@justanotherfan said:
You could argue that Marshall and Calipari coached to a draw yesterday, but Calipari had the better players, so heโs playing this week, while Marshall gets to go and work on recruiting better players.
This has been my main argument regarding Self vs. Cal. The shoe contracts have apparently made Self largely unable to compete on an even talent level with UK, Duke and UNC, since winning the ring in 2008 with a pretty talented team of players recruited back before the apparent recruiting asymmetry dynamic really became acutely set in stone.
Self, at a reputedly elite major, has faced a similar situation to Marshall and Self even said so, though most were not really taking him at his word. He said in an interview a few years back during a particularly dicey stretch of recruiting that he and his staff had won with players at Tulsa (reached the Elite Eight) of the kind they were by then having to sign at KU. Frankly, things have gotten worse since then. Self briefly used to be able to sign 2-3 OADs in a season and he can't do that anymore. Take away Josh Jackson this season, the only OAD that the adidas conveyor could apparently deliver this season, and his talent level in terms of recruiting stars by the signed players names is probably as low as its ever been, and looks strikingly like a good mid major. This is why the job Self has done is so stunningly impressive this season and the last several. He is basically winning with the same kind of players Gregg Marshall signs with he addition of one OAD. If Marshall could convince the shoe conveyor to feed him an OAD, Marshall would at least have been able to coach a slightly more normal game against a team like UK, instead of having to result to Xtreme Tactics.
Your post was about Marshall, but its about Self and KU, too.
Self is a magician doing it with mirrors this season.
From here on it is going to be VERY difficult to hide that he only has seven players on any given night during the second of the two games each weekend.
Self has a bonafide future NBA high first round draft choice in Josh Jackson, and he has a guy everyone expected to be a star across the pond--Svi--and he has two of those once, or twice in a career diamonds in the rough types in Frank and Devonte. He has patched them together with a project center that has become a very serviceable college center and has been fortunate to find himself in a season, where long stacking appears no longer engaged in, AND there is no dominant OAD big man either with a good team around him.
I bet if you interviewed Self off the record he would be the first to say that things so far have broken just right for this bunch of players that lost its bruiser big man. They haven't blown cold in the tourney yet. They haven't gotten seriously fouled up yet. They haven't run into a team with a strong inside game and long and athletic guards yet. They caught Duke and UK during the season in varying stages of development that his experienced team of highly skilled players, plus his OAD, could exploit in a way they may not be able to after those teams have developed to this point. Self has to be thinking, hey, I can't believe it!!! We've got a shot still. But he also has to be thinking, "We have about 3.4 the raw athleticism as UNC and Kentucky in our starters and we 1/3th as much, maybe 1/8 as much, on our bench.
Gregg Marshall had to say something similar, only he had to acknowledge no OAD was on his team.
Self has not moved from KU to a job that gave him competitive talent with Duke, UNC, and UK, because he won his ring before the asymmetry locked in and starved KU recruiting to the point we see this season. Self knows there is a lot more luck involved with this team than with his 2008 team no matter what happens, because his 2008 team never faced a team with far more athleticism and talent, the way his 2017 is about to face.
Marshall has to look at his options and say life will stay smooth and affluent here at WSU. Unless I go to a major with a Nike contract, I am fooling myself and even then I am taking a risk of the rebuild not working out to something as stable as I have here. And he has to be thinking, well, one thing for sure: I sure as hell don't want to go to an adidas, or UA, program, unless they pay me enough up front that my kids will never have to work a day in their lives.