We are stealing the ball. This is really encouraging. We are actually playing defense.
betterfireE
287 posts
Lightfoot. Will he ever be clutch?
@HawkChamp Jordan Bell was drafted last year. I would kill for a Jordan bell right now.
I think we still get in the Sweet 16 somehow. This team is still better than the Wiggins squad. I don't think we'd lose to Stanford. ASU and TT are Elite 8 capable teams. We've probably improved since losing to Washington.
But they need to focus. Say no to other things, yes to sleep.
This team can't stop anyone on defense. They cannot impose their will.
On the offensive side, I saw us do the weave once, and then Devonte Graham lost the ball because he wasn't paying attention. Good teams don't just run the weave or any play won autopilot. TT saw what we were doing, saw our body language (here we go again, just gonna move the ball here, then do it here, doh I lost the ball), and that's right, lost the ball. Totally destroyed our run and the game wasn't the same after that.
Another poor play was the inbounds pass that was stolen.
Mental toughness starts and ends with concentration. You have to play on edge, keeping your opponent on his heels. But it's also a mindset that affects how you improve in the offseason even, and our players haven't changed enough. Vick, Svi, Graham. They are mostly the same players they were when they got here. We aren't seeing the same sort of trajectory like we did with Frank Mason, who had the mental toughness to do what was necessary season after season to elevate himself to NPOY.
Self is just going to let them lose it tonight. Who cares? Team has no leadership.
Svi and Vick both still stink. Done can't guard passes on the ground.
We are pussies.
Just no toughness or poise. Doke is the shortest footer I've seen in a while, or TT has folks with reach who can disrupt. Vick doesn't have enough strength with the ball.
Nice steal by Garrett. Is he the one player that can make the other team play poorly? One would think Vick could produce some more steals as well.
Doke is allowing passes to whizz right by his arm. Keep your arms active!
Allowing interior passes easily. Awareness on the team is weak.
We should be up by 30 points against this soft Stanford team. Yawn.
Why does Azubuike not cover the backside for the rebound there? Look at where the shot is from. Azubuike was at the front of the rim!
Graham is no Mason when it comes to end of clock creation.
Garrett is a defensive revelation. Relefordation.
Who is worse? Newman or Vick? I thought Newman would learn a thing or two from Frank Mason. Perhaps he's just early Frank Mason right now.
Svi is still unathletic, Graham is good but not great, Newman is delusional.
Maybe Garrett can balance the team.
Ugh, Vick still can't play defense well enough.
@globaljaybird said:
@betterfireE I doubt the brain strength overload was Carlton's downfall. If he had muscular problems they were most likely hormonally driven.
Well, it's more about being conscientious. Bragg was more happy-go-lucky than self-critical, and so he never really developed his game. I read stories about how hard Mason worked on his game. Then I read a Mellinger tweet about him being a 3.
A 3 will move faster and dribble better. I saw neither of these things from Bragg. Nothing about being a big at Kansas precludes you from developing these aspects of your game on your own.
Amazing how some players develop and some don't. Mason comes to mind. Nick Bradford an older example.
The brain is a powerful muscle.
@kjayhawks said:
I think DG stays, he's very close to Newman.
I saw Newman and Graham out shopping together. I als so Vick at the same mall. I wonder if they were all just trying to keep their minds off the tourney.
I know people like the happy-go-lucky Bragg. But that's not what anyone needs. Look at Frank Mason. How often does he smile? Sometimes a little seriousness and self-criticism is necessary to getting better.
It's going to really suck losing Jackson.
People say we're loaded next year, but our success depends on our defense.
Jackson is too skilled to have an injury completely derail an NBA career. But you're more likely to get injured in the NBA.
If he wants to transform his body a little more, he should stay in college.
And shot mechanics can be worked on starting now.
I say it would be a 7 game series. But I believe KU loses 8/10 times against Oregon in the Elite 8. There is really no way to prepare against length, strength and speed. We would probably adjust to them, since we had some smart players. In any case, barring a job by the referees, I think Oregon makes it to the championship game.
This may sound like blasphemy, but how about Tyron Lue.
@wissox So it didn't cost us 100% of the game, just 50% of the game. I kid, but we will never know our chances because as you said, that opportunity was taken from us.
@jayhawk-007
I agree with all of these points. Oregon was too good defending us to be a fluke.
If there is one point I could disagree with it's preparation. We were clearly not prepared for Bell or really any of their players.
But how can you practice for length or strength?
I watched the Carolina and Kentucky game, and honestly both KU and Oregon are better. We shall see, but this maybe yet another year where we lose to a title contender.
Graham played that way for a reason; Oregon was a bad matchup for our guards (which means they are probably a bad matchup for everyone else's guards). I also think Graham took his development back with conservative play this year. He was the Jacque Vaughn of this year; he became a distributor. He also suffered against length (Jeez how many times do I have to say/think/type this, it stinks.
We really needed a big time step up this game, but Bell was just that much better. He's everything we wished Jamari Traylor could be. We NEEDED Azubuike. Many of us on this board said S16 or E8 was our likely ceiling after his injury.
What this shows to me is how much we were really screwed out of a Final Four appearance last year. Calling Graham for the foul late in the game was one of the worst pieces of officiating I can ever recall. We may have lost in the championship to NC last year, but I'm confident we would have made the championship game. Had we been allowed to finish that game and win it, our E8 record looks a lot better.
This year, we were beat by a super hot and more talented team that played defense against us the right way.
We should all keep in mind that E8 is still "elite", and I think we can be somewhat satisfied with our performance his year.
So basically we will have one point guard yes?
@BigBad said:
@BShark said:
Graham's lack of athleticism really showed last night. Dorsey/Graham and Bell/Lucas is where Oregon had clear cut drastic advantages.
Most here dont want to hear that.
Graham has used the attention Frank gets to get wide open shots and then uses his spastic head fake to >clear himself from lower level defenders. Against size and length and equal quickness he struggles.
Graham also never could quite drive like Mason, and I think Oregon realized that. Graham has been reluctant to take it to the rim or use a floater. He will need to add more to his repertoire for next season.
@Eric-san said:
@betterfireE I was just talking about being able to match up in size. Bell 6-9 225 Bragg 6-9 240.
I don't know what their stats say, but the eye test is more important. Bell was thick like Coleby, and Colby is a bigger dude than Bragg with wider shoulders.
This felt a lot like those losses where we were out-talented, as you suggest. Over the years, I've learned to roll with these kinds of disappointments. At least 18 of Oregon's points were just straight up ISO's where they shot over the defender. On defense, that same length and athleticism disrupted our shots.
It's not like one player beat us. It's not like we choked. This was one of the more digestible losses from the tourney in KU history. It stinks that this is the last time we see Mason or JJ. But in no way is it worse than the Nova loss, where the refs jobbed us for the Diallo scandal. Or Stanford, or VCU, etc. We lost because we couldn't hit shots, and because they couldn't miss.
Let's revisit this in a week after Oregon wins the championship.
@BigBad Anybody who thinks length wasn't a big factor wasn't paying attention last night. They had big guards that shot over us with confidence.
@Eric-san said:
You know who would've been a perfect counter to Bell? Carlton Bragg. He had every opportunity to develop and elevate his game this season and just could not get it to click. He can't even claim having off the court issues as a reason because others on the team has had it much worse than Bragg.
Um, Bell is like two weight classes over Bragg in addition to being a great shot-blocker. There really is just no comparison. Carlton Bragg was never a real 4.
Oregon played good defense on us. Thats why they won. We spent so much energy on defense in the second half without figuring out how to perform on the offensive front.
I miss having a shot-blocking big.
They look like a team that will win a championship.
Too much futzing around by KU. This loss wasn't as bad as the VCU loss because aside from seeding, we weren't THAT full of hubris.
That Jackson tip to the Oregon player at the end was when the game ended. Really wish Jackson had showed up tonight. The truth is he and Graham needed to be their absolute best tonight.
They imposed their will.
Oregon was the better team tonight.
Graham and Jackson were no shows.
They look like they did way more studying. Backing off Graham on the floater was smart.
Not sure how we come back and win this one by 20 points.
Oregon aren't missing shots or being forced to make dumb plays. These are real athletes we are playing against.
I hope we figure out their defense because if we can't prevent them scoring on ISO's, then we won't be able to stop them on offense.
How do the matchups work on Sunday vs MSU?
Does Jackson guard McQuaid?
Do we go two bigs?
We should have a post on diet, exercise and rest. I still don't believe that Jojo eats properly. And he went for fast strength gains rather than Hudy's philosophy (his soft tissues clearly didn't keep pace with the muscle gains).
Amazing win. We showed some championship type defense in this game. Frank won it at the line.
Positives: Aside from the usual dudes, Vick seemed to have a quality game with some good plays. Bad plays were counteracted with scoring.
Negatives: Landen Lucas was 2-7 from the line. Missed bunnies. Bragg joins Lucas in that respect. 1 rebound and 5 fouls in 18 minutes of play. And your demeanor was awful. Hubris killed many a talent.
I love this win, but I wonder what kind of blood sacrifice Bill Self had to perform. Have we burned all of our March luck early?
Can we dig around for some old quotes on who thought Freshman Jackson wouldn't have much of an impact on this team?
Bragg was making a contribution to this win before the injury. His passing ability came back for one.
21 turnovers. We didn't play defense this game. We got defended.
Who cares about these rankings though. Look at Mason and Graham. Lecomte is clearly a stud beyond his ranking.
I think Baylor has some stats guys that actually know what they're doing, hence the appropriate lineup selection for tonight. Also, it seems that they're doing a good job of finding talent in the haystack.
, so maybe they have a hand in that too.
Coaching is what wins you these games though, and we saw that tonight with the adjustments in the second half. Very proud of Vick and Svi for making some defensive plays tonight. We couldn't have done it without those guys (as well as Jackson) defending some of Baylor's taller players effectively tonight. That said, there were still dumb plays like the missed dunk and getting pegged out of bounds. Those can't happen late in March. Everyone made some pretty dumb plays tonight though.
This could be a preview of how we lose in March. Two athletic guards to match up with ours (but who can actually play defense), and solid 4/5 player.
Until Vick, Svi or Bragg actually shows up to win us a game, I'm skeptical of us doing anything. Everyone rotation player from that 2012 squad won us a game. Kevin Young, Releford. Everyone.
We are not a championship squad until Svi, Vick and Bragg play better.
What happens if Lucas fouls out? We are totally screwed.
Also, anyone have the dark thought that we will lose a tourney game due to poor FT shooting?
I've seen a couple defensive liabilities by Vick.
Has Bragg or Vick seen the floor yet?
So... start fast, stay fast, finish fast. In my opinion we basically have a starting 4 that can do this. Mason, Graham, Jackson and Lucas can stay fast and finish fast. But Svi is in a distant second tier, and everyone else is in a third tier.
All of our starting 4 has won games for us. Heck, Graham won games in his freshman year with defense and ball handling. Jackson is the first swing postman since... Kevin Young... and he has won us a game or two. Lucas has rebounded and defended us to a couple wins. Mason probably won us the last game (among others obviously).
My question for these other guys is "when are you going to win us a game?" Or better yet "how are you going to win us a game." I suppose you could count Svi's game winner with an asterisk as he had been playing pretty poor defense that game. Lagerald Vick, when are you going to use your athleticism to give us 5 steals and 3 blocked shots in 25 minutes?
I don't really know where to start with Carlton. I know he's happy guy, and people like that. But he might need to be a little sad right now. Some self-reflection and a resetting of his personal expectations.
In any case, I'm not so concerned about being #1 right now. It's clear some of our role players must improve their play if we are to be a championship squad.
I'm with @Blown.
Yes, we won, thank goodness. But this reeked of a 2nd round NCAA tournament loss. Our players should be crying angrily in introspection. Better now than in March. Instead, we appear to be happy and celebratory. No wonder Bill Self had such strong words after the game.