Well, Kellie says it is nothing outside of basketball - I take that statement at face value and that would seem to imply effort or attitude in practice.
So, the saga begines with RJ's sudden and quite drastic "indefinite suspension" (which signals that something severe is going on) to RJ scoring 17 pts. in 15 minutes, after a 2 game hiatus (Whoo, whatever it was seems to have been resolved, maybe it was not so bad after all, time to move on!). But wait, what has RJ done now because in the very next game, Kellie only played RJ nine minutes (in garbage time).
That UCF game is the hard one that is really hard to understand. That decision does not signal a clear trajectory for working your way back in.
It is hard to figure the logical progression in Kellie's player management decisions-- "Okay, you are a such blight to the team I can't play you and might never play you again despite you being the star; Then we have okay, you are back on track; to oops you have been a little bad so I am punishing you again. Then in the Stanford game, okay, you are now back in my good graces but gosh darn why did you run out of gas in the 4th quarter after hardly playing over the last five games?
I have no doubt Kellie is convinced that she is doing the "right" thing and that her "principals" are a hill worth dying on but but that does not mean that her drawing a line in the sand, covering it up and then faintly redrawing it has been the optimal way to handle a crucial player management problem.
Time will of course tell how this all plays out but I firmly believe that the yo-yoing punishment of RJ cost games against VA tech and Stanford. I worry the ramifications may carry forward (I hope not) but Kellie needs to find a definitive resolution.
As I think you know, I have been very, very pro-Kellie since she was announced but I think she may have backed herself into a corner here and I do hope she and the team can get out of it.