🏀 KuBuckets Archive

I had older siblings, and I went to college when I was 17. Was always younger than my classmates, and I felt it; always there. While I was confident, I was willing to defer to my elders, which happened to be most of the kids around me most of my youth.

Svi is 20 now, right? Still younger than many of the guys that are his peers. When Svi's subconscious weighs his social status, it may find him to be his peers' equal, without attempting to be their superior.

Last night Svi's autonomic basketball superiority kicked in. The sweet stroke that had the Spurs organization salivating took over in a moment that might have caused Svi to freak out if he had thought about it. He didn't think about it. He elevated, released and stuck a shank in 15,500 Pinnacle Bank Arena dreamers that thought they were watching a Nebraska W.

I hope that as a basketball player he realizes that he's neither young nor old. He's just a smart player and a great teammate with a finely tuned trey cannon that can be fired accurately at will to the lament of 15,5.

Sam totally bailed out Sosinki tonight, saved from 0-3 start.

@dylans lol yeah he's usually a little better % than tonight. He's a hustler too. Finds ways to impact games.

... has 6 guys in the top 20 for the last 14 days... absolutely rolling right now in my league (below are their stats for the last 14 days). Been doing this with high school buddies since 2003. Next year if anyone wants to make our own league let me know!

!0_1513390132150_Screenshot 2017-12-15 21.06.01.png ↗

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/21741498/philadelphia-76ers-joel-embiid-bringing-team-life ↗

@Kcmatt7 agreed. I'm expecting Malik to stay humble and hungry and figure it out.

@dylans can we get some practice time at Sprint Center?

@JayHawkFanToo Sosinki is the first Jayhawk basketball player to be 0-2 ever?

@3genhawk yessss

Washington got destroyed by Virginia Tech as well.

@jaybate-1.0

This loss is to me

The day we decorated

Our dear Christmas tree

With baubles like this

Twinkling posts light our evenings

Scheming and dreaming

That highlight reel validates everything. Life is good.

Hope Frank is making connections with established vets throughout league. Isaiah Thomas wouldn't be a bad guy to have on his side.

He did try Garrett there late, but Garrett wasn't ready.

@benshawks08 Bingo! I just said the exact same thing on another thread. I wanted to see Svi at the high post when Vick clearly wasn't comfortable.

@dylans I agree, it's admirable for coach to have a good attitude and remain calm, but when your coach is encouraging you to keep doing the things that aren't working, that itself can break morale. A firery disposition from the sideline can be reassuring in that it indicates that something can be done to get the train back on the track. The kids would not have given up and thrown so many errant passes down the stretch if they believed that victory was still achievable. I just don't think Vick was prepared to execute on the scale he was asked to offensively, and we were unable to correct his approach midgame. I would have liked to have seen Svi at the high post, but I'm sure we never practiced that.

@wissox Ah yeah, I remember you making that argument after 'cuse, and yeah, that makes sense. So if they don't step out when he turns as they did not, one dribble and STRAIGHT UP.. no lean, and practice practice practice of that shot and correct form. With his elevation he should be able to shoot over guys that don't step up to it.

Barney said:

@nuleafjhawk I actually thought Vick started driving a step to far to where he took a guarded shot instead of the open one. I know he was trying to draw the man out for the lob,but that was defended better by Washington in the second half with rotation. To me if he was going to drive he needed to go all the way to the rim. He still played well but he could have had a huge game.

Agree :100: it was the leaning floater he was trying to shoot that was not falling. If he goes straight up with the shot, even if he took 1 dribble in, got to think that falls more than leaning into it. To me, it's a form thing. He is just not comfortable with his form on that shot. It's not automatic. That is one thing that I think can be corrected by the end of the season, and Vick will be able to drop 50 from that spot when called upon in future games, if he's left that open.

I was watching Virginia Tech the other night in their only (?) loss, and was struck by how much improvisation the players seemed required to do on the simple things. When a player flashes in the key, the entry pass would sometimes be at his side or feet. And I thought about KU then, and how the pass is always exactly where it needs to be. And that was a comforting thought, but also a troubling one.

First of all, the pass was often not exactly where it needed to be to Vick last night. Often it was at his feet, costing him a half second to adjust. The passes at the end of the game to get the ball inbounds were horrendous as well. The lob to Doke at the end of the game was off. And beyond errant passes, the pass sometimes didn't ever happen. The plan to get it to LaGerald has no secondary action. The execution was poor, and the ball was sticky : stuck in a slow motion car crash.

So this leads me to my second point... was I dillusional about Kansas passing game? No! When we execute, our passes are always EXACTLY where they need to be. Players move to where they are supposed to be. Everything is calculated and coordinated, like a beautiful wooden automaton,
a coordinated factory scene where all the workers are turning their cranks in time.

But what happens when something blocks one of those gears that are all connected to main crank?

I don't think Vick was tight. He just lacked confidence in his shot. The automaton was relying on him, he was one gear of the drive train, and the gear was jammed. Vick simply was not comfortable with that shot last night. It just wasn't going to happen, and there was no improvisation, and everything broke down with it.

That being said, I don't think it's a bad loss for our kids. a. they're a good team and b. there's plenty of fuel for practice here.

So if the goal was not necessarily to come out with a W but primarily to get better, then I'm ok with last night. Better now than March.

Tough loss. Our shortcomings were on display today, and they were numerous.

Doke is not enough in the post, even if he stays out of foul trouble, and plays his best. He has tremendous strength, but also serious weaknesses. He does not high point the ball on rebounds, nor does he get up quickly. He does not have a great vertical, but has great length. He does not secure rebounds by getting his hand on the other side of it. He does not shoot beyond bunnies. He will be exposed by quick athletic bigs. Some issues can be corrected, others can be smoothed over, but smoothing over takes time. Probably another season. We need DeSousa and Preston. We just do.

Lightfoot is more agile than Doke, but strength is still an issue and will be. This too will take time, and probably another season to really address.

Malik is a bit of a headcase right now on O. I think he could learn a lot from watching video of Frank in transition. Remember Frank got swatted repeatedly early on. Sherron too. Should watch before and after Tyshawn tape too.

Vick did his best, but he looked tremendously uncomfortable at the foul like for 2/3 of the game. Every shot looked a little different, like he just didn't know what a 10 footer should feel like. If he's expected to be that guy against the 2-3, he needs to practice that shot over and over. And over and over.

We need to get the ball moving against the zone. This sitting around while the ball goes into the high post to an out-of-sorts Lagerald for the shot every single play is mind numbing. Our guys were standing around on the perimeter when they should have been getting open for the kick.I'm pretty sure Self knew that he was playing with PlayDoh and the other side had modeling clay about half way through the first. He partially owned the loss in his postgame, and I think thats fair. We were flat and our gameplan uninspired. Also, with a non-elite rebounder who lacks quick twitch hops / mobility, options are pretty limited passing to the interior.

Svi's shot from the corner was just not going to fall tonight.
Devonte seemed to not know what he was supposed to do besides passing in to Vick.
Garrett looked lost for a 3rd game.

By the end of the game, we could not run or did not run with Washington. Very likely we were gased and shellshocked. Our lateral quickness was either timid or slow and got torched, and they dictated pace to ice the game. At one point Devonte (?) waited for Doke to get down the floor so he could throw an errant lob as the defense recovered.

The good news is, we exposed a lot of weaknesses at once. Plenty of motivation to work our asses off in practice. The bad news is, some of this stuff can be corrected over the course of the next month, and some of it can't be with this personnel and lack of bodies.

Billy Preston probably would have been useful at the high post tonight. DeSouza probably would have been useful in the rebounding department.

I really hope we get them this year, otherwise I'm tempering my expectations on being competitive to win the Big-12, and hoping to make it to the Sweet 16, with the certainty that some team lurking beyond that can exploit our weaknesses.

Well glad it all worked out! Onward and upward!

Did I miss something good? No harm no foul?

@Texas-Hawk-10 :) yeah you answered like I was imagining it. So I guess I wasnt doing the math right on embiid and Wiggins. Last year then would have been Senior Frank, Wiggins, Oubre, Jackson, Embiid. That would be lethal.

I wonder if you put a team of 5 jayhawks who could still have eligibility vs any team with the same criteria, would we win against all?

@Lulufulu that 40-0 hypothetical prognostication is not hyperbole in the least.

@jaybate-1.0 said:

Basketball season in full swing is the next best thing to being young again!!!

Amen! Living in the afterglow of last night's drubbing.

:100: :+1: Mitch did take a couple charges when the game was still in the balance. I felt he impacted the game a bit more than Garrett. Garrett drew a ridiculous foul by moving laterally into a guy I think. That was about it for positive (?) impact.

Rig your Alexa to blowtorch a Grayson Allen wax replica every time his name is mentioned during our game. Then after, snap a photo and use it for the profile of your fake Ted Cruz Twitter account.

@jayballer54 maybe Self is saving face by saying practice player only? You're right, we have plenty of depth in practice. Unless he wants our guys to play through contact with a mountain of muscle. Maybe he doesn't want Doke banging as much in practice to limit wear so SodaPop could spell him?

Soda Popinski's going to KO some Little Macs.

! ↗

Link re: declassified documents... https://www.fulcrumnews.com/blog/2017/10/27/jfk-files ↗

@3genhawk at least the season opener is against Texas. Right now their bigs are a bunch of Knuckleheads as well.

How can we be in the wake of an FBI investigation into shoe companies' unethical influence in amateur basketball, and a month later, have a tournament held exclusively for Nike schools named after the still living co-founder of Nike as he sits court side? This is so absolutely out in the sunshine and corrupt, I have a hard time processing it. Please someone slap me and tell me I'm wrong.

Read Calipari's quote at the end of explaining why Kentucky isn't in it : "How many of those events have we played in since I’ve been here? And if I was gonna play in one, it would’ve been for Phil Knight. I want you to hear what I’m saying. The only reason I would’ve played in that event was if Phil Knight told me, ‘You have to play in this event.’ And he did not say that.”

@wrwlumpy :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :punch:

@SkinnyKansasDude :100: cultivating a dependency on 2-big lineups would prove to be fools gold once we get in foul trouble or go against bigger 2-big lineups. Our 4-1 is our Mariano Rivera cut fastball, and everything else we throw out there should still cut and set up the cut fastball.

Of your comps I would push Releford up to a 7 and TT down to a 6. Vick is probably right at a 7 but he just got there.

Maybe multiple scales per player would make it easier to identify a composite value?

Maybe Mitch could see minutes at 3 next year and Self could mix in 3-big lineups to really screw with people? What is Mitch's ceiling on D?

We shall see. Gotta start somewhere right? Kid looked great tonight. Hopefully he can keep building with all his PT.

@jaybate-1.0 he plays Mitch and Mitch plays like a competent big, in sync with the flow of the game?

People hanging out on Slack... If you want to join go here:

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Or if you already have an account come join us at kubuckets.slack.com

Headed over to slack.

Grayson didn't matter. If Texas didnt give the game away I would be in complete agreement with @Texas-Hawk-10

Still shocked they gave this one away. Dukes interior D was awful. Texas jacking up useless threes. I just don't understand.

The foul disparity is garbage.

Sims is a stupid freshman. O-kowski isnt bad.

Mohammed Mohammed Bamba! :notes: Moooohammed Bamba.... :notes:

Fouled Out.

Jack Tripper Jr fouled out. OT. Hopefully Shaka can extract craniums from posteriors.

For 34 minutesthey dominated on the inside. Shredded Dukes awful interior D. And then they start jacking up 3s and let Duke back inthe game.

Watching them piss this one away is painful.

Kerwin Roach just posterized Duke. Awesome!!!

Duke is gonna lose, we are going to win and come Monday we will be #1.