🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Our problems at the 5 distill to the following:

None of our 5s can guard the post AND rebound, only one or the other.

Two of our three 5s cannot steal.

Two of our 5s cannot block shots.

Two of our fives can run the floor, one cannot.

None of our fives can score in close.

None of our fives can score away from the basket.

None of our fives appear to be able outlet passes quickly and with length.

This long list leads me to question why we are limiting ourselves to these three fives.

@Jesse-Newell does a fine job of documenting how KSU simply ignored Jamari Traylor down the stretch and double teamed Perry Ellis.

I said in my immediate post game analysis that it might have been best to have played four on five instead of take the seven fouls our composite five got.

What to do.

When Self wants to play through Perry, it seems obvious.

No matter how long and strong the opponent's five is, we would be better off rotating Wayne Selden and Brannen Greene at the 5 and playing junk zone (3 out man to man and 2 in zone) when they are in.

We are apt to get threes from Wayne and Brannen on offense, and we are apt to give up twos with Wayne and Brannen taking turns guarding the 5.

Also, Wayne and Brannen are good enough at shooting Fool's Gold threes that the opposing 5 would HAVE to come out, which would make Perry's scoring a cake walk one on one with a rim protector out chasing Wayne or Brannen.

And junk zoning would let Wayne and Perry, or Brannen and Perry, help and double on the bigs.

This dog will hunt.

Wayne can't dribble penetrate effectively. Brannen can't guard the perimeter very well. Fine. Tell them both to shoot treys, don't dribble penetrate, and double all they can.

Will Self do it?

Probably not.

But necessity is a mother of invention.

Self needs to consider this option and engage in it to build leads for about 5-10 minutes each half, then defend the leads with his composite 5 of Jam, Landen, and Cliff.

Snacks needs to put the spurs to Cliff for 20 minutes, an the last ten minutes should be whatever else works on a gvien night.

None of our 5s can score back to the b

@jaybate-1.0
Well JB, Self sure has his hands tied. I'm not sophisticated to watch for 3 m2m & 2 zone, but know that if Mason keep driving to the net, then I'll know Self hasn't come up with new strategy. If so, we are doomed against teams with footers. Sure hope to see something different against footers. Thanks for the breakdown.

@jaybate-1.0

Wooden played a hybrid 3-2 zone with his shorter teams, with 3 players playings outside man-to-man and 2 player inside playing a loose zone. It worked for him then, but those were different times.

@JayHawkFanToo

Never knew that about John R.

Thanks for mentioning it.

@HawksWin

What's great here is posts are kind of like peer reviewed articles. You learn new things and then you learn doubts about all or some parts of the new things.

I spend most of my writing energy trying to find what Self is doing and why, because he is smart and logical and systematic in what he does, whether it proves to be the best way or not. I learn a lot from Self.

But Self cannot, does not and should not reveal everything to us. This is his career and the most he can do is do what he does and toss us a few bones along the way. He tossed us the bone of playing a junk zone with 3 out m2m and 2 in zone. I missed it until he mentioned it. They try to mask playing it from an opponent and they in the process mask it from us. We all miss things; that's why it's so fun to come here. Share what we see, learn what we missed. Net smarter.😄

I also try to what might be done differently not to knock Self but to see if I can guess what he might try next. If he doesn't try what seems obvious to me, a layman, then I figure he is up to something--another way to skin the cat, rather than wrong. He usually is.

When he is doing something that appears wrong it is usually he cannot figure out how to make the change without greater costs out weighing the benefit gained. Being a professional he often knows these costs better than we do. He has been through this or that 8 years ago, or faced it at Illinois, or Tulsa, etc.

We posters here have our own knowledge bases. Some have quite a bit. By proposing and debating alternative approaches, we are trying to pool our knowledges to see if we can figure out what he is up to, or come up with a better mouse trap. Mostly we discover what he is doing. 😄

The huffing and puffing and frustration here is the pain of learning, or struggle to learn. It is like in a weight room when persons are grunting with loads they are sometimes not used to yet. Afterwards, they are ok.😄

Self is a great coach. He has pedigree, philosophy, systems, innovation, experiments, guile, and gambles coherent enough to study and learn some of. Lesser coaches have lesser amounts of these.

But the very coherence of what he does can open him to more criticism, because there IS a logic to it and logics can fail, or produce unintended consequences, or randomly err.

Our goal should be to be kind to Coach Self and each other, we will learn more.

No doubt we find flaws in him and in each other. There are flaws in everyone and every thing. Perfection is for suckers. Our universe is one of emergent complexity, of making the best of the incompletely understood. No one has a be all end all formula for correct action.

But I really enjoy learning what basketball has to teach. I never go a day here without learning something. I cannot say that about every aspect of life I engage in. I could say life mostly sucks, but instead I choose to say basketball suggests that if I could open up to life the way I do to basketball, I could learn more about life, too.

Teach, learn, play, love.

In no particular order.

It's a pretty good life, if you can stand the occasional pain and not always getting your way. 😄

Rock chalk!

@jaybate-1.0 : What you're saying is for Self to play the same height that Hoiberg and ISU ran last year with the 6'6" Ejim as their 5. Only difference I guess is that Ejim and Hogue, when they go with him at the 4,5, weren't/aren't scared to play tough and muscle with guys bigger/taller than they are. But I too think that would have been a good tactic against KsU.

It often seems like 5s struggle when guarded by extremely smaller players. When there is a difference of 2-5 inches the advantage goes to the taller player because he can simply do what he does and score over or through the smaller player. However, if you completely change the type of player matching up with a big, he has to change the way he plays and change is hard. The smaller player is faster and can get around the big to deny, steal, and pester. If the big brings the ball down or tries to dribble the advantage immediately shifts to the smaller player.

I do feel like someone like Wayne or maybe even Frank would be up for this kind of challenge. The problem would be the physical exertion of bodying and muscling a bigger player for any amount of time would certainly cut out some of the offense from those two. Talk about dead legs!

Plus you could not guarantee the 5 would guard the man KU sends to guard him. The 5 would most likely shift over to Perry sending their usually more versatile 4 to guard someone like Kelly. Perry's struggles with taller players is well documented though he may be learning some by adding to his outside game.

There is also the fact that the other team can simply play zone thereby defeating any match up problems playing small hoped to create.

This in no way discounts the theory as valid. The 5 has added so little this year that it would certainly be interesting to see how this worked.

@jaybate-1.0

I just don't expect to see many changes on anything until I see players applying some of the basics... like box outs, shot fakes, and hedging.

Here is one loss we can chalk up to poor hedging...

[link text](

A few seconds left in the game, and Frank doesn't know where the basket is he is supposed to defend. So he bites on the fake to the outside (which is where he should be hedging him to and guarding the rim instead).

HEDGE ERROR = LOSS

@jaybate-1.0

"Net smarter" two thumbs way up!!! I've loved Kansas basketball since we moved to Kansas when I was six years old during the Carter administration. But my knowlege of the game of basketball (and even life to a smaller degree) has grown exponentially bc of kubuckets!

For example, I just texted a dear UT friend and mentioned I was having Bevo for lunch thx @globaljaybird!

@drgnslayr pretty sure these drills are new to coach Self!!!

@Crimsonorblue22

It blows my mind. I know a game can be won and loss by more than techniques. But look at all the effort we put in that WVU game only to come away with a loss from an inferior team. And it boiled down to Frank biting to the outside on the drive with just a few seconds left in the game.

That wasn't Frank's fault. He was never taught the basics of hedging. Lesson one... even though the basket is behind you (out of sight) you have to know where it is and must defend it from penetration.

@drgnslayr the thing your block out drill doesn't teach, is rotations. (Shell drill helps). When our guards get beat or players go for blocks, we all need to rotate and quickly. Sometimes we do, but to slow. That messes up the true 5 on 5 block out drill.

@jaybate-1.0

I believe he described the system in interviews for his biography.