🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@dylans Doke jumped and reached over the guy, landed on him on his way down. That was definitely an over the back on Doke. Refs were actually pretty good on the over the back calls last night. Doke grabbed a couple of rebounds over smaller players and last night without getting whistled which is unusual.

@BeddieKU23 Most players earn their extra money by working camps, but since those are not during the season, Billy might be SOL at this point.

@BeddieKU23 That would be a loan based on future earning potential which is against NCAA rules.

Can we stop complaining about the officiating? KU got away with just as much, if not more than Texas did. I was in the arena, had decent seats, and for KU to not have anybody in serious foul trouble all night should speak to how much the refs were swallowing their whistles last night which is surprising considering Higgins reputation.

@Fightsongwriter KU got away with a lot on defense which is very unusual for KU on the road when Higgins is officiating. Considering how much KU got away with on defense, I'm not going to complain about the goal tending calls.

Jayballer54 said:

Blown said:

i thought they broke the press easily....once they finally got it in it was moved up the court quickly.

once the 2 new bigs come in i expect Newman’s minutes to dwindle. he just doesn’t bring much at all right now.

I agree with you on the press, other then SOME trouble with getting inbounds and that's not going to happen every game - -why? - -because not every team has a guy with a 9'6 wing span defending the inbounds pass. - -when the ball was in we broke with ease, not wanting to attack as much during this stretch of the game.

Bamba didn't defend the inbounds pass after a Texas make. He was deep covering Udoka/Mitch. He did defend when KU was inbounding the ball on their own end when Graham was the guy passing it in.

1. Not shocked about Cunliffe not playing. KU never got into serious foul trouble so there was no need for him to play.

2. I think Newman is still in his mindset from Mississippi St. where he was far and away their best player. He still seems reluctant to pass when he gets the ball. Those ill advised 3's in the second half were momentum killers for KU. Each time KU built the lead up to double digits, it was a Newman brick that started a Texas run. If I were opposing coaches, I would back off Newman to entice passes to him because the ball isn't leaving his hands and let him shoot 3's all.

3. Press break was fine. Garrett I believe had the lone turnover against the press which is likely why he didn't play much down the stretch.

4. Udoka is definitely an impressive specimen of a human being. The biggest knock on him besides his FT shooting is that he needs to learn how to put some arc on his hook shot. He shoots it so flat that it's a pretty easy shot to block for anyone near his height.

5. Agreed, 3 point shooting is the calling card of this team and KU has 3 guys over 45% right now. The key to March success is having at least one of them on each game.

6. I expect to see a lot more zone going forward for KU to try and keep Udoka out of foul trouble. KU does not have the depth to absorb foul trouble so I believe that's the true reason why Self went to the zone.

7. Mitch is an effort guy. That's always going to be his legacy at KU because he's not a skilled player compared to his teammates.

8. TCU next Saturday is going to be a tough game. There's not going to be the normal crowd support for KU that there is there because TCU put that game in a mini plan to get more TCU fans in the arena and the game sold out before single game tickets ever went on sale. TCU is also a really good shooting team with a big that won't be outmuscled by Udoka.

9. Svi is shooting 45% this year from 3, his cold stretches aren't long lasting this year.

10. I don't know if I can put Mason ahead of Sherron personally, but his #0 needs to be in the rafters as early as possible.

Didn't realize Higgins was reffing tonight. That surprises me considering how much KU got away with on defense tonight. It's usually the other way around with him, but I'm not surprised though that he made himself the center of attention since that's his typical MO for games.

I think Archie Miller is overrated to be honest. And with his family connections, I wouldn't be surprised if it came out at some point that he's as crooked as his brother.

@SkinnyKansasDude Keegan is biased the wrong way against KU. He's quick to throw anyone under the bus and very slow to give legitimate praise to KU.

His current crusade against David Beaty and Sheahon Zenger is filled with false information that he is irresponsibly trying to pass as fact.

I don't have an issue with him not being a fan of those two men, but when he's creating false narratives to try and build his case against both men and I have no respect for that.

His railroading of Beaty has made KUSports a very toxic place to be right now that's even worse than when it was when this site was created.

@JayHawkFanToo Who freaking cares if JJ didn't play in that game. The point is Jamie Dixon did far more in his first year at TCU than they had done in a long time. He inherited some good players, good for him, doesn't chamge that they won 12 games the year before and only 2 Big 12 games that year.

I don't need to wait for him to finish in the top half of the league today he's a good coach. The man had Pitt consistently competing for Big East titles over his 10 years. Even his mediocre last 3 years weren't terrible. He still finished with a winning ACC record in his 3 years with Pitt in that league.

There's very few programs out there that wouldn't take Dixon as their coach. The man has a 73% career winning percentage that is top 10 among active coaches right now.

If you can't look at what he's accomplished and say that he's very good coach, then finishing in the top half of the Big 12 isn't going to really change your mind on the matter at this point.

@JayHawkFanToo TCU had won 6 Big 12 games total in their first years in the league. Dixon won 7 Big 12 games including the tournament win over Kansas last year. He also more than doubled their win total from the previous season in his first year.

That's major immediate progress no matter how you look at it.

@JayHawkFanToo Dixon and Tubby are two different situations. Dixon expanded on what Ben Howland did at Pitt and had the Panthers as a legitimate top 10 team for a 3 year stretch from 2008-09 to 2010-11. After that is when Pitt plateaued, then it became in the best interest of both parties to move on. I would say Dixon had 3 mediocre to bad years at Pitt during his 13 years there. He won 73% of his games overall and 64% of his conference games. Those are good numbers. I would easily consider Dixon a top 25 coach in the country based on his resume.

I don't think the Big 12 is nearly as good as the computers say the Big 12 is. The Big 12 has probably 2 marquee nonconference wins all season and that would be Kansas over Kentucky in the Champions Classic and Oklahoma over Wichita St. Name an impressive win the Big 12 has outside of those two games?

The reason why the Big 12 is as strong in the computers as it is this year is because there's not a lot of bad losses for the Big 12 this year. KSU has a real bad loss to Tulsa, Iowa St. has a real bad loss to UW-Milwaukee and those are the only 2 sub RPI 100 losses the Big 12 has in conference so far. I believe KU's loss to Washington is the 3rd worst loss any team in the Big 12 has based on RPI.

Say what you will about the RPI, but that's still one of the biggest tools the NCAA Tournament selection committee uses to compare teams and to base who gets in the tournament.

I still think the Big 12 is legitimately down from years past, but with the lack of marquee games the league played this year, it really masked a lot of the deficiencies of the Big 12 this year. TCU is undefeated because they haven't played anybody, Texas Tech is where they're at because they haven't played anybody this year. Nevada is the best team each of those teams beat this season. TCU is a good team, but they haven't been challenged yet this year. SMU is the closest to a major conference team they've played this year and they only play that game because it's a rivalry game.

The Big 12 could get anywhere from 4-7 teams in the tournament this year, I'll say 6 teams get in and we could possibly see all of them get knocked out before the weekend. I think KU, WVU, and OU are all good enough to make runs, but I don't think all 3 will and it's possible none of them do.

@BeddieKU23 History says Trae Young will have monster games against KU. Bill Self's strategy against these types of players that he doesn't have an answer for is to let them get theirs and focus on trying to stop the other 4 players on the floor.

@REHawk So you're saying that Trae Young is going to go off for 40 points and 15 assists and KU wins by a point?

@REHawk Durant and Hield each scorched KU in the games you're likely referring to. It was the rest of their teams that KU stopped just enough to barely win those games.

@AsadZ Should be a pregame party at Scholz Beer Garden that happens every year.

@BShark Bevo tastes just fine, maybe a little salty though.

@HighEliteMajor DeSousa did not finish classes until Wednesday. Because his original plan wasn't to graduate early, he's having to try and speed up the process of going through the Eligibility Center instead of the normal timeframe for a basketball player which is finding out in the spring about their eligibility. The NCAA needed his complete transcript from IMG and Wednesday is the earliest they could've gotten that because that's when IMG's fall semester ended.

As for Lightfoot, he'll never be a natural low post player, that's just not what his game is. He's a poor man's Perry Ellis on offense and a better version of Perry on defense. He needs to be a face up player on the perimeter to showcase the offensive skills he does have. His long term value to Kansas basketball is never going to on offense though, it will always be on defense being a nuisance defender amd blocking shots.

@BShark Put Mitch back at his natural position and his offense gets better, guaranteed.

DeSousa has been cleared to graduate and will report to campus on the 26th and is eligible to practice immediately. Still needs to wait for clearance from the NCAA before he can play in games though.

Wednesday was the final day of classes at IMG this semester. That's why Friday has always been the day to hear about Silvio. Teacher's have to input grades and then paperwork has to be processed which takes a day to do so in a situation like Silvio's.

@jayballer54 Buddy Hield was not this good as a freshman. Trae Young is a special talent with an incredibly high ceiling and is coming into college much further along in his development than Hield was.

@approxinfinity This is the last time do a KU game this season since he's a Big 10 guy.

Dan Dakich is a horrible announcer. He pissed off Tom Izzo awhile back.

These mean tweets he's reading exemplifies why he's a horrible announcer.

@BeddieKU23 Omaha is quite possibly the worst team on KU's schedule this year, no reason this shouldn't be a 30+ point win tonight.

This is a really good win for OU today. Trae Young is also the freshman of the year nationally. I would also vote him B12 POY at this point.

Is the Sprint Center game a part of the season ticket package? If not, then that's probably why KU keeps the games there because AFH games have maybe a couple of thousand tickets at most for each game and less for the higher profile games.

@kjayhawks I like Bowen well enough as a position coach, DB's have been one of the few position groups KU regularly sends to the NFL so Bowen is doing something right as far as player development goes.

I think he's a horrible play caller who absolutely failed to hide the weakness of the secondary this year and instead exposed them even worse.

This was a year the defense needed to the aggressiveness up to 11 to create as much pressure as possible to force quick throws so hide the inexperience of the secondary. Instead, Bowen called a lot of 3 and 4 man rushes that routinely failed to get pressure on the QB and forced the secondary to cover for extended time which ended up with a lot of big pass plays surrendered.

Lightfoot is also playing way out of position as well. He's being forced into being a low post player on both ends of the floor when he's never had that role before. The guy is a stretch 4 and is being exploited in major mismatches because he's never guarded the position before.

Clay Young has been better on the defensive end because he was a post at his JuCo even at his size. He understands the role and what's required of the role much better than Lightfoot does.

I'm not going to rip in Lightfoot for this because none of it is his fault. He didn't make Coleby transfer, he didn't make Whitman transfer, he didn't make Preston sit out because of a car. We all know Lightfoot isn't ready for this role, but he's the only option at this point.

This situation is why Self is trying to get DeSousa enrolled early and it's why Sosinski was added to the team. KU needs to work on developing Sosinski over the next 3 weeks which KU only has 3 games during that stretch. Work him into the rotation this week, let him make his debut against Nebraska, give him some big minutes against Omaha as a trial run, and if that goes well, let him sub for Azubuike against Stanford and see how that goes before Texas on the 29th.

If the Preston situation gets resolved in a positive manner by that time, then swap Sosinski out for Preston. Either way, KU needs to find a way to get Lightfoot back to the stretch 4 spot because him as a low post player doesn't work.

@justanotherfan If Washington makes the round of 32, having your worst loss of the season coming to a team that won a tournament game is far from a bad loss. Losing to Omaha or Stanford would be bad losses. Losing to Washington at this point is not a bad loss at this point. Disappointing for sure, but not yet a bad loss.

@chriz He's a Memphis and Calipari guy who's still bitter and pissed about 2008.

Wasn't Cunliffe one of the worst players for KU in Italy back in August?

@jayballer54 We'll know Wednesday at the latest if Sosinski is permanently joining the team. Self said depending on how practice goes today and tomorrow would determine his status going forward. Based on Self's comments after practice today, I would lean towards Sosinski joining the team.

The CFP is a joint venture owned and operated by the FBS conferences (all 10 of them). They negotiated the TV deal which runs until a couple of years after after the Big 12 TV deal does. The Big 12 appears to be a zombie league since ESPN and Fox each refused to bump up the TV deal up to allow expansion and will likely be divided up in a few years.

The CFP will then expand to 8 teams with the next TV deal and the conference title games will be the quarter final games.

That's 7 games total for an 8 team playoff. Rotate between the 6 games in use now for the CFP and New Year's 6 games (Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose, and Sugar) and keep bidding out the title game like now.

@approxinfinity With Embiid's back and foot injuries, a medical red shirt in 2014-15 would have been likely so I could see a redshirt senior Embiid happening in that scenario.

In that scenario, I think I would bump Vick from the line up and have Graham at the 1, Jackson at the 2, Oubre at the 3, Embiid at the 4, and Azubuike at the 5.

That might be the scariest front line imaginable.

@approxinfinity I'll go based on the premise of 4 year players, no redshift.

This would rule out Embiid and Wiggins. I think I would go Devontae Graham at the 1, Lagerald Vick at the 2, Kelly Oubre at the 3, Josh Jackson at the 4, and Udoka Azubuike at the 5.

I don't know how it would stack up against a Kentucky or Duke roster of players who could still have eligibility, but I know that KU team would be very salty on defense with only Oubre not being an elite level college defender and would likely have a lot of swagger with Graham and Jackson as leaders. Jackson would also be a huge match up nightmare for anyone to defend.

Clemson vs. Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and Oklahoma vs. Georgia in the Rose Bowl.

Big 10 champ Ohio St. left out in favor of Alabama. This is a repeat of the Penn St. and Ohio St. situation last year and the committee made the same decision as last year so at least there's consistency there which is a good thing even if someone disagrees with the choice.

@Fightsongwriter Clay Young was a post in his past years at KU when there was a full compliment of walk ons and previously at his JuCo as well. At 6-5, he would've been a post in HS as well.

Him being a solid, fundamental post shouldn't be a surprise because he's been a post most of his life.

She's likely there at the request of the Athletic Department to deal with the car issue. Self absolutely knows more than he's revealing, but this isn't a situation where divulging everything he knows about the matter will help the situation.

Coleby would be Azubuike's primary sub since Coleby is definitely a low post oriented player. Lightfoot is definitely a much more high post and perimeter based player.

I think we would have seen those two on the floor together on a regular basis this year had Coleby chosen to stay.

Given the circumstances at the time though, I don't blame Coleby for leaving.

The difference between this KU team and past KU teams is this KU team has a killer instinct that we haven't seen since the title team.

These are games that in the past few years, KU may be builds up a 25-30 point lead and it regresses to a 15-20 point win and the end of bench guys don't come in until a couple of minutes are left. This year, we're seeing Young and Teahan come in with 5-6 minutes left and and the lead drops to about 40.

This team is different in its mindset about putting teams away. Syracuse is a team that struggles to score, 80 is their high for the season so far. I really wouldn't be surprised to see KU win by 20-25 points on Saturday.

@nuleafjhawk Gordon Lightfoot is also Canadian which means he'd probably just apologize for not being a badass.

@chriz Lightfoot is a Native American name and a lot of Native Americans tend to be badasses though.

@mayjay We played Washington St. a few years ago at Sprint Center in a one off. I imagine if there was ever going to be a return game, it probably would've been played in Seattle instead of Pullman though.

I wouldn't mind a home and home with Oregon either because we've pulled some recruits out of the Portland area in the past.

@Crimsonorblue22 I would love to see Bowen get replaced because he just can't scheme a defense or call a game to save his life. Joe DeForest is another guy I would love to see get replaced as well because our special teams was atrocious this year. Gabe Rui was a bright spot and KU appears to have a reliable kicker with good range, his 50 yarder was good with a lot to spare.

Those are the two most obvious needs on the coaching staff, but as long as you keep Tony Hull, I think everybody else is expendable on the staff.

@kjayhawks KU will be returning a lot of players on the 2 deep, but that's about it if Beaty is fired. KU is legitimately somewhere between 50 and 55 recruited scholarship players before factoring in the 2018 recruits. Firing Beaty means KU would go through spring practice with that number of true scholarship players. I don't know what the exact number is for walk on players awarded scholarships, but it's likely around 15-20 guys, but those are the guys that wouldn't get scholarships in normal circumstances.

@jaybate-1.0 The discipline issue is a tough one and with the way Hasan Defense played today as well as last week, I genuinely hope Beaty makes an example of him and boots him from the team.

He had a stretch today where he nearly got into a fight with a WR, which drew a 15 yard penalty on Defense, and then had consecutive pass interference calls against him on the next two plays after the personal foul. Quite frankly, Defense shouldn't have even been allowed to travel today because of that cheap shot he took on Mayfield last week.

If someone wants to argue to fire Beaty because of the lack of discipline and accountability for the past two weeks, I can support and agree with that.

Discipline and accountability have to be there from day 1, and this is an area that is becoming pretty clear that Beaty is failing at. That's something to me at least could take precedence over the scholarship issue because it does deal directly with how recruits and opposing coaches view Kansas which is something should be very high in the list of important things.

If KU develops a reputation for being dirty players, that's not a reputation that disappears easily even after multiple coaching changes.

This is a situation as you said where Zenger and Girod have to prioritize what is most important to them in rebuilding the team and it does appear getting the scholarship situation under control is their top priority at this stage and appear willing to sacrifice some disciplinary issues to get there.

Zenger has already stated that Beaty will return next year.

In the short term, I get that it sucks because the W-L record hasn't shown anything for Beaty to return.

Personally, I think this is the right call for the big picture view. We can throw the current scholarship numbers out there which makes it look like KU is there or very close, but the reality is KU is still 2 years away from being caught up. Beaty inherited less than 40 scholarship players during the 2015 spring. Today, the number is somewhere in the upper 70's right now. 2015 was a small senior class like this one and 2016 was a large senior class (27 players I believe). Let's say KU has graduated somewhere between 35 and 40 seniors the past 2 years. Beaty has brought in 62 players in the 3 recruiting classes he's veen apart of. Do the math, that means KU is still at about 60 scholarship players that were recruited as scholarship players and somewhere between 15-20 walk ons that have been awarded scholarships at some point.

That means David Beaty inherited a roster with D2 level of depth and has now built to FCS depth. It also means we're still 2 years away from being caught up and having FBS level depth. If you fire Beaty now, you destroy this recruiting class and keep KU at FCS level depth whole expexting the next coach to succeed with FCS level depth for at least 2 years.

Keeping Beaty for 2018 is the right call because it allows him to build a full recruiting class this year which should put KU somewhere around 70 true scholarship players. Not perfect, but a much better situation to give Beaty's successor than to bring a new coach in with only 50 true scholarship players which is only about 10 better than what Beaty inherited.

I know it will be frustrating next year because 1 or 2 wins appears likely again, but I will go through that if that means Beaty's successor has a much better foundation to build upon than what he would have going into 2018.