@DanR
Thanks for the recall. Self steals a lot. I often think he makes himself steal something that was used effectively in the NCAA tournament. Self stole XTReme Cheap Shotting from Coach K the very next season after Coach K beat Butler and Brad Stevens using the illegal hand checking with the XTReme Cheap Shotting. To Self's credit, he adapted it to XTReme Cheap Shotting Lite and had his players (most memorably the Morri) cheap shot unpredictably in the most absurd situations for the psychological impact. Self had the Morri and TRob throwing forearms out in open court, rather than flipping guys upside down Duke style. But the psychological effect was the same. And he immediately pulled his guy to protect him from quick retaliation exactly the same as Coach K did in the championship game against Butler. Before it had worked for Coach K in the NCAA championship game, Self had seemed to think pre-emptive cheap shooting was unmanly. But once Coach K showed that it was a psychological operation to be run on an opponent playing a way the refs refused to take away, then Self borrowed immediately, Self definitely brought Doc Sadler in to borrow Doc's defensive schemes. There was another guy I forget the name of right now that had been with Haskins and Self took some stuff from him. And Self brought Janks in to learn what the hell he could about Jack Hartman's wrinkles with Iba ball also. The thing about Self though is that he rarely borrows what I expect him to borrow. That hedge defending from Ben Howland I did not see coming. I also doubted he would borrow the hack'n'slap, but he took it completely until the refs stopped it.. If you watched Self play for Paul Hansen at OSU, or saw his ORU and Tulsa teams, you know Self was never one much for physical basketball, even though he was a broadshouldered ex footballer. But once Self got to Illinois and got his nose bloodied a time or two by Ratso Izzo, Self very quickly became very much enamored with integrating Big Ten Bang Ball into his scheme--what he came to call grind. There is no question in my mind that Self steals. I think he tries to steal at least one thing every year from the NCAA that someone else wins ring doing, or gets to the finals, doing, just to keep himself and his game fashionable and growing. The only things he doesn't steal quickly are things that he believes are fundamentally unsound. The Princeton and lots of ball screening is just fundamentally unsound to Self. But eventually, when he needed to ball screen for a guy like BenMac, he stole straight from Calipari's Princeton on Steroids Dribble drive initial ball screen, as well as pinching that fade curl screen from someone. Sometimes I even think Self steals things like the fade curl from college football passing routes. But that's just a wild hunch. Self is an Okie. All Okies are deeply affected by football. And all football is deeply derived from Bud wilkinson. Sometime I swear I look at KU hurrying up the floor even when they don't need to sometimes and I think Self just dreamed about Bud Wilkinson and stole something from Bud, or one of Bud's myriad coaching offspring. But one thing Self will NEVER do. He won't steal an entire system; that is a violation of the prime Okie Baller Directive. Hell, Jim Calhoun stole Self's entire system to win his next to last ring, or maybe it was his last ring. If I recall Calhoun coached Ollie in college and Ollie had played pro for LB and assisted LB somewhere. It really looked like LB gave Ollie a brain dump and Ollie gave Calhoun a brain dump, and voila, KU winds up playing in UConn uniforms. The guy that was at Marquette after Crean and before Woj, umm, Buzz Williams. He is another guy that copied Self ball with two degrees of freedom. He assisted Billy Gilispie at Texas A&M if I recall correctly and learned the Self Stuff there. Marquette under Buzz Williams played 3-2 inside out and defense first, and looked like a carbon copy of Self's KU teams pre 4-1. And it was insane watching Calhoun switch from his old style of Big East ball over to Self's high low Carolinda Passing offense, chops and all, the same defensive help schemes after so many years of watching UConn play east coast style. A testament to Calhoun that even that old he was willing to steal an entirely new way of playing!!!! All great coaches steal. Bob Knight has made clear that the offense he created was parts of Fred Taylor, Pete Newell, and Claire Bee all coiled around the motion offenses of Hank Iba before Iba invented the 3-2 high low passing game for the 1964 Olympics. Bob wanted the motion for when he did not have the best players.
What I'm concerned with about college basketball right now is that the young guys are all making so much money to start with in coaching that none of them wants to be a character innovating the game. Self's earliest innovations were simply to go back to Hank Iba's cedar chest and pull out stuff like the chop and dust it off and adapt it. But Self at least went his own way most of the time. So many young guys today are not trying anything new, nor are they reaching back into the past. They are just running one of the three ways the game is played right now. Self Ball, Dribble Drive, and that other thing I forget the name of that lots of coaches are queer for now.
By the way, most persons forget that the chop and the weave are actually different, The chop has each guy going under the guy he gets the ball from. In the delay weave, the guy goes outside the guy he gets the ball from. The chop is to get the ball into the guys hands you want to drive inside with. The delay weave is what you run to get the ball in the guy's hands you want to shoot a trey, or run some quick action from a point or a wing point with a few seconds left on the shot clock. One works the ball farther and farther inside. The other works the ball slightly farther outside. Both the weave and the chop are designed to make the opponent get tired sliding and grow uncertain if you are going to drive or hand off again; that uncertainty makes the defender hesitate and that hesitation checking his blindspot is the moment he is lost, especially on the chop. Its an annoying offense to watch and to guard. But it works from time to time.
I'll stop now. I'm getting to old for going long with the young bucks.
