In another thread, @wissoxfan83 wrote that last season I called what we saw against Pittsburg State Bad Ball.
Uh, no.
Actually, I never called that Bad Ball last season and wouldn't call it that this season.
We just watched clunky High Low Post offense being worked on in the first game of the predicted touch call era.
In contradistinction, Bad Ball is a specific way of running the High Low Offense that Self adapted and resorted to increasingly from mid season on last year, until accrued injuries made Bad Ball the ONLY offense he ran at the end of the season. Bad Ball is running the High Low Offense to shoot short threes by driving INTO your man to COLLAPSE IMPACT SPACE (from all positions on the team), rather than trying to BLOW BY him and DRIVE TO THE RIM uncontested. Collapsing impact space is the coin of the realm of BAD BALL. Opening up impact space is the coin of the realm of the normal High Low Offense, and of what I call its Good Ball variation that was played in the WUGs.
The Pittsburg State Exhibition game appeared to me to be mostly just this team trying to practice running the High Low normally out of the blocks to see if the KU bigs had improved enough to constitute a credible scoring and rebounding presence in the paint.
To be clear, I am not talking about the 4 position, when I talk about the bigs. Perry is what he is. He looks good inside against guys his size, and not against guys bigger than him, unless they are incredibly slow footed and don't body him. Against the blue meanies, Perry has to turn into a stretch 4 and attack face-to-basket to be effective.
What I am talking about is the 5 position and the committee of players that will staff it most of the time. I say most of the time, because there will be 5-10 minutes every game, when Perry will take a blow and Bragg will fill for him and we will have both 4 and 5 positions staffed by our "bigs in question."
The N of 1 (an exhibition) indicated KU's bigs, subtracting Landen, who got fouled up and so did not show his game, are better offensively, somewhat improved on rebounding, but hardly dominant in either...yet.
If we look at Traylor, Mickelson, and Bragg as a committee at the 5, well, they beasted!!! They scored 33 points and grabbed 14 rebounds. If we had a single starter have that kind of night, we would be saying we had a future All American on our hands!!!
(Note: Isn't it about time that Jesse Newell and Ken Pom started tracking and packing the stats that would enable us to talk empirically about an All Committee team? Even the best teams usually have at least one position staffed largely by committee. Part of Self's greatness is his ability to find committees that work. We need an All-Committee Coach, i.e., a coach recognized for his particular gift with committee work at the various positions on his team. But I digress)
The only down side to Self's Three-mittee at the 5 was Traylor still appears unable to rebound beyond random grabs. He played against a Division II team and only got to two offensive boards in 16 minutes. He grabbed not a single defensive rebound, which means he remains clueless as a senior about how to block out a guy his own size with less athleticism and then go get a basketball coming off a rim. It is a strange, inexplicable deficiency in his game. They perhaps ought to have him hypnotized at this point. When Traylor cannot get a single defensive rebound against a D-II team in 16 minutes, something deeply psychological appears to be the impediment and NOT what the coach is asking him to do. I mean, does anyone think Self actually tells Jamari, "Yo, 'mari, don't defensive rebound tonight?" In 16 minutes guarding in the paint, a big man, even a little big man, should catch at least one random defensive carom!!
Enough with ragging about the Jam Tray's anti-rebounding.
Why do I say better as a team on rebounding after just railing about Traylor? Because Bragg and Mickelson grabbed 12 between them, and that is a decent, but not dominant night against a D-II team. We need those two to grab 12 between them against Duke, UK and UNC. This means we are probably better rebounders than last season simply because Self is finally playing Mickelson, and has added Bragg. But let's not kid ourselves. Until we see Bragg and Mickelson pull down 12 between them against the Blue Meanies on a top Division I, while getting punched out and muscled during the game, the jury is out on whether or not we have improved ENOUGH to be one of the top teams in the country.
(Note: Bragg and Mickelson WILL BE PUNCHED OUT A COUPLE OF GAMES, if Self stops leading with Lucas and Traylor. So: I think Self will lead with Lucas and Traylor as long as he can to protect Hunter from getting his pointy nose pushed out the back of his head before mid season, and to protect Bragg from head hunters and knee kickers, too. It is obvious Self is NOT playing Lucas and Traylor ahead of Mickelson and Bragg, because they are better. They aren't. What Self is doing is warming Lucas and Traylor up for coming back in to relieve with EXTREME PREJUDICE, which ever and whenever one of his relatively inexperienced bigs--Mickelson and Bragg--or his finesse stretch 4--Perry--get punked. It is basically a foregone conclusion that Perry will be punked again after the success Marsha and his Shocks had with that tactic.
Also, starting guys like Lucas and Traylor let them take the early fouls that refs will be calling to establish the level of contact allowed. Better for Lucas and Traylor to pick up those early fouls than Bragg and Mickelson.)
Though KU resorted a few times to BAD BALL vs. P-State, we can reasonably infer that KU was playing it very infrequently, because KU took 19 3PTAs; that rarely happens in BAD BALL. 19 3PTAs is the kind of number that comes with normal High Low Ball, or with Good Ball.
At this point, let's summarize the possible offense schemes Self and KU bring to each game, whether used each game, or not.
KU runs three offenses that we know of so far: Normal High Low; BAD BALL; and GOOD BALL (what we saw in WUGs).
Self was clearly tinkering with the normal high low in the first exhibition game.
My guess is that the second exhibition he will start with High Low again, but then tinker more with Bad Ball and/or Good Ball; so that the team will have a rounded exhibition experience with all three schemes.
But all offense and offensive preparation involves both strategy and statistics.
The three schemes are the strategic element of preparation.
The statistical element of preparation is something like 3PT shooting percentage.
The team shot 21% from trey vs. Pittsburg State. Self has to make a judgement call about his team's 3pt shooting. Are they going to shoot back to their average the next game, or are they starting the season in a slump and so one should expect the bad trey balling to continue a couple of games.
To make the judgement, Self will look at the practice shooting percentages. If the team has been shooting poorly in practice, then the judgement would be that the team would be starting the season in a slump. The prescription for that is for them to take 20-25 3ptas again the next exhibition game in order to bring the team closer to shooting out of its slump. Slumps are stochastic phenomena. The fastest way out of a slump is shoot as many treys as possible ASAP, short of shooting so many misses that you jeopardize winning a game. Against a second consecutive D-II opponent, it is logical to assume that KU's bigs can control the game, while Self lets the guards shoot a high number of treys, in hopes of shorting the remaining length of the slump, and so shortening the number of regular season games early that must be played during a slump.
On the other hand, if the team has been shooting the trey well in practices, then the prescription is to tinker on the offensive options (i.e., work on Good Ball and Bad Ball) independent of the 21% performance vs. Pittsburg State, and assume that the team will shoot back to its average this next game. In other words, don't infer a slump and don't try to manage for one.
In the regular season, your options would differ, because you would be trying to maximize the probability of winning against stiff competition. Typically, Self holds back on 3ptas, when he thinks his team is in a slump, or when he thinks his players are too injured to shoot them well, or when the team has been so hot for so many games, that he expects a slump to start sooner rather than later. He does this in order to guaranty a win by winning "ugly", i.e., by grind it out, or by shifting all the way into playing Bad Ball. You just take treys when you have a solid lead. The rest of the time you play for short threes only. If you fall way behind, then you take treys and try to burn up the slump attempts and hope the slump breaks.
To conclude, it was a rocky start for the High Low Offense. Those dreading Bad Ball will have to remain in suspense; that wasn't it. Regarding the front court, we finally have some small evidence for optimism about improved offensive productivity from our bigs. And we have some reason for improved rebounding from the bigs, but not from Traylor, and that's BAD, because many teams will go small on us, if they know Traylor can't rebound regardless of who he is matched up with. Lucas will take another game or two to assess. He gets you what I now call "The Newell Factor" on the tipoff, so he might keep starting just for that. But surely he can do better than what he showed vs. Pittsburg State, after all these years.
An ugly win to start the season.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Only different.
More offense and rebounding out of the 5.
And isn't that what we needed most?
Even if it ain't purty?
