitting on the bench and losing is worse.
Severovas was moving down the rotation with the Raiders, and, apparently, saw an opportunity to go elsewhere and play. He told Biancardi — three days after he left the coach a voice message he was leaving — that he planned to attend Oakland College in suburban Detroit.
Biancardi wished him well, but had to be wondering why a player would leave seven games into a season. It wasn't the best message to leave behind for teammates.
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