On the fouling issue, in its first game MSU fouled 14 times vs. the opponents' 25.
Ku fouled 24 times vs. the opponents' 35.
So far MSU has been able to adjust to the new rules at least as well as we have.
ParisHawk
838 posts
@konkeyDong Thank you for your call to prayer. I'm joining you. Let's pray especially for the victims and for those fighting for their lives in Paris hospitals right now, as well as the medical personnel who are on the front lines.
Right now France is in a state of emergency, and military reinforcements are being brought into Paris and its suburbs. Lots of closings of schools, sporting events, open markets, museums, etc.
All security-related personnel have been working overtime and under stress all year long, since the "Charley Hebdo" attacks in January. Although the physical attacks are rare, the psychological warfare is constant.
We need to make sure it's ISIS too. Remember, "Charley Hebdo" was an Al Quaida hit.
[Edit: ISIS has claimed the attacks.]
Excellent point by @jaybate-1.0 : the 2008 team would be favored over the current team head to head, and every matchup would favor 2008. I do think the Mason/Graham duo has some offensive magic that RussRob/Chalmers didn't quite have, but the latter wreaked havoc and created easy buckets on defense.
To be fair, we should also compare with the 2012 team that made it to the title game.
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No current bigs could measure up to Withey / TRob.
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WUG Selden + Mason + Graham may be as good as Travis / EJ / Tyshawn. A lot depends on Selden.
Of course this year's bench is incomparably better than 2012.
If things go our way, this team could be comparable to 2012, except for toughness - but do we expect this team to reach its ceiling and even surpass it as the 2012 team did?
I think these comparisons provide a little perspective.
if Diallo – through his attorney – wants to strongarm the NCAA and falsely claim racism...
Without addressing your main point, and just to be precise about Diallo's direct responsibility here:
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Formally, the attorney represents Diallo's guardian not Diallo,
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I suspect the attorney, not Diallo or his guardian, decided to raise the race card.
You could have made your case just as strongly without the words "if Diallo wants".
The NCAA is absolutely doing this to these kids based on a bias towards Nike based schools.
What makes you think that, please?
I might admit an indirect link:
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Nike schools get recruiting advantages.
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non-Nike schools try to catch up with Nike schools by recruiting players that have a harder time getting qualified.
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So non-Nike schools tend to have more eligibility problems.
The thing is, I don't even know if that is true. Anyone have statistics on eligibility problems in Nike vs. non-Nike schools?
@Hawk8086 I agree that's what we'll see, but I will be sorry to see it.
28 minutes together means 12 minutes apart, so each rests only 6 minutes - unless you play a few minutes with both on the bench, which Self says he wants to avoid.
If Self set a goal of 20 minutes together and 10 minutes each apart, then that would give each one 30 minutes a game and keep at least one of them in the game at all times.
Obviously he wouldn't reach that goal and they would wind up playing more than that, but if he doesn't set a goal of limiting their minutes they will play too much and wear down.
Do we really want to be running on fumes in March?
- No question our defense was less bad against FHSU. Yes we could use elite shot blocking, especially with the new rules: once you get beat you have to let the dribbler go and hope for help, and the last line of defense is the shot blocker. We were spoiled by Cole / Withey.
Hunter didn't look that great to me, except for his blocks. Jamari looked pretty good.
- I tried to notice when Ellis was playing the 3. He didn't seem to do as much on offense from that position.
Bragg is so far ahead of TRob and the Morris twins at the very beginning of their careers. He may really help this year.
The team looks good with Mason and Graham together on the floor, but that means either resting them at the same time or piling up their minutes, both bad choices. They shouldn't play together more than half the game.
One thing @BeddieKU23 didn't mention was ball movement. The ball didn't stick. The half-court offense was less stilted than in previous years.
On defense, there was some pressure on the ball handler to shorten the shot clock.
Bottom line for me: the first exhibition game was boring, the second one was entertaining.
@JayHawkFanToo said:
If you attend the run of the mill state high school chances are you will be cleared with no problem and they cost a lot less than the private schools to boot.
What if you don't live in a state? Recruits from Africa seem to have specific problems. They aren't eligible to go to state schools with little or no tuition, are they?
It's not a racial thing, it's a continental thing.
Just a fact: Calipari recruited Enes Kanter, who was never cleared and never played a minute for UK.
@BeddieKU23 said:
If the report is true about homework & pre-high school this is extremely out of bounds from what should be going on.
Clearly this is part of an appeal. The NCAA said no and KU said "if you looked closer you'd say yes", so the NCAA agreed to look closer.
How "looking closer" involves sixth grade transcripts is an exercise left to the reader...
@Statmachine Somebody explain to me how the NCAA can have a "side"?
Does a judge in a trial have a "side"?
Do referees in a game have a "side"?
Kind of a Freudian slip on Self's part, suggesting that the NCAA is not on KU's "side".
On Ellis at the 3:
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Ellis will start and play most of his minutes at the 4
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Ellis at the 3, if it happens, will be 10 minutes a game
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Those 10 minutes will come from Greene / Svi, not Selden
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So we are talking about taking 10 minutes from Greene to give to Traylor.
Yawn.
This is mostly another way to motivate the wings and to give opposing coaches a bit more to think about.
I think this shows Diallo is serious about wanting to play, not just prepare for the NBA at KU's expense.
Publishing the story now may be an attempt to nudge the NCAA toward a quicker resolution - though I'm sure the NCAA would have been happy to say "no" a long time ago.
"Distraction for the team" - not sure. It might develop a chip. The distraction would be on the coaching level: do you scheme the same with and without Diallo?
Sources: Kansas' Cheick Diallo hires attorney for possible NCAA eligibility fight ↗
As he awaits a ruling on his eligibility, Kansas freshman Cheick Diallo has hired an attorney with experience battling the NCAA on student-athlete rights issues, Yahoo Sports has learned. Attorney Don Jackson was formally hired Monday to join Diallo's legal team.
The NCAA received 2,000 pages of homework from Diallo's Our Savior high school courses, and has requested middle-school transcripts as far back as sixth grade, multiple sources told Yahoo.
I certainly admire and want to accept the explanations here about "fool's gold" and the importance of good, consistent defense.
So why hasn't it worked in March the last few years?
If it's not the system it's the players. OK; but who recruited the players?
Self said years ago he likes to recruit guys who can score already because you can teach defense. Has that been verified the last few years?
Is there a problem? If so, what is it? Without a problem, there is no solution.
If you don't like fool's gold, why recruit fools?
Personally, I never said Self was against 3-pointers. I'm the one who's "against": I'm against the expression "fool's gold".
And: what kind of 3-pointers is Self for?
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Does he scheme to get open 3-pointers?
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Are shooters free to shoot 3-pointers early in the shot clock? (Not saying it's always a good idea, especially if no one is in position for the offensive rebound.)
There's more to the argument over "fool's gold" than simply whether KU shoots 3-pointers.
“It’s fools gold because you don’t play as hard defensively because everything is going in."
So when nothing goes in, you play harder defensively? Did everyone notice that the last two games?
I thought we weren't supposed to "play hard", we were supposed to play "with energy"?
Ken Pomeroy has recently published analysis that tends to show:
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3-point shooting percentage depends more on having good shooters
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2-point shooting percentage depends more on having good offense
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Over several seasons, Bill Self is in the top 10 of coaches both in 2-point offense and in 2-point defense.
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3-point shooting percentage varies more from game to game than 2-point shooting
The last point could be part of the reason for "fool's gold".
@wissoxfan83 More likely spam than hacked. Blogs get spam comments all the time. There are tools to avoid that which require folks to prove they are human by entering special text or solving simple math problems.
I believe there is a nodebb spam filter based on Akismet. That would help without requiring special human input.
Other forums are complaining about Korean spam these days. We are not alone: "우리는 혼자가 아닙니다"
Superior post and replies! Thank you!
@Bosthawk said:
Make a list of your favorite top 20 KU players since say, 1985… How many OAD’s make anyones list?
Embiid makes my top 10 - maybe my top 5.
This is a complex subject and maybe sometimes we don't know or just forget some details.
My understanding is, Cheick could be a "full qualifier" or a "partial qualifier": full means you did OK in high school and you did OK on the ACT or SAT entrance exams. "Partial" means you did OK on one or the other.
BenMac and Jamari were "partial qualifiers". At that point the decision to let them play or not was left to the Big 12. It was Big 12 rules that made them sit out a year.
Does Jay Bilas want to dissolve the Big 12 too?
I'm assuming the question is whether Cheick is "full" or "partial". If he is partial,
- he is "free" to attend KU,
- "free" to keep his scholarship
- and "free" to practice with the team.
- He is also "free" to keep his full four years of eligibility.
He is not "free" to use his first year of eligility this season. That's all.
This isn't a "freedom" issue. It's an "instant gratification" issue.
On the flip side, it's pretty daring on the part of the NCAA to judge US and foreign high school transcripts in a country where public education is theoretically run by the states. What other national organization tries to do that?
One thing that does frustrate me, and I'm sure all of us, is this is taking so long. At this point I'll bet it's KU taking the NCAA to overtime.
@nuleafjhawk Are these 22 year olds presumed OADs?
How about Hunter? ... Bragg was really good too!
The difference is Bragg was allowed to continue being good. Hunter was allowed to continue warming the bench.
There are two expressions I am really beginning to hate: "Fool's Gold' and "Energy".
By the way, I just had a bad year-end review. My boss claimed that according to all available measures I didn't meet my objectives. What's more, my department was less productive when I was there than when my replacement was there.
What a bunch of BS: I brought energy!!!
@drgnslayr said:
I’m slowly grasping this new stat on the positive/negative a player has on point totals while getting PT.
What I don't like about that stat is it depends a lot on the coach.
If you go in with other subs and the best players are resting, your +/- stat may go down because the other guys stink, not you.
@drgnslayr said:
This team is so capable of going out and taking a nap at half court.
Hangover from the WUG? Going from international gold to an exhibition, and from a freewheeling short-clock game to work in the hi-lo factory may depress the players more than they or anyone else realize.
Maybe Landon was ref meat last night: Self knew there were going to be mucho fouls called, so he sent Landon out there to take the first few quick ones.
Not a bad tactic really.
Just looking at the box score, Hunter hunts: 10/6/4 in 13 minutes! Play 33 minutes and that's 25/15/10.
I've been mostly out of the loop on baseball but I did get to see some games while in the US recently, including the Series.
I was always taught that you needed defense up the middle to win big. Think Frank White at second base, Amos Otis in center field in the '80s.
For the Mets, Murphy was a disaster at second base. I saw that and thought "How did these guys win the NL?"
Pitching isn't everything if the offense manages to at least get the ball in play and the defense breaks down under pressure.
@drgnslayr Mississippi State.
Howland can count! One Mississippi, two Mississippi...
2 nice recruits in 8 days.
@HighEliteMajor First base dugout for me. I waited until the cop let you go before going on the field ;)
@drgnslayr That is a great point in many walks of life: don't dumb down people, help them smart up the others.
@HighEliteMajor Hey, I was on that field too. Saw games 6 and 7. 6 was a thriller: I said to my friend "the next pitch could end the game, either in a loss (double play) or a win if 2 players score." Next pitch: 2 runs score, win.
How do we take Self’s comments about Mari playing the best basketball of his career in the past few weeks?
You asked @HighEliteMajor but I'll chime in.
Self said Mari is playing the best basketball of his career, and he also said fans will think Mickelson is the most improved player.
I put those two together and read "No matter how much you want me to play Hunter over Mari, I'm playing Mari, so just get over it."
Wow, there are lots of choices here.
I guess the first question is, what's the "difference" you mean? Winning the Conference again won't be "different". I'm guessing you mean "'who will get us over the hump in the postseason?"
To me, that means the guy who won't let us lose.
Frank Mason.
@HighEliteMajor said:
I always wonder why some folks, though, think Self’s way is the only way – as if there is not a big basketball world out where conference titles and national titles have been won doing things differently.
But that's usually not your point, right? If I read your 2015 posts correctly, you don't want to "do things differently", you just want Self's 90%, plus some tweaks and flexibility to get even more than 90%.
I guess the question is, can Self tweak and flex to reduce the 10% without endangering the 90%? In my work (nothing to do with sports), fixing the 10% does sometimes endanger the 90%.
Maybe that's what sets Coach K apart, being able to conjugate system and flexibility - or else it's Nike.
@jaybate-1.0 To me, it's not "all" a positive but mostly.
The more it's about the team and not about other aliases, the better I like it.
The less it's about what we feel and more about why we feel that way, the better I like it.
The more it's "here's what I say" and not "you shut up", the better I like it.
@HighEliteMajor said:
I would not pay for my kids’ college if I didn’t think it was worth it, e.g., I wouldn’t pay for a degree in the fine arts, or philosophy.
Wow. So money is the only measuring stick?
Some colleges and universities are called "liberal arts", which long ago were opposed to "servile arts". "Liberal arts" were / are things worth doing in themselves, not just because they were means to some other end.
Money is at best a means to an end: no intrinsic value.
I suspect players or handlers who treat college as just a stepping stone to monetary success will tend to choose UK over KU.
@HighEliteMajor said:
Guys like Lightfoot, like Traylor and Lucas, can become roster cloggers. They may not deter another signee now, but possibly later when they have experience, and when they have coach that favors experience.
A "roster clogger" may or may not take minutes away from younger, more highly ranked players; he will certainly consume a scholarship.
Why do we have such a looming lack of large bodies? Because Traylor, Lucas and Mickelson had scholarships and we didn't send one packing to make room for another recruit this year.
So why didn't we jettison a "clogger"? Because all 3 had already used up their redshirt year.
Self has let lots of players go, but never a guy who had already redshirted. Accept a redshirt and Self feels morally obligated to keep you 5 years.
Lightfoot will become a fullblown roster-clog risk the day he redshirts. Until then, he's just a project who risks getting recruited over and sent to Plan B.
Let's leave the kid to his dream without making him into our dream.
@HighEliteMajor So should we post up Svi? I've been waiting for an opening to ask that question...
@joeloveshawks I'm being a Negative Nancy here, but what did KU do with Wiggins? He went from potential to results in the pros, not at KU.
Embiid would be the story if he weren't hurt.
KU has had success with the multi-year players, not so much the presumed OADs.
Why aren't the guys rated 20 through 50 on their knees begging to come here? They could have dorms as insane as the UK OADs and work their way up to lottery status. SMH...
@BeddieKU23 said:
We know Self values seniority, experience, trust, defense, hustle, understanding of the system. The List goes on and on…
Yes, indeed. But if in addition Self values intangibles over tangible results (see Cliff) and that helps the presumed OAD drop out of the draft (see Cliff), then recruits are going to hear: "at KU, you don't play even if you're better!".
Again, it's not just the preference for upperclassmen that is the problem: it's the preference for pedestrian upperclassmen over non-pedestrian freshmen.
How can that not be used against Self in recruiting? An opposing coach who doesn't play that card is simply not doing his job.
@HighEliteMajor said:
@ParisHawk Same logic apply to Vick? I would think so but you had the thought, what do you think?
Thanks for asking. Using your gun metaphor I would want to pack every gun I've used in battle, but might leave behind a gun I'd only fired on the practice range.
A part of Self thinks he's the one shooting and the kids are his weapons. He wants the grip to feel comfortable in his hand.
I'm more worried about the Royce Woolridge syndrome: Self asks a freshman to redshirt and the freshman says "I'm not planning to stay 5 years", and sooner or later he's gone.
@HighEliteMajor said:
I don't recall who mentioned it, but why redshirt if this is a NC year?
I mentioned that, with respect to Greene who has already shown what he can do.
And if Bragg gets put on ice… what does that say to the recruits considering Kansas? Plenty!
You are so right.
If Bragg were benched in favor of highly ranked and successful upperclassmen, that would be one thing.
If he's benched in favor of our pedestrian bigs, then the message is pretty dadgum negative.
@drgnslayr said:
I’m going out on a limb with this… but I don’t like the idea of Mason/Graham so much this year.
Why out on a limb? You're not the only one worried about overusing the dynamic duo. As I said before, one of the two must be out there at all times. Play each one 30 minutes and that means each plays PG 10 minutes without the other, and they play together 20 minutes.
That's half the game without the Mason/Graham combo.
You can't build a team dynamic on something that will not be there half the game.
Play Mason 30, Graham 25 and Svi 25. Mix and match. Mason plays half his minutes with one and half with the other. When he is out, Svi and Graham together. That still gets you 15 minutes of Mason/Graham.
If you really think Mason/Graham is the best combo, play them at the beginning and end of each half - although I would rather choose based on matchups.
How crazy would this be if Mickelson beat out Diallo? Anywhere else, crazy-talk. With Self, you never know.
That's not really what I meant. If Hunter becomes one of the 4 rotation bigs and performs well in that role, he could be the most improved player - which is enough for me to declare this "Hunter Mickelson year".
I'm hoping for a tie among Mickelson, Selden and Svi!
@drgnslayr "flexible coeds" - is that the title of a film you saw recently?