🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@Barney

The first half yes.

The question is: during a half time, why couldn’t a hall of Fame coach just say, play straight up M2M. No tricks. No reads. Silvio, follow Paschal wherever he goes. Mitch, do the same, whenever Silvio needs a blow.

BShark said:

Sometimes Self makes mistakes. Weird I know.

I don’t find mistakes weird.

I find not making obvious adjustments to mistakes weird.

@KUSTEVE

Hope u r right, but Self is a hard man, when it comes to what can make the team better.

@HighEliteMajor

I didn’t speculate that Mitch took an eye steak from a Lawson, but it’s an interesting hypothesis I recall some posing after I noted possible team chemistry problems early on with Svi and Malik.

But if Self were to have Doke, Silvio, and two Lawsi, and with Vick taking the Adios Express, along with DG, Malik and Svi, Self desperately needs trey guns, not 5th or 6th bigs without trey guns.

The looming shortage of trey guns is the evidence that dovetails with the two game no play.

Eye steaks for Mitch from Lawsii still seems outside the flashlight penumbra, until more turns up.

@HighEliteMajor

Exactly. Self pulled in his horns the entire game, drove it, Silvio had a better first half than Doke and a rotation of Silvio and Mitch would have massively outrebounded Doke’s debounding, once Nova blew 35% cold, as they predictably did. What was needed was a double post to match up with Nova. Silvio and Mitch were a much better match up than 1 kneed Doke and combo guard Svi. And Self could have rotated 1-kneed Doke for 5 minute blows for both.

How many teams as good as “the find-a-way boys” became have you seen that could not make a run the second half, when a hot first half team blew cold the second half? Not saying win, but close the gap. It was looney that KU could not close the gap down to 10 by the end.

Self looked completely not himself in post game interview. He looked almost guilty, rather than shell shocked. He showed no fight in the game at all. He coached this one as passively as he coached the Stanford loss.

The pieces don’t fit.

@FarmerJayhawk

I wonder if President Trump might dispute you now?

@JayHawkFanToo

I agree. Playing 6-7 in a game in the FF is NOT what this is about.

IT IS ABOUT WHICH 6-7 he chose to play. His hands were no longer tied as earlier in the season. He could have set Doke the second half and played either Mitch or Silvio who appeared to offer much better matchups against Paschal than Doke.

He could arguably have set Doke and Svi and gone with Silvio and Mitch for better matchups on guarding the trey and rebounding, since Self decided to drive and shoot so much inside the trey stripe the last 20. Svi’s unsuccessful drives could have been redistributed to DG, Malik and Vick.

Self made some very peculiar choices.

Silvio looked much better against Nova the first half than Doke did IMHO.

But Self went all in the final 20 with a guy with what appeared a weak knee, weak FT stroke, and according to Self’s post game no experience “guarding out there” apparently unable to guard the trey stripe.

Silvio appeared perhaps the strongest hope we had the second half and Self did the sit’n’fergit with him the final 20, while Doke appeared overwhelmed.

Silvio appeared physically able to have hustled out to the corner and denied those uncontested threes KU gave up, if simply allowed to play straight M2M on Paschal.

It didn’t take a defensive read to follow Paschall every where he went and get a hand in his face. Heck, Mitch could have done it also. The only KU big that apparently couldn’t have was Doke. So: what was Self thinking?

What gave with playing Doke a full monte the second half, when Self thought in post game he could not guard him outside, and appeared unable to score or rebound or rim protect productively inside?

Silvio made mistakes the first half, but he could actually stay on the floor with their big guys that first half.

I have waited a long time to post this to see if any one else picked up on this peculiarity of Self not playing Silvio the second half when Doke was taking a beating.

Another question: why didn’t Self go double post and play Silvio AND Doke at least 5 minutes each half?

Silvio or Mitch it appear now and then to have been better fits than what Self tried.

The NO PLAY of Mitch stood out like a sore thumb in the Finals. KU needed some one to guard Nova’s bigs on the trey stripe. Mitch was the only guy up to the challenge. Self DNP-ed him, except may be the last minute. Very, VERY ominous sign.

Cunliffe went in cryogenesis sometime shortly after becoming eligible. He was behind some good players. Okay. But one of them was Vick they would reputedly have us believe is movin’ on up, to the east side, to make room for some hot young guns. If starter Vick can’t see daylight as a senior, Cunliffe must be looking out of the cryo ice into something after midnight.

So: are Mitch and Sam the next to seek greater opportunities elsewhere?

I don’t have a good feeling about Vick’s departure.

Vick played 3rd most average minutes and averaged 12 ppg. Not bad. He started in a Final Four, too. Impressive. But an awful lot of guys have started as 3rd or 4th options in the FF and never played in the NBA.

Further, Lagerald shot only 37% from trey land and only 67% from the FT line. And he wasn’t big and strong enough to not need a lot of help on defense against true 3s. Everyone in the NBA is as good as Bridges. Self could find quite a few guys that could give him those numbers.

Langford’s hype says he could, maybe more, but we all know how rarely 5-star freshmen can step in and fulfill the hype that first season, especially on defense, for Self.

Vick is probably going to have to play D league, or overseas, unless I am missing an aspect of his game, so, he should have stayed a senior season, even as a sixth man, and gotten a degree and Self should have wanted him to, if things were good between him and Self, and there were no skeletons in his past from his association with LB, nor stuff we don’t know about the last two seasons.

My antennae often go up about players, when their mothers, or fathers, start explaining what appear odd situations, especially early departures.

Lightfoot appeared the guy that should have gotten pushed overboard to get Langford, not Vick, under normal circumstances. Lightfoot was the guy given the ominous “Bill-Self-no-play” the last two games. Rotation guys that suddenly get the no-play the last game or two are at significant risk historically of shortly saying (or having their parents say) how much they have loved their time at KU, but feel its time for them to move on.

Don’t get this situation.

Feels like more than Langford availability and already signed recruits.

Maybe more to the story?

@Lulufulu

It was the realm that protaganist Billy Pilgram intermittently time-travelled through, in the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Slaughterhouse Five,” when he came unstuck in time with Miss Montana Wildhat on their way to the geodesic dome on the planet Tralfamadore with a cyanide atmosphere outside the dome to be observed mating by the super beings of that culture. 🤓

Hawk8086 said:

@jaybate-1.0 I didn't expect any news to come out during the sacred cash cow tournament.

Agreed. That’s why I was asking after. Wondered if any bombs had dropped immediately after?

@dylans

That appears pretty stiff pre punishment preparation.

Do you suppose the university will gave back any of its ill gotten gains Stumpy’s success brought in?

FAT $&@)”?!ing CHANCE!

Its like those rumored reports of a broadening investigation kind of went into the chronosimplastic infindibulum.

F-

As in abject failure.

Same as last year.

And all the years before.

The man appears the sport journalism equivalent of the leper with the fewest fingers and least brains.

Lulufulu said:

@jaybate-1.0 Ahhhhhh dripping with sarcasm, I love it!!

I think of it as playfulness with love for a fellow Jayhawk fan-zoid. :-)

What we all post about here is entirely recreational and well meaning--things to distract us from an apparently looming WMD fight for control of those Trans Eurasian Super Corridors that Russia and China have built and are expanding iwithout the western central banking owners having financial control of them. Here is to living to see another apparent Carney next March and April. We should be so lucky.

And Buffer 2

And Buffer 1

justanotherfan said:

They dominated all season. They dominated in March. They dominated the title game. Hats off to them.

Um, they didn't win their mid major conference.

Interesting sense of dominance you have.

When Manning and KU did that sort of thing back in 1988, they were called Danny and the Miracles.

P.S.: I beat you to hats off to them, too, right? :-)

Rock Chalk!!

@DCHawker

They are as good as any Nike EST team that has had the apparent benefits of apparent seeding and whistle asymmetry.

But this is exactly why I call it the March Carney in recent years.

Apparently legal entertainment values have in recent years appeared to deny us a sufficiently level playing court to call it a tournament with a straight face. Capice?

They appear as good as any other NIKE-EST champion that has performed in a recent Carney.

I don't see why that grinds aliases so much.

Its just how things apparently have been and remain.

FWIW, we might have a glimmer of hope--I know, call me a bleeding heart conspiracy theorist--of getting a level playing field, if the reputedly broadening FBI investigation triggers a clean up of the game, if it in fact were to actually need one.

Alas, last I had read, the reputed investigation has so far only identified an adidas exec as being allegedly involved in improper recruiting conduct, even though there were a clump of reports apparently from outside the FBI that the FBI investigation might have broadened. Hmmm. As a layman fan, that still doesn't give me great expectations the FBI will take on legacies addressed so long ago by the late Murray Sperber in 1990's "College Sports, Inc.," and by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger in 2000's "Sole Influence. Whew those books were written a long time a go now. I wonder if the statute of limitations have run out on that stuff? Some times I really wish I had gone to law school just so I could understand a leeeeeeeeeeeetle bit of what's going on in NCAA D1. Still kind of confused about Easygate down at UNC fer one exemplo.

Oh, well, we made it through another season and KU acquitted itself mighty fine overall--better than I had hoped for a good part of the season. And our guys showed once again that amazing things happen inside the crimson and blue uniforms still!

And in the now lengthening apparent Carney era, we have a successor to those three recent paragons of college basketball virtue: Ten Stack State, Nine-Stack-and-a-Cloud-of-Jewelry State, and Easygate State. Alas Apparent Embargo State, er, KU, has not been in their class lately, relegated as we have been to competing for lowly conference titles in a lowly Power Conference--conference titles I might add that turn out not to even be necessary for a one seed in a cupcake regional. In the places of the apparently asymmetrically Big Three, we now have--drum rolls please--Villanova.

Is this progress, or what?

Investigations? We don't need no stinking investigations!

And as per usual, conspiracy theories are for suckers.

Rock Chalk!

JayHawkFanToo said:

@jaybate-1.0

SMH. Gee Wally, all that for nothing...

NCAA Basketball Titles by conference in this century

• ACC - 7 (3 different teams)
• Big East - 6 (3 different teams)
• SEC - 3 ( 2 different teams)
• Big 12 -1
• AAC - 1
• PAC - 0
• Big 10 - 0

You were saying? Equivalent to the Missouri Valley Conference? Are you off your meds or perhaps trying new meds of the recreational kind? :smoking: :smile:

The Big East has more titles than all the other conferences combined not including the ACC.

Ooh, I love it when "I get to you."

It makes me want to run some "attack graphics."

Howling!

Note I never said they weren't once a great basketball conference.

Howling!

@AsadZ

I would like to give them due credit, because they are a daring, competitive, talented and innovative bunch with the pieces of a champion and Jay did a great job of coaching them, but...

The apparently aymmetric tourney seeding and whistle dynamics don't really allow them to prove it. They deserved a tournament lacking those dynamics to show they could do what they did on an apparently level playing field. But either way I can admire them AND believe we can't know what they might have done on a level playing field.

Try to remember what Self said post game. He said it as gently as he could and he tried to say it so he did not sound like a sore looser, but he usually tries to tell the truth when it won't hurt his team strategically in up coming games, or in recruiting. He said that he really felt that KU was finally exposed; that KU had been playing over its head, and by implication masking its missing pieces for most of the season. And his further implication was that KU had gotten lucky both with facing opponents in conference that were so limited themselves that they could not expose KU's weaknesses, and that it was some luck that Duke had shot 24% against them, or they wouldn't have made the Final Four. I admired Self for being both candid and for not using it as an excuse. It was just a fact. The KU team got a lot out of a little and got a good run of breaks and then ran into a team with all the pieces on a good shooting day, and, while he may not have expected to be blown out quite so badly, he really wasn't surprised at Jay Wright having both the insight and tools to exploit the flaws in his team of overachievers trying to compensate for some big missing pieces.

Back to Nova.

Nova played a TTech team with a green coach that the wheels had come off from after KU beat and exposed them the second time.

Nova played a Huggins team with little trey game that KU, a team with big holes, beat twice.

Nova played a KU team with big holes.

Nova played a Michigan team with practically no trey game.

These opponents were ideally suited for Nova to not only beat, but to blow out.

I don't even recall the cupcakes they played in the first weekend.

But there is more.

I was so wrapped up in the shooting of Nova against KU that I really didn't watch their defense. So: I focused closely on Nova's defense vs. Michigan. They cheat more on defense than any team, since Ben Howland's UCLA team brought the Hack'n'Slap to the Final Four that season UCLA beat KU with the hack'n'slap.

Nova hooks on defense more often and more subtlety than any other team I have ever witnessed. They were fabulously well drilled on hooking. They hooked Michigan on almost every possession with multiple players doing it simultaneously; this is exactly the same approach as Howland's hack'n'slap, or Huggins' muscling everywhere all the time for stretches. The refs simply cannot call it all even if they want to. But what made the hooking so effective for Nova was that the refs were apparently going to no call the hooking whether they did it a little, or a lot. When a team is allowed to muscle, or hack'n'slap, or hook anywhere all the time, you simply cannot tell how good their defense really is. I am confident they were doing something comparable to KU also, though I have not gone back to look.

So: I think Nova is a marvelous team.

I think Jay is a terrific coach that has taken the game to a new offensive era.

But because of the apparent asymmetries I cannot tell exactly how good they were.

KU got its head handed to it even in the second half when Nova was only shooting 35%.

It was an almost perfectly ineffective game plan...so ineffectual KU could NOT gain ground on a team shooting 35% for 20 minutes; that is the proof in the pudding of how completely wrong Self's calculated gamble to help all out on Bridges and leave their bigs open.

Jay Wright actually held it down to 95-79. It could have been so much worse, if he had really exploited us in our demoralized state.

But, hey, some folks think the Big Mid Major is stilla great basketball conference after all the defections of recent years.

And again, there is nothing wrong with playing and betting everything to win and taking the related risks to do so, and crapping out big time.

It is not a criticism of Self to say he bet wrong.

Basketball is a strategic undertaking in which players move and counter move. When you guess right betting everything winning and execute and the opposing coach bets wrong, you win big.

Self bet everything on lane jumping against UNC in the semifinals of 2008. He could easily have crapped out and UNC would have blown us off the floor. As it was, they came roaring back the second half and gave us all we wanted.

If Jay Wright had decided to pull in his horns and play entirely through his greatest match up advantage in physical size and athleticism--Bridges over Vick, Self's strategy might well have worked beautifully and we would now be thrilled by another Selfian victory.

But Bill guessed wrong this time, and Jay guessed right. Jay played his own version of take what they give us. Jay said if you are going to let us shoot the corner trey with our bigs, so you can hold Bridges to ten, then fine, we will shoot the corner trey with Paschall.

Further, Jay said, if you are going to give us the 28-30 footer, we will take it every time DiVincenzo gets an open look there.

Anyone that plays even a little bridge understands the guy with the most face cards and points can best play the game of ploy and counter ploy.

Jay had MORE face cards in a there point shooting driven game; that's why Self tried to beg the referees to make it into a short trey game, but Self was kidding himself even thinking for a moment that they would do so given he was up against a NIKE-EST opponent. It was silly of Bill to do it, and he probably knew it, but he just didn't have any other ideas apparently. So he bet everything on trying to keep it from being a three point driven game and Jay promptly recognized what he was doing and said early on something like, "Fire away boys. We're aiming for 40 3ptas this game."

drgnslayr said:

The real problem was that Nova guarded aggressively on the trey line.

IMHO the real problem was that Nova's guys were trained to shoot where KU gave them open looks and KU's guys were trained to shoot where Nova's defense denied them open looks.

In turn, KU either shot a low percentage on its threes (below KU's average), or did the even more foolish tactic of taking the given 2 pt attempt futilely hoping for refs to call fouls they were NEVER going to call in such a contest given the opponents.

Everyone has to remember there are two structural things going on in this March Carney--two tracks if you will--biasing outcome.

1. Seeding and whistle asymmetry appear to be favoring non adidas EST teams and lo and surprise, surprise, not one but two EST teams made the Finals and neither was an adidas team. UM used to be, but I think they shifted, didn't they?

2. The three point line is biasing outcomes toward good three point shooting teams and toward teams that are good at guarding the three point shot. And lo and behold three good to exceptional trey shooting teams--Nova and KU, and Loyola-- and two teams three that were either exceptional or solid at guarding the trey stripe, made 3 of the Final Four. And Michigan, the fourth, though not a good trey shooting team, was actually very good at guarding the trey stripe, forcing Nova to opt for shooting only 27 treys.

Not surprisingly, the team that won the Carney was:

a.) the best trey shooting team;

b.) the best at guarding the trey;

c.) from the EST; and

d.) contracted with Nike.

What a coincidence.

@Texas-Hawk-10

Here is how I would respond to your defense.

I would recruit two DiVincenzos that can easily shoot 45% from 28-30 feet if that's all they train to shoot. I would send DiVincenzo1 into a seam of your zone, collapse it and pass out to Divincenzo2 and leap out to a 10-15 point lead the first ten minutes, and then smack you around on defense and literally muscle you into the two point zone, or sucker you out to the 28-30 feet range you have not been trained to shoot from and start scheming for my next opponent at half time, while telling my team to continue beating you into the next century the first ten minutes of the second half, while milking the clock the last ten and letting the scrubs play. Occasionally, I would have a PG drive into the lane in a nice big arc and taunt you at the basket and then kick out to wherever your zone and two weren't. I might even take and make the open two once just to humiliate you.

This was easy.

And I could come up with many more counters to whatever you come up with, same as coaches have always done playing mostly inside the stripe. Punch and counter punch can be played any where on the court. The question is: who has the new Doomsday Weapon and who is wielding the previous one that can't match the new one?

What you are struggling with is that we create shots now right in the middle of smaller defended areas within 22 feet of the basket right now and no one thinks twice about doing so, because that's how its always been done. THE SWATH is a huge area to defend with huge areas to enter and exit it on both sides.

I am not even a little concerned about beating you shooting treys from 28-30 feet with two DiVincenzos and taller bigs than yours that can't range more than 15 feet from the bucket. Its a piece of cake.

You've just got to get used to the change the trey causes.

We have traditionally guarded the area near the basket because that was the place to create the most points per possession.

Now we know TALL players can shoot QUITE ACCURATELY FROM THE CORNER AND DIVINCENZOS CAN SHOOT QUITE ACCURATELY ANYWHERE IN THE SWATH.

Since the combination of the bigs shooting corner treys and the DiVinenzos shooting anywhere in the swath can be inferred to yield a higher PPP than the traditional offense geared to go get a basket 25 times near the trey stripe and the rest of the time in the two point zone, regardless of how you defend the swath, THE SWATH RULES.

No-one now thinks twice about two hand set shooting being superseded by shooting with leaping athleticism and height.

No one now thinks twice about hook shooting being superseded by trey shooting and help defense.

Soon no one will think twice about all the driving for short treys and the 50/50 balance of treys and 2s being superseded by more and more trey shooting eventually moving toward an asymptote of nearly complete trey shooting.

Oh, there will always be some tiny amount of two point shooting, triggered by asymmetric distributions of abilities. But over time, the future of three point shooting ascending toward the asymptote is so bright, one has to wear shades.

Fightsongwriter said:

They forced us into the lowest of all percentage options and again made us look foolish.

Great insight.

Nova is very skillful and well drilled about letting guys they think cannot beat them have open looks, while at the same time forcing good trey shooters inside the treys tripe.

Nova did this to both KU and UM.

But to give Self some luv, KU shut 6-7 210 lb AA Bridges down to 10 measly pointswith a combination of a combo guard and some big man help, and literally giving Paschal a bunch of open looks betting Paschal could not beat them.

Jay's defensive gambit worked.

Bill's failed. Paschal bombed us back to the stone age.

But if Paschal had choked, or even just shot a little under his trey average, that 10 point lead at that point probably would only have been a 5-7 point lead and Garrett's misses would not have been quite so devastating.

Self was trying to do what he always does, when a team shoots lights out the first half: ride out the opponents best flurry of punches the first half, and chip away at the lead, while showing as few wrinkles and adjustments as possible the first half, so he has as much in his bag of tricks for the second half and as so as muchelement of surprise in his adjustments as possible.

Jay has coached against Self 3 prior times, knows his tendencies, and bet he would respond this way. Jay also anticipated that it was likely Nova's trey shooting would fall off sharply the second half, which it in fact later did (Nova shot 50% the first half and 35% the second half).

Jay responded with impressive clarity of analysis and conclusion in the heat of the moment. Many coaches would have begun defending the lead with about 6-10 minutes to go. They would have converted to a lot less trifectation and a lot more milking the clock to get to half as quickly as possible. Instead, Jay had his Cats keep shooting treys, as long as they were falling. Everyone was taking them. It was one of the most impressive halves of shooting I can recall. They mixed in a few quick dunks, too. And they (and the refs) did NOT put KU on the line the first half, which is one of Self's tactics for chipping away at big leads. Self likes to hurry down and play for the short trey, hoping to quick score and stop the clock for some FT points while the clock is stopped, which then gives his defenders a more controlled situation to defend afterwards and so more stops and so more hurries up the court to quickly play for a short three again. But Nova and the refs (you can never talk about Nova, or any other NIKE-EST team, in the CARNEY without the refs in the same breath) kept the clock ticking with no calling and Nova kept shooting treys. It was the perfect counter to Self's tendency. KU could hurry up but couldn't stop the clock and get to the line for short treys. Hence, KU's tactic actually fed into and actually enabled what Nova was doing. KU effectively was shortening its possessions (without getting a foul or a short trey) and so giving Nova MORE 3 pt attempts! Then add in Self opting to use help to contain Bridges and let the Nova bigs take open looks and beat us if they could, and Paschal shooting lights out, and, well, you have what happened down the stretch of the first half--a blow out.

Self and KU fans should not feel too terrible about what happened.

The identical thing happened to Michigan in the Finals.

Self and Beilein built teams to face most of the teams they would meet this season. They had, frankly, never seen a team with six trey shooters--two of which were bigs. Further, neither had probably ever faced a team with not one, but two, maybe even three 3 point shooters with NBA range from three.

Against Nova, you have to defend the college three in the corner against Nova's long bigs, which means your combo guards can be right there and they can still shoot over them without getting blocked. But what's worse is that your combo guards can't just defend the trey stripe, or even just 2 feet beyond it. Nova had two perimeter players that could bury it from 28 feet and they DiVincenzo may have the best reliable range on a jumper since World B Free. I mean DiVincenzo is simply a Doomsday Weapon from outside. Self was talking about how KU's bigs had never guarded the trey stripe and so there were compromises in defensive scheme that had to be made for their limitations that way. Well, what he wasn't saying was that KU's combo guards had never had to defend that many guards and forwards out THAT far!!! And you saw the same phenomenon on Michigan, too. Nova's guards and forwards could shoot farther out than what KU and UM players were trained to defend against. Nova's bigs could shoot farther out than what KU and UM bigs were trained to defend against. Michigan defended a little better, but only a little.

We are talking about an order of magnitude increase in three point shooting range and accuracy with this Nova team at all positions. Neither Self, nor Beilein, could scheme any defenses that would work. The magnitude of Jay Wright's accomplishment is hard to gauge accurately. Wright faced three of the wiliest defensive coaches in the game in Huggins, Self and Beilein. If anyone could have schemed a defense to stop Nova, one of those three would have been among the most likely to have done so. In this perspective, Jay Wright achieved an absolutely towering accomplishment. From another perspective, as a friend of mine noted, Huggins, Self and Beilein had among their least talented teams in years and each of their teams were conspicuously missing pieces that doomed them from the start against a team with all the pieces. WVU was a poor shooting team. Self had no bench and no rebounding and no 3. Beilein had no three point shooting. So: from this perspective, Jay had a flipping cake walk, since his team not only had all the pieces of an NCAA champ, it also had an unprecedented edge in number of trey shooters at all positions and an more or less unprecedented edge in number of trey shooters with NBA range, and a coach that has been among the first to recognize that always shooting more treys (Nova shot 10 more than KU and 4 more than Michigan. But remember, both those numbers reflect game totals in blow outs, when KU and UM were forced to shoot a bunch of desperation treys they didn't want to shoot the last ten minutes of the blowouts. In the first half, of both games, I would hazard a guess that Nova fired away from trey the first 10-15 minutes of each half a significantly higher frequency than both opponents than end of game stats would suggest.

Finally, let me echo what both Self and Beilein, two fine defensive specialists indicated: Nova played a stifling defense and rebounded well. How do they play such fine defense with players ranked below the top 75 players in their recruiting classes?

Well, for one thing, it appears The Top 100 list either:

a.) apparently emphasizes players with put it on the deck and go create a basket abilities far more than defensive abilities, or rebounding abilities, or three point shooting abilities, or arm-hooking abilities; or

b.) those that make the Top 100 lists don't know their butts from first base about who can play, because they are too busy sucking up exclusively to POWER SUMMER GAME TEAMS.

KU and Michigan also brimmed with guys The Top 100 yahoos missed on, but Self and Beilein were still too mesmerized by guys that "could go make a play" even to recognize the insanely good trey shooting athletes that Coach Wright cherry picked most likely to significant degree from Jesuit Roman Catholic basketball feeder system. This of course does not explain why Notre Dame and Georgetown failed to find these incredible young men Wright assembled and coached up.

Increasingly, while I steadfastly acknowledge the apparent NIKE-EST biases of Carney seeding and whistling, and the random luck of recruiting and injuries, I recognize that a few coaches just accept the dominance of the trey unconditionally and others still cling to keeping it ghetto-ized in the 15-25 attempts per game range. Increasingly, it appears there just are a few coaches that recruit to build potent three point shooting teams willing to use it as their primary and go-to weapon when the going gets tough, and most others that still believe that the primary and crunch time weapon is great go-get-a-basket athleticism wedded to action and defense.

The three point era keeps unfolding before us--glacially it came for a while, but now it seems to be on the verge of sliding down a luge path.

There is a new definition of how to go get a basket at crunch time.

There is a new definition of what a team's primary, first option weapon ought to be.

It is the player that can go get an unblock able trey.

This can be done by mobile, long bigs that can shoot out of the corner against less mobile long bigs unable to guard that far away from the basket.

This can be done by finding guys with the right blend of height, strength, shooting range and shooting accuracy to shoot jump shots farther out than waterbug style combo guards can stretch-out and block.

Like all new approaches that take basketball by stunning and overwhelming surprise, it may or may not be able to be duplicated by more than a few teams. Only a few teams could keep ahead of Wooden's ascendant talent acquisition curve and emulate Wooden's 2-2-1 zone press, sticky m2m half court defenses, and single post offenses, and beat Wooden. I suspect many teams will soon be able to emulate what Nova has recruited and schemed to significant degree. I suspect many coaches will start selecting toward more trey shooters and coach trey shooting more and more. Self has already come quite aways down the path, but he has not been able to recruit bigs that shoot the corner trey since the Morri. Self has to commit to finding bigs that can shoot the corner trey. He has to tell the recruits that if you can guard and rebound, and screen and defend the trey, you will be required to shoot the corner trey at KU, or we can't use you, except as a back up.

Whew!

Its exciting to be alive during a potential college basketball strategy tipping point.

Free the bigs to shoot corner treys.

JayHawkFanToo said:

@jaybate-1.0

Why do you insist in calling the Big a East a mid major conference? The Power 5 or major conference moniker is driven and applies primarily to football but when it comes to basketball, the Big East has been and still is a MAJOR basketball conference any way you look at it

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

(Let me see, if I can re-learn your apparent rhetorical style and respond in your own apparently preferred mode, to help you understand my danged silly old opining. Its been awhile. I wish one of the search engines would get a rhetorical style translator algorithm, so I didn't have to go to the trouble of re-learning your style.)

(Ah, yes, its coming back now...)

@JayhawkFanToo, why do you insist in calling The "BIG" EAST a major, much less a power conference?The Power 5 applies as much to basketball as to football, but when it comes to basketball the Big East was once many years ago a strong basketball conference though NEVER categorized as a POWER conference any way you look at it.

(By George, I think its coming back to me little by little.)

(Let me continue in lovingly and respectfully spoofing apparent @JayHawkFanToo style...)

You appear not to watch much basketball, @JayHawkFanToo. You appear not to listen to much sports on the radio. You appear not to listen to much short wave radio chatter about basketball. You appear not to have an old fashioned dish and so appear not to listen to too many raw (unedited) feeds of sports broadcasters. You appear not to read the internet much. You appear not to subscribe to spoken editions of any of the mainstream sports magazines for the hearing impaired. You appear not to read smoke signals, or listen to drums delivering the daily rankings of the THE MID MAJOR EAST. You appear not to scan SETTI telemetry about possible alien commentary about the ranking of the Big East. And that is any way you look at it, too.

(HOWLING!)

(SUMMARY...)

(Oh, gosh, no, @JayhawkFanToo, I can't recognize any way you look at it, but as usual IMHO THE "BIG" EAST ought to be ranked as a mid major conference in hoops comparable to the MVC. Replace Wichita State of a few years back with Nova of today, and 2016, and "any way you look at it" its a mid major conference despite you apparently insisting to the contrary.)

(Note: all kidding around in this post. No malice.)

(As always I defend your privilege to think, see and say it as you wish.)

(Note: consensus cracking, smears, and attack graphics may be inserted after Buffer below.)

Texas Hawk 10 said: [SEE CAPS]

@jaybate-1.0 Doke shot 77% from the field this year. Over 100 shot, that's 154 points not including any FT's he would make so we could assume his number would could assume that number to be higher.

[FIRST, DOKE’S 77% WAS DECEPTIVELY HIGH. HE WAS SIMPLY INCAPABLE OF BEING OUR 1ST OR SECOND OR EVEN OUR THIRD OPTION AGAINST GOOD COMPETITION. HE COULD NOT CREATE DUNKS ON DEMAND THE WAY 3 POINT SHOOTERS CAN GET OPEN AND SHOOT ALMOST EVERY POSSESSION OFTEN WITHOUT ANY ACTION—JUST PULL UP AND SHOOT. HE WAS NEVER A SHOOTER YOU COULD BANK ON GETTING A BASKET WHEN YOU NEEDED IT IF THE OTHER TEAM HAD EVEN A CREDIBLE CENTER. HIS 77 WAS NOT FEASIBLE TO TAP INTO MOST POSSESSIONS. BUT FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, LET’S PRETEND HE WAS LIKE WILT OR JABBAR—SOMEONE YOU COULD RELY ON TO GO GET YOU A 2 POINT BASKET ANY POSSESSION AND MAKE .540–Wilt’s career FG% AVERAGE. A GOOD TREY SHOOTER GETS YOU 40-46% ON 3s. THUS A TEAM FULL OF WILTS GET YOU .540 on 2 POINT SHOTS AND A TEAM OF STEPHEN CURRY’S GETS YOU 43% ON 3S. THE 43 CONVERTS TO ABOUT 65-70%. CLEARLY TREYS ARE THE WAY TO GO. DOKE’S 77% COULDNT BE ACHIEVED BY A TEAM FULL OF DOKES. DOKES 77 IS CONTINGENT ON GETTING NEARLY ALL DUNKS NEARLY ALL THE TIME. EVEN A TEAM FULL OF DOKES COULD NOT GET NEARLY ALL DUNKS NEARLY EVERY SHOT. BUT A TEAM FULL OF GOOD 3PT SHOOTERS ACTUALLY COULD SHOOT 43 % WITHOUT MUCH TROUBLE.

ANOTHER WAY TO THINK ABOUT THIS IS TO SUBTRACT POINTS FORGONE BY SHOOTING 2 POINT BASKETS. THIS APPROACH MAKES MORE CLEAR THE TRUE COST OF SHOOTING 2 PT BASKETS. EACH 2PT BASKET FORGOES SOME PERCENTAGE OF 3 PT BASKETS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN MADE. THUS EACH 2 PT BASKET IS REALLY WORTH SOMETHING LESS THAN TWO POINTS, AND IF YOU ARE PLAYING A MOSTLY OR ALL 3 PT SHOOTING TEAM EACH POSSESSION YOU ARE VERY SHORTLY FOREGOING TO MUCH TO EVER MAKE UP, UNLESS THE TREY SHOOTING TEAM HAS A TROUGH GAME.

TO A THREE POINT SHOOTING TEAM, EVERY TIME IT FORCES A KU TO SHOOT A MADE TWO POINT SHOT IT IS LIKE 1/3 OF A STOP.

In order to reach that 154 mark from 3 point shooting, a shooter would have to make 52% of their 3 point attempts.

Shooting all 3's just isn't a smart or feasible strategy because of the percentage a team would have to shoot over the course of a season to make it an effective strategy.

Yup. Garrett froze up a little there.

But he wasn’t the only deer in the headlights on KU, or Michigan.

Nova is a B-52.

They rain terror from above.

@Texas-Hawk-10

It’s a good question and I will be serious.

Most offensive action is now run from two feet beyond the trey line to the baseline. Thus, less than half of half court is having to be defended. And even now defenses are camping on the three point line more and more.

This is what we are used to: running actions in the lesser, closer-to-the-basket half of half court.

Nova tries to penetrate to two point range to collapse defenses to kick out to open treys. Or ball screens outside at the 3point stripe so it’s shooter can step back to 22-28 to get the unblockable look. There are almost no passes into the post for b2b play. Driving is the preferred means of collapse.

In a 100% 3PTA offense, the entire half court would be used to run actions to get open looks in an 8, or 6, or 4, foot swath beyond the trey stripe, depending on the skill of your 3 point shooters.

Contraction of defense and stretching of defenses will no longer be in relation to the basket, but in relation to the swath.

Some offenses would start with players on both sides of the swath with a trey shooting post man in the swath. Players would cut in and out of the swath. Screening and ball screening would occur. Others possessions offenses would begin with weaving starting at the mid court line and weaving into the swath. Other possessions the ball would be worked to say the low blocks and the ball would be weaved outward to the swath.

All past offenses would be adapted over time to generate open looks “in the swath”, instead of “in the paint”, or “at the stripe” and new offenses would be devised to do the same.

Every defender would be camping in the swath same as every defender used to camp “around the lane” before the 3 pt shot and “along the trey stripe” after it, when coaches were still trying to balance 2 and 3 point scoring.

Shots can be created any where on a basketball floor regardless of whether players are camping here, or there, or elsewhere.

Defenses will be devised to guard “the swath.”

Offenses will be devised to create open looks in the swath. Where the shots are created will depend on the skills of the shooters.

The kind of athleticism required to play swath-centric will change from what they are today, same as the kind of athleticism changed from the 1950s to the 1980s and thenfrom the 1980s to now.

Look at the KU-Nova game and the UM-Nova game. Nova’s muscular, hooking defense and 3 point shooting completely obsoleted the “athleticism” and “go get a basket” abilities of KU and UM.

We saw the same obsolescence occur when the jump shot, great leaders and highly mobile footers entered the game. The horizontal set shooting of fences and players were obsoleted.

Jay Wright has not just built a great team. He has obsoleted playground descended basketball of the kind played airborne and exploding for one on one plays. The playground shaped modern game is now as obsolete as the horizontal set shooting game became before it.

Now the great players and teams will increasingly be those that have the kind of athleticism and shooting range to get open looks in the swath.

It’s all about the swath, not the trey stripe, or the paint.

@Crimsonorblue22

Defensively, emphatically yes. Billy would have been perfect for guarding Spellman. There wouldn’t have been any open look shots by Paschal or Spellman.

Offensively, it’s harder to say. I posit high volume three point shooting wins a higher percentage of games than high volume back2basket shooting, or a balanced attack, so a lot would have depended on how well Billy shot the trey and how much Self let him do so. If our team treys had dropped 5-7 per game with Billy, I am pretty confident we would have lost MORE games with him, even though we might have fared slightly better .against Nova, because of better defensive matchups. The trouble with Billy would have been that Self would have had to give him 10 to 15 FGAs per game eventually to keep him and the shoe company-agent complex happy happy, and one has to wonder: would Billy have been as productive as our three point shooters spreading his 10-15 FGAs among our trey shooters. It could have been that billy would have rotated with Doke, as Silvio has, but then we would have been in a similar predicament of matchups vs. Nova.

If Billy were a 40 % trey shooter and we took the same number of treys, we would have been MUCH better, but not if not is my best guess.

Registering strong disagreement is not persuasive, of course.

The regions 1 seed couldn’t win a mid major conference.

The region produced TTech for Nova to play before KU.

KU played Duke before Nova.

Who would you rather play before playing Nova: Texas Tech, or Duke?

I don’t even know why TTech made the tournament after the way it fell apart, as I predicted it would. Maybe the NCAA just wanted some or all canon fodder for Nova’s regional?

Year after year we witness apparent asymmetric seeding of certain Nike EST teams that appear to enable such teams to advance through less resistance, less depletion of energy and less wear and tear.

Winning and losing are always multi factorial.

The fresher and more apt an explanation is the more likely it is makes us more prone to underestimating, or overlooking, an adequate constellalation of drivers that Self will have to fix/add to get to the Finals and win.

Hold in your minds @HighEliteMajor ’s fresh and apt explanation regarding the need for KU to have shot at least as many 3 PTAs, as the 40 Nova took, and probably more like 45-50 to offset KU’s lower trey make rate.

But add the following to it.

Here is why Nova won part 2:

a.) Self had no bigs that could guard the trey stripe, and all of Jay’s bigs could (result: Nova got way more open look treys; that was crucial), so KU has sign or train bigs to guard the trey because teams are going to copy Nova

b.) Self had no bigs that could shoot the trey and Jay had two that could (that meant Jay could put his bigs outside and KU had to switch and guard them with perimeter guys they could easily shoot over, and it also meant Jay could keep his bigs home and clog our driving lanes), which means Self has to get some bigs that can trifectate;

c.) Self had no trifectates on the bench (Garrett actually shot an uncontested airball) and Jay had one or two more on his bench, so the bench has to do more than guard; and

d.) 3 huge mismatches.

The three killer mismatches that smashed us were Paschal outside shooting (+16 pts over Doke), Nova Bench scoring (+11 pts mostly over our bench mostly on treys indicating high ppp) and Spellman (+11 rebounds on Svi).

I believe there was a fourth mismatch that didn’t show up in the line score, but that combined with our bigs that couldn’t guard the trey stripe to lead us into the kind of help defense that left Paschal and Spellman open for so many uncontested treys.

6-4 175 lbs. Vick had to guard 6-7 210 Bridges. The box score indicates we controlled Bridges well. Bridges only got 10 points and 3 rebounds. Great job, Vick! But wait! My guess is Vick was being given a ton of help to keep Bridges from running wild. In essence, Self said something like: help shut down Bridges and let Paschal shoot treys. If they beat us with Pascal shooting treys, then they beat us. The point? Guarding 6-7 210 pound All-Americans with skinny 6-4 combo guards and big manhelp won’t work at this level of competition, because sooner or later it runs into big men that can bury the trey. KU needs a real 3 to guard real 3s straight up and not surrender open look treys to anyone..

Now that I have identified these other deficiencies, it’s clear KU had to shoot at least as many, and probably more treys to have a chance, but would not have been enough on its own. KU needed a bench to take some of the additional treys. And KU needed a 3 to guard their three straight up so bigs could guard outside. And KU needed bigs that were trained to guard outside. And they needed some one that could match Spellman on the boards; another 11 boards would have bought KU the rebounding edge it needed to overcome the trough 3pt percentage with increased 3 ptas.

With the constellation of augmented drivers above, plus what KU already did, then KU could have beaten Nova.

In short, it needed a productive bench, a true 3 that could guard a true 3 without help, and bigs that could at least guard the trey and preferably another big that could make the trey.

dylans said:

You go after the most talented guys that fit your system to give you a shot every year. It's difficult with all 4 year guys to be good for more than a 1-2 year stretch. So your championship window is 2-4 times every 10 years instead of every year. You may have a better chance in those years, but bad luck can end any season. Personally I want to be I it every year (playing the numbers game).

Well said.

@BeddieKU23

Nova’s biggest edges in the Carney are:

Easy seeding;

Refs;

Taking 10-15 more 3ptas than opponent; and

Bigs that can guard the trey stripe so the opponent gets fewer uncontested 3ptas.

@BShark

There really was an easy region: Villanova’s.

@BShark

It does mean that. They have the easy seeding and the refs and they go out early and it means they were overrated. Simple.

@kcmatt

I don’t follow you there. That appears a logical disconnect. They couldn’t even win their own mid major conference. Why would they have won a Power Conference? If Michigan has a good shooting night, UM is likely to beat them. Really, they are are a nearly unbeatable team at their average 3pt% or better, when the opposing team takes 10 less treys. But they lost 4 trough games, couldn’t win their mid major conference, and teams haven’t tried to shoot 5-10 more treys than Nova. Here’s hoping UM roughs them up big time, as far out as they want to range on defense, and shoots 5-10 more treys. Couple that with Nova shooting 37% for the game and its party time in Ann Arbor!

@BShark

Not by the definitions of winning your conference to get a one seed, or by getting a difficult path to the final four. But then you know that and are being reductive, because it is easier than changing the way you think. I’m okay with that!

Yeee hawwwww give me some of that Jay Wright cool aid!!!

@BShark

Alas Nova has proven they are a 1 trick pony by being beaten in trough games. Thus unlike a long stack, they can be upset at any moment, by a team that denies them just their treys, which will be easy to do by simply staying with them outside, and guarding the kick out passing lane on defense and shooting 5-10 more treys than they do on offense. Like all one trick innovators, their trick will quickly be turned against them. Self just needed that good beating to knock his blinders off. Bellein is wily coach that has the benefit of seeing the KU experience. He will likely eliminate their wing and corner treys by denying the kick out lanes. He will likely benefit from Nova moving slightly down into its trough phase with a 35-38% 3pt game and it will be up to the refs to finish the job that seeding started of making Villanova the champ. Don’t kid yourself. Big shoe, big gaming and big TV appear invested in making Wright the new hot brand of the Catholic crescent from Boston to Miami to New Orleans to LA to Sacramento. Villanova will likely be given every opp to beat UM and any one that understands marketing gets why. What do John Calipari, the once anointed SAVIOR of THE CRESCENT and now deselected fallen angel, have in common? I will give you a hint. It has to do with beads. I am not knocking Jesuit RCs for marketing to their base to enrich their own members and schools, and spread their religio-political influence through sport and marketing. Protestants and Jews try to do similar things. No doubt Muslims, Buddhists, Janist’s, Hindus and “god only knows” what other religions never pass on these sorts of branding and marketing opportunities in sport. The object of the sport game and religion game is similar—put butts in the seats on selected days and spread the word. Religion, still the biggest cash enterprise on earth, has long understood the utility of sport. We Christians got our start in sport and politics with lion fighting in the biggest arena of classical antiquity—The Roman Coliseum. We never really forget our roots. One of our home offices are still just across town from the Roman Coliseum. Capice?

@BShark

How does the best team in the country finish second in its own conference?

Villanova is only the best team in the March Carney, wherein seeding and whistle symmetry and bet balancing appear to be paramount to success and in which it was given an complete marshmellow pathway to a ring.

It has been given the weakest opponent in a FF in many years.

Don’t drink the Media-Gaming complex cool aid!

Jay showed that he understands and has distilled three point shooting and three point defense to an accurate and precise level.

His strategy will not always work, but at any given level of equivalent execution and equivalent shooting percentages, Jay Wrights combination of offense and defense will beat any opponent that pursues balance between 2 and 3 point shooting.

Wright got a Nike short stack, maybe even a medium stack, depending on how you count their stage of development.

But he also made the most of his stack by scheming an offense/defense that optimized his stack's abilities and put them in position to win if they executed it, not to perfection but just to a level of pretty good.

What Wright has wrought is a primer on how to play college basketball the most efficient way possible on both ends of the floor.

"Its who has the most open 3ptas, stupid."

This phrase should be painted in huge lettering on the walls of the KU practice gym this off season and next.

Only idiots claim Self had no plan for the Nova game.

Self had the exact wrong plan for what Wright schemed for Nova: 40 3PTAs on offense, and stretching to take away KU's uncontested treys and giving them the mid range 2. Self told his players to take what they gave KU, as was his custom, and hoped that their ball screen defenses could deny the guard penetration that collapsed KU's help defense for kicks to completely open looks at high percentage spots.

Wright was right. Self was wrong.

Even when KU executed what Self wanted it could not close the gap, even when Nova cooled to 35% for the entire second half!

Even genius makes mistakes.

Self gambles everything on a strategy he thinks has big risks, but big return.

Thus, he wins often and often beats teams that can't counter what he does.

Wright took him one better. Wright gambled everything on a strategy that couldn't lose with Self having KU drive. Wright even upped the ante by shooting more than their average number to 3ptas in expectation of Self driving, and as a hedge against Nova having an off shooting night.

Likely as not, if Nova had shot 35% the first half, Wright would have had them shoot even more treys.

This is where Self has to get to.

The worse KU's three point shooting is, the more 3pt shots KU should take, when KU is playing another 3 point shooting team.

@justanotherfan

You to are making the point clearly.

There was almost no luck involved in Nova's performance, except the good fortune of Self and KU electing a drive strategy that magnified the advantage of the strategy that Nova has won with all but 4-5 times this season.

Frankly, Nova only shot a little above its season average for the game.

This game could have been a MUCH bigger blow out, if KU had had one of its 19% trey games, of if Nova had had one of its peak shooting games.

KU was very, very VERY fortunate to "only" be beaten 95-79.

Self is going to learn something crucial from this experience.

This was a wood shed lesson that no one could overlook.

The lesson is college basketball is increasingly about:

a.) who can shoot the most open look 3ptas with the best shooters that are the hardest for defenders to alter their shots (tallest); and

b.) who can force the opposing team out the farthest with defense, while still being able to deny blow bys at the rim.

The game is now first and foremost about using point guards and drivers to force help NOT to take short threes, but to create wide open kick outs.

EVERYTHING offensive action that does NOT contribute to creating an open look trey EVERY possession is to be jettisoned.

Except when defending a huge lead with ten to go, no 2 point dunk should EVER be taken instead of a 3 PTA. Period.

What Nova did to KU means the cat is out of the bag.

Every coach with a bunch of long three point shooters and a guard that can drive it can win any game simply by taking 10 more 3ptas than an opponent.

Over the next five years, we can expect the average number of 3 PTAs to climb steadily from 25 to 35 to 45 to 55per game.

Three point shooting attempts are headed for the asymptote of the possible curve of total possessions.

Hide bound thinking is the only thing that has made it take so long to occur.

Balance between inside and outside scoring is obsolete.

Balance between corner treys from both corners is the new balance to achieve.

The new stressor of offense is the long corner shooter--the corner shooter that is too tall for his defender to block, even if he gets to the corner in time with a hand up.

The new stressor of defense is the defense that can guard trey shooters out to 30-35 feet to deny them open looks.

@drgnslayr

Combine higher 3PTAs than opponents with higher basketball IQ training and we are gold.

It will take both.

@HighEliteMajor

I am your choir and happily preached to.

PHOF

TOTAL 3 PTAs were the strategy that drove victory; that kept KU from reducing the game to tactics after tip off.

Everything else Nova did was tactics in support of the MORE THAN 3pt strategy.

A few years back I argued for shooting threes EVERY possesion and I still know this is the correct strategy and where the game will gravitate without further rule changes.

If KU shot all treys every possession and Nova shot the number and percent it actually did, KU would have won even at .35
make rate.

From the dominant strategy Nova imposes, KU simply defaulted into more and more complexity and unforeseen consequence.

Self actually magnified the advantage of Nova’s MORE 3PTAs strategy by choosing to drive to try to foul up Nova for 30 futile minutes.

KU became a 2 pt team playing a 3 pt team.

And in PPP terms more like a 1.5 ppp team playing a 3ppp team for 30 futile minutes.

Self made the worst move he could have made; I.e., trying to drive on a team the refs would never allow to be fouled up.

Perfect strategic storm beat downs occur when one coach picks an unbeatable and executable strategy and the opposing coach selects the a strategy that magnifies the advantage of the other team.

Self did this.

It’s counter intuitive, but when you are faced with a great three point shooting team the refs won’t call fouls on, your only chance is to shoot enough more treys than the opponent to offset your expected trough make rate. It’s simple mathematics and probability.

Note: I was not smart enough to forecast this spike trey before the game. I even suggested the driving strategy Self tried and said it probably wouldn’t work because refs wouldn’t call the fouls. But I am saying henceforth, any coach stupid enough to shoot less 3PTAs than the opponent deserves to lose and be horse whipped if one can find a horse! (Kudos to SJ Perelman if I recall correctly).

KU was probably going to shoot 35%.

Wright was probably going to increase 3PTAs to try to exploit our off night and any chance of Nova having an off night.

Self’s logical move was to in crease our 3PTAs to 50-55, if Nova shot 40 treys making 45%.

Shooting fewer treys against a good trey shooting team would be like saying, well, the enemy has switched from semi-automatics to automatics, so we are going to switch from semi automatics to single shots.

9/11 Effect Hits March Carney, KU Hard

A mid major conference runner up, Villanova, got a 1 seed in the East Region—the easiest region by far.

1-seed Virginia from the ACC lost to 16 seed minor major UMBC.

Perennial beneficiary of whistle asymmetry, Duke, troughed at 25% from 3, got no called on an obvious and decisive charge by KU, plus was found against on an out of bounds play replete with the now infamous rest period TV timeout to give KU a 4 point victory, despite KU shooting only 35% and somehow mysteriously massively outrebounding an arguably better rebounding Duke front line.

A mid major from Chicago, Loyola, makes the FF, without a single USA Today AA on its roster.

Not one, but two—fully half—of the Final Four teams are not just Catholic schools, but a respected, hung ho subset of Catholicism called Jesuits, once proudly kicked out of South America by the Pope. The only thing more improbable would have been for ND and Georgetown to join them, while Neil Gorsuch converted back to Roman Catholicism to give the RCs over half the US Supreme Court Justices!

A Michigan team without a single player making even “just missed the first, second and third strings of the USA Today All American Team”, nor with a likely NBA draft choice, is in the NCAA Finals.

And last but not least, the father of all college basketball programs, 1 seed KU from a power conference was blown out 95-79 by Villanova—a runner-up from a mid major conference mysteriously given a 1 seed.

To put it mildly, college basketball tourney teams have been falling in their own footprints of XTReme improbability, as if the Deep State were flying airliners with Arab patsies with box cutters aboard into teams beaded at the knees and ankles with Thermite charges.

It feels like after one of the two remaining teams falls improbably in its footprints, the talking heads may broadcast that “now, everything has changed in college basketball,” and some team that wasn’t even in the tournament will be announced by BBC to have been beaten and fallen in their own footprints, before blur-frame video is run that shows the team walking off the floor of a game nobody saw in an arena no one ever heard of crying and sobbing about a loss that had not yet occurred.

It will take awhile to make sense of this year’s March Carney, same as with 9/11.

But we will.

Over time.

Rock Chalk!

Spellman needs to learn immediately what its like to guard our high mobility attackers.

Once that mobility has put the fear in him, then come at him with some Doke AND Silvio. Let him face u against someone his own size for a change and see how he likes getting some shots crammed down his throats.

Spellman getting cuffed by Svi, then Mitch, then some Silvio, and he will feel the trauma of the drama!

@DoubleDD

Great take.

Away all boats.

Rock Chalk!