As prisoners of our recruiting past in which KU rarely signs more than a couple top talents, and often gets beat out by UK, and Duke, we suspect that Self will be lucky to sign one more player. Most think it will be Diallo with Ingram an outside shot, and that would be for most a successful recruiting season: Diallo and Bragg.
But Self has made it clear that he is swinging for the fences this season again. After signing 4-star Bragg, and characterizing him as a 4, Self has said he is looking for a pro type wing (2 or 3) and needs some scoring at the 5. He lost out on 5 star Zimmerman and transfer Thorne. Self has thus put a full court press on Diallo, a face the basket 4, who looks too skinny and short to add what is needed at the 5. He stretched the press to include Malik Newan at the 2 and Brandon Ingram at the 3.
Mostly everyone has been considering probable, or worst case scenarios. What say we break out of the prisons of our recruiting experiences, as Coach Self is trying to do, and study the best case scenario.
First, why should we even entertain the notion?
Coach Self has been a make it happen kind of guy. What he decides he wants he often gets after a few tries. This is his third season of really swinging at the fences in an unlimited sort of way, and with the slots open to make some plays.
Board rats often disagree with what he sets his mind on, but it is has been a hard way to make a living betting against him getting what he wants when he bears down, and persists.
Coach Self wanted a team that could score by driving instead of trey balling. Many of us howled. But in the end, despite a blizzard of injuries, KU was an inside scoring team that won a conference title and got a two seed in the tourney.
Coach Self believes winning conference titles is the way to get the best seed and that the best seed is the best way to start the Madness. To this end, Coach Self pursues a win at any cost conference style of play and has won 11 straight titles. Many disgree with his approach, but none can dispute that what the man has wanted to do he has done.
Likewise, when Coach Self entered coaching, it was a time when defensive basketball was not the coin of the realm. Coach Self decided that defensive basketball was the way he wanted to play to win. He became the winningest coach in D1 for a significant period of his career as a defensive coach.
When Coach Self decided that he wanted to bring the greatest player of the last decade--Andrew Wiggins to KU--when everyone more or less said that he could not, Andrew Wiggins wound up wearing KU crimson and blue.
One could go on here quite awhile.
The point is that Coach Self has decided that he wants KU to play with as much talent on the team as Calipari and Coach Cheapshotski have. And he has pursued this with the kind of singleness of purpose that he pursued getting Wiggins, and all of 11 straight titles, and so on.
So: we have some reason to believe that he WILL accomplish this sooner or later. It may not be this season. But it could just as easily be this season as another.
To borrow a famous phrase: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
So: it appears Self's first hyper class could look like this:
2 Malik Newman
3 Jaylen Brown
3 Brandon Ingram
4 Cheick Diallo
4 Carlton Bragg
5 Pappagianis
That is six players including a double stack at 3, which of course is exactly what is needed when playing OADs as starters at a key position.
So let us look at depth chart combining those six with our returning players.
1 Malik Newman/Frank Mason/Devonte Graham
2 Brandon Ingram/Wayne Selden
3 Jaylen Brown/Brannen Greene
4 Perry Ellis/Cheick Diallo/Carlton Bragg
5 Landen Lucas/Pappagianis
I think this dog will hunt.
And it will not be one whit more crowded than either UK, or Duke, or Arizona, last season.
This could be the greatest escape from a recruiting prison in college basketball history.
Nothing is written.
