🏀 KuBuckets Archive

If you take a mug of beer that is half full. Some will see the mug half empty and some will see the mug as half full. There is nothing one can do it about it. Not even those that see the mug halve full or empty. It is human nature. We can't help ourselves.

In the OU game. Some seen a game where KU played like crap and got lucky to win. While some others seen KU play like crap only to score 31 points and holding OU to 7 in like 7 to 8 minutes.

Who is Right and Who is Wrong? Neither. Perception is a very powerful thing. It's all in how you perceive things. Like I said before we can't help ourselves.

For instance some believe that a team should play flawless basketball with little errors for 40 minutes to have a true champion. Others believe a team has to get hot and feed off emotions.

Who's right and who's wrong? Well that's the answer we must discuss, and debate.

Many great teams of played great all season long. They destroyed one foe after another. They rebounded with fury. They played great defense. They shot the basketball with a high average. Hell they even buried their free throws. Yet the NCAA history has shown time and time again these team get beat.

More times than not it's the team that refuses to lose. It's the time that doesn't tighten up when the game gets close. It's the team that makes the big shot when the game is on the line.

Every great team has games where they have to suck it up and pull it out. Every great team has a game or two where things aren't going their way. Yet they man up and they win the damn game. Style points don't count. W's do.

See the mug as you must. Yet don't deny the facts. KU is number 1, 4-0 against the top ten, Big 12 champions, and most likely the best team in the country. These are facts and not perceptions.

So if you got a mug half full? Polish it off and fill it up again. :thumbsup:

@DoubleDD here's to you! It's tea though!

@DoubleDD I think you are right about perception - many do feel as though a team is only a final four contender if they dominate every game. The tournament is all about toughness and shot making. Matchups are a factor, but former are more important.

Bill said at the beginning of the year about the tournament that if you keep knocking at the door eventually it is going to open up. I dont know if its this year, next year or five years from now, but Bill is eventually going to get his third final four and ultimately a second ring. What he has going for him is his ability to stay flexible and adjust his strategy and plan of action to look for new ways to succeed.

In the end, though, patience and persistence are the keys. No team goes to the final four every year and there will always be disappointments. But the ability to stay positive and thinking about the goal every day is vital.

I do disagree about KU being the best team. The best teams are UCLA and North Carolina. They are the most dynamic and have the potential to have scoring explosions and lock down the other team. KU has a definite case for toughest and most resilient, but their margin of error is smaller than both UCLA and North Carolina.

@HawkChamp idk if I believe this team is the best team. They do have arguments to such. But I have to wonder if they still aren't the team to beat. Maybe not based on being the best.. very possibly based on other criteria that simply cannot be measured. I know we all hope that. It will be fun and interesting to find out. Gotta love this game

I'm a glass half full guy myself.
The season for me has 4 basic parts - pre conf games, conference games, B12 tourney, then the dance.

I love pre conf because A- the interminable 7 month wait for KU hoops to start again is finally over, and B- we get a mix of bunny games where my stress level is low, and we get to see our freshmen play and get a feel for things and C- some tough matchups with top flight teams so we can gauge how we are at this point..

And most of all I love conference play, because this really is the meat of the season, the "real" season for me, and where our team rotation gets set in stone, and oh by the way we have won 13 conf championships IN A ROW while still in a highly competing league. The two games that essentially sealed it this year, the just plain silly comeback vs WV and then at Baylor were magical, and I will never forget them - wow.
Plus senior night... god I love it.. the essence of what is great about college hoops right there (does Kentucky ever have any seniors ? Probably all bench players ... sad)

I don't know really how to feel about the conf tourney.... Its the cherry on top of the big fat B12 championship cake... yes I hate seeing the boys lose, but stats show that teams who make the final NCAA game almost never win their respective conf tourney... plus maybe our team needs some added rest ??? I don't know

The big dance I'm my humble opinion of watching it for 37 years, is a Weird mix of skill and crap shoot. Obviously the top level teams who have the skilled players are Usually the ones who get at least to the elite 8, but its a tough thing for college kids to sustain good to great play for 6 straight games. Even the best teams can have an off night, and a few missed shots here and there is all it takes to get ousted. Doesn't mean you are not a great team, just means it wasn't your night is all. It's the Hunger games :scream: the strong don't always win.

The fact that KU has come back so many times this year and clawed and scratched and hustled and fought their way to win games is a BIG PLUS I feel. Remember we got beat soundly only once this year, the other two losses were overtime. I usually don't have a set prediction for KU in the NCAA tourney because of the chaotic nature of how it unfolds, but this year I would be pretty disappointed if we didn't make the 8, mildly disappointed if we didn't make the 4.

Let's hope our boys can get keep a consistent fire In The belly straight thru the NCAA... they will have a big target on their backs because on their top ranking.

I know these pundits are posting stuff to get clicks, but Jerry Palm has the following:

!palm 3.2.17.JPG ↗

@RockChalkinTexas

Yes - we lost in overtime to Indiana in Honolulu nov 1 - our very first reg season game. We really should be penalized for that...

@Bosthawk Back before Indiana got totally decimated by injuries too. And in a game where the officials decided they were going to be really strong in their enforcement of rules and called like 60 fouls. That was such a farce of a game refereeing wise it's hard to draw any conclusions from it.

That was the 1st game where Frank began to cement his place as the POY. He willed us to overtime if you recall.

@wissox

Yep - strong enforcement of rules early in the season to cover their asses, and now with the tourney looming the d1 game is back to a slugfest.. wrestle mania 2017

@Bosthawk

"The big dance I’m my humble opinion of watching it for 37 years, is a Weird mix of skill and crap shoot. "

I can't think of a better way to describe it than this.

@DoubleDD

A half full mug of beer.... good start!

I just think we are a team that plays better as the game moves along. And we respond to being down. That is a very good sign.

A bad sign would be if this team wasn't winning by much but had stellar games without TOs and hot from trey. If that were the case we would have no margin for victories moving forward.

I always like to see our team hitting on all cylinders... but the fact is, we very rarely do that or even come close. Josh gets hot when Devonte goes cold, etc etc etc. So as long as we have a couple of guys playing well, we can beat most teams. In the Final Four, we better have more than 2 guys playing well, but let's get there first.

The comeback win against WVU at home was huge. Being down 14 points with something like 2:47 left and coming back says plenty. Very few teams could pull that off. That doesn't mean we screw off in a game until the last couple minutes. It just proves our guys can come back big. So they will never quit moving forward because they know they always stand a chance. It does take HUGE BELIEF to pull a game like that one off. Very, very impressive! The only KU team I can put in this category with such an insane comeback was our 2008 championship team.