Spread the work around.

McGhee and Hoover were very capable in running their offense if needed. This allowed Murphy more of an opportunity for open shots. This year he seems to have to create most of his shot opportunities and spend more time running the offense.

Until pedulla improved significantly in the season Murphy didn’t have much help.

He also had to take on a bigger role defensively than he did at wofford as our bench wasn’t very good defensively in the first half of the season.

In my opinion the reason we turned things around from the 2-7 start was the bench finally was able to play good enough defense to justify having them play more minutes. During the 2-7 conference start we ran the starters into the ground but many big runs for opponents (nc state is the notable game) occurred as soon as the starters sat. Essentially we couldn’t rest the starters because the defense suffered so they were exhausted at the end of games.

Thankfully the emergence of Maddox and pedulla has taken some of the pressure off all the starters (Murphy included).