And we are going to rule the BIA Rec League!!!!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
No, this year its THE WUG OFFENSE!!!!!
The BIA is using all these former players as assets out in the field operating with legends provided by the BIA.
Dale Greenlee--Dale works as a hairy leg model for a depilatory company in Russia. Greenlee has been Sasha Kaun's undercover connection for smuggling out information about Russian basketball prospects.
Dave Robisch--aka Robo, is embedded as a spinal curvature expert at a leading research facility in Shanghai China. Robo has undergone plastic surgery and now passes for Chinese, while supplying the BIA information on Chinese athletes capable of pitching baseball and shooting the base line turnaround in basketball.
Kivisto brothers, Bob, Tom--aka plural Kivisti, are posing as restauranteurs running a small restaurant in Bologna, Italy, specializing in a roast horse dish called Trigger Bolognese. They are secretly running book on Italian professional basketball, so that the BIA can keep tabs foreign basketball intelligence programs using gambling on Italian professional basketball for laundering black monies.
Ken Koeings--aka Crazy Fro aka Dr. Pitch Fork has given up a promising career in medicine and become the first 6-10 member of the Bolshoi Ballet. Ken now provides the BIA with a steady stream of cell phone and internet surfing records on Dale Greenlee and Sasha Kaun.
Greg Dreiling--Greg is running a BIA front operation called The Institute for Retired NBA Journeyman that Became Too Muscle Bound to Transition Smoothly to Life After Basketball. Greg supplies the BIA with intelligence about the children of former NBA journeyman that may be recruited in the future by KU.
Darnell Valentine--Darnell is another field agent running a front organization. Darnell is the Founder/CEO of the not for profit organization called "Center for the Advanced Study of Thunder Thighs." Darnell is providing the BIA with regular reports on young prospects with thighs of sufficient strength and mass that DARPA wants to do tissue grafts of their fast twitch muscles on the next generation T-3 terminator chassis.
Cedric Hunter--Cedric has pursued an acting career under the stage name Patrick McGoohan 2.0. The BIA has given Cedric a number and taken way his name.
T.J. Pugh--T.J. is running the T.J. Pugh Charitable Trust for Slow Feet. This is a BIA front organization used to attract DARPA research dollars for research aimed at speeding the footwork of high school recruits that are a step slow.
Clint Normore--assignment status classified For BIA Director's Eyes Only.
Victor Mitchell--Victor is a BIA field agent running a hair club for men in Tibet. He is also running a radical new Buddhist Monastery where all Buddhist Priests wear hair plugs and eat high protein and high fat diets aimed at helping Buddhist priests get wide in the lane in the Yin and Yang Monastery Professional Basketball League of Tibet. It almost, but not quite, goes without saying that Victor supplies the BIA with recruiting info on Buddhist Priests that can go hard to iron.
Tommy Smith--assignment status classified above top secret.
Danny & Kelly Knight--running a tea kiosk across the street from MI-5 in London, England and supplying disinformation to MI-5 eavesdroppers on the offense Bill Self intends to run this season, if Diallo were ineligible.
BIA employs many more of the old Jayhawks, but the others are involved in such sensitive basketball espionage that all I am permitted to divulge is that not a single thing World Wide Wes does is unknown to BIA.
Respectfully submitted,
jaybate 1.0,Director
BIA
@HighEliteMajor said:
Thus planning for the contingencies is a must. Self faced a stark reality last season. He had no competent back to the basket scoring...
With Diallo an uncertainty, to reiterate a recent post of mine, the WUG offense (i.e., its quick trigger, reduced passing and absence of action) could be the blue print for playing with, or without Diallo this coming season.
And Self talking about having to "play inside," despite what the team learned at the WUGs, may have just been Self smoke screening, same as Bob Huggins appeared to be smoke screening about the shortened shot clock making it less logical for his team to press the way it did last season.
Self is making sure early season opponents have to prepare for both the WUGs offense AND legacy Self Ball and, since he briefly showed BAD BALL the last game of the WUGs, BAD BALL, too.
That's a lot to prepare for early on.
Playing WUG BALL in D1 could make a lot of fans happy...but ONLY if it were to work as well in D1, as at the WUGs.
Two things puzzle me.
-
I am now amazed at how many programs were scrambling for the opportunity to sign a guy that everyone must have known was an eligibility risk. Calipari and UK vied strongly for him at the end. And Calipari's former assistant that jumped to St. John's tried to sign him for Chris Mullins' new regime. And, if I recall, there were quite a few others vying for Diallo.
-
Why didn't Self announce to the fans at signing that there were "issues," or if not at signing, then a few weeks after. Why wait so long? Or did he announce it and we are just now learning of it? The longer Self waits to announce this sort of thing, then the bigger the let down among fans. Fans are willing to accept pretty much anything he tells them these days, and they are pretty much used to everything being up in the air with recruits and recruiting after all the guys we've had like Selby, BenMac and Traylor with "eligibility issues." Why contribute to an appearance that Diallo has been signed and a huge hole has been filled, when it appears a significant possibility that Diallo has been signed and may not become eligible for a year, if at all? Something seems odd here. Either this is faulty PR strategy, or Self did not understand that he had signed an eligibility problem.
I am curious: will more complexity with Diallo surface?
Strategic advantage often is unjustified by its cost.
Militaries required to hold strategic advantage often do not justify their cost.
But strategic advantage is the cost of staying in business and can only be understood in terms of the vastly greater costs to staying in business by other means, or the greatest cost of all--going out of business and losing ALL sunk costs and all future net benefits of staying in business.
Paying the endorsers vast sums-- both individuals and schools--is worth every penny to hold strategic advantage to stay in business.
Bird's dad committing suicide and Bird deciding they were probably better off without him, pretty much sums up how hard he was from an early Age. A lot of people don't understand hard. Like high IQ, until you have been around it, you don't get it. Self is a hard man. Bird was diamond hard. Hard men make hard choices with grave consequences knowing they can cut both ways and don't look back. They play for money and whatever else there is of value. Bird leaving Knight was two hard men parting ways. Bird says he was afraid and he was. But most scared kids would have stayed. Only the hard ones playing for all the marbles from the beginning ever would have left and walked into potential oblivion. All the NBA guys that appeared in that documentary knew and respected that hardness. Earvin and Julius and Ainge and Parrish and Maxwell and Carr and Isaiah were most definitely hard. Those that refused to appear had their pride hurt by it. I bet Bird loved knowing he was too hard for the ones that refused to appear. The truly hard can always respect another hard man, even when they don't like them. It's only the princes and the princes that become kings that struggle with it.
Hard men can be sunnsabitches. But they have a code. Ask no quarter. Give none. It seems archaic till you get to know one. Then you realize they are the gold standard, whether the pencil necks outlawed the gold standard or not.
Adidas reputedly contracted UL for about $42-45,000,000.
Adidas reputedly contracted Michigan for about $60, 000, 000.
I forget KU's contract, but it was huge relative to its Nike deal. Given the stratospheric $200,000,000 deal reputed for Harden, and given the rising importance of international competitions as means of marketing, College contracts to schools willing to broker their teams or select players to international competition mean school shoe contracts will sky rocket in coming years. And as school shoe contracts spike, coaching salaries and shoe contracts will likely skyrocket again. Self already can probably not afford to move to the pros based on the XTReme value of his next contract.
This looming spike in contracts may also drive some of the apparent regime change destabilization under way at places like UNC. Anticipate lots more. Any elite program is likely to be targeted IMHO.
My hunch is that most recruiting and regime change phenomena is now driven not only to brand players in D1, but also in international competition while in D1. It follows that more stacks are needed get more teams and more select players effectively and controllably branded during D1 for international competition, and vice versa. This appears a circular dynamic.
And from a labor stand point, the petroshoecos and NCAA appear to be forcing two seasons on the players without having to proportionally increase their consideration received. One might wonder if The Drake Group and Sonny Vacarro and the legal team that brought the OBannon Case might find some grounds to challenge this double season exploitation, but you never know.
Bird and Magic, Magic and Bird: You have to have lived in Michigan, or Indiana, to fully get these guys. I lived in Michigan awhile, and my family migrated from Indiana to Kansas. Outside of KU players, I love these two as much as any. Before Bird's back injury, he and Magic were the best of their time. After, Magic was better. America is several regional cultures bound together. I get the Midwest, so I get these guys better than MJ and Barkley, say. Outside KU guys, Bird and Magic were the MEN of their time. GIANTS.
Usual long list spanning both petroshoeco brands; this appears to signal he would consider a brand lean switch, if the market for downstream endorsement deals were to change sharply and asymmetrically; I.e., with Adidas and Harden.
Key: Which brand sonsored his SUMMER TEAM?
@Lulufulu said:
It just seems like KU is being picked on while Duke, UNC, UK and others get passes way more than we do.
There appears a cascade effect involved.
KU signs with Adidas.
Adidas reputedly has fewer power summer league teams and Adidas leaning players to recruit.
Adidas KU signs a few top players, but not as many as top Nike programs.
Self moves toward signing guys that have gone to multiple high schools due to the phenomenon of closing schools; this leads to more delays in NCAA and B12 clearance; top Nike programs can sign fewer of these, because of larger recruiting base.
Self tries picking up more transfers and also some OADs from imploding programs. This works for a time, but then the NCAA appears to shift away from disciplining programs and toward using delayed "clearance" process to deal with recruiting abuses. At the same time, more coaches engage in Self's transfer signing tactic so transfers to KU plateau. Further, OADs from imploding programs dry up, as rising reliance on clearance process lessens frequency of programs imploding from NCAA infractions. And later disciplined programs like Syracuse hardly appear to skip a beat in recruiting, nor suffer wide spread transfers, as a result of infractions. Further more coaches appear to embrace OAD signing. Net Self has fewer transfers, fewer OADS from imploding programs, and more competition for fewer nonNike OADs.
Self appears to resort to signing still more players from multi high school backgrounds, which means longer clearance times.
Running out of moves to end run a shrunken recruiting base coinciding with signing with Adidas, Adidas appears to get more aggressive about signing top endorsement talent in the NBA with huge deals; awareness of these new huge deals appears to filter down to Nike lean recruits and encourages some to shift brand leans and consider Adidas college programs to better position for post college shoe deals.
Adidas-KU and Adidas-Self sign certain superstar and reputed early Nike lean Wiggins away from Nike programs AND sign potential superstar Embiid--a reputed foreign Nike lean to Nike Florida and Nike Donovan.
These signings of Wigs and Embiid might be viewed as an Adidas program poaching Nike leans--two potentially huge future endorser-type players.
Apparent Nike long stacks start.
2-3 OAD/TAD Adidas program rosters suddenly then at competitive disadvantage with 4-10 draft choice stacks.
Rick Pitino reputedly notes agent and agent runner mechanism for channeling some players toward some schools with some brands, as well as some reputed asymmetry in recruiting pools related to brands.
Self appears to counter apparent long stack strategy with pursuit and signing more foreign players with complicated school backgrounds. More clearance delays.
Apparent Long stack strategy quickly modified to apparent medium stack strategy apparently perhaps to get broader stack coverage of conferences and lower profile of stacking strategy and reduce appearance of unfairness.
Adidas-KU struggles more and more to sign top players. KU's reliance on recruits from complicated academic backgrounds rises. More clearance problems.
The above is speculation and opining and hypothesizing on appearances by a layman fan without insider knowledge of actual recruiting. No conspiracies are expressed or implied. All is assumed to be legal, or part of regulatory grey areas. Your take may differ and be just as possibly correct. More and more we need credible pro journalists with resources to dig in.
But, but, but.....
Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis work for CBS Sports.
Doesn't that automatically discredit CBS Sports as a reliable forecaster in pre season polls?
Let me hear an AMEN!
Way to stiff screen those pencil necks!!!!!!
So many people don't get that private schools get to set their standards any way they flipping like. They can let moronic legacies in. They can let dumb jocks in. They can let the Dean's 16 year old mistress in to keep her from spilling the statutory beans on the Dean and school.
Nothing is sacred at these private schools, except the "appearance" of high standards.
The reality is whatever they want it to be.
Damn that would be fun, but I've tried song writing and I'm not for real. I can do parodies of lyrics easily, but my from scratch stuff leaves something to be desired.
I would still like for you to dust the Strat off and lay down some licks on an mpeg file, or whatever is used now, and attach to a thread here so we could hear some REAL guitar playing. Too much guitar playing with empty ball sacks these days.
We'll call it: The 'Slayr Sessions.
@JayHawkFanToo said:
will Smart be able to recruit top player to play in a system that will not prepare them for the NBA?
All coaches adapt their systems to embrace the best talent they can get at whatever level of program they are at.
All "systems" are incredibly flexible, as Self, Cal and Consonants have shown in their migrations to adapt to OADs, TADs and 3ADs.
Cal with a 10 stack and 4 footers adapted the Dribble Drive to a low tempo, half court, cram it inside offense.
Players' talents and expected opposition and officiating determine how any "system" is used.
Self's supposedly inflexible high low was adapted to 4 flat and 4 out 1 in with no passing or action to win the WUGs.
The question is: will Shaka be a short stack, or a long stack?
Au contraire, any B12 fan should feel great about exposing over rated poseurs that don't win conference titles in mid major conferences, win no rings and fatten their W&L statements on cupcakes. I know I sure do. Try it. You'll like it. :-)
For two seasons in a row KU played one of the toughest non conference schedules in the last decade, not just last season, according to many quantitative based ranking systems, not just according to Vinnie the Putz writing opining for some east coast talking head viagra peddling sports content.
The Big 12 came by its high ranking last season very honestly (and QA substantiated) and inspite of the apparently typical asymmetric press coverage that has appeared to have been the long term tendency of national broadcast, digital and print sports media.
And it seems quantitatively naive and street sappy to infer from one apparently asymmetrically seeded and apparently asymmetrically officiated March Madness with apparently asymmetrically distributed talent that the Big 12 was in fact an overhyped poseur. Who you gonna believe? A sizable pre-conference schedule against good competition that included referee bias of all kinds both for and against the Big 12 teams, or the results of an apparently asymmetrically seeded and apparently asymmetrically officiated single March Madness?
Only a sucker would believe the results of March Madness were more indicative of the quality of the Big 12 than the Big 12 pre conference W&L statement last season. I mean c'mon!!!!!!
This does not take a statistician capable of grinding stats on quantum phenomena of sub atomic particles being accelerated at CERN. Capice?
Any bookie running a virtual betting window could figure this one out.
Heck, any MBA grad from Harvard hustling fast fiber on the New York Stock Exchange could see what's going on here without even thinking about it.
Nothing illegal, or conspiratorial, either--let's dispense with that nonsense right now!
But why should we feel great about viewing perhaps soon-to-be Stacka Smart through a more objective lens than ESPNCBSFOX-Big Gaming feed us sometimes coverage at least possibly for bet-balancing expedience of Big Gaming? Is that really so far-fetched a notion? Is it completely beyond technological feasibility and gambling expedience?
But again, why should we okay about being skeptical about Smart and about doubting the Big 12 was overrated as you suggest.
Because it appears absurd to talk about how overrated the B12 conference is most of the time. It appears rarely overrated, even sometimes when it seems to be, because the media apparently can make more money traditionally under covering and underrating it and over covering and overrating EST conferences. Surely you would never dispute that tendency, once you start thinking about spatial distribution of viewer and betting demographics.
I am hardly an expert on this stuff (I don't even bet in office pools anymore), but about the only time it would make business sense for the media-gaming complex to systematically overreport and overrate the B12, or KU, specifically, would be to try to amp up betting on B12 teams that seem so generally under rated and under-reported over the long haul. It would appear that well targeted coverage and situational hyping of the CST could well amp up interest in the CST when needed; i.e., it appears technologically feasible and cost effective to some degree to stimulate betting on CST teams to off set the much greater number of bettors inclined for regional affinity to bet on the EST teams than the CST teams, right?
BUT THERE APPEARS A LONG TERM TENDENCY OF ASYMMETRY IN COVERAGE AND RANKING OF EST CONFERENCES AND TEAMS, THAT DATES TO THE ERA OF EST ONLY CONFERENCES, AND NOW EXTENDS INTO THE ERA OF CONFERENCES WITH SUBSTANTIAL FOOT PRINTS IN THE EST AND THE CST.
Note: the B12 lacks a substantial foot print in the EST. WVU was clearly intended to be the first of an eastern division of the B12 that was still born for whatever reason. But I digress.
A conference like the B12 will, I guess, rarely get remotely symmetric coverage, anymore than it will get symmetric seeding in the Madness. Eyeballs and clicks and gambling dollars channel coverage and seeding into asymmetry.
Again, hypothetically speaking, the only time I can imagine that it would be logical for media to over cover and over rank CST conferences would be in a situation where 5-10 draft choice stacks were strategically placed in ACC (Duke-9), SEC (UK-10), and even the Pac Ten (UA-4), so that it was apparent a CST conference, at least its top 3 teams in a conference like the B12, was outclassed not top to bottom, but only at the top, from the get go vis a vis the strategically placed stacks. For the sake of bet balancing, you might want to over-hype and over cover the CST teams, and conferences in order to diminish the adverse effect on betting created by the stacking of EST and PST time zones and NCAA regions.
Under this hypothetical scenario, it might be especially beneficial to do if the stacking process had side stepped the B1G, also, because the top coaches/programs in the B1G were perhaps non compliants with the stacking process (i.e., adidas UM and an apparent recalcitrant dissident about stacking in Izzo at Nike MSU), so the B1g had no stack.
Gee, might any of the above hypothesis rendered fit the data last season?
Maybe?
Possibly?
Who can say, eh?
Note: I am absolutely hypothesizing the complete absence of any conspiracy or illegality. This hypothesis assumes activities are entirely shaped by spatial distribution of eyeballs and clicks, plus by legitimate, law abiding organizations--some for profit and some not for profit--pursuing apparently legal market and business strategies to ensure solvency and pursue minimum yield, and if possible profit maximization in a significantly oligopolized market.
Rock Chalk!!!!!
Addedum 1: alas, I wonder what became of @elpoyo's post I was responding to?
It appears Shaka is laying the foundation for KU being his chip just as Everyone tries to do in the B12.
The question is will Texas become an EPA SUPER STACK SITE next season?
Will Shaka become Staka?
KU needs some quality big men soon.
USA could hold off the Japanese for a time with old P-40s and Grumman Wildcats, but it had to get better planes to become a serious threat on the offensive. End of metaphor.
One more interesting take away from the SI article was the reporter framed the Texas' recruiting challenge of signing its in state players as involving UK, Duke and UNC. Thus the reporter implied KU was not among the elite. This appears a classic passive approach to marginalizing a program with discourse framing. If media excludes KU from mention among the elite in recruiting, then over time it marginalizes the program--a self fulfilling prophecy, especially if it were to coincide with an appearance of recruiting embargo, hypothetically speaking.
Agreed. The true test comes when the first stack comes. If Cuonzo and Johnny get stacks in their conferences, then Shaka gets one in the B12, too.
How Adidas and Self respond to this challenge will be very interesting.
We know Shaka's approach has produced no conference titles in the Atlantic 10. We also know it produced either a deep run (one final four) or six early exits. He has accrued a .744 W&L statement, which when combined with mediocre conference records in a mid major conference, implies pre-conference opponents stacked with not just cupcakes, but outright Bon-bons.
What does all of the above suggest about Shaka's approach?
He burns players and teams out early with his relentless pushing of his players onto an "edge."
"Attack the day" works the first 90 practices and first 20 games.
The last 90 practices and last 20 games its freshness goes stale.
Shaka is not really developing players, or their late season performance would be better.
His system is a war of mental attrition to find the guys with the deepest wells of intensity.
It appears to indoctrinate and reward fanaticism and then selects toward it.
It appears to pay lip service to players developing better basketball skills.
It appears focused on getting better "mentally" and peak conditioning. It has its strengths, but it has its weaknesses, too.
This is going to mean the time to mount a maximum effort on Shaka is early, when his team's are best. beat them early and you are likely to sweep them late.
The world evolves in mysterious ways.
It could turn out that Hunter Mickelson holds the fate of the team in his keep-it-alive, ball tipping hands!!!!!!
From cryo-ice to KU's crucial piece of Self's first shoot first and tip team.
Rock Chalk!!!
In which SI "SERVICES" a Nike program laying a year's foundation before a full stack in order to unseat Adidas KU withering under multi-year domestic OAD and 5-star blockade at 1 and 5...hypothetically speaking, of course.
Howling!
Yes, I confess, I once wore my collar outside my coat.
But it was not a white suit.
Still, it would take a lot of therapy for me to admit what color of suit it was.
The power of disco was strong, Luke, and the force of it took me away from the path of Bob Dylanesque righteousness for a time.
Its alright, its okay,
Bob took a few missteps
Along the way...too.
Losing a low possession game like that by 2 points is like losing a high possession by 6-8 points.
Everything is a sliding scale in this stuff.
So: the effects of the randomness factor slide too and there is really no net change in the effect of randomness. Randomness scales up and down.
It is somewhat misleads and oversimplifies to say the real problem is needing 8 more possessions to score more.
The real problem involved needing BOTH fewer TOs and higher FG% AND more stops at the other end. Insufficient stops stemmed from defense failing to strip sufficiently, and failing to both force more misses from lower percentage attempts and grab more of those rebounds.
Its all of these on both ends of the floor that create the net effects that determine each team's scores and so the game outcome.
Basketball occurs on both ends of the floor and events of both ends of the floor combine for net effects.
Frankly, the fewer the trips the fewer the chances there are for random variance to work net against you, but when it does the greater the impact it has.
It is not clear to me yet if the reduction in accrued random variance and the gain in its percentage contribution to final score is a wash or not.
I suspect that since Wooden and Smith and Rupp and Pitino represent winning big up tempo, and Knight, Coach K, Iba, Eddie and Self represent winning big with low tempo, that the risks and rewards of playing fast, or slow, are a wash, and that what is really decisive is adopting the tempo that the particular players you have any given season are best suited to play efficiently.
Efficiency is, regardless of tempo, the holy grail of basketball.
If you score, handle and defend more efficiently than the other team, at whatever tempo you play at, you are likely to win.
The beauty of great talent is that if you harness it to the right tempo that allows it to play most efficiently, whatever tempo it may be, great talent and fitting tempo demolish opponents.
Well, you can tell by the way that I wait to sign
I'm an ineligible man: no time to talk
Shoe lean loud but agent not, I've been kicked around
Since I was hot
And now it's all right, it's OK
NCAA may look the other way
We can try to understand
ESPN's effect on man
Whether you're a brother or his mother
You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Eligibility breakin' and everybody shakin'
And we're givin'em hives, givin'em hives
Ah, ha, ha, ha, givin'em hives,
Ah, ha, ha, ha, givin'em hives...
Well now, I fly high and I fly low
And if I can't do either, I say I'm set to go
Got three stripes of adidas on my shoes
I'm a jammin' man and I just can't lose
You know it's all right, it's ok
I'll live to play in the NBA
We can try to understand
ESPN's effect on man...
Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive Lyrics adapted by BeeBate 1.0
@konkeyDong said:
Coach Self was obviously rather frustrated when his 2011 class was cut in half by eligibility issues, and he’s been said to have vowed to never send papers to a kid that he wasn’t sure he could get eligible again
Coach Self has never before felt such sustained effects of an apparent domestic OAD/5-Star Big Man drought/embargo, as this season.
What you say above makes a lot of sense under conditions when Self has credible D1 Elite Major players to fall back on
But presently, Coach Self has at the 5 two projects and a transfer that was not wanted at Arkansas, for a second straight season.
We love these three guys for their hearts and gameness, but they would not be threats to join the rotations of UK, or Duke, this season, even during what some are calling UK's and Duke's "down" seasons.
This is getting scary. Like walking thin ice two winters in a row and now anticipating some risk of having to do it a third.
In a pinch, Self could slide 4-star freshman Carlton Bragg to the 5, but that would be asking rather a lot of freshman Bragg base on what we saw in Sur Korea; i.e., to be the anchor rebounder, post defender and rim protector as a freshman muscling against blue meanie upper classmen in the Big 12 of the kind Tough Tubbie and Tougher Trent use on green wood. And those are just the cellar dwellers of the Big 12.
Were it not for a 5-star in-stater, Designing Perry Ellis, imagine the hives Self would have entering this season.
And Self is nothing if not a forward looking (and planning) fellow.
Knowing that he struck out on signing any grade of footer this past season, and knowing that Perry, Hunter and Traylor are gone for sure after this season, and Lucas and transfer Colby are it for next season, imagine the pressure on Self to sign Diallo even just for some sizzle alone, but also for the long shot chance he might mind control Diallo into come back, if DIallo were ruled ineligible this coming season.
The season after this coming season increasingly appears to be the REAL nightmare scenario everyone was hand wringing about maybe happening this coming season.
Tally up the birds in the bush likely and then recall the difficulty Self has had signing domestic OADs and 5-stars--the kinds Self would have to sign for even a modicum of immediate relief in the paint--and think about that paint rotation.
Pardon me while I apply some steroidal cream to my hives.
Blockades and embargoes work slowly.
They often appear to be unsuccessful early on and for quite awhile.
Blockade runners find ways to break through and the break throughs are celebrated and keep the attention off the accruing long term effects of the blockade.
But eventually the adverse effects of blockade are felt.
This uncertainty regarding Diallo's eligibility that you have discovered and posted makes me view Self's use of Mickelson in the WUGs in South Korea in a new light.
It seems axiomatic that Self sharply increases players minutes only in anticipation of having to use them sharply more down the road.
Mickelson got an enormous bump in minutes at the WUG for a guy that was in the cryogenic ice most of last season.
Further, when the team went to the WUGs, there appeared no indication in advance that Mickelson was going to get big minutes--in particular such big minutes that Traylor wound up nearly on ice himself at times.
Self appeared determined to get Mickelson and Bragg a lot of work, but he was noticeably more committed to getting Mickelson extended minutes than Bragg.
Frankly, the style of play the team used, especially inside, in South Korea appeared rather tailored around Mickelson's strengths and weaknesses.
But back then, heavy reliance on Mickelson just seemed simplest to explain as expedience in the absence of Diallo for the WUGs. We were temporarily short handed, because the regs did not allow Diallo to participate.
But now it is reputed that significant uncertainty about Diallo's eligibility exists this coming season. In turn, Self's heavy use of Mickelson appears to make more sense as something other than a stop gap measure.
Self at least appears to have been hedging on whether Diallo would be eligible or not.
Self apparently already knew what Lucas and Traylor could do, given he had developed them considerably two seasons. The team already knew how to play BAD BALL with Lucas and Traylor and their limitations. The real question facing the team, then, was: how might the team play something other than (or more likely in addition to) BAD BALL this coming season, under one of two possible scenarios--Diallo eligible, and Diallo ineligible.
The answer to the question, in retrospect, appears to have been to see if an offense like the one we witnessed could work with Mickelson playing big minutes as a scrambling, keep it alive type of garbage man big--the same kind of big, only better, that Diallo would be if he were ruled eligible.
The idea was to play the kind of offense inside that Self hoped to play if Diallo were available--a scrambling, keep it alive offense inside working off quick field goal opportunities--and offense that both Diallo and Mickelson, or only Mickelson could play, too.
If Diallo were ruled eligible, then Self would be two deep at 5 playing this kind of post in the paint.
If Diallo were ruled ineligible, then Self would have created an alternative way for the team to play that could make use of Mickelson for stretches of games this coming season and give this year's team another offensive look than just Bad Ball.
So: how did this new offense work?
Answer: PDW--pretty damn well.
I suspect there must be significant risk that Diallo will not be eligible, or Mickelson may not have been added to the rotation. Self might have gone another route.
I suspect that Self's failure to sign a legitimate footer type five also fed into all of this. Failing to sign a footer for the 5, and there being some risk that Diallo would have to sit, made Mickelson even more worth developing.
And if there were some risk of Diallo not becoming eligible, then Self would likely also view there would be considerable likelihood that Diallo would simply jump to the NBA at the end of the coming season, rather than come back.
And that's where Colby comes in. Colby can work with the team this season, and be developed to play some next season, if the apparent embargo continues to make OAD and 5-star bigs scarcer than Ron Paul if there turns out to be no currency crisis.
I suspect the risk regarding Diallo's eligibility has been known quite awhile.
Heck, what if Self and Hunter decided Hunter did not need to transfer for PT, precisely because of this situation?
Huggins is doing some double talk here. His hypothesis is: the more possessions superior players get a chance to score the more likely they are too outscore and out defend lesser players; ergo more trips make better players more likely to win.
But consider that the fewer trips made, the greater is the percentage contribution of each score to total score; i.e., each basket and each stop are worth more in a low possession game than in a high possession game. So: if you have the better players, then as total possessions reduce, your superior players ability to score more often and get more stops means the advantage of your superior players is magnified. In turn your superior players get to decisive leads in fewer possessions and so control the game sooner and longer.
From a risk management POV:
Low possessions magnify the value of both makes and stops, but at the same time magnify the value of your own misses and opponent scores.
High possession games decrease the value of successes and decrease the cost of failures.
Thus, low possession games are the way to play, if you are an efficient scoring team that makes few turnovers and mistakes. Low possession games are also the way to play if you are foul prone and lack depth.
High possession games are the way to play, if you are an inefficient scoring team that makes turnovers, but defends well.
Depth, scoring efficiency, turnovers and defensive skills determine whether to play high or low possession games, not degree of talent.
Superior players to an opponent's are superior regardless of number of possessions. The question is which tempo makes the most of their superior talents?
And that depends on how well they guard, protect, and how many of them there are (i.e., depth).
Your funny take about the lions and Jo Jo in Africa reminded me of a hilarious segment I watched on Top Gear, the car review TV show produced in England and shown on BBC America. If you love cars, and wacky British humor, you have to watch this show. But even if you don't love cars and wacky British humor, you have to watch the episode about the Top Gear host test driving a 10-ton "Marauder" armored military vehicle built in South Africa. Imagine how much bigger a US military Humvee is than a Volkswagen Beetle, then imagine a military vehicle that much bigger than a Humvee; that is the Marauder. The Top Gear host drives it through a McDonalds mowing down all of the lane marker reflector posts, then goes for a spin in the city and bowls through the wall of an abandoned brick building, then parks it on lion preserve, where three full grown lions climb onto it and gnaw on the windshield wipers, but can harm nothing else, then intentionally double parks it in a city street till a police tow truck backs up, fastens a tow cable and starts to tow it away, only to have the Top Gear host put the Marauder in gear and drive away dragging the police tow truck behind him!!!!! At one point they park the Marauder and set off an IED under a parked General Motors Hummer that completely destroys the Hummer, then detonate an identical IED under the Marauder. It explodes and when the flame, smoke and dust clears the right rear tire is flat and sunk in a blast crater about 4 feet deep, but the Marauder starts right up and after spinning wheels for some traction crawls right out of the crater and drives on with the tire reflating automatically!!!!
If Jo Jo gets his game back and becomes the star that we all know he could be if healthy, then Marauder ought to sign him as a spokesman. I can just see him being visited by his old coach, Bill Self, who starts taunting him about lions and asking if he has finally bought himself a car? Jo Jo takes him out to the driveway and shows him the Marauder. Cut to them driving along and Self cracking that its quite a vehicle alright. Then Self says, "But how does it handle lions?" Cut to Jo Jo and Self sitting in the Marauder with three giant lions climbing around on the outside of the Marauder. Cut back inside to Jo Jo and Self. "Now you see I wasn't kidding about the lions,eh? What do you think, Coach?" Self looks at a lion roaring at him through the windshield and says,"Not bad, Joel, but don't roll down the windows."
Here is a link to the segment on You Tube.
@Lulufulu and @Crimsonorblue22,
If adidas paid $200M to Harden AND has Wigs and Oubre, KU could become a very desirable place to spend an OAD year.
As an aside, I am not usually stunned by a high number for an athlete, but $200, 000, 000 is a lot of bones to pay someone to say nice things about a shoe...even about shoes, shirt and shorts.
WOW!
Defense that starteth as 2-2-1 3/4 press of court
And falleth back into defense
That switcheth most from zone
To man to man
And back again;
That is the one.
--Willam Shakesbate 1.0
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words,
Remembers me of his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
--William Shakespeare
Azubuike is also a necessary get to keep expanding our linguistic dexterity and so help us get beyond pronouncing apparently African names with midwestern twangs.
Terrence Ferguson is a classic KU type name.
Mustapha Heron is not, but we have to sign him anyway. Having him will be like having the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of college basketball.
Noted. For that you get a double increase in what we cannot pay. :-)
I am giving you both an increase in what we cannot pay you.
Best regards,
@jaybate 1.0
Director, BIA
It would be much better if it could happen, but the effects of joining the Big Ten would unfortunately cut a number of different ways for big power interests in Kansas and that makes it unlikely to happen.
I would think that both adidas and Nike would be willing to spend sharply more to have KU under contract were it in the Big Ten.
KU could never be as sexy as UM and MSU in the Big Ten, but KU would become especially desirable to turn into a long stack in basketball for the Big Ten, if it were in the Big Ten. It would be a very desirable alternative to Indiana and Purdue, because Indiana is politically basically a rogue state in the midst of the Big Ten. The state of Indiana itself is a thorn in the side of blue state interests in the Great Lakes Basin. It is essentially a long north-south potential transportation and pipeline and canal corridor from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and on to the South that many Great Lakes interests would never want to see opened up.
To digress a moment, Indiana is, if anything, a redder state than Kansas. And if Kansas were to join the Big Ten it would likely occur only if it had decided to move back toward its centrist, main street republican roots, which would make it a preferred alternative to many Big Ten power players to Indiana's continued red state stridency. But of course with local Big Oil and Big Ag players heavily supporting red state stridency in Kansas, Kansas Republicanism for the foreseeable future seems unlikely to shift back to center and so KU seems unlikely to join a blue state dominated conference.
There is more complexity to it of course.
Contrary to popular belief, it appears to me that certain elements of Big Oil and Big Ag might at least consider KU and KSU joining the Big Ten, but only if they were able to build their influence in KU and KSU to the point that they did not have to worry about KU and KSU getting off the leash once they got into the Big Ten and grow more independent because of the implied political economic alliances that become possible with such membership. The Big Oil and Big Ag interests from the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas alliance reputedly worked hard for political regime change in Wisconsin and Michigan the last few elections, so injecting a KU and KSU into the Big Ten conference to go along with a strident Red State Indiana might well be appealing to them on some levels. But only some.
All the oil interests at play in Kansas always have to keep in mind keeping the state of Kansas staunchly in the Texas-Oklahoma-Kansas oil and gas and pipeline right of way alliance. And one of the crucial levers in any state that a player must control to control that state is its major universities. Controlling those universities creates tremendous economic and political economic clout. That clout translates to getting regulatory control of the state government and control of the senate and congressional voting from that state in Washington, D.C. The end game is always preservation and extension regional infrastructure and political economic interests.
So: while on the one hand, oil players operating through Red State political organizations might see some advantage to porting KU and KSU to the Big Ten alliance of state schools and states that dominate the Great Lakes Basin, as a means of interjecting influence, where vast crude oil reserves exist under Michigan and the Great Lakes themselves, and for other agendas, also, well, those sorts of agendas are birds in the bush so to speak. In turn, birds in the bush have to be weighed against birds in the hand. The pipelines and oil, gas, oil shale, and tar sands through out central North America have to be delivered to Texas' Gulf Coast for refining NOW. The have to come through Kansas. No small amount of it has to come FROM under Kansas, too. The great sunk costs are in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and northwest Basin and Range and north Great Plains all the way to north central Canada. No moves can be made that ever jeopardize control of that system and those interests. NOTHING. Everything else is flank, not center. Given the way present worth of money discounting works, almost nothing, not even all the oil under Michigan, and the chance to extend the Super Corridor through to the Great Lakes, can exceed the importance of maintaining the existing sunk costs already in the Great Plains. Some day, under the right set of crisis circumstances, the oily folks in Texas and the Royally Chartered district of London, will get that oil in the Great Lakes, but it will be after most of us are gone. So: in this regard, KU is going no where fast, because the state of Kansas is joining no Great Lakes Basin alliance fast. :-)
But hypothetically speaking, if the Big Oil and Big Ag interests would let KU move, Big Ten membership would sharply improve KU's recruiting credibility throughout the Great Lakes states, with, or without Big Shoe, where KU is now viewed (wrongly) as barely a cut above U of New Mexico academically and in sports (outside basketball) kind of a nothing also.
KU would have to embrace an even more physical brand of bruise ball as the norm too.:scream: Note: the bruise ball gap is now much smaller between B12 and B10, but still seems significant to me. Let me put it this way: some B12 teams now play as rough as the B10 teams, but all B10 teams play that way. :-)
Finally, Big Ten football is one helluva a big party and Kansas fans would love it as much as Nebraska fans now do. I doubt many closely involved with Nebraska football, even the fan base, in Nebraska looks back and wishes they had stayed in the Big 12, good season, or bad. And all the academics and grant whores are much happier in the Big Ten, where the academic esteem and granting pork is higher. For teams and fans, its fun playing in front of big crowds every game and most every town (except Minneapolis) is quite a fun campus and town to visit away. Those lovers of Prince and Minnie cut me some slack here. I don't know that town and campus well. Maybe the Golden Gophers know how to have a good time. But when I was at UW, no one drove to Minnie the way they did to Ann Arbor, Iowa City and Champaign Urbana for games. Ann Arbor, Madison, East Lansing, Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, Columbus, Bloomington, and University Park, these are great football happenings every weekend even in their down seasons. Some times they are even better in their down seasons.
So the long answer is above.
And the short answer is: yes, some of KU basketball's current recruiting problems could be made some what better by moving to the Big Ten, but not fully resolved IMHO without a switch to Nike, too. Notice adidas UM struggles for talent just as KU does. And Nike MSU, before Izzo kind of appeared to go along to get along with apparent stacking last season and this, struggled, too. But for things to improve decisively, some fundamental shift in the Big Shoe regime that would favor adidas programs would probably have to occur.
It happens sometimes. :neckbeard:
This is how it is when you are a blockade runner.
Captain Rhett Butler can break it from time to time, but it gets harder and harder, unless his Confederacy can make strategic alliance with some one willing to fight a war to end the Union blockade permanently.
Blockades and embargoes take awhile to work but they slowly strangle an opponent.
KU has to join an alliance capable of breaking the blockade, or this is going to get worse, not better.
It joined the adidas alliance, but that has not worked.
It has tried running the blockade with imported weapons; that worked a little for a short while.
But now that approach is sputtering.
This could spill over into recruiting for next season, too.
Those that argue that if Diallo doesn't qualify, then KU would just have more scholarships to give, just don't get it.
The 3 long stacks have more 5-7 short to medium stacks.
This situation is getting worse, not better.
Hope he is a good one. We always need good basketball players that want to be Jayhawks.
Imagine a whole team with comb overs!
Go fast in a car and slow down, and you feel like you are going way slower than you are. It is called being velocitized.
When UK has a 10 stack and slows down to a 5 stack, or Duke slows from a 9 to a 4, some board rats feel UK and Duke are in a down year and rebuilding.
Are they "Stackicized"?
• I don't see WSU and Marsha mentioned in the running for any of these players. Looks like beating KU didn't change much in their recruiting so far.
• This looks like another recruiting season suggesting the embargo on top domestic 1's and 5's continues.
• It seems like the domestic OADs are basically out of the discourse till the end of the 2015-16 season, when most go through the long ritual of milking branding publicity pretending to make decisions that were apparently made back in early high school.
• Since KU appears shut out of the domestic OADs, then the big question should be who is the next foreign OAD? The next Wiggins, Embiid and Diallo?
• Oh, the other thing to focus on are the high school juniors most likely to reclassify and come to D1 early? The next Vick?
• the other thing to watch for is the foreign, or domestic, OAD that appears to change shoe leans? The next Wiggins, or Jaylen Brown?
The only legitimate speculation this time of year is among the 4-star and less guys and the occasional 5-star tweener local.
😄
Of course last season was largely about injuries, one player too young to perform, and another player caught up in loan issues.
That isn't even disputable.
@mdm7eb said:
Now lets take a look at front court rankings. As you will see, KU leads over UVA in this category too, 86 vs 110.
See the 8-2 score above.
@mdm7eb said:
I don’t have the time to parse the differences between the ACC and the Big12.
Why does your lack of time not surprise me?
This is kind of like playing "beat the beaver" at the video arcade with only one hole and one beaver.
Howling.
@mdm7eb said:
Narrative is fun but much more substantial with data and facts.
Yes, it is and I am having a helluva a lot of fun exposing your foray into stats, which reminds me of Twain's "The Innocents Abroad".