🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Geez, what a terrible game last night by both sides, just sloppy, dirty, it was downright fugly. Still finding a way to win was good to see, I guess somebody had to win it. My biggest observation was that we didn't play to our strength last night and it was by design. KU stinks in the halfcourt game. However, UK stinks even worse in the halfcourt game. It was obvious to me that Self did not want to turn it into a trackmeet and play into Kentucky's strength. It also helped KU deal with the situation of being short on players (Preston) because a fast paced game up and down the court would have led to much more winded players.

Dok stepped up, thought he played well. Need to work on those foul shots (when tired) though.

Garrett regressed a bit, played more like a frosh.

Graham was off, this has been the knock on his game. Hopefully he can find ways to stay more consistent.

Newman didn't have a good game but came through in clutch time with the big three and two big free throws.

Svi played decent overall yet there is still so many times I get frustrated with him out there.

Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes Grimes De Sousa.

@BShark grimes does absolutely nothing to help the current team

It's November and KU always gets better under Self. Just focused on the important things today after KU beat Kentucky for the third straight time.

Better to shoot 28% from three now rather than in the elite eight, I suppose.

@RockkChalkk I think you're right about us slowing down the pace of the game. We looked alot slower than normal.

@BShark 3rd straight time. I love it.

KUSTEVE said:

@RockkChalkk I think you're right about us slowing down the pace of the game. We looked alot slower than normal.

Had too. Can't run at UK with 6 guys.

@RockkChalkk

Yeah Garrett wasn't great offensively. Had a big 3 though. The steal and turnover was poor because that was a momentum play missed.

Defensively though he was awesome and its not a stretch to say he's our best defender already

Garrett did enough in the minutes he had. Would not have minded him getting more minutes and Graham not having to play the ENTIRE GAME.

On such a big stage, one I'm certain Marcus has never experienced before he certainly seemed to have those jitters early. Once the game settled I thought he was really active. It seemed he wasn't trying to force the issue and make mistakes.

HawkChamp said:

Better to shoot 28% from three now rather than in the elite eight, I suppose.

Or 9.5% (VCU) or 20% (Oregon). Against Villanova was about the same as last night, 27 and change.

Of course the layup %age in 2007 vs UCLA was probably worse.

@mayjay I think Oregon was 25% but yes you are correct.

@RockkChalkk

That was my take on the game exactly. The only thing I would add was to emphasize how much I think Doke has improved. Didn’t get into foul trouble early, didn’t get too winded while playing a lot of good minutes, used his size advantage well against skinnier guys and, even though just two blocks I think, defended the interior nicely… all a big step up from last year. Plus no injury!

Not sure he’ll ever get above 50% for FTs but if he does everything else well, and at least gets close to 50%, that will be good enough for me. I do think he can expect to see a lot of “hack-a-shaq” plays on him if he has the ball at all late in the game.

There were so many “almost in” shots that just didn’t go for us - and a fair amount of ones for UK that did - if we were shooting even halfway decent, we’d have easily won by double digits.

That said though, I have to begrudgingly admit, those UK frosh (all five starters ?!?) really showed some flashes of potential. If they gel, and we know they probably will, they are going to be a really tough out in March.

But for now, the good guys won and yea, it was ugly, but as others have said above, I’ll take an ugly win over Kensucky over a well-played loss any day.

@HawkChamp 5 of 25. Just too hard to conceive it could be that bad, eh? :sob:

I expect so much more from Malik. He’s terrible right now. Drives 100 mph to nowhere. He needs to figure out how to play against length and equal athleticism.

dylans said:

I expect so much more from Malik. He’s terrible right now. Drives 100 mph to nowhere. He needs to figure out how to play against length and equal athleticism.

I said it last year over and over again, Malik and Billy will test Self's patience. Not to toot my own horn too much or anything, I certainly hope Self gets the best out of them!

@dylans It has been said before, but we saw Frank do that for a couple years. Great when it worked, stupid looking when he got stuffed--but I am glad he didn't listen to all of us who yelled "Stop it!"

@mayjay I’m glad Frank did. He was terrible as a freshman, but learned to control his body as the years went on. He drew a bunch of fouls agains Duke his freshman year, but the rest of the year he didn’t. We don’t have years for Malik to come around. He needs to be good now, but so far he’s just average.

I prefer to call it Wugly. That's a W with ugly after it.....

dylans said:

I expect so much more from Malik. He’s terrible right now. Drives 100 mph to nowhere. He needs to figure out how to play against length and equal athleticism.

Show some patience with Malik. He needs time to grow into his role.

Playing UK was the hardest on Malik because he is the guy that wants to drive the lane, and he doesn't have the size to take it to UK. I don't know how many of his shots were blocked, but I can easily imagine at least 4 of his shots were swatted. Kind of reminded me of our disastrous game with UK back when Frank was a freshman and UK seemed to block 100 shots that game (felt like it anyways).

Let's hope he learned a lesson from this game. But it does take a huge effort and open mind to fix talents regarding driving to the hole. The hardest lesson is to learn a concept that seems counterproductive: slow down! The biggest key to successfully finishing in the paint is to slow down at the end so you can assess the defense and adjust to a successful finish. This requires being in control. Malik is not in control on his finishes right now. He's making the mistake made by TT and Sherron when they were young. Trying to finish at full speed.