@KUinLA
First, the premise of your argument that this has to do with playing the High Low Post is a false one.
The team has won playing the High Low all season. It never runs another offense. When it runs out of the 1-4 all it is doing is pulling its post men out high. And when it runs 4 out one in, it is leaving one post man low and playing Perry outside. It is always the High Low Post Offense. Always. It is the offense Larry Brown and Dean Smith and Roy Williams have run. It is the offense all the Okie Ballers have run. It is largely what Bruce Weber runs.
The issue hinges entirely on where Self decides for the team to try to attack an opponent, which formation of it they run it out of. If the opponent tries to take away the outside shot, KU attacks inside. If they take away the inside game and give away the outside, KU shifts the high low formation to the 1-4, or the 4 out one in.
The team has won several games outside in this season, so we not only know they have the shooters to play that way, but they also have the offense for the shooters to play that way.
The question of whether Self could, or would, evolve his High Low Offense so that he could take advantage of his good outside shooters was answered almost a month ago now. He did.
The question is why has he decided to spend the last month playing inside out with the High Low in its conventional 1-2-2 formation and 1-3-1 formation.
The answer is we have played a series of teams that have decided like KU fans have decided, that the strength of the KU team is its outside shooting game. The opponents have either zoned us with matchup zones outside that make the 1-3-1 formation of the High Low Offense the appropriate formation, and make attacking the seams inside the appropriate place to attack the zone.
When we see zones pack it in, Self stays in the 1-3-1 formation and the number of 3ptas rises to 20.
When we meet teams that decide to pack it in on m2m, then we see Self shift formation to 1-4 and four out one in and the 3ptas rise to 20 and the bigs either drive or cut to the blocks for scoring.
For several games now we have had opponents that have taken away the outside game, so KU goes inside.
KSU clearly over played our perimeter to take away our treys and gambled that their bigs were strong enough contain our bigs.
So: Self responded not with going to the big men on the blocks to score, but to feed cutters, and also to his strength, his guards to drive the lanes. We got quite a few feeds to Kelly cutting to the rim early, or Perry across the lane. But Weber adjusted to that. The next line of attack was from the guards. Frank, Wayne and Devonte went to iron, but were not up to the challenge, though they drew some fouls and made some FTs that kept us ahead and then even for awhile.
But finally, our defense broke down, which I think happens often when we start asking our guards to drive a lot. They take a beating and they expend a lot of energy and it shows in their defense on the other end after 5-7 minutes of doing it.
That was when KSU squirted out into its little lead that it then began defending.
Basically, we had done to us, what we do to other teams.
Weber took away our outside game, kept it close, kept adjusting his defense to shutt off our various attacks inside, waited till our guards tired from our attacking, had his guards squirt free for some treys and a few easy inside baskets, and then he told his players to tighten it up again and defend the lead. Then when our guys tried to run some stuff for threes in desperation at the end, KSU's guys played 3 man zone out front on the weaves. Then when we shifted from weaves to fade curls they anticipated them and just dogged our guys as far as they ran their curls.
The weaves were run out of the 1-3-1 formation.
The curls were run out of the 1-4 formation.
Neither worked.
Why?
Because Weber is a good defensive coach that schemed defenses to stop exactly what he had seen Self run in the past, when he decided to shoot treys earlier in the season.
The reason Self did not go to the trey earlier in the game was because he knew he would see exactly the kind of defensive schemes earlier that he finally saw when he had no choice but to run some trey action.
Weber is not a great coach, but he is a good defensive coach. He schemed defenses for a lot of years for Gene Keady at Purdue, who was the only guy that could beat Bob Knight very often back in those days. Weber learned Okie ball from Keady who learned it from Eddie Sutton, who taught Self a lot of what he knows about it.
Self knew exactly what defensive schemes he was going to see if he ran his outside stuff.
Self gambled he had the better inside scorer in Perry, plus Oubre who could get inside, plus guards that could attack and draw fouls and FTs. He played take what they give us, as he always has. He played the percentages. He played money ball. He knew his team was in the bottom third of its performance distribution. He tried and played nine guys double digit minutes looking for some combinations that would get some stops and gets some buckets. Nothing worked.
And we saw what happened the minute the team started running action for threes against Weber's defenders. Zip.
When things go wrong for Kentucky, does Kentucky quit running the dribble drive?
When things go wrong did Phil Jackson opt out of the triangle?
When a coach's team struggles, he doesn't junk what they practice all the time.
You keep looking for ways to attack within the scheme and within what the opponent is giving you.
Young players facing very aggressive m2m defense with perimeter defenders that match up well without an inside option that can go get them a basket in a pinch run into hard times from time to time. This was one of them.
Playing inside didn't look good at all.
But playing outside looked worse.
When you aren't hitting your shots, nothing looks very good, and it is at that point that you need to go to your got to guy to get you some impact buckets.
Who are KU's go guys?
Frank, Kelly and Perry.
How many FGAs did Frank, Kelly and Perry get?
Perry 16 FGAs
Kelly 13 FGAs
Frank 8 FGAs
Self went to his go to guys.
Sometimes your go to guys crap out.
He gave Brannen 6 FGAs and Brannen went 0-4 from three.
The more I reason through this for you, the more I understand what Self did and the more it appears he coached this exactly right, given his scheme for this team.
The only thing I would have done differently is I would have become an outside shooting team early this season and been shooting 30 treys a game minimum, and as I've noted, may be would have been willing to experiment with shooting all treys all the time. But i'm an outside the box kind of board rat.
But there is hardly any guaranty I would be tied for first place doing it.
And the fact is Self is STILL tied for first place.
And he is just now getting to the number of conference losses most folks predicted would win the conference.
So: while this was a horrible, ugly loss and one we should have won, if we had shot better, bottom line is: what we have here is a bad performance on the road by a young team and a loss to a rival.
How much of a barometer of doom really is such a game? Not much.
How unexpected was such a loss coming sooner or later during a title winning season? Frankly most expected it. Teams have bad games and lose when they shoot horribly, no matter how much they try to get good at winning on bad nights.
Did anyone seriously think a team that is a donut with a hole in the middle was going always going to luck out on the close games? Nope. Well, I did for a brief period, when I got over optimistic and predicted they would win out. But my latest wild hair prediction of them winning an NCAA Ring this season, in no way precluded them losing some games before the Madness. It assumes a hot streak by a not huge team like UConn last season. But I willingly admit it is a wild hair prediction.
But these gloom and doom predictions of the end don't do it for me. They could lose the rest of their conference games and probably still make the Madness as 4-6 seed and make a long shot run almost as easily as from a one or two seed. Frankly, the better season they have the more likely the NCAA seeding mavens are to put KU in a stacked region to ensure they exit early. The worse we play, the lower our seed, and the more likely we are to be just ranked in any old region, and,thereby, slip up on someone. But i digress.
When Cliff began to play better for while this team's fortunes really picked up. As he has tapered off, its fortunes, not surprisingly have turned downward.
But either Cliff is hurt, or opposing coaches have found his weaknesses and cliff cannot correct them till the off season, or Cliff has a mentor relationship with Snacks and can't function without Snacks. KU needs Cliff to get back at least to the level of productivity he was at a month and a half ago, when he could at least give 15 decent minutes.
Can we blame Self for Cliff's current flame out? Hmmm. Cliff had four fouls. Did Self call those fouls on Cliff? Nope. Has Self been saying since the beginning of the season the guy was too foul prone to cornerstone a team? Yep. Has Self been trying to coach him up? Yep. Has it worked? Well, he was getting better for awhile, and then he cratered. Surely part of the blame must be Self's, if Cliff is not injured. But have you ever seen a single top coach that never had a promising player crater on him? Nope.
I wish we shot more treys, like you and others.
I wish Cliff played like the OAD that stifled Jahlil Okafor in their famed head to head meeting that got Cliff ranked so high.
But not if we shot treys the way we did tonight.
And what would it matter if Cliff played up to expectations if he fouled out of every game before half time?
The most logical response to this game is: recruit some big men that can play productively without fouling.
And keep recruiting more and more of them.
Duke, UK, UA, UL and Zaga have 4 near footers.
It can be done.
With the right shoes and agents, apparently.