Dr. TJ Pugh is originally from Nebraska, Omaha if I recall correctly.
Coach K's comments after the game were arrogant and patronizing but he never imagined the backlash that followed and he was force to backpedal. Basically he bluffed, his bluff was called and he folded like cheap suit; however, as much as he lost on this hand, he still has sizeable war chest to continue playing. Now that people are on to him he will need to be a lot more careful; a couple of more losing hands like this and his war chest disappears
I think Bilas is mostly OK and one of the better analyst around. The only problem I have with him is that he has been at the forefront of the people bound and determined to sissify the game by calling all these ticky-tack fouls that take away from the game, penalize good defense, disrupt the tempo of the game and make refereeing even more inconsistent and unpredictable.
Being qualified to attend college and being cleared by the NCAA are two different issues. You can be well qualified to get a home loan but you will not get one until you have submitted all the paperwork and it is not the bank job to go chasing the documentation, it is up to you to submit it.
You should read Beyond the Phog: Untold Stories from Kansas Basketball's Most Dominant Decade Hardcover by Jason King and Jesse Newell, you get a very different view of Giddens.
Niang had a back condition and no hope of playing professionally so he did not play in his senior year and stayed at KU as a student assistant for the team in order to complete his degree.
It is not the job of the NCAA to go get information, it is the job of the student athlete to provide all the required information in a timely manner. I know that KU spent a large chunk of money helping Diallo get the information in, but if Diallo would have been a little more diligent beforehand, a lot of the issues could have been avoided.; can't really blame the NCAA for this.
The NCAA requirement are widely available to schools and student via school counselors and coaches and also directly from the NCAA. I find it hard to believe that student considering playing sport in college, particularly hight profile prospects are not fully aware of the required paperwork. In my opinion, many that submit insufficient paperwork do it because they know their HS work is not good enough to be cleared to play college sports; many of the high profile prospects change schools often or attend unaccredited school knowing the it will cause problems down the road.
For many of these athletes school work is a nuisance that gets in their way to playing sports which they believe is what will get them to the pro leagues, but the truth is that very few get there. This is why I believe that if a players is good enough to go directly to the NBA, he should be allowed to do so, but once they start college, they should stay at least 3 years so they have a decent shot at getting a degree.
JR Gidden transfer was not due to basketball ability but because his off court issues. He was All-Big 12 Conference Freshman team and after he transferred to New Mexico, as a senior he was named Mountain West Conference Co-Player of the Year and Honorable Mention All-American. He was selected by the Celtics in the first round of the NBA draft. Pretty darn good player. Likewise, Andre White did very well at Nebraska where he averaged 16.6 ppg,d 6 rpg, shot 0.412 from the 3 and was in high demand when he decide to transfer to Syracuse where he is having a good season with number similar to those at Nebraska; a pretty good player that got to KU at the wrong time. Several other players that have transferred have had good careers elsewhere such as Micah Downs that had a very good career at Gonzaga making several All-Conference teams and David Padgett that went to Louisville where he did very well..
Had many of these players been at KU at a different times they certainly could have had considerably more playing time. There have been lean years when walk on players like Moody and Teahan ended up starting and getting considerable playinmg time they would not have had in the not so lean years. The lure of playing time is a powerful incentive for many players to transfer.
The problem is not unique to KU, in fact it is fairly common; many high profile players have transferred from other Elite programs and I remember KU being a candidate to land Derryck Thornton from Duke just a few months ago.. Here is a good story on the subject with comments from Coach Self... ↗
At least you will not shoot your eye out...:smiley:
As much as we don't like it, In the Diallo case the NCAA followed the bylaws to the letter and did what it is supposed to do. Diallo had incomplete transcripts and the NCAA had to wait until all the information was in before ruling on his eligibility. The problem was not with KU, it was with Diallo and KU just happened to be the Innocent bystander. :smiley:
Perhaps I did not read the article as carefully as I should have and I missed the link but I do not see the connection that you mention to KU. The NCAA did not conduct a witch hunt on KU that I know of. The issue was Diallo's transcripts that had nothing to do with KU but with Diallo's lack of planning and preparedness. Had Diallo chosen a different school, the process would have been the same..don't you think?.
I am not sure where the 4-1/2 comes from but I would take it any day. The line opened at 5-1/2 and the consensus is now at 6-1/2. When you consider the home court and its 2-3 point advantage, at a neutral site it would be more like 9 and at AFH closer to 12.
Frankamp "transferred" out of KU for reasons unrelated to basketball. The kid deserves a chance to get his life back together and some privacy so I will leave it at that. No sense in discussing it here since he is no longer a part of the program.
I am not sure I agree. Most other teams will also have losses as it it almost unheard to go unbeaten, unless you have overwhelming talent like UK or play in a crappy conference like WSU.
The Big 12 is the #1 ranked conference and 3 or 4 losses will not be a big deal like it would be in a lesser conference.
Josh Hart is the real deal and the one player Nova cannot afford to loose; with him they are contenders, without him they are a marginal top ten team.
I agree with you. I have had Mitch as my surprise player since before the season started. Much like Perry before him, after many tentative games, one game the switch will turn on and we will really enjoy watching him from there on...at least this is what I am hoping for...
I am not sure anyone is a fan of Bruce but he is a good X and Os coach. I hope KSU b**ch slaps Texas.
I agree. I just threw Lillard's name because he is an exciting offense player and as we all know, offense sells tickets, defense wins championships.
She is nothing but trouble for him. He needs to be careful with what he wishes he might actually get it....and regret it. Hopefully he has advisors steering him in the right direction; he is young and smart and he will learn and do well.
I agree with you 100%.
No, this is what you said...
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There have been kids from Kansas/KC recently that KU never recruited that went to major programs. Willie Cauley-Stein was from Overland Park and Tum Tum Nairn at Michigan St. played at Sunrise in Wichita. There was also Semi Ojeleye who committed to Duke before busting out who was from Ottawa 10 minutes south of KU. I almost forgot about Buddy Hield who played in Wichita as well.
Thise are four guys in recent years from Kansas/KC who KU never went after despite all 4 being pursued by other major programs.
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Do you want to try again? I explained about Cauley-Stein and Ojeleye and frankly, I just don't remember Nairn, heck. I even added Alec Burks, Willie Reed and Ron Baker, again explaining why they were not recruited. This is not at all the case with Hield, whom based on his ranking at the time, KU recruited a lot harder that it did other comparable players it pursued.
Nicely stated.
I have been watching the UCLA - Oregon game...interesting...
I feel your pain. I have been there before...:smiley:
Again, you are expecting KU to put a full court press on a player that was eventually ranked #85 by Rivals and unranked by ESPN? Coach Self attended several games at his HS which is not the same that Ellis played; just because they went to Wichita to see Ellis play does not mean they could see Hield at the same time...unless they played against each other which I don't believe they did. Obviously he saw him play and thought that he was a system player and not a future star, no one predicted that...Coach Self admitted that much... and his initial year showed that he was indeed a 4 year player and he exploded only on his junior and senior years.
Once more, Perry was a 3 time POY in Kansas and a McDonald All American ranked in the top 30 and Hield became eventually a borderline top 100 player...do you really think KU should have spent the same effort on two players that far apart? Considering Hield's ranking, KU did spend a lot of time on who at the time was a marginal player. If Lightfoot becomes the second coming of Hield in his junior or senior year, Coach Self will look like a genius but it still would not justify KU spending any more time recruiting him than it did. You have not provide one single reason, other than hindsight, why KU should have spent any more effort than it did.
It does not appear like either one will change the other's opinion. so maybe it is time to just drop it? You can have the last word. Good discussion any way.
Adam Morrison proved that you don't have to be a great NBA prospects to be a great college player; I am sure the Big Dub agrees...we certainly could use him now.
Well coached team. Tonny Bennett would be in any elite program's list of potential coaches and he is relatively young at 47.
I am with you, although OSU can be a tough place to win...
The first round of games will be interesting since it will give us a first view of some of the teams in games that actually count and against better competition.
OSU -West Virginia - Is WVU the real thing? can OSU compete with the better teams?
Iowa - Tech - Is the Perfect Storm for ISU finally over? Do they have one more season left in them? Has Tech improved enough to be competitive?
Baylor - Oklahoma - Baylor should win easily and we will not get much from this game unless OU keeps it close and exposes chinks in the Bear's armor.
K-State - Texas - A convincing win by KSU places them in the top half of the conference and Texas squarely at the bottom.
KU - TCU - KU should win this one easily and the only thing we will get from it is how less bad TCU is...or isn't.
Ouch.
Yep, that's the one. :smiley:
You are taking Coach Self's words out of context.
KU does not offer a scholarship or has Coach Self attend a prospect's multiple HS and AAU games unless it is serious about it. Coach Self does not have the time to watch every prospects and he watches only those with a high priority as he did with Hield, the rest are scouted by the other KU coaches.
When Coach Self said...I never thought he would average 25 (points per game) or we would have tried a lot harder to recruit him...he is stating exactly the obvious that if he had thought Hield would be a super star he would have recruited him harder. Obviously he did not think at the time that he would be a super star but a good system player and if you look at his numbers, in his first season when he started only 13 games and averaged less than 8 point per game, it is not not bad but exactly what you expect from a system player, as Coach Self projected, but not a super star like say...Wiggins or Jackson...or how Hield turned out later on.
KU cannot pursue every player, it just does not have the resources, no program does, so it has to prioritize who, how long and how hard it pursues. Top 20-30 players get a lot more attention than lower ranked players. Players like DeAndre Ayton are pursued early and hard and in that case, he did not even pick KU or Kaleb Tarczewski who assured Coach Self he was coming top KU only to sign with Arizona. In addition to Ayton, in the upcoming class alone KU went hard after Duval, Sexton Trae Young and Billy Preston, all Top 20 and so far it has only signed Preston. Buddy Hield was ranked #86 by Rivals and in that class KU picked up #24 Perry Eliis and #51 Andrew White; ESPN had Ellis at #35 and White at #48 and Hield was unranked...that is correct, unranked. He was pretty much at the level of Lucas or Lightfoot and neither got the star recruiting treatment either and yet they signed with KU. For the record the coaches in charge of recruiting Hield were Self and Manning. Considering his ranking at that time, KU did give Hield quite bit of attentions all things considered, wouldn't you agree?
Probably the Dunk against Baylor at the Big 12 Conference Tournament.
Damian Lillard?
Nice. Do you have a link?
This is from The Wichita Eagle... ↗
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You could say that Kansas coach Bill Self missed on Oklahoma senior Buddy Hield, the reigning Big 12 player of the year. You could say that the KU staff should have been more diligent with an in-state recruit. You could say that they should have seen this coming.
Self’s response: How many college coaches did?
Four years ago, Hield was a standout senior at Sunrise Christian Academy, a private prep powerhouse on the northeast side of Wichita. A native of the Bahamas, Hield, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard, had gone to Sunrise to pursue a college basketball scholarship, and after two seasons, he was a top-100 recruit with offers from schools all over the country.
One of those schools was KU. The Jayhawks’ staff was interested in Hield, Self said. They believed he could be a program player, a nice addition who could help the Jayhawks in time. They did not, of course, think he would one day be an All-American candidate, averaging 24.7 points per game for the No. 3 Oklahoma Sooners.
“I never thought he would average 25 (points per game),” Self said, “or we would have tried a lot harder to recruit him.”
Self smiled. This wry concession came Saturday night, two days before No. 2 Kansas’ showdown with Oklahoma inside Allen Fieldhouse.
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And this from the KC Star... ↗
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Kruger was new to Oklahoma when he recruited Hield, and quickly made the Sunrise product his primary target. He faced competition from Wichita State, which offered Hield a scholarship, and Kansas, with Bill Self attending many of his AAU games. Colorado and other schools were also in the picture.
Hield considered Kansas, but said he chose Oklahoma because of his relationship with Kruger and the Sooners’ style of play.
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It is not that KU did not recruit Buddy Hield, KU did and offered a scholarship to him. Not too many coaches or scout expected him to be that good and Coach Self thought he would be a program player and not the superstar he turned out to be, but keep in mind that it took him 4 years to get there. Remember another players that everybody missed? Ron Baker who had to walk in at WSU because he did not get offers from any other major program and Coach Self said pretty much the same thing about him. Hindsight is always 20-20 as Coach Self is clearly inferring in his comment; KU tried as much as it should have with Hield and Baker (who was invited to try at KU but never did) given their respective standings at the time, wouldn't you agree?
Texas has more losses than the top 6 teams in the Conference...combined.
Between Texas and Oklahoma, they have more loses than the other 8 teams in the conference...combined.
Oklahoma lost great players but I expected them to be better. Texas has been a huge disappointment; they were supposed to be KU's top competition and now they sit with a 6-6 record and some really bad loses to the likes of UT-Arlington and Kent State.
I have not heard that one but he did have a good story about Bill Walton that he changed over the years...
I've always enjoyed Bill Walton. He's his own man. You've probably heard this story but one time he told me he wasn't going to get a haircut. He told me I didn't have the right to make him get a haircut. I said, "No, I don't, Bill. I just have the right to determine who is going to play — and we're going to miss you."
and...
One day, All-America center Bill Walton showed up with a full beard. "It's my right," he insisted. Wooden asked if he believed that strongly. Walton said he did. "That's good, Bill," Coach said. "I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them, I really do. We're going to miss you." Walton shaved it right then and there. Now Walton calls once a week to tell Coach he loves him.
I am not sure which one is the true one...
I am not sure what the point is then...
By the way, Willie Cauley-Stein is not from Overland Park, he is considered to be from Olathe and attended Olathe Northwest HS where he played .basketball and football; KU was never in his list, KSU was. Also, KU indeed recruited Buddy Hield heavily and along with OU they were his two final schools and he chose OU. ↗
The only KU foreign player that did not play HS in the States in recent years is SVi and he kind of fell on KU's lap. All the others were ranked players that played here. My point is that I do not believe and does not appear to be any evidence that I have seen that Coach Self and his staff sit and say we are going to recruit or not recruit foreign players unlike other schools such as Santa Clara and Saint Mary's that concentrate on players from down under and have scouts that recruit that part of the world. From what I understand from people that are a lot closer to the program than I am, the various coaches at KU decide on the upcoming needs and prioritize who they would like most but at one time or another visit the majority of the top 100 ranked players since they do not know which player they will get or miss...regardless of nationality and sometimes, while scouting a player they find another that was not on their radar. Players like Emmanuel Mudiay,and Thon Maker, both foreign just to name a couple of recent prospects off the top of my head were high targets, not because they were foreign but because they were highly ranked and neither ended up at KU or anywhere else. You can search for other highly ranked foreign players and you will see that many were KU targets and had KU in their list but did not end up at KU.
Again, you are trying to find a reason why more foreign players have not played at KU and all I am saying is that there is really no specific reason that I can think of, and much like the other elite programs, sometimes we have 3 and sometimes we have none, If you believe there is a specific reason I would love to hear it but you have not provided one. You believe there is a pattern I believe there is none, let's just leave it at that.
Perception by whom? Sports writer and analysts know this already. The people that see the Big 12 as weak obviously don't know much about basketball and you need to educate them. Most of the people with whom I talk sports are very familiar with the Conference status and the ones that are not are quickly persuade when they look at the overall confrere rating and realize the Big 12 is top to bottom one of the top 3 if not the top conference in the land.
Granted, the conference has not done as well as it should in the Tournament, but what other conference routinely sends 60%-70% of its teams to the dance? The answer is probably none.
Willie Cauley Stein made it clear that he did not wantt o go to KU very early on and thus was never recruited. I know several kids who went o school with hm and the consensus is that he was real jerk. Ojeleye was also know to have issues with teammates and that proved to be correct at Duke. More importantly, both players were part of the MoKan AAU team that has a very strained relationship with KU which also prevented players like Alec Burks and Willie Reed from considering KU.
Russel Westbrook as been a triple double machine this season...
Your post reads like WVU lost to Illinois, WVU beat Illinois by 32 points...
What @Kcmatt7 said was..."But why did we have a decade without one?" which is the question I answered.
As far as why we did not get more players? I believe it is more happenstance than design, some years there are more top foreign players than others and other years top foreign players pick other schools. If you look at the Kentucky roster as an example, you will see a similar pattern, some years they have 3 some years they have none. It is similar to saying why don't we have more Kansan players? Some years the state produce a Perry Ellis or Tyrel Reed and some years it does not. The team currently has 2 Kansas born player (Self was born in Tulsa) Tucker Vang that has played a total of 11 minutes and Clay Young that has played 12 minutes and have scored a combined 0 points; basically players used for practice and not recruited to contribute at game time...although their practice contribution is indeed valuable. Since Reed, the only Kansas players that were recruited were Ellis and Frankamp who was a low priority recruit since he basically recruited himself to KU. Had Kansas produce more players like Ellis or Reed KU would certainly have more of them,
KU typically recruits from the top 100 players and a few diamond in the rough outside that range, Lucas comes to mind, so the opportunities are more limited than those of lesser programs that basically recruit from the top 1,000. Not a lot of foreigners in that upper range although the number has been growing recently. Now, there are programs like Santa Clara and Saint Mary's that have made it a point to recruit Australian players and have been very successful with them; KU is not and I don't anticipate it will be in this mode any time soon. Just my take.
Jack Harry did...oh, wait...ROTFLMAO. :smiley:
The Big 12 has consistently been ranked in the top 2 in the last few years and has sent as many as 7 teams to the dance, that is 70% of the teams in more than one occasion; no other conference has come close to that success. The conference is currently ranked #1...
Having consensus All-American players that stayed 4 years in college like Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sidney Wicks, Bill Walton, Henry Bibby, Jamal Wilkes and Dave Meyers during his tenure did not hurt either. :smiley:
I have been to Pierre, South Dakota...I liked it...
Wow, that is pretty dang impressive.
- 2004-2005 Kaun, Galindo, Niang
- 2005-2006 Kaun
- 2006-2007 Kaun
- 2007-2008 Kaun
- 2008-2009 None
- 2009-2010 Henry (Born in Belgium)
- 2010-2011 None
- 2011-2012 None
- 2012-2013 None
- 2013-2014 Wiggins, Embiid,
- 2014-2015 Svi
- 2015-2016 Svi, Diallo, Coleby
- 2016-2017 Svi, Coleby
Now, how do you figure a decade without one? Even if don't count Henry, it makes 5 years without one in the most recent 13 years..
I think you missed my point; it has been happening all along. All coaches go after top players and some happen to be foreigners and some years have more quality foreign players than others...not really anything new. Now, some programs (Saint Mary's, Santa Clara) emphasize overseas recruitment since they cannot compete against elite programs and foreign players can be a good solution. don't believe this to be the case for the elite programs, they simply go after the top players regardless of nationality. Keep in mind that other than Svi, all the other foreign players at KU played HS here.