🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Some of the things troubling our KU basketball program:

OAD era and UK. The OAD system only works if you have enough talent on the court to streamline your playbook so that your players can perfect the basics. Coach Calapari has managed to do this and HCBS is still trying to play his entire playbook. Case in point HCBS plays Traylor more minutes than his more talented guys because Traylor knows what plays HCBS is calling from the bench.

Lack of experience is also troubling HCBS. If you are going to make it to the final four you have to have a bunch of OAD's OR upperclassmen. When HCBS (and almost every other program) made it to the final four it was a group of upperclassmen that took him there.

Over recruiting. We have seen this many many times recently with KU. Upperclassmen leaving because HCBS is recruiting over them. Which also leads to not landing guys in the 25-100 ESPN top 100 range due to warring that they will be recruited over the following year. I know that HCBS wants to land OAD's and he says he wants the best available players but if you cant duplicate what Cal is doing at UK then STOP trying.

Adidas. Go to any shoe store in America and look at the product. If you are 17-18 years old tell me you don't want a pair of new NIKE's every day. Adidas is just not on the same level. Go with NIKE and take less money to accommodate players and not your wallet. If your going the OAD rout then you MUST be a NIKE school to land MORE top tier recruits!!!

Lastly if you are not going to streamline your play book and you are as hard headed as HCBS then you have to pick a side and stick with it or you can forget about another final four any time soon. I would LOVE it if KU would get with the program and make the necessary changes and pick which direction they were going to go so us fans can enjoy making it past the first weekend of the tournament again some day!!!

Andrea Hudy ‏@A_Hudy · 4h4 hours ago
It hurts to lose. sviat_10 already back working on upper body strength for the future

!SVI.jpg ↗

@Statmachine God bless Svi !

It's a funny looking picture though - is he any relation to Nikki Minaj ?

@nuleafjhawk He looks constipated...

Just look at those UGLY shoes! NIKE is soooo much better! They look like some red hot geriatric velcro thrift shop garbage.

OAD era - this is not going anywhere until at least 2017. The current NBA CBA is not up for negotiation until then, so until the end of the 2017 season, we have to presume that OAD is the way things are going to go. No rule change is coming over the horizon, and even if there is a rule change, we won't know how many players will stay (and how long) until that new agreement is in place. So we can't depend on a structural change to save us.

Adidas - Nike is the 800 lb gorilla. Adidas is a different type of company. The key for KU is to look for "cool" products. Right now, flashy is in. I don't know how many kids I see wearing bright neon shoes. As adults we hate them, but kids seem to like them. Maybe it's time to have our guys rocking some bright blue kicks for hoops, or some slick red cleats for football. Change something up. Nike is cool because of just do it and Jordan and all of that. Adidas can be cool, too, but KU has to open up the brand, much like Oregon has opened up its brand and basically let Nike do whatever they want with it.

Over-recruiting. It's a fact of life. KU is at the top of the food chain. Every year, KU is going to be in the running for whatever top recruits are out there, whether it's OAD talent, or the next group. If a guy doesn't develop, KU is going to be in the running the very next year for a guy that could potentially replace him. Whether we have OADs or not, we will always recruit over guys that we currently have because we will always be in the mix for whatever the top guys are.

So it all comes down to strategy. Self has to accept that he won't have three and four year players every season, and he needs to adapt to that by playing to the strengths of the personnel he has. How many times on this site did we talk about needing to become more perimeter based this year? How many games did it take before Self really did that?

The stubbornness in making adjustments is what is hurting us right now. It won't keep us from winning 25 games a year because this is Kansas, that's what we do. We win 25 games every year. But you can't expect to win the exact same way every year for all eternity.

Bo Ryan's teams used to be all defense and couldn't score. The last two years, the Badgers have had one of the most efficient offenses in the country.

Coach K once blew up on a parent when their son (William Avery) declared for the draft after his sophomore year. Now he's willing to recruit OADs.

You have to be willing to adapt to stay on top. Coach Self has all summer to figure out how he will adapt.

@justanotherfan said:

this is Kansas, that's what we do. We win 25 games every year.

That's exactly my problem. 25 wins per year. Any good team can get 25 now. We're slipping.

Our win totals beginning with 2006-2007:

33

37

27

33

35

32

31

25

27

If Self wants to shut up his critics - get us back up to that 30+ wins per season mark. And win a few in March.

I still think that the number of student athlete's in the Nike pond triples the number of all other brands so IF you want to fish in the big pond you have to use the best bait being Nike. If Bill Self wants to land more top talent he is going to have to sever ties with Adidas and start fishing with the big dogs. If he doesn't he needs to have 5 guys in the espn 25-100 range at senior night every year. Since he is so stubborn he needs the seniors because of his reluctance to step out side of the HI LOW box he is stuck in. I still think that if Nike is a more attractive option for the teens you should go with them and cut your losses financially for recruiting gains.

I just got done reading this. Kind of interesting and it supports what some are saying because Bill Self doesn't show up on this particular parameter.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/tom-izzo-is-the-best-coach-in-modern-ncaa-tournament-history-by-far/ ↗

Of course it calls Izzo the best as you can see, but he has one ring and others on the list have more so it's just one way of looking at it.

WSU beat KU...blah, blah, blah...Oh wait, how many consecutive MVC titles does WSU have? Wha? Wha? How many NCs do they have?

They are not king in Kansas. Good grief...One lousy game with so much drama and so many issues, and people want to crown WSU king. It's really funny.

@Statmachine Well said! Everything Gregg Marshall is doing with his upperclassmen is no different than what modern midmajors are doing & what Self has done many times over...but the last 2 yrs Self's been laboring with his 2 youngest rosters EVER.

Agreed, we are not KY West!

@justanotherfan +1, but what if the team adapts, by fixing its several issues? Team MUST continue to get better & tougher physically & mentally.

KU is in the position of having to recruit multilple OAD type players because of previously having too much experience. 3 5th year seniors has led to this predicament. Wiggins and Embiid were a stop gap as Oubre and Alexander were this year. Next year if Bill gets 2-3 OAD type players to add to an experienced roster watch out! That is how OADs work in Bill' system they must be surrounded by eperienced players to show them the way. OADs need to be used similiar to how McLemore was used in the current system, unfortunately not all OADs get to practice for a year first.

@justanotherfan I am not disagreeing. Just a question. Do you think Michigan State has started to play differently? To me it seems every single Izzo team is the same. Same offense where he sends all 4 guys to the glass to rebound. Same defense where he recruits bruisers to man handle the opposing team.

Again, just a thought. To my eye MSU looks the same as they always have and it is working for them in the NCAA.

@joeloveshawks

I think Izzo has adapted. Early in his tenure, he did not let his perimeter players freelance. The last couple of years, you've seen him let both Trice this year and Harris last year take shots that, five or six years ago, would have gotten someone benched. Heck, he didn't let Jason Richardson freelance this much, and Richardson was a star in the making from day one.

Izzo went through a period from 2004-2008 where he finished second, second, sixth, seventh and fourth in the Big 10, had one Final Four appearance and otherwise never made it past the Sweet 16. In the years since then, he has failed to make the Sweet 16 only once, has a pair of Final Fours and might make another run this year.

What changed?

Well, during that period of struggle, Izzo started experimenting with more explosive scorers on the perimeter. Maurice Ager averaged almost 20 a game. Shannon Brown put up big numbers. He started getting more athletic on the perimeter. Rather than having one super athlete, he started getting athletic depth.

He kept the basics, yes. Hard nosed defense, ball security, physical play. But a lot of that is just good basketball. But he also looked at his teams and said, hey, my best player this year is a guard. Let me let him do his thing. Gary Harris rewarded him last year with 17 ppg, including some clutch play in last year's tournament. Trice is doing the same this year.

Self hasn't really done that. Tyshawn was probably the last KU guard that really had carte blanche to just do his thing. Is it any real surprise that the last two teams Tyshawn was on went to the Elite Eight and the title game.

McLemore could score, but there was never a "Ben, go take over". Last year, only in the West Virginia game did I see Self just let Wiggins go off. Self needs to take the reins off and let his explosive perimeter guys, well, for lack of a better term, explode.

That's why they are explosive.

@justanotherfan Good points. Another aspect of Izzo's approach is that he appears more than willing to take losses during the year - testing depth and letting guys play through mistakes - in order to best position his team for year-end success. As per @wissoxfan83 post above, the FiveThirtyEight piece is an interesting angle on tournament success. Izzo does have just 1 NC, but 6 FFs. But, the reason that he comes out on top (by far) using their methodology is that his teams outperform their seeds. His teams rarely have the best regular season records, and often come in as 3/4/5 seeds - or 7 as this year. We typically have a great regular season record so almost always have a 1 or 2 seed - tough to live up to that consistently. Probably why Self isn't anywhere on that list - during his tenure, we have actually substantially underperformed seed expectations - 5 #1s and 3 #2s.

As you note, Izzo seems to have adapted to the changing game reasonably well - maintaining his general tough, hard-nosed style, while giving a bit more latitude to his better players - and doing it with relatively few McDs or NBA-caliber players.

I haven't seen the line, but I would guess that MSU is actually favored as a 7 seed over OU.

!dillo.jpg ↗
Kansas coaches Bill Self & Norm Roberts will be flying in to see 6'9" Cheick Diallo @cheick_diallo13 of OSNA (NY) tomorrow. #kubball

@DCHawker

Part of that data that makes Self look bad is the abundant #1 seeds. That means, while having a very successful regular season and earning the 1, any loss before the FF is considered a failure. It's kind of unfair, but it's the way it is. I don't think for example, in 2013 when we lost in the sweet 16 to a team that played for the championship (and got screwed by the officials in my opinion!) as a failure. Sure we blew a big lead, but we blew a lead to a team good enough to almost good enough to win it all.

Same goes in 1997. We lost to the champion. We were the #1 seed, but by golly, Arizona turned out to be very good. No shame there either, although it was a painful loss indeed.

@justanotherfan All great points. I would have to say that Bill has adapted in some similar ways over the years but perhaps not as much. Probably easy for us to all point out his shortcomings as a coach after a season ending loss.

Part of the reason I think of Izzo is that him and Bill have similar models. Hard nose play. They often recruit raw guys. Izzo is my 2nd favorite coach by far and you obviously like the way he coaches and recruits as well.

Rock Chalk.

@wissoxfan83 Agree - thought I had made that point, but obviously not clearly enough. It's just a statement of fact that we have underperformed seed expectations (alas, by a fairly wide margin). As I had indicated elsewhere, the high expectations are a product of regular season success, which is a good thing (too much of a good thing?), which is a high-class problem to have.

As much as anything else, I'm speculating whether the B12 title chase is becoming a bit of an albatross - Self seems to shorten his rotation regardless of actual depth capability and fairly early in the year. In past years, both in and out of conference, we've always had several blowouts which have allowed more minutes for the 9-12 guys and more rest for the starters. Not this year. Question is whether some of our guys were just too beat up and had tired legs to compete? On the other hand, a lot of other teams (including WSU) have pretty short rotations and they seem to have a lot of energy at the end of the year....

@Statmachine He looks good in that pic. I wonder what it is, the colors, background...hmm

Changing the subject, hope none of you are in the tulsa area or Moore ok! Where do Selfs parents live?

@truehawk93 nobody looks good in maroon and yellow, maybe Niang or McKay.

@Crimsonorblue22 We're in the OKC area. It went right over us and East along I40. We're all good. Moore got some damage, but nothing like 2 yrs ago.

Self's parents live in Edmond.

@nuleafjhawk I think Self is right. We need a big and a guard.

@truehawk93 hot spot for sure!!

link text ↗

Why is this a rumor? Why would a head coach visiting a top recruit be a rumor? It sounds as if the recruiting world may know something by "rumor." Might 'rumor' be defined as 'getting a commitment'?

It appears this visit is no ordinary visit.

6'9" is not tall enough. Especially, when it really means 6' 7 3/4"

Does anyone remember TRob when he arrived on campus his freshman year? I do. Diallo is built a lot like TRob, only moves much like Embiid. I think Diallo will be slightly better than TRob and after Hudy gets him, Diallo is going to be a beast. I remember when I saw TRob, he was thin and lanky. He left a grown man.

Let's definitely hope Self and Roberts are pulling out the stops on Diallo. Let's hope they tell him, you will play. You will be the second inside presence we lacked all year. We would've been a better team with you this year. So, come play in the Phog and help lead us to a NC next year.

@truehawk93

TRob thin and lanky? Maybe I'm getting old but dude looked like a muscle builder when he first stepped on campus and looked like the HULK when Hudy got done with him.

Man, Thomas Robinson not only was the best ripped bigman KU has ever had (certainly in Self era), but he had the hustle, motor, & heart that Self's system simply has GOT to have.

I'd rather have TRob types for 2-3 yrs instead of Julius Randle x 1yr (unless a Randle type big completes an otherwise complete, experienced, upperclassmen roster).

Be VERY wary of this relying-on-freshmen-TRAP we are currently caught in!!!

@truehawk93 I hope you have a storm cellar or a basement. Anybody that lives in N. Central Texas, all of Oklahoma and most of Kansas needs them.