Trent Johnson knows his problem isn’t necessarily a problem. The Stanford men’s basketball coach knows many of his colleagues at other schools would give a lot to have the Cardinal’s depth off the bench. But that doesn’t make finding minutes for all his guys any easier.

“One of the things that’s been good for me is that this team, as a team, they don’t worry about who’s starting as opposed to who’s on the floor helping us win,” Johnson said. “You know, if it was up to me, I’d play them all the same, because that’s how I feel about them.”

Seven players have started at least once for No. 20 Stanford (15-3, 4-2 Pac-10) and all but two are averaging over 10 minutes per game. After six games in conference play, Johnson has tightened his rotation a bit to seven, but has enjoyed the flexibility in shaping his lineups — often deftly shuffling players in and out to take advantage of matchups inside and out.

For example, Johnson swapped in senior guard Fred Washington for junior forward Lawrence Hill against USC in order to employ Washington’s defense against Trojan freshman O.J. Mayo. The plan worked, as Mayo suffered his worst performance of the season, a 14-point effort on 5-of-19 shooting from the field.

“We have the flexibility to go small and to play big,” Johnson said after the Cardinal beat USC 52-46. “The key is at the defensive end.”

In Stanford’s past four games, Johnson tweaked the starting lineup again, substituting Hill back in for sophomore center Robin Lopez. In each of those games, the Cardinal faced a team without a true center and went small to keep up defensively.

Much of the flexibility, Johnson says, comes from experience. The players know how to play with each other and are comfortable adapting to different lineup changes. The coach, in turn, knows what to expect from his players.

“I think it helps us with an experienced team that if we get in foul trouble or if a team comes and goes small, we can go small,” Johnson said. “Now their smalls may be quicker than ours, but we still have that flexibility.”

“I think the kids have that confidence that we can play without one or two guys, you know, during the course of the game,” he added. “And that’s important.”

Johnson says he bases his rotation on a combination of “feel and plan.” Performance in practice is weighed heavily, but once the game starts, foul trouble and matchups can dictate substitutions by necessity.

“I don’t think there’s a coach in America that can sit and say ‘this is what I want to do’,” Johnson said. “Then you have to be able to trust. Trust that if a player has two fouls, he can play with three. Or if you have somebody in a late clock situation, is he going to get in the proper spot? Those types of things.”

For the players, playing multiple positions brings tradeoffs. Hill, who stands at six feet, eight inches, said that he adopts a different mindset when shifting between playing on the perimeter and down low.

“I like the four [power forward] better — it’s easier; it’s not as tiring,” Hill said. “At the four, I can go from aggressive, strong to finesse, from outside guy to inside guy. But at the three [small forward], run me off cuts and screens and I’m thinking catch and shoot, sometimes not catch and attack.”

Junior point guard Mitch Johnson said he changes the way he runs the offense depending on who’s getting minutes. When both Brook and Robin Lopez are on the floor patrolling the paint, he said, it gives the other players confidence that they have a larger margin for error.

“If you are guarding a shooter, and you have to push up on someone and they go around you, you’ve got a little bit of help back down there,” Johnson said. “So it definitely can affect your decision making, and how you’re thinking out there.”

On Saturday, Stanford faces a California team that also likes to go big. With the Bears trotting out a front line of 6-11 center DeVon Hardin and 6-10 forward Ryan Anderson, expect to see both Lopez twins log major minutes on the floor together.

“Oh yeah, you’ll see a lot of them playing together,” Johnson said Tuesday. “We have some flexibility; whether our bigs on a given day are good enough to compete with theirs remains to be seen.”

Of course, Johnson also has Hill and seniors Taj Finger and Peter Prowitt ready and willing to log more minutes off the bench.

“We’re a team,” Johnson said. “We’ve got 10 guys we’ve gotta use, and gotta play.”