Alas, you were born funnier than me, but I keep working to catch up!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
But saying no to what's wrong has to start some where.
Yup.
I agree, but I would. hate for my fellow Jayhawks to suffer quite so much angst! Me included . 😄
The rebounding deficit was hard to understand.
Composite 5 got a stellar 15 and Frank got his good for a point guard 4.
It seemed the 2, 3 and 4 positions could not grab their share.
PHOF
Someone said KU was schooled by Harvard despite KU actually winning the game by 5 or so.
This assessment got me to thinking about getting schooled in this way.
What if KU were to win every remaining game by 5 and win a national championship title game by 5?
Would anyone like to get schooled in this way?
I always used think getting schooled was a bad thing.
But getting schooled by winning by 5 makes me see getting schooled in a new light.
Maybe getting schooled is good?
If Self were really to believe he had a chance for any of the reputed Nike lean domestic big men, I would agree with you.
But I don't think Self appears to honestly believe he has much chance for any of them, same as he apparently doubts he has a prayer in heaven of signing any Nike lean domestic OAD point guards. It hasn't ever happened since 2008 at least. What has changed this season? Diallo was a guy that only Self, who appears to have been cut out of all the domestic OADs, was willing to take a chance on, until Gianni the Squid got desperate late, and Mullins anticipated the Under Armour donation to St. John's and tried to take a risk on Diallo.
The recruits just aren't apparently brand jumping with sufficient frequency for Self to try to please them by starting Diallo and Bragg.
LaGeraldo will see some wood after Svi's 1-6 and his meager rebounding. But it depends on how much action Holy Cross runs. If they run a motion offense, Self may wait for a dribble drive, or high-low opponent. Vick, like Svi last season, may not be ready for chasing over the top of a lot of picks. But one way or another, Vick is going to get a look.
Ah, that was better than an AMEN!!!!
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They only won it by five.
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Self wouldn't have won it without the edge of Allen Field House getting him another 1 seed.
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That's the last ring any High-Low team will ever win.
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KU would have gone undefeated, if Self had started Diallo and Bragg all season.
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The Composite 5 that @jaybate 1.0 says got 27 points, 22 rebounds, and 6 blocks really doesn't count as a post man.
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Yea, they won the NCAA National Championship, but they only shot 16 treys in the Finals and you can't keep winning rings doing THAT!
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They wouldn't win a second consecutive national championship next season, if senior Landen Lucas were to return and play 25 minutes in the Finals again.
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Coaches always luck into one on the down hill slide.
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Yeah, they won it all, but they were the weakest KU team to win a championship ever.
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They played just well enough to win a ring; that won't get it done year in and year out.
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C5 and Frank played well, but we still should've got more out of the 2, 3 and 4 positions!
(Note: All fiction. No malice.)
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Try to put Self's .821 W&L statement out of your mind.
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Forget that he has won 11 straight conference titles.
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Hypnotize yourself and give yourself a suggestion that he did not win the ring in 2008.
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Ask your Yogi to give you a mantra that goes "Self was not the winningest coach in college basketball for six seasons."
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Write a paper for a peer reviewed journal on game theory explaining how winning by 5 against Harvard leads to an equilibrium strategy dooming KU to mediocrity.
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Blaspheme against the God of Basketball in order to be cast into basketball hell, so you can wear black leather KU basketball warmups and lead a cult of hell rising up against the naivety and coaching cluelessness of Bill Self regarding who can and cannot play and undermine his credibility to the point that his replacement by either Bruce Weber, or a coach sponsored by the Drake Group, becomes an inevitability.
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Learn to love Rat Face.
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Argue that the evidence is incontrovertible that playing players before they are psychologically and physically ready to play is one of the Ten Anti-Commandments that must be obeyed, or the new Coach Kthulu will end KU's conference title string AND cause KU to be upset by UK in the first round of the NIT.
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Drink an artisan cola, while munching Wolfgang Puck's incredible new Corn Nuts Rockefeller at the Allen Field House Friends of Bilderberg Concession at the new kiosk next to the Phog Allen statue.
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Embrace KU's fabulous success and learn to love it.
Perry is insignificant compared to the vast waste of young players at other programs, where Perry's plight seems to be the norm. Fans and the media are in massive denial about what is being done to the players. What happened to Perry should never have happened IMHO, and it happened largely because of a system unleashed by a few in college basketball that has spread through D1 like a cancer. Increasingly young and psychologically unready guys have be thrown to the dogs, because of the high turnover of early departures. .Perry is everything a parent could want a son to be, and a Kansan could want a Kansan to be. I love and respect Perry Ellis more than you, or he will ever know. He is my kind of basketball player. Smart on the floor and smart off it. He has gotten better each year. But he has paid a terrible price that he should not have had to pay, because of this system. And today's fans are so confused by sudden gratification that they don't realize what a terrific player he is almost completely inspite of the system. People that think my harsh words for Perry's play against Harvard are anything but situational don't get me and don't understand what a good basketball player he has made himself into despite having been forced to play to much too young.
People should be grateful to Self for holding Diallo and Bragg and Svi out of the meat grinder for as long as he has. People that want Self to play these young guys before they are mentally or physically strong enough just don't understand how vulnerable young men are to being hopelessly, needlessly scarred up by this experience. They don't understand and appear not to care.
This is wrong.
And it needs to stop now.
Basketball is NOT war.
War is just one possible metaphor for some of the battles and campaigns of college basketball. Basketball players should not be encouraged and enabled to subject themselves to this stuff in college until they are ready. Coaches should not be ensnared by a system into playing them before they are ready. . If they want to go pro whenever they want let them. But if they come to college string the bow so the coaches have to let them mature enough to play the game without this kind of psychological damage that is apparently going on.
I see the body of evidence quite differently. MPG played by these players says nothing about readiness to perform, nor anything about level of performance. Many, if not most, are like Skal Labissiere. Out of their depth from the start. Playing big minutes against week teams, then being subbed out ASAP when the tough teams expose them. On the teams that have no one credible to replace them against the blue meanies they get punked again and again. They spend their entire single season learning nothing but how to run and hide from blue meanies, and hoping to get drafted on potential. Some do and barely make ripples in the L. Most come back broken like Selden, never quite able to get back on their competitive edge consistently. It's so sad to watch the waste, because it so utterly unnecessary. In that regard alone, it's like the waste of war, but for a sport instead. Large numbers of Boys with talent but too young to think stuff through fed through a meat grinder for the cause of those feeding them through the meat grinder. Tragic, really.
I can't help the evidence.
Self gets fewer draft choice recruits yet sends more to the pros over a ten year period, if I have read the posts here correctly.
To borrow from Bruce Hornsby...
That's just the way it is...
in @DinarHawk said:
he has yet to figure out consistency in the post season.
I've been through this exhaustively recently. My god! His post season record evidences strikingly LESS unevenness than the other top coaches. Other coaches with regular dump truck visitations have won more rings, but have been MORE uneven in their post season finishes. The guy is a consistency MACHINE in pre conference, conference, and post season, compared to other top coaches.
Self just needs regular dump truck visitations to win more rings.
@benshawks08 said:
So yes, Diallo and Bragg should play more.
Based on what evidence should they play more?
If you are going to play them based on ppm and rpm, well, okay, but they are building those numbers against the second stringers Self is pitting them up against to give them time to develop without unnecessary trauma. Those numbers WILL fall once they come up against the best and once they are schemed against based on game video. Look at what Amaker was able to do with a little game footage to study.
If you are going to play them based on natural ability, okay, they appear more physically talented than Traylor and Lucas, but what I am talking about is the mental capacity to learn to do all of the things that a college basketball player needs to do at a D1 level of speed and violence. This has to do with psychological development, not just motor skill coordination. Self seems to understand this. Other fans seem to say they just don't care if these guys are mentally wrecked early from playing to soon, as the stats on the number of players Self has playing in the pros compared with the other top coaches that tend to get more draft choice grade recruits than Self seem to suggest. I can't side with throwing these guys to the dogs. I really believe Perry Ellis was harmed by playing too much too soon, but Self really didn't have anyone else around, even nearly as good as Perry.
Without giving me a body of data that makes your case as to why Diallo and Bragg should be thrown to the blue meanies as punching bags to be knocked off their spots, I have to default to Self. I don't like arguing from authority, because it is something of a fallacy. But I just don't see any evidence that I can use to support your POV, and it is counter intuitive to my experience, and so I am left to look at Self and try to decide if he knows what he is doing as a coach to know when his guys are ready to play and when they are not.
Well, most of the guys that fans have screamed for Self to play more quickly proved why they weren't playing sooner once he did play them. I really can't think of a single player where one can look at him and say, oh, well, Self played a player ahead of him that keep him from developing faster. Everyone cried about Brady Mornginstar playing ahead of Elijah Johnson. OMG!!!! Let's not even talk about how good Brady was in so many aspects of his game and how good his three point percentage was, and so on. Let's just talk about the guys people cry about him stifling the growth of.
EJ? Oh this is too easy. EJ would have completely imploded starting his freshman season. Or his sophomore season. Even starting his junior season taxed him, but he guarded well and shot it well till his shoulder got screwed up. But then he was asked just to glue. After what you saw as a senior, would you have wanted him running the point as a junior? NOT. But then as a senior? He revealed exactly why Self had not turned the team over to him to run for so long. It took EJ an entire season of struggles as a senior to get untracked and he never really did. He had one phenomenal game. But then most persons say he should not have been playing point guard at all, and so had he not been, he sure as heck would not have had THAT game.
Travis Releford? The guy was wild as a march hair. He desperately needed every second of his red shirt season AND his bench time his freshman and sophomore seasons to get ready to play--to get it. No amount of trial by fire would have helped Travis lose his wild hair. If anything, trial by fire habituates what ever your are at that moment. Outward signs were that Travis would probably have been crushed psychologically had he started sooner than his junior season. We would never have gotten those two great seasons out of him. We would have had a marvelously seasoned wild hair; that's about it.
So: I can't look at Self's players that have waited to play and say, "See, if this guy had played when he clearly wasn't ready, he could have been much better." Watch UK. When the dump truck leaves the pile of draft choice grade recruits, some of them don't pan out that season. Even Cal knows that some of these guys are too green. That argument of play'em now is always better just doesn't wash. Hell, I saw guys on my high school team that were wrecked by playing too early.
The start'em and play'em early no matter what; i.e., the trial by fire argument, has always defied long tested common sense in coaching, AND now defies recent neuroscience. Guys that aren't mentally ready, aren't going to learn diddledy squat from trial by fire. You only learn a lot on the job, if you are mentally ready to learn a lot on the job. Those not ready are just going to get burned.
So that leaves me to go look at Self's coaching experience.
Self has been a head coach since 1993; that is 22 years. He has head coached a Division 1 independent (ORU), a mid major in the Western Athletic Conference (Tulsa), a major in the Big Ten Conference (Illinois), an elite major in the Big 12 (KU). He has coached every level of player in D1, from the marginal role players at marginal schools to the greatest prospect since Lebron, and every type in between. The guy has seen who can learn from being thrown to the dogs and who can't be helped by it, if anyone has seen it. He has actually thrown guys to the dogs, and he has actually withheld guys from the dogs. its not like the last 20 some years he has been withholding EVERYONE from the dogs, is it? He has thrown some to the dogs. He threw Andrew, Joel, Brandon, Mario, Sherron, Xavier and Perry to the dogs. He does throw some guys to the dogs and has even watched some of them like Perry get badly mauled by them. Man is it ugly to watch when they get eaten alive, as Perry was. And who could say that it helped Perry, eh?
Okay, pure experience may not be enough to consider. How about Self's mentors? Were they good enough to give him some judgement about this stuff?
Self's mentors include Paul Hansen, Henry Iba, Larry Brown, Leonard Hamilton and Eddie Sutton that we know of. Iba and Brown are considered among the greatest coaches of all time. Sutton was arguably the second or third greatest coach of his generation. These guys seemed likely to have mentioned at least in passing that some guys aren't ready for trial by fire, don't you reckon?
What about Self's insight into the racial variable, if there even were on, in this issue? What if players from different races gave off different visual clues, or different developmental clues, due to myriad cultural differences and different cultural conditioning? Does the white boy from the Oklahoma middle class have anything in his back ground to maybe clue him into when African American athletes are ready for being thrown to the dogs that compares to Self's own white experience, and his own white mentors? Hmmmm. Gee, Bill Self was an assistant to an African American head basketball coach. Hmmmm. Bill Self counts Leonard Hamilton among the men who shaped his coaching ways. How many of the so called elite college coaches EVER in their lives assisted an African American head coach other than Bill Self, the Edmond Kid? Not one I can think of, but I haven't researched it. Coach K? Um, I don't think so. Rick Pitino. I don't recall him assisting an African American head coach. Roy Williams. Nope. not unless Dean and Bill were passing. Surely some other current elite coach assisted an African American head coach, and so had a mentor to help him understand the cultural influences unique to shaping African American player, if any in fact exist, but I can't recall them right now. Can you?
Why does it matter? Well, maybe Coach Self actually understands African American Athletes as well as he understands Caucasian American Athletes, and Russian Athletes, and Ukrainian Athletes, and so on. Maybe he has more than a thimble of insight into what Cheick Diallo and Svi Mykailiuk and Carlton Bragg are going through as human beings from different cultural back grounds and has more than a thimble of sense about who is ready emotionally to play and who is not,when they show up with their 5-star rankings and their projected OAD rankings.
Awww, but considering racial cultural influences is so 20th Century, right. Let's move on.
What about Self's own cultural back ground? Well, he comes from a family of middle class high school educators. That ought to have exposed him to a least a little inherited knowledge of how to deal with teenagers, right? Mom and Dad dealt with teenagers and youth for a living.
Oh, but family values only count today when it involves religion, and religion is rather too sensy of a subject to discuss on a basketball web site.
What about Self's school back ground? Anything happen in his schooling that might have helped him have some insight into when kids were ready to play D1, and when they weren't? Well, um, Bill played in Division I. He played for Okie State when they weren't too good, but he did play college basketball. Maybe that counts for a little something.
But you know, jocks are dumb, right? They don't learn anything about people just bouncing a basketball for four years at a D1 program.
Is there anything else in his school years that might give him a clue? Was he a sharp student as a kid?
Well, Bill reputedly holds a bachelor’s degree in business (1985) and a master’s degree in athletic administration (1989), both from OSU. Not exactly Harvard, but neither is KU. I wish he had a degree in developmental psychology, but he doesn't. What do you want to bet that he has over the years read up on psychology and read most of the books by the great coaches on coaching during those long plane flights recruiting?
What about results? Might results count for anything in America still? Are the results he has achieved at all indicative of a coach that knows a leeeeeeeetle bit more than the average head coach about who is ready to play and who isn't?
Well, Bill wins .821 of his games at KU and he is .753 overall and he HAS coached at at least one program in the pits. The guy has seen OADs come and go, TOO. And Bill's web site list 32 players as having at least bounced a ball a little professionally. Most of those aren't NBA stars. Some never even made it to the actual NBA, just to the D league, or something. But quite a few have made a mark in the NBA itself. Surely the guy has to know something about who is ready to play and who isn't, if he has that many guys in the pros, right?
In sum, Self seems to be the kind of guy that makes me think he should be able to know when Diallo and Bragg are going to be ready for the rigors of D1.
All this talk of Self being in love with Traylor and Lucas is as illogical as Self being in love with Brady Morningstar.
By all accounts Self is a stinging, demanding, relentless task master in practice, and he seems hardly an old softy from what we see in games.
There just isn't any evidence in his public behavior as a coach, or in the harsh decisions he has made over the years regarding who plays and who sits, to suggest that this guy won't cut any player off at the knees that he decides cannot cut it in the role he has assigned.
I keep telling board rats Self is a HARD man.
I just don't believe any body gets as far in coaching as Bill Self has by playing guys that don't deserve to play, and by sitting guys that would be way better than the ones he starts. It is just too far fetched for me to find credible. From my POV, Self has to be striving to the very edge of the envelope of playing the guys most suited to winning games, titles and championships, to have achieved what he has achieved. I just don't believe that it would be possible, much less probable, that Self is so driven by love that he picks inferior players to play because he loves them more than other players, and so wins .821 of his games, 11 conference titles, and 1 national championship. Do you see why I just can't believe you on this? I mean you are asking fans to ignore such vast chunks of reality to believe your point of view that they would have to kind of be engaged in what would feel kind of like a pretend world.
Let me add some perspective on how tough it is to find your position credible on Diallo and Bragg.
Self has to want to win several more titles so he can be considered in the top tier of all time great coaches. Right now, winning three more rings is all that stands between him and being ranked up just shy of Wooden and Coach K. I mean four rings and he is one of the all timers. And he only has another decade or so to do it in. Why in god's green earth would he NOT play Diallo and Bragg right now, because if he loves Traylor and Lucas, if playing Diallo and Bragg more from the beginning of the season would win him a ring this season? It doesn't make any sense! If Diallo and Bragg had a snow ball's chance in hell of winning Self a ring by being played more now, of course Self would do it. Hell, a moron would do it, wouldn't he? And you have to admit Self is smarter than a moron, don't you? I mean surely we can agree that Self is smarter than a moron. And we both agree that even a moron would play Diallo and Bragg a whole bunch up front if he knew it would give him the best probability of winning a national title, right?
All of the above taken together pretty much covers the problem I have with this whole argument that playing guys that don't appear ready is the sensible way to handle young players in order to win a national title. It just doesn't make any sense when looked at up close. It defies what we know about traditional coaching. It defies what we know about neuroscience. It defies what we can infer from Self's record of producing lots of NBA players on relatively less Draft choice grade recruits that coaches like Cal and K. It defies the logic of common sense. And it even defies the logic of a moron being able to decide to play Diallo and Bragg if they were probably the better choice in delivering KU to a national title.
And there is something about defying logic that would even be apparent to a moron that really makes me uneasy with this whole line of reasoning.
So: I'm going to have to side with Self on this right now. All indications IMHO point to working Diallo and Bragg slowly into more minutes as they show they are able to handle them, and as the situations seem fitting for their relative stages of development.
Rock Chalk!
@RockChalkRedlock said:
If Self is focused on developing players why is he wasting his time on Lucas?
Answer: Because that is what the recruiting cat dragged in during the apparent recruiting embargo of top players at the 1 and 5 the seasons Traylor and Lucas were signed.
"WE WILL NOT WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP WITH LUCAS OR JAMARI GETTING 25+ MINUTES A GAME!"
--@RockChalkRedlock
First, not every game, but some games it now appears. As of early this season, it appears KU COULD win a championship with our Composite 5; that is pretty clear after kicking the asses of UCLA, which then beat Kentucky; and Vandy, which appears a credible Top 15 team; and after barely losing to MSU on a 20% trey night. Damn, our Composite 5 coupled with our other four starters playing their A, or B, games is apparently damned good. They have to dip down into really rotten shooting nights to get beaten by a ranked team it seems.
Second, it is almost certain that Diallo and Bragg will get just enough better over the season that Lucas will only have to play 25 mpg against most teams. But isn't it great to know that Lucas can play 25 minutes and we CAN beat whomever we need to beat?
Third, what one really cannot reasonably expect to do is compete even for a conference title, much less an NCAA championship, if Diallo and Bragg are forced to compete as starters at their present levels of development. My god, if Self had been starting them and playing them 25-30 mpg we would probably be .500 at this point. and both of their confidences would now be completely shot, and Self would be removing them from the starting lineups and we would now be looking at starting Lucas and Traylor. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of bringing in a guy like Marcus Lee to prop up Diallo and Bragg the way Cal can flush Skal with only 16 minutes of PT and win the game with Lee (only not against UCLA, of course).
Self is working this very tough situation and milking it for the most it has to offer right now, as he has done ever season since the apparent recruiting embargo of 1s and 5s began to seem to be felt.
I hypothesize the real problem is the apparent recruiting embargo that left Self with Traylor and Lucas as his best bigs in their class. My god, what kind of a position would we be in, if he not been as good at coaching'em up as he is? Holy cow! Can you imagine where we would be this season, if Self had to choose between a completely undeveloped Traylor and Lucas, and a completely sushi Diallo and Bragg? We would be just like last season: a donut team--one with a complete hole in the middle.
Its my belief that if a recruiting embargo were to exist, KU should dare not sit back and let petroshoecos and Hollywood talent agencies dictate to it who can and cannot attend KU based on Big Shoe-Big Agency complex dynamics.
If the apparent Big Shoe-Agency complex were to exist, then KU absolutely should advocate for what independent powers that be that might remain to look into the apparent recruiting embargo and end it.
It is complete inappropriate for Self to have to coach and try to win at a blue chip program with guys of the caliber he probably used to coach with at Tulsa.
I mean, do you really want KU and Self to have to coach this quality of player to a national championship, even if he can do it?
Don't KU and Self deserve the best players available willing to come to KU independent of apparent Big Shoe-Big Agency complex dynamics?
The reason Self wins so much is that he is brilliant, flexible, and ahead of the pack. He copies what works for them and is not fooled by herd mentality into copying what fails.
Take Calipari for one recent example. Call has probably had twice to three times as many OADs as Self has had and yet Self reputedly, as posted on this site sometime ago, has as the most, or nearly the most guys in the NBA. Think long and hard about that. What other conclusion can you come to than Self is doing a vastly better job developing guys for the NBA than Cal is. Whats the big difference in approach? Cal throws them straight into the starting line up first thing. Self lets them grow into their roles and acquire skills at a pace more fitting to their stages of development. Self lets someone that is advanced start immediately. Self holds others back and lets their neural nets grow in and their skills grow in.
Even Cal is starting to get it the minute they apparently cut back on the number of dump trucks he gets in Lexington. Skal is increasingly playing less right now. He's played only 16-17 minutes a couple of games recently. Skal is just another super talent kid physically with neural nets not yet sufficiently grown in and not enough strength and skill to dominate it like the next Jabbar, or the next Wilt. People forget that Jabbar and Wilt spent all those early years actually playing basketball for demanding coaches that made teacher salaries, or worked the Borscht Belt summer teams in the Catskills, and saw their job as developing Jabbar and Wilt in their skills, not just introducing them to the right agent runners and agents, and petroshoeco schleppers. Oh, and Wilt even got the luxury of a year to work on his game in freshman ball, where he learned pressure defense from the guy that invented it, and went to school. Jabbar thought he was pretty well drilled, until he spent that freshman season with UCLA.
The insane thing about today is that today's players have vast resources on developing not their skills as players, which the NBA often does not draft, but on their developing their potentials. Today's OADs are culled for the right height, hops and running gate. They are introduced to the right agent runners, agents, and petroshoeco schleppers. These are the potentials that are drafted, so these are the "potentials" that are developed. The "actuals" are left for someone else to develop.
Going to these two week big man camps is a flipping joke. Have you ever tried to master anything in two weeks? Have you ever met a single 16 year old that could master anything in two weeks, or even take the techniques home and work on them 8 hours a day, 7 days a week over a summer and be ready for Division 1 play? No way. Not gonna happen. Never.
The current system is developing "potential" and leaving "actuals" for others down stream.
The current system is feasting off of the potential and leaving the players undeveloped. Its pathetic. And its why @drgnslayr keeps harping on player development as one possible way for KU to get better. Bulletin: KU and Duke appear to be the only places developing blue chip players, but he is right, they could both do much more. But as long as Self is behind the apparent recruiting embargo eight ball, he has to keep most of his coaches on the road recruiting even more than they used to need to do. So: what is Coach K's excuse? He has dump trucks coming on a regular basis. Its an insidious system; that's Coach K's problem. It rewards the most potential, not the most actual. It rewards the longest stack, not the best team. Sure, a good team squirts through and wins a ring every now and then, but look at the tendencies. Everywhere you look you see potential being rewarded and not actual. Its sickening.
But this is not really about brain science, is it? Coaches have been coaching Self's way for nearly a century, until big money and the NBA started vacuuming guys on "potential" and wasting an incredible percentage of them. This is the NBA's fault. It is wasting these guys potential, as surely as any oligopolist wastes the raw material that it manages when it is in oversupply, given the production levels the system needs. Basic economics. We waste oil on burning it in cars for less than the unit price of a cheap bottle of water, and on free grocery bags, because oil exists in gross over supply relativ to the crucial production uses for which it is irreplaceable, and the energy oligopolists have to find controllable ways to waste what they dare not let others control.
And why shouldn't the NBA oligopoly do it? It costs them practically nothing to do it. They are making (and perhaps laundering in some cases) vast monies that are obscured from, or simply underreported by, the media. Paying some underdeveloped sushi of an OAD $5-10Mil is NOTHING to these guys. They could just as easily wad up a $5M personal check and use it to start a fire in their fire place. Everyone please wake up. adidas can afford to give James Harden $200M to read a few cue cards and wear some tennis shoes. This is NOT cramping their bottom line, even in an EU recession. Anyone that knows a lick about money management grasps why the types of owners that predominate in the NBA scramble to get these franchises. We are not dealing with choir boys among the NBA owners. And these types of human beings aren't sitting around trying to figure out how to develop these players to the best of their abilities. Capice? They are in it to treat them like an extractable, fungible raw material like coal, or oil, where waste is budgeted into the bottom line, just like usable units are, too. This is business in a noncompetitive market. Most of the NBA owners don't even give a shit about winning, or putting a good product on the floor, any more than Ford, or GM or Volkswagen, cares about building the best possible car they can. Value engineering prevails at Ford, GM and Volkswagen. Now even at Toyota, too. Most NBA franchises are "value engineering" their raw materials into value engineered teams to satisfice in a non competitive market place. Its simple, people. They aren't even a little interested in competition. If they were, they sure as hell wouldn't buy NBA franchises fer chrisssakes. They are in it for money management and some ego strokes among their reputed fellow "deep entrepreneurs." Period. Hey, look at me Louie? I got me uh NBA team. I own a bunch uh these guys. And I even got the dopes to front m cash and rent subsidies to build me a new freaking arena, eh? And my accountant, Julius, he says its helping me big time with the Feds. Yo.
So the system vacuums up these underdeveloped sushi OADs (HOW IS THAT FOR DESIGNED REDUNDANCY?) precisely because their accountants, money managers, game theory wielding economists, lawyers, and PR flacks have contributed their expertise so models can be run. And the financial models told them that the tipping point between too much waste and too much developed product with too high of a second contract salary comes when you grab them after one year of college. Screw if most of them are hopelessly unready for this system. Screw if it turns the college game into a joke and reduces the NBA to the National Undeveloped Basketball Association. This is when to take them to gore the ox.
If their analysts tell the NBA differently, then the NBA will start taking players at a different age. If their analysts say draft them at 12, then they will. If their analysts say draft them at 25, then they will. If their analysts tell them to try to reinstate chattel slavery, some of them would probably seriously consider doing it, before their political friends tell them, well, that's just not palatable, even in today's neo authoritarian, let's engage in undeclared war on Muslims when ever the economy can stand it, kinda culture we operate here these days. Capice?
But let's get back to Self and what he is doing out in the wilderness of Basketball Tibet.
Self is proving over time the original wisdom of player development; that is all he is doing. The difference between him and a lot of other coaches is that KU gave him the FU money he needed to do it this way, and he has enough character, and educational legacy (his parents were educators) to try to do what's right for his players at least as much as his limited human wisdom allows.
But even Self is feeling the pressure of this apparent recruiting embargo. In the old days, Diallo and/or Bragg probably would be wearing rouge smoking jackets, because of how skinny, weak, and young they are for big men. Before the OADs days, even in the time I fondly recall as referees at least reading the rule books and trying to call the game somewhat like the rules suggest, big men had to be able to stay on their spots. I mean, staying on spots is not exactly rocket science as an aproach to playing offensive basketball. And being able to sustain a block out even briefly just kinda makes sense before running to jump for the ball right? But not today. Now, because Self has to play this Sushi, even Self has apparently decided that teaching even his long term guys to rebound is kind of stupid. I mean what is the point of teaching team rebounding based on blocking out, if two OADs/TADs of the four guys you have to rotate in the paint haven't a clue about how to block out. You have to teach a new unskilled approach to rebounding, so the OAD bigs and the 3ADs and 4ADs and 5ADs can play on the same page. You have to have Jamari Traylor running around like some 6-7 inch Garo Ypremian shouting "I keek a rebound" each time he allows himself to be pushed under the rim as he runs around trying to explode out of one place unrelated to a rebound for a rebound neither he, nor his OAD friends, is in remotely the right place to grab, but which all might "leap" into without having to have any skill.
But I am whining, right?
So let's get to morality concerning violence committed on the innocent, shall we?
Seriously, don't you feel a little guilty about sending innocent boys into D1 action with blue meanies, after seeing what is done to young men in this game season after season?
I bet Self hated throwing Andrew Wiggins to the dogs his first season. I bet Andrew's dad did, too, and that was probably a big part of why Andrew appeared to play 2/3s speed and appeared to actually run away from the blue meanies every chance he could. It wasn't just to protect him from injury for the draft, though that was probably a big part of it. But how would Mr. Wiggins have like seeing Andrew wear the saddle on his back all that season when Andrew came out of high school a year early, and then had to literally get mugged for an entire season and have to learn to fist fight or wind up in the hospital; that's what it would have been like for Andrew had he put the team on his back. What father wants to see his son punked all season long just because the NBA analysts decide this is the best system for their bottom line?
This entire OAD system needs to be reformed and reformed NOT by the NBA, or the NCAA, or most of the current basketball NGOs looking at this situation, which all appear to be compromised in whom they serve.
The game has to find a handful of untouchables and give them some research money and tell them to figure out what is best for the players, and then try the exact system they recommend for five years before revising it, unless those untouchables say to revise their own plan. The untouchables have to be drawn from a countervailing element of society that know something professionally about this phase of child development, and whose continued career statuses depend on doing the right thing for these young men.
What is going on now is a scandal both because it is unnecessarily ruining a bunch of young men's potentials, and also because it is dumbing down fans into thinking that this new normal is the way it has to be.
Rock Chalk!
And look at Slal having to step aside so that Marcus Lee can come in and do what needs to be done.
And look at LSU losing games.
And so on down the list.
@DCHawker said:
@HighEliteMajor You hit the mark, as usual. The only way that our most talented young players are going to get better is by playing through and learning from mistakes. And, that is in game situations against real opponents, including quality opponents and tight games. Not just practice and not just against much lesser competition.
This flatly ignores recent and accumulating neuro scientific research indicating very young persons (most < 23) with incomplete neural net development may not be able to learn certain things simply because they lack the neural nets needed. Put another way, the acid bath of experience cannot burn in nets that aren't there.
If an exceptionally physically gifted person like Diallo, or Skal Labissierre, struggle against physically inferior opponents, it ought to raise a red flag that such players may just be too young in the neural nets for the level of competition they are at.
There is probably a greater chance of young players' neural nets growing in randomly over the next four months neede to do some of these tasks than there is competing the next 4 months against first stringers and burning in neural nets that aren't there.
Inference: so if Diallo and Skal are waiting on neural net grow in, brief tests are probably all that are needed to see if they are ready to compete. And work in practice and against second stringers is all they really need to work on those neural nets they already have.
Yet again Self has been way ahead of the game.
It may turn out that Self has more guys in the pros now because he has been wrecking fewer of them playing them too young!
Go, Bill, go!!!!
@DoubleDD said:
These two are easily our best bigs
If these two were our best bigs now, they wouldn't need to play and learn, right? They could do better period.
But what we are seeing s they need to learn a lot and get consistent.
To be clear, if they are inconsistent and struggling with the basics against the Harvard SECOND STRING, and the second stringers of the ranked teams, we would probably be hanging Al's every game with them starting and playing big minutes against the other team's best.Look at Skal on UK. Cal can get about 16 mpg out of him against even lesser teams. Skinny freshmen bigs that have never had to slide and guard guys longer and stronger than them really struggle awhile.
For every Anthony Davis, there are 10-20 Skals, Cheicks and Braggs.
Great recall and insight. Your comment also triggered/unfroze my thinker enough to add that Harvard is rebuilding and so there is likely a huge fall off in their backups. When Diallo and Bragg entered first half, they were probably matched up with some weak players. Second half Amaker made a push with his first stringers to come away with an upset and Diallo and Bragg didn't fare as well against the starters.
Composite 5 is averaging a double double and trending up. He is a stud!
The last game he had 14 PTS., 15 REEBS 3 blocks and 2 steals.
And he double doubled against MSU, UCLA and Vandy!
C5 is team strength and very consistent.
By mid season, if he stays healthy and his freshmen components learn help defense and how to read and rotate, C5 could be up to a 15/15 guy with some 20 rebound nights!!!
I mean think how much less wear and tear C5 is going to have than other top big men in the country, whe March comes!!!!!
C5 will be fresh as a daisy and probably beast on the exhausted OADs around the country...
Unless the other coaches start copying Self again!
Coach Self may or may not level with reporters and the public about what a player brings to the mix of the team that is allowing it to blow out several good teams one good shooting nights and hang very close to a good team on a horrid shooting night.
But given that Self wins at .821 over 11 seasons at KU, I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he does in fact know how to fit the pieces of teams together, so as make them efficient enough to win games at a higher rate than most coaches.
Note that what I am saying is not a flat statement that Coach Self never makes mistakes. He does and notes them. He just often does not agree with reporters and fans what his mistakes actually are. And here again, if we were talking about Bruce Weber, I might be inclined to do doubt him a bit more often. But you hold that the object of the game is primarily to win games, this guy just annoys the hell out of most of because he is right .821 of the time.
This Harvard win is a perfect example.
Everyone is upset with the way we played. We figure that if we blow out UCLA, soundly beat Vandy and almost beat MSU on a horrid shooting night, the only explanation to close win over Harvard is Self not coaching correctly, and players not playing correctly.
I myself have taken the players that staffed the 2, 3 and 4 to task.
But let's look at this realistically.
This was something between a cup cake game and a major game. It was kind of a fundamentally sound high mid major rebuilding after five strong seasons.
Could we have beaten Harvard worse than we did if Self had elected to scheme on of his special game plans against Harvard of the kind he might for UCLA, or Duke, or UK, late in the season? Probably.
But we know after watching Self for 11 seasons that he does not mount the same kind of effort for each game.
For a painful example, we know that when he is completely outmatched as he was by UK a couple seasons ago in the first game, Self just treats it as a game for getting experience and trying to practice doing what we do and being who we are. He takes the drubbing and moves on.
On the other hand, we have seen him mount the equivalent of end of season efforts in the early weeks of the season, if he thinks the game will be crucial to the team's resume later in the season.
And we have seen Self approach games everywhere in between, also.
He sends them out flat as a pancake against the lesser of 2 in three days and amps them sky high against the greater of the 2 teams.
He plays the entire team sometimes and allows games to be close in order to try to keep the team rested for the next top opponent.
He sends them out sometimes with a bunch of trick plays early to try to get them some confidence, before later sending them out against other opponents with nothing but the basics of his high low offense and tells them to figure out a way to win it themselves.
Self is also very much like other great coaches in key aspect about personnel for teams. Self picks out 2 to 3 players to be his cornerstones that he crafts the team around. The team is schemed to complement the talents of those 2 to 3 foundation players. The other two guys are called glue guys sometimes, but more importantly, their roles are specifically crafted, scoped and limited so as to provide ONLY what the other 2 to 3 need to beat the very best opponents the team can be expected to run into and hopefully all of the lesser ones.
When John Wooden had great post man Kareem Jabbar, great point guard Mike Warren and great 2 guard Lucious Allen, he picked an extremely limited 6-4 Lynn Shackleford to play the 3, because he could make the corner J, even back before there was a three point basket. Wooden knew Jabbar would be on the low block and would need room to pivot and shoot his J and his Sky Hook. He knew he needed someone to stretch the defense out to the corner to prevent double teaming Jabbar with sagging wings. Shackleford might never have played for another Wooden team in his long career but that particular Wooden team. Wooden didn't really like one dimensional players most of the time. But Shackleford could hit that corner shot in his sleep and so Wooden was willing to put up with his offensive and defensive limitations to get that one attribute.
Remember when Wilt came to the Lakers who already had Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, two hall of famers themselves. They played one season and weren't too good as a unit. Each guy respected the other. But their talents didn't mesh well. Elgin needed to be able to drive into the very area that Wilt was so deadly within for Elgin to really be his best. When the Lakers didn't do well, they brought in Bill Sharman, a former Boston Celtic. Sharman didn't hesitate a second. They shipped Elgin Baylor out and found their own version of Lynn Shackleford, Jim McMillan, a short chunky guy that could drain the corner J in his sleep. Voila, the Lakers became champions.
The rule is not that all of your most talented players have to play.
The rule is that as many of your most talented players that can perform well together have to be on the floor as possible. The rest of the slots have to be filled by guys that can as nearly as infallibly as possible do a specific activity that complements the foundational players. This is the oldest rule in basketball team building. And it causes hall of famers like Elgin Baylor to get shipped out and role players like Jim McMillan and Lynn Shackleford to be the missing pieces that elevate a team into being a champion.
Season after season Self fits guys into the starting, or rotation roles, that bring certain things that the fans don't value to the team, but which make it keep winning conference titles, or at an .821 rate, or getting high seeds in the Madness, or what have you.
To Self, beating Harvard by a couple may be a great accomplishment if it helped him get a little closer to finding the right complementary players to Frank, Wayne and Perry.
Heck, winning by two against Harvard might even be a great win if it exposes that someone cannot do a complementary role the team needs. When Svi choked big time, you never know. Self may have just made a decision after seeing that that, well, Vick may be no thicker than cigarette paper, and he may not be able to do some of the things Svi can do, but well, what we need is some low variance trifectation in that role and so Vick, the Dick Powell of D1, may turn out to be the right complementary player, and not Svi.
Self is like a shark swimming looking for the right bite. He never quits swimming toward the goal. To Self, the Harvard game may have been the greatest win all season so far, because it exposed the most flaws in some guys he thought could do the job, and so aimed him toward the real guys that can be the complementary players.
All I know for sure is that at the end of 11 years at KU, he mixes the foundational players and the complementary players at a rate that wins .821 of the time, wins 11 straight titles, and has yielded 1 national title and a couple deep runs.
The guy most definitely gets it.
He may no like to get his Ws the way some of us would like to get them.
But here is the thing: he probably gets more of them and understands the subtleties of getting them better than most of us; this is just common sense and not an argument to tell others to quit trying to outthink him. I like to learn form him, because I have tried to outthink and haven't done very well. I have plenty of ego for such explorations. :-)
But what I am trying to learn from Self these days is not how wrong he is, but rather why the hell some of these seemingly counterintuitive things he does winds up with us complaining about them and him winning .821 and racking up 11 conference titles and a ring.
He's a wily devil. He knows something I don't. And I want to hang around and figure out what it is.
Rock Chalk!
@Bwag said:
I don’t think your C5 concept is helpful.
With all due respect, what I think you mean is that the logic of it is sound and it gets in the way of what you wish would happen. Isn't that much more accurate?
The studs on our bench aren't playing consistently enough to warrant turning the 5 over to just them.
There are always three things to consider about a player's PT and most fans only give weight to one of the two things.
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Can the player give the coach what he asks for from the position the player plays? Note: this varies greatly from game to game. One game a 5 needs to be able to bang low. The next game a 5 needs to be able to chase and hedge. The next game a 5 needs to be able to run the floor. The next game a player needs to be able to score low against a zone. The next game he's got to be able to go set picks up high. And so on.
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Can he do so at a higher average level per minute played than other players can? Note: this is the angle that most board rats focus on almost singularly.
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Can he do so with the best trade off of average and variance in performance game in and game out, regardless of the kind of opponent that is faced at that position? Note: trade off between average productivity and variance in that productivity giving varying kinds of tasks varying game to game but needing to get accomplished regardless is particularly hard for board rats to focus in on, and write meaningfully about. I am quite aware of this trade off, because I have long used it in my evaluations in my work, but I too find it hard to write meaningfully about it, because so far statisticians are not grinding and publishing meaningful statistics about it yet. Its hard to talk about because the tasks a 5 are expected to do vary a great deal from game to game and influence how much Coach Self is expecting him to score and rebound. Some games Coach Self wants a lot of scoring and rebounding out of a player, because he isn't putting much load on him defensively. Other games its the reverse. Finding stats that indicate these varying loads being placed on a player and the way the alter his likely productivity in scoring and rebounding on a per minute played basis each game is very difficult.
Mostly board rats focus on the player's average production per minute played in points and rebounds and ignore work loads along with those activities. I am even a bit guilty of this in my talk about the Composite 5.
But implicit in my talk about the Composite 5 is that because he is a composite of several players with differing abilities, differing levels of experience, and differing strengths and weaknesses, is that Self is going to being playing each player to achieve things situationally that the other players might not be as good at achieving as the player selected.
KU has kicked ass against against UCLA and Vandy on good shooting nights, and hung in against MSU on a terrible shooting night, in no small part because KU's composite 5 has been able to counter almost everything MSU, UCLA and Vandy big men liked to do. Our Composite 5 got MSU's Costello, clearly the best big man we have faced, fouled up and nearly marginalized him from the game. But Costello is just a very fundamentally sound and experienced big man that we couldn't quite control down the second half. Costello would have had a field day against Diallo and Bragg alone, because they couldn't have made good reads on help with him, he would have pushed them off all spots, and he would have had THEM fouled up in not time, instead of him. The UCLA and Vandy big men we just never allowed to get in a comfort zones, because Self kept coming at them with fresh legs, posing different challenges, and trying to do different things on them.
Until we run into another fundamentally sound center like Costello, who is taller than Costello, and so limits us to having to go with our taller guys only, this Composite 5 of ours is going to be our team's greatest strength game in and game out, except maybe for Frank Mason.
Composite players have great vulnerabilities to a single great player that can do it all. Our composite 5 is MOST vulnerable to a really big, strong rebounding single 5 about 6-10. But, of course, so would be most single players that weren't as great as that single great rebounding player on the opposition.
But right now, we have the best of all possible worlds with this composite 5.
And I haven't even mentioned the best part of this Composite 5: Diallo and Bragg both are likely to improve a lot in the next two months and so the Composite 5 is likely to get a lot better.
Good point. Extending a lead is definitely a reason to play them more rather than less. I wish we could get @JesseNewall to ask Coach Self why that did not weigh more heavily in his decision making.
Sorry, I misunderstood.
I think we would have lost to Harvard, playing Dialllo 20, and Bragg 20. They just didn't seem to be able to handle Amaker's motion offense and help defense. But @Bwag in his post below observed that the lead widened with Diallo and Bragg, so I must have missed the dynamic. What I watched (and seized on) seemed to suggest that Diallo and Bragg were very confused out there.
But here is the thing: though I am disagreeing with you some here, I am not arguing against your basic notion that you've got to get your best guys out on the floor.
If Diallo and Bragg could get to where they were protecting, and making good choices on both ends, they are surely the more talented basketball players.
Their only physical shortcomings are weight and strength, and those will be sharply improved either later this season, or next.
We have this disagreement most seasons. You think playing the most physically talented players, regardless of experience levels, yield the most net benefit in most cases. And I think that Self working them in gradually, while playing to the strengths (even if limited) of the experienced players yields greatest net benefit in most cases.
The lesson I learn form the Harvard game is that playing a lesser, but not inconsequentially talented team, and having your 2, 3, and 4 play from mediocre to poorly, can be offset by playing to your experience in the post, and you can walk away with a W you probably wouldn't get if you didn't.
You think going with your experienced, lesser player in Lucas nearly costs you a W.
To me, I would rather do it Self's way. It seems better risk management. It seems to be part of what makes him win .821 of his games. And it doesn't seem to cost the guys like Diallo and Bragg much at all. Cliff Alexander was about the worst case scenario and had his mother not taken out the reputed loan, and created a situation in which Cliff had to sit out the stretch run, Self made pretty clear that Cliff was finally ready to play down the stretch.
The only advantage to playing Diallo and Bragg big minutes, and maybe even starting them, out of the blocks, is that it might make recruiting OADs easier. But a lot of folks are down on OADs here, and so it seems Self has that covered also.
Nice job.
HC needs some attention.
Really too bad about Clarence.
They tried, though.
Especially grateful you loaded Cooz into the mix.
I remember Cooz coaching the Omaha Kansas City Royals briefly. It was a shame Cooz never got to coach for an organization that gave a damn.
Not going to miss him tattooing us from trey and out hustling us, but I hate seeing great competitors get injured. It like a thoroughbred going down. Ugh! Tough break for Forte.
Yes, I do think that we would have lost the game if Diallo and Bragg had played 20 minutes each the last half. Diallo wasn't making any correct reads on either end. Bragg I didn't keep such close track of, but he wasn't able to stay on spots, or knock others off theirs. And until Self switches to the old "slide of the spots" offense he ran with Withey and Young, I don't see Diallo and Bragg being able to really get in and go toe to toe with any Blue Meanie teams, if they can't do it against Harvard...at least for a couple of months working up to it.
Diallo seems a smart guy. Maybe the neural nets aren't grown in, but a basically smart kid. Can't tell about Bragg, but he may be, too.
But he's got to have some time to make some mistakes.
And that's what he is getting right now.
Diallo will keep getting minutes, and keep getting better.
But he is not used to how much action Harvard ran. Diallo had the same reaction to Harvard's action that Svi had to action last season. He just could not get over those picks last season, and this season he is finally doing it some. Diallo will be the same. They basically ran Duke's offense and there is a whole lot of screening to get used to being done by guys that were basically Diallo's height and stronger. It frustrated him. And the team never really separated, so Self couldn't let him back in the game for an extended period to get his confidence back.
Diallo is a decent talent. But he has always played opponents running simple offenses with guys that were way shorter and less athletic. And when he played in the meat market games against guys his size, no one was running any action. All he had to do was run and jump. Amaker had some video of him and immediately used K's and Knight's motion offense to make him play an X-axis game. It stood out like a sore thumb in his first game. He was standing up straight as a bean pole and running and jumping. He wasn't getting his butt down and guarding anyone; that was a red flag for Amaker. ACTION, he said, the guy doesn't really know how to get down and slide.
It isn't a knock on Diallo to say that he had never had to slide and fight through picks to stay with his man before. He's never done it before. Its new to him. Even in KU practices, he's probably only seen some scout teamers running that sort of stuff, never real D1 talents. Self's multiple offense doesn't run much action. No reason for him to be prepared; that's what these kinds of opponents are for.
Diallo got good experience against Harvard. They were tall and as strong as he was, just not leapers. He got to learn what its like to play on the X-axis with guys you can out jump, but that aren't letting it be about jumping. Diallo will be much better the next game he sees that. And Self will have him watching himself running around like a pogo stick. Self wants him jumping, blocking and rebounding, but Diallo has to understand that he needs to do that AND get his butt down and slide.
Not much paralysis here.
The game I watched would most definitely have been lost had we played Traylor, Diallo, or Bragg another minute. Those three were just not up to the challenge at all yesterday. Diallo showed exactly why Self isn't starting him. Bragg, too. Lucas was our best postman by quite a bit and that's not based on talent, just on guarding the post, getting boards and being able to contribute to the flow of play. These are minimum pre-requisites for playing on a team, so its not like Self is setting the bar too high for Traylor, Diallo, and Bragg. Hunter is the only guy I would have given more time to, to at least see if he could get untracked, but Hunter has apparently been re-condemned to the cryogenic machine, until someone gets injured. Woe is Hunter. He looks like some German or Russian soldier frozen to death in a fox hole at the end of the bench. There is no explaining this treatment of Hunter in my mind, except trying not to look like a coach playing a kid from a small
Regarding the approach to the game generally, there was just no way Self was going to beat the tar out of one of Coach K's guys, or out of one of the nations' most influential alumni bases. No one gets a head in life hanging a century on Harvard for fun.
Be that as it may, the reason the game was such a grind was that our 2, 3 and 4 position players stunk.
Frank was very good.
And the composite 5 scored 14, snagged 15 reebs, blocked 3 shots, and got two steals.
The 1 and composite 5 were the only strengths of the team.
Regarding tempo, Self gave Frank the day off running the team and tried to give Devonte as much experience as he could; that was smart IMHO. Its just that Devonte really didn't perform very well offensively in the point guard role, but maybe he couldn't look very good with the 3 and 4 sucking the hind teats of a passive boar. Either way, Devonte just could not get a feel for pounding it inside once Amaker figured out that Self wasn't going to play to beat him into the next century, and was going to let Amaker clog the paint, so that Self could let Devonte practice playing pound it inside to the the Composite 5 and Perry the second half.
Self is going to work on conventional pound it inside every time we play an opponent that is not very good, but that has some length inside to practice against.
Finally, Jamari really looked bad. He appears completely back in injury mode judging from the lingerie on the legs. I would go so far as saying we probably won't see him play more than 10 mpg for at least a couple of months. After looking pretty springy up till this game, against Harvard, he was moving around like he did last February and March. His legs looked completely shot. Woe is Jamari, if he is this worn and torn this early.
The bad news is Diallo is completely uncooked, not just raw. Facing just a little team help defense, he was completely lost. That really chastened my hopes for him. He will do fine whenever we are playing teams that aren't well drilled defensively. But his minutes are going to fall in a big way against good defensive teams, unless Self wants to take a bunch of Ls the rest of the way in hopes of getting Diallo ready and for KU to make a run from a low seed. Don't see much chance of that, do you?
Diallo has young neural net syndrome. He'll be much better next season, where ever he chooses to play. But man does he appear to have a young brain. And his shot? Don't even ask.
I view this some what differently than most.
I thought Frank was stellar.
I though our composite 5 with 14 points, 15 reebs, 3 blocks, and 2 steals, was stellar.
Who sucked and nearly cost us the game were those that staffed the 2, 3 and 4.
Those that staffed the 2, 3, and 4 each need ZTR lawnmowers doing donuts on their asses for about 5 minutes each.
(Author here [RIP/DFW]: It occurs to me that some board rats here are getting use to me calling attention to apparent hoop asymmetries and waxing positive about KU basketball and so may doubt my willingness to get down in the performance muck and bluntly praise and criticize how basketball is played by our beloved players. Here followeth a post for them.)
Frank Mason, Jr., and Composite 5, Jr., kicked grand old Harvard's butts.
Frank dropped a highly efficient 21 points on the Crimson. The only criticisms of Frank were three TOs, but, amortized over 38 minutes, and coupled with 5 assists, the TOs hardly tarnished his increasingly typical Masonic performance.
The other player to kick Harvard's bookish booties was KU's new super center, Composite 5, Jr., aka C5. C5's consistency and elevated numbers mean C5 now deserves Al Maguire's old Air Craft Carrier monicker. C5hammered Harvard inside for 14 points, 15 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 steals. It was frankly another all-league quality performance from c-5. The ONLY major criticism to be leveled against C5 involved three careless turn overs in only ten minutes by one of the hydra's heads--senior Jamari Traylor, who soon enough felt the wrath of Self for said carelessness via reduced minutes.
Without putting too fine of a cursor on it, if it had been a two on two game, KU would have cleaned the Crimson's chronographs--analog, or digital.
But, alas, basketball was a five on five affair with some rotation players that required a 2, 3, and 4 position player performing respectably to achieve a the appearance of a well oiled ship's clock in barely average-sized swells out on the Ocean of Grass on which James Naismith Court and the USS Allen Field House sail.
And there in, to stack metaphors with indiscriminate abandon, flew the ointment occupying flies.
The buzzing quartet of flies that needed the ship's fly swatter taken to them for their paltry contributions may be nick-named Passive Perry, No Focus Selden, Uneven Graham, and No Touch Mykhailiuk.
We could include TO Traylor to this list, but that would be double accounting of a sort that only Skull and Bonesmen dusting ledgers of Triangle Trade could truly applaud with rum soaked gusto.
Let us now braise infamous ballers, shall we?
Passive Perry aka the alter ego of the team's senior stretch 4, cornerstone and go-to-guy Perry Ellis, aka The Designer, pulled one of his increasingly rare, but still stupefying possessions of Perry Ellis' basketball soul. Aggressiveness? Gone. Decisiveness? Gone. Taking over the game at crunch time? Fuggeddaboutit. 5-11 from the field, no 3ptas, and 2-5 from the foul line constituted over 27 minutes of Division 1 basketball on James Naismith Court, in Allen Field House, on Naismith Drive, a pitiful performance. And it occurred against--shame--a rebuilding Ivy League team coached by the barely above average ex-Dookie, Thomas Amaker (note: no, I am not an Amakisti).
Passive Perry cleared just 4 total rebounds. Passive Perry, KU's stretch 4, a position that should yield 9-12 total rebounds got exactly 0 offensive rebounds. Let's put that in some perspective, shall we? In 27 minutes, Perry never even followed one of his 6 misses inside the the three point stripe and got his own rebound; that is hard NOT to do. To get on with adding perspective, in 27 minutes of college basketball, Passive Perry could not even guess where the miss of even one of his teammates, who were missing 52.5% of the time, was going to go and get their before a bunch of less athletic fellows with the same high IQs that Passive Perry possesses. Passive Perry has been Perry Ellis' nemesis, since he first set foot on Naismith Court back when Perry still had hope of averting amateur status during the Triumph of the Idiots that is the Republican primary of 2015 so far.
Woe is Perry Ellis; that he must still surrender his gifted body and mind to the entity known as Passive Perry. 12 points and four rebounds--the production expected from a 3 on an average day--is not going to get it done at the stretch 4.
Perry, you may not like it, but you are the Daddy of this team. You are the Wayne Simien. The Marcus Morris. The Thomas Robinson. You are it, pal. Don't look over your shoulder, because there is no step Daddy. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Daddies show up no matter what. Daddies keep the lights on and the heater blowing warm enough to avoid frozen pipes. Even top 1% Daddies have to keep going to the Presidential Plunge Protection Team and getting the untraceable e-monies necessary to keep their fortunes ahead and above rising nouveaux pirate families fortunes. Daddies if all socio economic classes have to come to work EFD. On there bad days? On their bad days they work 12 instead of 8 to make up for not being as effective as usual. Daddies are not about IQ, Perry. Daddies are not about brilliance. Daddies are not about laying back against the easy opponents. Daddies are about EFD, Perry. Next.
No Focus Selden aka OAD become TAD become 3AD become 4AD Wayne--No Focus Selden repossessed the mortal soul of our beloved, go-to wing gunner and drive-to-iron guy. The re-possession took away our best go get a basket man, Wayne Selden, Jr. No Focus Selden's repossession of Wayne took away the closest thing we have to swag. It took away the only NBA physique on the team. It left a foul prone, 22 minute, 9 point, 2 rebound, jack of nothing and master of nothing performance. Is there a medicine for lack of focus? Even a flipping placebo? Hell, I will take hemlock for Wayne, if that's the only way. No, wait, I'm not taking the Beezelbub Express for a guy that can't focus.
TO Traylor, uh, no, I already said I wouldn't go there twice. Oh, what the hell!!!! He was lolly gagging around, as if he were licking on a codeine and nembutal bomb pop.
Uneven Graham? He is the nagging alter ego of Devonte Graham. Uneven Graham is the guy that seems to be ruling over his hair style and his hoops decision making and leading him into the valley of the shadow of inefficiency, where we, if not he, fear all evil. The only thing that spared Uneven Graham from a thorough grilling here is those four steals and 4 rebounds, god bless his defensively engaged soul.
Which brings me last but most certainly not least to No Touch Mykhailiuk aka Svi. On a day when he was asked to take op the slack resulting from the possession of Wayne Selden Jr. by No Focus Selden, No Touch Mykailiuk occupied Svi's optic nerves and twisted them into knots, thus leaving him to stink up the floor offensively with a 1-6 anti-shooting clinic and standing 6-8 on the perimeter and towering over most of those guarding him, No Touch Mykailiuk pulled down a whopping 1 offensive rebound and zero defensive rebounds! HOW CAN THIS BE!!!!!!! Has he caught the no rebounding virus from TO Traylor? No Touch Mykhailiuk, at 6-8. and did I say taller than his opponents, and by appearances stronger than them after Hudy-fication, also, cannot shove a single Not Ready for D1 Elite Major Harvard player off a spot and grab a defensive rebound? It is not fair for No Touch Mykhailiuk to become No Rebound Mykhailiuk, also; that violates some kind of universal basketball law that escapes me, but which must be written down somewhere.
There is a simple solution to what occurred in Allen Field House and it involves lawnmowers and asses attached to those that staffed the 2, 3, and 4 positions. It might also require some exorcisms, if the alter egos prove intransigent about relinquishing control of the good players they inhabited.
Next.
But you like Self having such a positive edge on other top coaches, right? And Self has beaten IZZO as much as others have beaten IZZO, right?
Allen had Iba. And Wooden had Newell. And sometimes they never get time to finally figure the tough opponent out. Dean had Wooden's dust for ten full years before Wooden retired and left the stage to Smith and then Knight.
But I am confident Self is circling in on Izzo. Tom just does not make many mistakes at all. He is a very, very, VERY good basketball coach.
OMG!^googleplex
Every one knows Self is going to hunt IZZO down and master beating him. Every great coach has one other good coach that gives him problems for years before figuring out how to crush him. IZZO will fall like a load of virtual manure posts off a destabilization wagon!!
Self will stay in D1 the rest of his career if he has to to master IZZO. He already almost has him knocked. KU was up 11 shooting 20% from Trey! My prediction is:
SELF WILL NEVER LOSE ANOTHER GAME TO IZZO UNLESS KU SHOOTS <25%, or MSU SHOOTS >50% from Trey.
Self will demolish IZZO next meeting!
And Marsha?
I can hardly wait for KU to draw straws on who takes Van Vleet to the hurt locker!!!!!!
Self is relentless at getting better!!!!!
This is what makes be a Self fan so fun. It's like watching a really relentless cat continually corner a mouse. The mouse gets away once in awhile (1.0 - .821 of the time), but sooner or later the cat shreds him to pieces.
IZZO and Marsha: you're next.
Self is more himself than ever after MSU--always resilient and bouncing back and learning.
It is you who are changing and becoming like him.
That is the great good that can come from being a fan. We can learn from remarkable persons like Self.
PHOF
It is never an excuse to talk about factual obstacles standing between you and victory.
In war, if you ignore factual obstacles you die.
In sports, if you do the same, you keep losing.
Get Self the OAD point guard and post man and watch the rings come!
I will point out some obvious holes in this home court bias argument.
First, assume hypothetically that KU really is slightly better than other top teams. KU would win a higher percentage at home than UK or Duke, right?
Second, assume hypothetically that Self puts greater emphasis on winning conference titles than other top coaches, as so many allege here. Then KU would have a higher winning percentage at home over time, right?
Third, assume hypothetically that Self is more focused on overall winning percentage than on post season results, as some here allege. Then KU would have a higher winning percentage at home than the other top programs, right?
Fourth, assume hypothetically Self really is a better regular season coach than all the other top coaches but not as good in post season, as some allege here. Then KU would have a better home winning percentage, right?
I could go on, but the point is made.
These hypotheticals each posit plausible explanations for the higher winning percentage at home. They make as much sense as a building winning games, probably more, and I am among those that attribute some spiritual power to the place.
But here are the most plausible drivers of the phenomenon.
At different times in basketball history different buildings have housed different clusters of teams that gave that building the "highest home court winning percentage." Pauley Pavillion after its first five years absolutely held such a distinction. Then UCLA stopped being so good and Pauley was not so invinceable. Indiana's arena was the best in 1976 I suspect. Now it's not so invinceable a pile of bricks. The Dean Dome? Man, could it out defend and out defend Allen Field House certain years! And so on.
Building winning percentages are the result of play, not the cause of it.
Players feel more at home at home. Players feel less secure away.
Refs favor home teams.
AFH contributes nothing. KU fans contribute something. But fans quit contributing when the winning stops. See?
A program that wins a lot can enhance the home edge. For periods it can seem invincible at home.But it's a constellation of factors driven by winning plAyers, and quality of opposition and so on.
UCLA used to be invincible at home. What changed? Pauley? Or the coach, players and fans?
Finally, having the best home court advantage overall means nothing in isolation. The amount of incremental advantage is crucial. I haven't looked, it's probably small and it's probably attributable variance at date of measure and the fact KU HAS BEEN INCREDIBLY GOOD FOR MUCH OF THE LONG LIFE OF AFH, certainly the last 25 years.
I can remember when Ahearn Field House had a stretch under Winter, Fitzsimmons and Hartman where it was allegedly a tougher place to play and win than AFH.
It depends on what time series slice you take.
But if it were true that arenas create more than money advantages, well, then bully for us and let's research design to make the advantage even bigger. I want to win more and more games and conference titles, because they get you the best seeds!
1.) The keys to Bill's post season problems are:
2.) Not enough of the best players;
3.) Asymmetric seeding;
4.) Asymmetric officiating; and
5.) Bill.
The first four are huge in aggregate, but not much we can alter right now. They will take some time.
Bill has to keep getting better,which he can do and is good at doing. Wooden said it took them a long time to figure out how to win rings systematically, but when they did they got pretty good at it. Bill lucked into one early that Wooden did not. The early win may actually be impeding his learning. But he will get better and figure it out. But will he ever get the players K and Cal get
If you think Self is not up to the post season challenge, you must think Cal and K really suck! They have squandered double or triple the opportunities with way more talent!
You must loath IZZO! Not a single lousy during ring Self's awesome run! IZZO hasn't won a ring since 1999-2000!
You scorn Cal and Pitino! They have both been to the NIT!!!!!!
And this is just a raw, unadjusted comparison with Self.
Imagine if we took into account the increasing asymmetry in seeding and refereeing that Self faces in post season that these other coaches you must find competent don't have to deal with.
With their players, their seeding, and the refereeing they are getting apparently for the sake of eyeballs, betting and shoe sales, would Self ever NOT get to the FINAL FOUR? Would Self ever NOT WIN THREE RINGS OUT OF FOUR?!
UCLA pops UK's fantasy 87-77. Welcome back to the 6-deep stack, Cal. Eh, don't cry for me, Lexington...this was nothing more than an off shooting night (UK shot 32% from trey and 38% overall to UCLA's 53% and 46%). Put it this way: UK only looses to ranked UCLA by 10 on a night when Labissiere gets four early fouls and plays a whopping 16 minutes, while the rest of the team can't hit the side of a UK booster's overblown ego.
Jim Boeheim gets to serve his 9 game suspension sooner, rather than later. Jim is serving 9 games when it should probably 50 to life at hard labor in the perversion penitentiary. This is a very tough call. Who should shoot himself in the eye socket and put himself (and the rest of us basketball fans) out of misery? Boeheim, or Emmert? I pick both. No, its only a game.
Jay Bilas announces the 68 team Bilas Index which is to basketball prognostication what a prophylactic is to a Great Sperm Whale--a hopeless attempt at containing that which is too big to be contained.
Self has gotten plenty of these poisoned valentines over the years about KU being ranked 1st. Stick it to RATSO, Bill.
Self has to know this team is full of guys who need help believing they belong at the top. Frank from Towson State. Jamari from abandoned cars. Perry and Wayne the can't miss 5 star and OAD that have hung around for years getting punked by opponents. Hunter the top 50 postman no one wanted after UArk. Devonte the kid who came in exchange for a selfie. Svi the all everything Ukraine Kid who couldn't guard over a pick in d-1. And so on. Diallo the guy they won't even clear. Landen the 5 year project. Self has to keep pumping these guys up. They have chips and doubts.
If I had known he were Hornsby's kid, I would have set up a scholarship just for him, on the condition Bruce would sing The Way It Is at each game against a ranked opponent!!
@SoftballDad2011 said:
I so badly wanted to comment that you had put some cheese in the trap...
It seemed a no lose proposition at the time.😄
Also, if we can't cover it with the Greeks, we may have to dust off our pre-Hellenist research spectacles and see what the Cycladics and the Minoans have to say about our coach!!!!
Achilles and Hector!!!!!
Getting to the classic archetypes!!!!!
What makes Self so impressive to me is that he has this Achilles streak that extends right up to a breaking point, but then the Odysseus in him keeps him from breaking. Few coaches have this quality. Wooden had it. So does K. They go much farther with what they believe in, but then find a flexibility inside not just to bend a little, but redirect greatly, then once the stress is gone to come back on course to the objective, or the goal.
Howling!