🏀 KuBuckets Archive

I have read many post saying how a certain team is so great because of the amount of McDonald's All Americans they have. Nonsense. It is Division I Basketball. McDonald's All Americans are great, but it doesn't guarantee an undefeated season or a National Championship. McDonald's All Americans commit fouls, turnovers, and fail to box out just like every other player. They are human. Now a lot have real good skill set and that is fine and dandy, but that does not guarantee anything. It is a team sport, that rewards, hard work, intensity, developing chemistry, unselfishness, determination, and a will to win. Kansas has just as much talent as any team in College Basketball. We must be loaded with talent if we can let 3 D1 players go and not miss a beat. We have 11 players fight for minutes right now, just the way Coach Self wants it. How else can you get maximum effort?

Looking forward to another great season of Kansas Basketball and reminding everyone that we have just as good a chance as anyone else. Win or lose, I love my Jayhawks!!!

A very timely post as right now Kentucky is struggling with powerhouse (sarcasm) Buffalo.

Like you said, everyone believes the hype and no one thinks they can be beaten.

They can be beaten and they have weaknesses. UConn proved that last year. I hope KU can exploit those weaknesses on Tuesday.

Wow, I just saw the score from the UK game. Timely is right, wow. I guess it proves my point.

@KansasComet Exactly. Now I'm not saying that KU will win, but I'm not as sure as everyone that they will get blown out.

@DinarHawk I am in agreement with you. Games are decided on the court and not by press clippings.

Hype exists for a reason.

Hype does not guarantee success, but it is telling.

After all, the reason that Kentucky is hyped is because they have a basketball team that happens to have lots of very good basketball players on it. That definitely helps.

There are other good basketball teams, obviously, but the media has to hype someone, so why not hype a team with probably 8 or 9 guys that will play in the NBA in the next 2-3 years.

Nobody is going to hype a team like K-State because K-State does not have the talent to be a great team. They will be okay, but nothing more. Nobody is going to hype a team like TCU because TCU is bad. UK may go undefeated, but probably not. But if I had to pick 5 teams that might win the national title, it would be foolish to not include UK in that group. In fact, my five would be UK, KU, Florida, San Diego St (random west coast team) and Villanova as the team that could get hot in March and run the table.

@justanotherfan

Sometimes just having great players is just not enough; you have to get them to play together as a team. There is no question that UK has great talent, it would be foolish to say they don't; however, the real question is:

As a team, are they better than the sum of the individuals?

or...

As team, are they not as good as the individuals?

Good coaching and team chemistry will make the first case happen; poor coaching and inflated egos will almost guarantee the second.

@JayHawkFanToo Well said. I believe you are right on point!

@KansasComet

Thanks for the spirited post!

If we keep working on what we did Friday, we stand a good chance of beating Kentucky.

Backcourt pressure, pinching on the sidelines... I think some people learned what can happen when an athletic Kansas team starts applying pressure!

We created several TOs, and even better, when we ran pressure we completely sped up the Gauchos. I'm not sure we would have won that game if we didn't use the pressure, because when we started to lax, they were able to run better offense.

Really... the issue for us is to control tempo. We ran pressure on the Gauchos and sped them up and they couldn't score... but we also sped ourselves up to an ineffective speed. We have to get better at speeding up on defense and then running a bit more methodical offense. It might still help if we run fairly quick offense, but not if we aren't being effective.

It was great seeing us create some TOs. I'm trying to think of the last Jayhawk team to do that... hmmmm.... '08?

@drgnslayr We have not attacked the passing lanes like this since '08. I think you are on to something as far as controlling the tempo. I think we will be just fine this year. A great mixture of talent and experience in the program.

@KansasComet @drgnslayr -- you're both right. We haven't seen this type of aggressiveness on defense for quite some time. That slow footed rim protector can be a detriment when you have to cover for others with rotation. I have said for quite sometime that I prefer playing with two 4s vs. a pure 5 -- 4 and 4a. Don't get me wrong, I liked Withey and Embiid. But I'd rather have Jackson/Arthur and all of the options that type of pairing presents one both ends of the court. A bigger bonus is Self might actually get away from the "feed the post" mentality at least 25% of the time. .

@HighEliteMajor

Haven't the C and PF become one and the same anymore? A few years ago, most current PFs in the NBA would have been called Centers and most teams don't even list a Center anymore. College follows the NBA and the same trend is present, KU does not list a single Center in the roster, even Mickelson and Lucas are listed as Forwards.

@JayHawkFanToo

I agree with you that we don't know how that team will come together. But that's the nature of college basketball. We don't know how most any team will come together because most teams have either lost or added key parts during the off season.

For instance, do we absolutely know for sure that if a player like Perry is asked now, in his junior season, to take a reduced role, that such a request won't harm KU's overall chemistry? Same with Brannen Greene. Do we know that this team is ready to follow either Mason or Graham at the point?

Without knowing that about any team (because everyone has questions right now) you have to look at overall talent. UK has talent, so until they can't play together, I have to believe that they will play at or near their talent level.

UK has the McDonald's, but Oklahoma over the weekend might now have the best starting 5.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/11883876/tashawn-thomas-eligible-play-oklahoma-sooners-immediately ↗ ↗

@wrwlumpy said:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/11883876/tashawn-thomas-eligible-play-oklahoma-sooners-immediately ↗

That's a huge get for OU. Makes them pretty stout up front. I don't know that it means they can win the Big 12, but it makes that game in Norman a lot more dicey.

Unless Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa State or our very own Jayhawks end up imploding throughout the league season, as did Okie State last year, this looks to be the most competitive of the upper echelon Big 12 squads in recent years. The Big 12 is now loaded with experienced winning coaches. We could lose 5 conference games and still tie for the title, maybe with two other teams. The league tournament, come March, should be a super colossal prep for the NCAA Tourney.

@wrwlumpy Ou has an upcoming game against Creighton, so we'll see how they look. OU could be a darkhorse, for sure.

@KUSTEVE Creighton is replacing a lot from last years team and not just McDermott either. I think they lost 4 starters from last years team. They might be down a little bit at the beginning of the season.

That said, Coach McDermott, has become a good recruiter for that level of school (pre Big East), and seems to be a solid coach as well. Even though at Iowa St. he just couldn't get it done.

@wrwlumpy

Thanks for posting the info on OU. They are going to be tough!

But I believe the same line that has been said now for a decade:

"The championship for the B12 will go through Lawrence."

There is a lot to that. It's a deflection of another fact... KU is the only effective road team in the B12. So it sort of helps us when there are 3 or 4 really good teams in our league, because they knock each other off constantly and help us out.

We've got two major factors helping us; first, we are tough to beat at home. Second, we are tough to beat on the road! We only need to win X-amount of road games, and all (or all but 1) games at home to win our conference. We make it look easy, mostly because we know how to win on the road!

@justanotherfan said:
"Hype exists for a reason.

Hype does not guarantee success, but it is telling.

Nobody is going to hype a team like K-State because K-State does not have the talent to be a great team. They will be okay, but nothing more."
~
~
~
K-State DOES NOT have the TALENT ..... AMEN !!! That may be even a over statement. They are losers and KU Basketball OWNS them !!

CBS has the good guys favored by 2.5. not saying that is right, or whether or not that will be the actual line, but it's a good omen.

Tue, November 18, 9:00 pm ET
TV: ESPN
away team logo
Kentucky
Wildcats
vs
home team logo
Kansas
Jayhawks
Odds:
KANSAS -2.5

@justanotherfan

To add...Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield went 7-7 from the 3 to tie a conference record. OU has a great starting 5 and a very good coach...I am not sure about depth though.

@KUSTEVE

I think that is a typo since the Vegas lines have not even been announced. If you look at the Michigan State Duke it shows Duke +25. which makes MSU a 25 point favorite? NO WAY! Duke will be the favorite in that game, no question about it. There is no way that the unanimous #1 team would not be favorite over the #5 team, even more so when the game is a short distance away from Lexington...it is like KU playing at the Sprint Center in KC.

@JayHawkFanToo Lon was my absolute favorite player back in the Hartman days. The NCAA tournament has not been kind to him as a coach ( over 20 years since his team made the Final Four). In all the years he has been coach, his teams have managed to win one conference title ( 1994 with Florida), That said, OU will be tough. Tough, but beatable.

@JayHawkFanToo I posted what was listed. It's an omen. We will win by a bucket.

@KUSTEVE

The Vegas lines from the traditional places are starting to come in the consensus seems to be 5-1/2 point with UK the favorite. I thought it would be little higher so UK must have not impressed yesterday.

@JayHawkFanToo The Line: Kansas Jayhawks +4 Opening line from betonline/com/ I figure the money will flow on the Mildcats, pushing that as high as 7 or 8. Vegas doesn't determine what happens on the court, so it doesn't matter if the number goes to +20, we can win this game. KU by a bucket.

@KUSTEVE

Vegas does not care who wins or loses, they just care about making money and they are very good at it.

If you are familiar with Vegas betting, you know the opening line does not mean much; it sis simply the first number that is reported and it usually is gone once the big books announce their odds.

Also, Vegas does not base odds on what the score will be or the point differential. it simply adjust the odds so one half o the bettors will bet one way and the other half the other way; this guarantees a payoff for them. Although the spread tends to mimic the potential point differential.

Last night, most of the services had the line at 5-1/2 and today it went to 6-1/2 which means more bettor were taking UK by 5-1/2, but now that the lines is higher, bettor will be less inclined to take UK by 6-1/2 and will take KU instead and the bets will balance.

This is probably the best source to get odds:

Vegas insider... ↗

You will see that the actual line opened at 3 and now the consensus is at 6-1/2; it was 5-1/2 late last night, but game day action changed that and it might chance even more during the day and prior to the game. For another example, look at the Wichita State-Memphis game, It opened at 4-1/2 and not it sit at 9; you would be crazy not to take Wichita and the 4-1/2 points but Wichita and 9 is a different thing altogether.

@JayHawkFanToo Without divulging any non-pertinent information regarding the illegal act of gambling, my nickname used to be "double up"....lololol.

@KUSTEVE

In Vegas gambling is legal and until your bookies gets nabbed, you can gamble locally as well. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what happens at KUBUCKETS.COM goes to the entire world.

5 Months ago, wow. Anyone can be beat! Wisconsin was the better team and deserved to win. "Don't believe the hype".