OU will be a tough out, but...
The saplings learned what D1 is about that first half against SDSU...it is about how hard and tough you play.
Talent?
Talent only comes into play once you play hard enough and tough enough for it to overcome another bunch of L&As playing hard and tough.
Unless every sapling on our team has an XTReme Learning Disability, KU will come out on the floor the first half, as it came out on the floor the second half...conducting maximum amps.
Self WILL amp them for this game. They will not have practiced heavily before it. Legs will be very fresh. Players will be juiced, unless there are deep, abiding relationship, personality and transfer issues eating like a cancer at the team. Self will have some wrinkles for them, because Bi-Brow (formerly Uni-Brow) will have the same for KU.
It is an away game and so KU could lose, if OU shoots out the lights.
But KU should get back to 50% inside and 38-40% from trey with fresh legs and the psychological edge of having played SDSU's phenomenally L&A starters. Even though OU has some size and athleticism, playing OU is going to feel like going from swinging two bats with donuts in the on-deck circle against a fast baller to swinging one bat in the box against a control pitcher. You gotta be careful not to overawing at first, but if you can get to 3 and 2, you are going to have a quick bat and some of your juices flowing to look for one to yank.
Rebounding is once again the coin of the realm, as I prefaced the last game with, and then went on ad nauseum about during the JNew chat. A game without rebounding advantage is like World Trade Center VII without a jet impact. All sorts of unforeseeable and hard to solve consequences unfold that people in charge have spend a lot of time after the fact trying without credibility to unravel. A game without rebounding advantage becomes a mystery of cascading riddles wrapped in an enigma of complexity.
Rebounding is best done by those that have a sixth sense for it and KU alas has not one of those kind of players this season. That KU lacks this is one of the reasons I forecast them having a very rough go of it before rounding into shape late.
KU's problems are only partly attributable to youth. The team has serious holes in abilities, as do most teams, as some have noted when I have taken the time to point the shortcomings out. Naa can't guard and shoot on a long guard. Frank can drive, but has yet to learn to dish cunningly, and his virtue of aggressiveness conspires with his inexperience to make him misread required spacing on his man to prevent blow-bys. Selden is a slow-foot with a long first step that masked the slow feet, until he started meeting fast-foots with first steps as long as his, plus Selden is almost certainly playing injured. NBA bodies in D1 don't regress without ongoing, denied injury. And Wayne Selden is an NBA body, don't let the slump fool you. Like a Tyrell Reed on steroids, otherwise L&A Selden will next season acquire fast feet at the muscle couturier--Haut d'Hudy and break a lot of defenders' hearts...and minds.
Moving on to Andrew "Earwigs" Wiggins, his L&A amounts to a mega pincher being applied at creepy crawly speed and intensity most of the time. Andrew has been so much better than his competition all these years that he literally had no clue he would ever need an above average trey gun to do in D1 what he has always done since 4th grade. That same dazzingling L&A has obscured from him that he would ever run up against unsung, non OAD guys he would have to play harder and tougher than for a full 40 minutes to crush. Never in his wildest dreams because his wildest dreams have never included clawing and scratching and biting for 40 minutes just for the chance to explode a few times all over someone's face for the ESPN high light of the night. This is no knock on Andrew; this is why playing AT LEAST an OAD year truly is helpful to NBA bodies with insight. Of course, those without insight it doesn't help, but that is neither here nor there, because Andrew has insight. He just really, really needed that experience of lessers overwhelming him, kicking him when he was down, and walking off at half time laughing and mocking him precisely so he could hear them. Andrew has the insight to shed the "earwig" exoskeleton and fulfill great expectations, once he learns what Bird and Jordan understood understood after getting their butts handed to them (Bird breaking and running his freshman season with Bob Knight) and Jordan getting cut when he was a wee lad. Andrew needed that butt kicking by SDSU more than any sapling on the team, and he got it in a big, big way. And you just know his father, an NBA player, who probably loves him to the edge of the universe and back, knew deep down in his craw that sooner or later his super son, Andrew, was going to have to take a kicking and keep on ticking in order to make a career, and not just a first gaudy contract, in No Boyz Allowed. Andrew Wiggins is not someone I would want to face today, if I were a Sooner. Andrew's father and mother were apparently ferocious athletic competitors. You can almost hear the cell phone conversation that must have occurred after the SDSU game. Father Wigs said, "Facing adversity is part of the game, son. You've got to fight back." Brother Wigs said, "Baby Bro, don't get your robber down. Be strong. Some of those guys on SDSU were old enough to be on NBA pensions. Be yourself and you will be okay." Those conversations were fine. They made him feel better, like this was just one of those bumps in the road. But then mom probably called on Face Time, or Skype, or something and she put the stern mother look on him. She who has competed at a high level looked at her son and said, "You can do better than that." Oooh, those mothers! That's all they gotta say sometimes. Its the look and the failure to live up to even their expectations. Chilling. Just chilling. The mother unit is not satisfied. Ooooh, wee, its like packing a whole bunch of TNT around some U238. Only mothers can come at you from all sides sat once with just a few words and a look. Fathers are head on, linear, battering rams. Mothers are all inclusive, omni-directional imploders. Its the deep nature of evolution. I don't know how good Andrew will execute versus OU, but I suspect we are going to see some nonlinear increase in activity.
Then we come to Embiid: the player that has the heart and fire of a great athlete; the willingness to mix it up with anyone no matter how fierce; but at the same time the guy that really does not yet sufficiently grasp the spatial relationships among himself and his teammates when double and triple teamed. He is already an accomplished shot blocker. He can "make plays." But he often cannot know the spatial things Wilt Chamberlain knew from playing the game since a child. He cannot know yet how other players and refs view him and so what he can and cannot get away with. Time and experience alone can deliver these precious insights to him. Embiid is a star incubating. KU is sooooo fortunate to have him, but it is not the same as having Wilt, or Danny, or Kareem, or Walton yet. It is like having Hakeem that first early season at U of Houston, not the last season of Phi Slamma Jamma.
And then there is The Designer--the 3 revolving elliptically in the 4th orbital shell of the Team Green. Sometimes the elliptical orbit hurls him far from his greatness and sometimes too near Embiid's incubating sun that this team orbits around for him to do anything but score. And then those Blue Meanies of D1--the 23 year old L&As inside--the guys explode all over his head, when he tries to finesse a bucket--they can and do stop him. Its not a knock. Its not a knock. Its like saying Brady Morningstar had a limit at the 3, because he was 6-3 and slight of build and once he ran into the Blue Meanies on the perimeter in the Madness he could not score his usual 40% from trey. It was just stating the obvious. Play out of position without an NBA body in D1 and sooner or later the Blue Meanies separate one from what one is assigned out of position to do. Like night follows day.
And we could go on thusly down the roster. There are holes in this team regardless of age and regardless of the number of ecstatically hyped recruit rankings. They are holes that will remain in one form, or another, for the entire season. Just as other teams have holes.
This is why the game of basketball always defaults finally to which teams have pieces that fit together the most seamlessly and so can mask the inevitable holes the most effectively.
This is why starting freshman is such a chore.
Each game an upper classman starts, he and his coach really only have to worry about compensating for the next one of his flaws opposing coaches expose in his game after several days of film analysis and applying the appropriate player and disruption tactics to him.
But with a freshman, you are also combatting learning everything the first time, plus having opposing coaches expose his flaws.
A freshman has to learn how deafening 15,000 hostile fans can be.
A freshman has to learn how tough and mean long and strong 23 year old men playing for their futures can be on cue from coaches.
A freshman has to learn "the system."
A freshman has to learn D1 speed defense on ball, off ball, and then help one, help two, and help three.
A freshman has to learn to play with a frisky young woman wanting his attentions.
A freshman has to learn to play HARD and TOUGH for 30-38 mpg depending on how close the game is.
A freshman has to go through the pain barrier of length of season starting in January, when the season is already as long as his longest high school season.
And all of the above and more makes it an order of magnitude harder to mask the inevitable holes in abilities on a team hunting for a title and a ring.
I am pretty confident that this team will win the Big Eight Conference, if Baylor doesn't have an exceptional L&A point guard. KU really will have no answer for an excellent L&A point guard this entire season that does not make it even more vulnerable somewhere else, unless Self begins to swing Perry 3/4 and Wiggins 2/3, which so far he has been effectively unwilling to do. Wiggins and Perry are the go get a basket guys. They are also the bread and butter scorers. I don't believe KU can win a ring in March/April with Perry sidelined for extended minutes, when he is unable to handle really good L&As at the 4, because of his height and slightness and finesse game. The Designer has to be in the game for KU to have enough scoring to play for all the marbles.
But this headline and thread asked if this team can win another title.
The answer is: yes.
And it seems a high probability to me that it will, not a slim one.
Talent and depth playing well together wins conference titles.
There is no reason to think this team will not make a non linear improvement in playing together when they get their legs back and with the butt kicking by SDSU.
But rings are won by 7-8 guys, three of which have nearly every game MUA, with the other 5 or 6 having the fewest holes to mask, that then get the most favorable match ups in the three 2-game tournaments that comprise the Madness.
KU seems to have too many holes to win a title, even if it gets hot in March, unless Embiid transforms into Hakeem in a single season, or Wiggins actually becomes the next Lebron.
But it can win a long grind to a conference title with its depth, with Cobbins out of OSU's line up, with Self having correctly anticipated the additional length of this season (KU should not burn out late January and early February), and with Self giving KU the edge over Drew of Baylor in coaching over the course of a round robbin. OSU can get a split with KU just because Smart is an order of magnitude better than any guard we throw at him, but not a sweep without Cobbins.
The Mayor and Iowa State can get a split, but our depth and talent should will out over a round robin.
Kruger and OU may be the biggest threat and so stealing a win in Norman tonight, when we are not yet probably sufficiently developed enough to do so would be huge! We all need to hope and pray for a great shooting game, some aggressive rebounding heretofore not seen, and a big dollop of lady luck. If we get out of Norman with a W, then we can afford the splits I mentioned above and lock a share of this tenth title up. And if we happen to sweep either OSU, or Baylor, well, then we should get it outright.
Rebounding, guard play, and finding a scheme for keeping Perry in games against L&A 4s, are what this team needs to focus on the most. As soon as they are confident in these areas, then they can really focus on the Disruption Stat and so steal enough advantage in possessions to win on their bad nights.
Rock Chalk!!!
