Ok. So a player has 2 or 3 fouls in succession so you sit him tor a bit so things settle down. Makes sense.
But why, when there’s 6 minutes left in the game, would you sit a player who just picked up his fourth foul like Bruce Weber did? You don’t want him to foul out because he’ll lose minutes so,you take away his minutes? Is this the whole “you want to make sure he’s around for the end of the game”? Just, from a pure mathematical standpoint it doesn’t make sense, but there’s probably something I’m missing.
A lot of it is mental. The player is frustrated, the refs have got him 4 times, the other team is gonna probably go at him. Just set him down for a min or 2 and calm everyone down. Then send him in and play through it.
Also, would you rather lose minutes from your player at the time when you can plug them back in if it starts to go downhill, or lose minutes from your player at the end of the game and he can’t come in?
I guess that’s part of the question. Do the minutes at the end of the game truly matter more than the minutes now? What if they help the team go on a run so the minutes at the end don’t matter as much. But I think a factor here is maybe they don’t miss any moments at all. If you take them out, there’s a 100% chance they will miss minutes, vs. a probably they miss minutes at the end of the game.
My take on it is, you pull the guy out, and if things start going south while he’s out, you can plug him back in. But if you leave him out, then he fouls out, you can’t plug him back in.
It all depends on situation. If you’re up 10, sure pull them, you’ve got a cushion. If you’re down 10 you probably can’t afford to not have them out there.
Also, like @Helper said, especially in college the player is probably frustrated and is more likely to commit a foul out of that and “making up” for plays.
To piggyback on @ScottCorken’s comment, it really depends on the level of desperation. As the minutes tick by, you just have to take a huge risk eventually.