@mdm7eb said:
I am not claiming Tony Bennett is in the same league of Self (we need to see 10+ years of continued performances).
Well, of course, you aren't doing that, because you would be contradicting the facts, wouldn't you? Based on the data available it would be impossible to make a credible case that TB was better than Self now, or that he probably would be better at the end of both their careers.
Elementary.
An average is one way to look at it.
But an average kind of ignores entirely what the players were able to contribute due to circumstances. The circumstances that prevent players from contributing can include injury not requiring operation, but sufficient to impair them from reaching their potential for the portion of the season that you say "matters." They can also include playing operable. They can also include players out for regulatory reasons. And they can include players that are for one reason or another unable to perform up to rotation standards and their ranking.
So: let's sum the number of players Self had that were able to play to their rank during the period of the season that you call the part "that matters" and compare that with UVA, shall we?
Let's drop out KU's injured and operables that could not possibly have played to their ranks, regardless of what coach had coached them, shall we?
Selden, Ellis, Traylor, Lucas, Greene, Oubre.
Then lets drop the guys that played so poorly they weren't in the rotation sufficiently to play up to any rank: Svi, Hunter, Cliff.
Let's see. Who does that leave Self?
Ah, yes, Frank Mason, Devonte Graham, and, um, well, uh, that's all.
So Bill gets a score of 2.
Now, I don't know the injury and under performance figures for UVA, but I recall them having all but maybe one of their 8 guys 6-8 or higher available. That means TB had 7 long guys.
And let's cut TB some slack here and say there was one more guy of some kind on the team that did not perform up to snuff.
That means TB 10 minus 2 =8.
Hmmmmm.
So Bill = 2.
TB = 8.
By the way, the higher score means you have more talent to work with than the guy with the lower score.
TB had vastly more talent to work with at the end of the season "when it matters."
You lose.
Next.
For those trying to understand the recent success of WSU basketball spanning Mark Turgeon and Gregg Marshall, and wondering if it will continue, it helps to consider their prior AD, Jim Shaus, and their current AD, Eric Sexton.
Jim Shaus was basketball man through and through. He was the son of Fred Shaus, the great coach at West Virginia that coached Jerry West and then moved to the NBA to coach West early on with the Lakers. Fred Shaus has been some what forgotten, because the Lakers mostly blossomed AFTER Shaus coached them. But as Laker coach Shaus won 4 western conference championships despite falling to the great Celtic teams of the time. Shaus identified the problem correctly. He became the GM and began building the Laker staff and team that would was win the title in 1972, when Bill Sharman was hired as coach, Wilt was acquired, and Elgin Baylor traded. With the Celtic giant slain, and with Jerry West in line to be the Laker GM that would craft Show Time and the eventual foundation for the Shaq/Koby Lakers, Fred Shaus returned to college coaching briefly at Purdue, then finished his career as AD of West Virginia. Fred Shaus built a huge basketball network in West Virginia. Son Jim apparently learned the family business—basketball.
Son Jim Shaus graduated from Purdue (BA), where his father coached, and West Virginia (M.S.), where his father was AD, and after stints at Oregon, UCinn, UTEP, and Northern Illinois eventually wound up as Wichita State AD at the time Mark Turgeon rebuilt the basketball program. Shaus recognized Turg’s abilities and basketball breeding. When Turg left, Shaus also recognized Gregg Marshall’s ties as an assistant to Greg White at Marshall University in West Virginia, and his grooming under Head Coach John Kresse of College of Charleston. He probably also understood the significance of Kresse influence on Gregg Marshall with Kresse having been Lou Carnesseca’s assistant twice at St. John’s. Shaus did not hesitate to pull the trigger on hiring Gregg Marshall from tiny Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Basketball men recognize basketball men.
By 2008, Shaus left WSU for Ohio University.
WSU replaced Shaus with Eric Sexton, one of the most fascinating picks for an athletic director in some time I would hazard. Eric Sexton is a native Kansan and a WSU grad. But he is so much more. Sexton holds a Ph.d. in political science from KU. But let’s paste a quote from WSU President Don Beggs.
"For 18 years, Eric has worked to develop positive relationships with people external to the university," Beggs said. "He has participated in the hiring of several coaches and in 2005 served as chair of our successful NCAA certification process. He is the right person to lead the athletic department.”
http://www.wichita.edu/thisis/stories/story.asp?si=185 ↗
And then there is this from the reporter:
"Sexton is the executive director for government relations and Board of Trustees at Wichita State, where he builds relationships with elected and appointed officials at the local, state and federal levels to advance the university’s finances and to provide for the academic and research needs of the Wichita region.”
http://www.wichita.edu/thisis/stories/story.asp?si=185 ↗
Translation: Cha-Ching!!!
Sexton is at the Nexus of WSU, the Feds and research monies, the NCAA, the Board of Trustees, and now the Athletic revenue streams.
He might even know the Kochs. :-)
Sexton has been able to encourage Marshall to stay through some pretty impressive offers.
WSU’s athletics are going to be getting better for quite awhile, I suspect.
@JayHawkFanToo said:
Gregg Marshall coached the Eagles from 1999–2007, engineering one of the great program turnarounds in NCAA history.
I wonder if Marsha wrote that?
Or maybe one of his supporters?
It doesn't sound quite, ummm, objective to me. Does it to you?
194-83? That's .700. Hmmm. That's a good turnaround. But great? Wouldn't good fit a little better than Great?
Wouldn't calling Marsha a good coach rather than a great one fit a little better?
I know there have been a few great coaches that have not won rings, but we really can't tell how great those non-ring winners are until we see their careers beginning to end. We have to see how they stack up with the other great coaches that have not won rings. We have to gauge their lasting contributions to the game, their character, their positive impacts on the game, the respect they earn from their colleagues and so on. Marsha has coached 17 seasons and is 358-159; that is a .715 W&L statement. It is good. But great? And what lasting contributions and/or innovations has he made to the game? I really can't think of any, can you? Is he held in high esteem by the most respected of his fellow coaches? Has he made good enemies? You know. Do all the weasels dislike him?
And what is the context of his turnaround at Winthrop?
What was Winthrop's record the previous few seasons? Any idea. I looked and couldn't figure it out. You seem pretty good at ferreting this sort of thing out. Was Winthrop's coach before Marsha a hapless coach? Or had he built a modest foundation Marsha could take and run with? If there were no decent players to build on at Winthrop, how did Marsha get the good players there his first season, which was a fine 21-8 and 9-1 in conference? Just trying to ground our understanding and perceptions of Marsha in whatever reality may exist about him.
I want to know my opponent. :-)
We are keeping you busy this morning!!!!!!!
We will all have to chip in to an @Red.Rooster fund in case of repetitive stress injury!!!!!
Rock Chalk!!!!
And hurry up Late Night!!!!!
Now that's a scary thought.
Marsha and Cal switch jobs.
Marsha at UK.
Cal with the Wheat Static.
Cal might not even HAVE practices at Wichita.
He might just have watch settings.
Auto-Howling!
@JayHawkFanToo said:
Elijah Johnson was given a flagrant one for intentionally ringing Mitch McGary “bells” and Coach Self did not bench him, right? It just does not happen.
Irrelevant whether any one benched anyone for unsportsmanlike conduct last season, same as it is irrelevant whether anyone else other than benched anyone for improper loans. But you should know that.
Also irrelevant, because of invalid comparison. A nut punch is not remotely as dangerous to a victim as an elbow to the head. It would not make sense to compare an elbow to the face with a gunshot to the face either. Different levels of violence. Different situations and fitting responses. But you should know that.
But from what I could see, Self should have benched EJ, too. It's a mark against Self that he didn't. But Failing to bench Van Vleet for what he did to Ellis? REALLY BAD FORM on Marsha's part. Suspending him for the rest of the season might have even been a fitting disciplinary action.
And it is possible that by not disciplining Van Vleet for the contact Marsha has increased the long term risk of playing for WSU. Any coach and team that prepares for WSU now probably realizes that this sort of play by WSU players is apparently tolerated, so opposing teams must train specifically to self protect and retaliate for such plays, or perhaps even adopt pre-emtive doctrine. The next players injured BOTH on WSU and WSU OPPONENTS by this kind of play may to some extent be victims of both those referees and Marsha's apparent failure to address this issue constructively.
But you should know that.
@JayHawkFanToo said:
Can you think of a coach, any coach that has sat his starting PG or any other player for the rest of the game, …while playing in the NCAA or any other game
Irrelevant.
Can you think of a valid reason why a coach should not pull a player for a game, as punishment for unsportsmanlike conduct? I cannot. Heck, they pull players for games for poor performance?
Can you recall another coach in the same tournament faced with one of his players appearing to wield his elbow at the nose of another defender in quite the way Van Vleet appeared to do to Ellis? I cannot. So: why would I expect to find another coach to have pulled another player for such a play as that appeared? I haven't seen an elbow appear to be wielded in that particular way before. It appeared extraordinary to me then and still seems so in recollection. Quite startling in first viewing and repugnant in replays.
Perhaps someone can post a feed of the elbow incident?
@JayHawkFanToo said:
There was no indication that it was an intentional, premeditated or flagrant foul; in fact, VanVleet was not even called for a foul
Opining your honor! And quite unpersuasive opining.
And the Zapruder Film doesn't document that JFK got his brains blown out either!
Next, refs not calling a foul in this era hardly means there wasn't one, but of course you know this.
Yeeee hawww, now we are having some off season fun!
Wha
@Crimsonorblue22 said:
@drgnslayr I heard him say it. A friend of our family is a d1 ast coach and he told us a long time ago-before chickenhawk remark that Marsha is not respected by other coaches. IMO he’s a jackass
Most interesting!
@drgnslayr said:
You don’t have to convince me that Marsha is a great coach. He is a rare breed and able to do things few are capable of.
I still need a ton of convincing. He is good at best till he wins a ring. Period.
@drgnslayr said:
What do Kansas fans expect him to do? Bow down to us?
Yes, and after that bend over. 😄
@JayHawkFanToo said:
I think this topic has been discussed as much as it can be and we need to agree to disagree and move on.
Not even close to exhausted as a topic or you wouldn't be responding. 😄
"...he is doing what his fan base wants and expects him to do to get KU to agree to play WSU."--@JayHawkFanToo
WSU must be getting very disappointed with Marsha not getting Self to play the Wheat Static.
Go, Bill, go!!!!
Ignore hell out of the Wheat Static each regular season, then beat them early and often in the Madness!
Comments taken in context and with right amount of complexity as usual. Thanks!
PHOF!
@JayHawkFanToo said:
If you can separate Marshall’s WSU spokesman persona from Marshall the Coach, you see a very good coach, regardless of how you feel about him personally.
First, how could anyone have any feelings about Coach Marsha personally unless they knew Coach Marsha personally? Not sure I follow this. I know I don't have any feelings about him personally. What feelings I have about him are shaped largely by him letting Van Vleet continue to play after elbow-sledge-hammering Perry Ellis' nose out the back of his head on national TV. It was bad enough that the refs did not eject Van Vleet from the game, but it was far worse that Coach Marsha did not sit Van Vleet for the rest of the game.
Second, why should we EVER separate the WSU spokesman persona from the Coach? Coach Marsha doesn't publicly separate them, does he? If he has, I would like to hear about it. If he doesn't, why would we? I mean, if Coach Marsha would come out and say something like, "Hey, when I am acting as WSU spokesman, well, I say a lot stupid fecal matter. Don't pay any attention to that. It has nothing to do with my coaching," well, then we would be obliged to separate the two sides of him, right? But he doesn't do that. Coach Marsha appears to comment related to KU and WSU as speaking as WSU Head Basketball Coach Greg Marsha.
When I look at WSU Head Basketball Coach Greg Marsha I see a coach that has won a lot games, baited Self about not scheduling WSU, and failed to remove Van Vleet for the rest of the game for elbow-sledge-hammering Perry Ellis in the nose on TV in an NCAA tourney game. Its all WSU Head Coach Greg Marsha.
If I were to break out Greg Marsha into WSU Head Basketball Coach, and then into WSU spokesman, I reckon I would then have to break him out into Greg Marsha, human being, that lacked the character to kick his own player out of the game for elbow-sledge-hammering an opposing player in the nose. Do you see what I am getting at here?
Would you really think it would be fair to Greg Marsha to break him out into a series of abstractions? Shouldn't we view him as a head coach, since that is all we have much knowledge of him as.
We don't know what Coach Marsha is like at home, or out partying. We don't know what his politics are. We don't know if he likes to hunt, or fish, or much else.
All we know is WSU Head Basketball Coach Greg Marsha.
I for one have no problem recognizing that WSU Head Basketball Coach Greg Marsha wins a lot of games, baits Coach Self about scheduling WSU, and wouldn't bench Van Vleet for elbow-sledge-hammering Perry Ellis in the nose. It seems easy to keep them all in my head simultaneously.
And I can do it without having any feelings about him personally either.
Rock Chalk!
The Coach--no hesitation.
Dear Bill,
Hire the Coach.
Best,
'bate 1.0
@drgnslayr said:
I’m talking about players that appear to have come from another planet… an advanced basketball planet.
PHOF
Thanks for doing the leg work and clarifying that.
I stand corrected.
That is certainly a point for Marsha in my book.
Now, are there any teams that Marsha has coached at Winthrop, or WSU, that were similarly depleted by injury, transfer, and suspensions, to key players and rotation players, as Self's KU team was down the stretch?
If Marsha has in the past had a similarly depleted team to last year's KU team down the stretch and won a conference title and gone .500 or better down that stretch, then Marsha definitely should be considered as an example of another coach other than Self that could have done it, don't you agree?
As an aside, I am excited to learn that Marsha really did turn a program around, like Self did. It makes me respect Marsha more, and makes me want to beat him even more, and makes me wonder if we might be even more justified in punking one of his players next time the way Van Vleet punked Perry. I mean the guy is good. And the punking was unquestionably part of how he beat us. So: is there any reason not to punk one of his players the next meeting? Or maybe even punk him? What do you think?
To punk, or not to punk; that is the question.--Shakesbate 1.0
Rock Chalk!
Marsha has apparently had D1 major talent at mid major WSU during his best seasons at Kochita State.
Kochita State looked more talented last season down the stretch than KU decimated by injury.
Van Vleet looked better than Frank and Devonte combined. He was closer to Nic Moore's level of that season.
Baker was certainly more capable than Selden by that time. Selden had not played as effectively as Baker all season. Selden could only get up to the rim on a dead run. He never shot, or handled, well all season. I would have taken Baker over Selden last season for sure. Selden was a former OAD battling back from a knee operation and God only knows what else. Baker was at his best.
Their 5s healthy looked better than our twin big man projects injured.
Pretty much anyone they put on the court was better than Oubre and his injured knee by the end.
Cliff wasn't even an option.
Perry wasn't sound even before the apparent assault.
BG was operable.
Where does ANYONE get the peculiar idea that hollowed out KU was more talented down the stretch than Kochita State, especially after Ellis was laid out? That contradicts the facts.
KU was seeded higher based on an RPI Built largely when when KU was not hollowed out.
And Marsha's great teams the two previous seasons? The guy had good players.
Can Marsha coach? Yes.
Has Marsha been doing it with second rate players? No.
Does anyone think Koch grade support can't get good players to WSU?
Marsha might have won a title with the talent Self had at the beginning of the season. He has done well when he has had good talent.
I don't recall that Marsha has ever turned around a moribund program as Self did ORU.
Has he?
Winthrop was a good small basketball school in the south, wasn't it? My recollection is that Marsha's mentor had run a good program at Winthrop, that Marsha was asked to continue. Marsha made it better just as Marsha improved already decent WSU. Could be wrong, but that's what I recall.
I don't recall Marsha coaching a hollowed out team that KU was down the stretch. And winning a title. Has he?
UNLV should have some ringers.
UCLA will likely have an adidas short stack.
Chaminade will have a recording of Iz singing "Over the Rainbow."
Vandy and Indy?
Both will be better than we expect.
In the end, all that matters is a steak at The Shore Bird, and making contact with wahines without gun-toting husbands with family in Sicily.
St. John's should be a threat, because they have apparently given into the forces of darkness and so likely Chris will have a short stack of one kind, or another.
@JReyn said:
Would another coach have noticed that and played Svi more? Who knows.
I do.
I bet a lot of folks do, too.
Another coach would have played Svi more than one-legged, operable BG, if Svi could have guarded his own shadow over a pick, and hit the broad side of a blimp hangar, as a 17 year old refugee from a war zone half a world away likely with some of his family in harm's way.
Heck, even Self would have played Svi more. He tried to start the kid early. That was a bomb.
Svi was clearly a year away physically, emotionally and probably linguistically.
And BG was what there was.
It wasn't like Conner Frankamp was available; like Conner hadn't transferred, when Self had said he had intended to start him some and play him in the rotation.
It wasn't like Selden was rockin' the trey at a higher percentage than one-legged, operable Brannen, right?
It wasn't like Self didn't need to use Devonte to spell Frank, even though Devonte intermittently would get speeded up and down the stretch got nicked up himself trying fill at 2 and 3 on top of backing up Frank.
I don't know.
Does Self really have trouble "noticing" viable players?
Or is it just that some fans think some players are viable that really aren't...yet?
In my experience the last five years or so, every time a guy sits a season after stinking up the floor early, and folks start saying that the guy could have played if Self had just given him enough PT, then the next season rolls around and the guy comes out and exposes exactly the reason Self didn't play him the previous season.
I forgot about Marsha. Marsha possibly could have done it, IF they would have given him carte blanche to have Van Vleet punk the opposing team's top player in every game down the stretch of last season's KU stretch run. I am not sure the refs would have let him though. What do you think?
Without the carte blanche, not a chance.
It is fine not to agree and I really do like your posts much of the time, whether I agree with them or not. Because we have our spats from time to time I make a special effort to upvote your posts to let you know I think they are worthy and to let you know I am grateful to have you here. And you are right that Archie IS a maybe. But he has a way to go in my mind to prove himself capable of doing what Self did in the Big 12. Heck Self went to the National Finals with five players and Conner Teahan. Let's see Archie do that!!!
But here is something else. I am pretty confident that Archie would have a ring, maybe two, with Stumpy's stacks at UA. That is how much better I think Archie is than Stumpy.
Point made. He finished second in the A-10.
Stumpy's kid brother will definitely have something to crow about when he wins, say, 7 conference titles in a row and a ring.
It is interesting you use fixed technologies as a metaphor. Airplanes are designed, retrofitted with a few new subsystems and used until they are obsolete and then mothballed and scrapped.
I view the Multiple Offense as much more like the expressed doctrine and strategy of the Marine Corp.
Doctrine and strategy just keep being amended, or erased and rewritten to fit the technology, battlefield and opponent. But the Marine Corp just keeps coming in as teams and embracing tactics as strategy. It is what keeps them surviving until they can figure out the tactics that can become the new strategy to finish enemies off. It never gets old.
There is nothing to throw away except maybe the weapons and gear from the last war that needs to be replaced with new gear and weapons. So sometimes Self throws away the three point play, and sometimes Self throws away scoring on the low block, and sometimes Self throws away all perimeter action, and sometimes he goes back to perimeter action. If he hasn't got a single big man that can rebound, he rebounds with his perimeter. If he had great inside rebounding he schemes shots that produce short rebounds. If he has no centers that can walk and chew gum, then he designs a post committee that doesn't walk and chew gum. His flexibility is stunning. Where the notion that he is not flexible arose is hard to explain. I think it has to do with Self seeing clearly what his teams can and cannot do, and what they must be able to do, and what it does not matter that they cannot do, and stubbornly persisting in finding ways to enable them at what they can and must do to be winners, which they tend to turn out to be. Self's teams always wins SOMETHING; that's the difference between Self's teams and other coaches' teams these days. Other coaches, if the Petro gods bless them, win with a few more with stacks. One or two coaches actually are a little better at certain things than Self. But only Self's teams win SOMETHING EVERY year.
The Marine Corp's team philosophy and doctrine of flexible response and tactics becoming strategy never seem to age to me, or to them, or to their enemies, that mostly end up wishing they were the Marine Corps allies.
Self philosophy is play it any way they want via the flexible response doctrine of Multiple-Offense that morphs to take the many forms of High-Low aka the Carolina Passing aka the Four Flat, aka the 4 out one in, and so on. The opponent match-ups determine the tactics and over the course of a game the tactics become the strategy.
It never gets old.
No other active coach has kept winning at his rate for the last 11 seasons without stacks.
No other coach has won more rings without more seasons of superior material.
Self's offensive schemes vary more year to year than any of the other ring winning coaches that I can think of, because the Multiple Offense is so flexible that he can vary it more that Knight's motion offense, or Cal's Dribble Drive.
Calhoun embraced Self Ball at UConn and won a couple rings with the Multiple Offense, Ollie won one, Self won one, Roy won two with a variation of it--it is actually doing well.
The only offenses giving it a serious run are the Knight Motion Offense that Consonants runs that Capel could not make run at OU, Pitino's offense, which I have never investigated, and the Judd Heathcote oddity that Izzo continues.
I suppose if Bob Huggins ever finds a way back on to the recruiting gravy train and gets some guys that can not only guard but shoot, then his father's idiosyncratic old offense might have some feasibility, too.
The Dribble Drive is already petering out. Cal has proven that it squanders talent. Even those apparently stacking the talent with Cal appear no longer to believe in it and Cal, or at least are starting to hedge their bets. They appear to be diversifying to LSU and Cal, among other places. I don't know what Johnny Jones runs yet, but if I recall correctly he was influenced by Pitino. Cuonzo plays a variety of Okie Ball filtered through Haskin's disciple Nolan Richardson that is frankly VERY close to Self Ball.
And if we are honest, Fred was running a 4 out 1 in variation of the high low, and when the going got tough, last season, he copied BAD BALL lock, stock and ugly barrel.
No, I have to say we have state of the art right now.
We have Picasso and he has a really big flipping palate and everyone is trying to paint like him, regardless of what offense they run.
And our Picasso is morphing through phases faster than most of us can keep up with.
Only genius is able to invent BAD BALL the second half of a season, then shift to Four Flat, and Four Out One WITH NO ACTION, only a couple of months later, and win a conference title on the one hand, and a WUG championship on the other--both times without most of the players he was supposed to need even to be competitive available much of the time in both seasons.
Its like a hat trick with only one hat.
Magic baby.
Pure Houdini.
It is an interesting point as to whether Izzo had better cards than Self last season.
At the start of last season, before Cliff was apparently marginalized in anticipation of his NCAA investigation issues, back when people thought he might be a dominant D1 big man his first season, and back before it became apparent that Oubre had a bum wheel from the start of the season that repaired briefly and then blew out down the stretch, I would have argued that Self had the better cards.
But of course Cliff at his peak rarely played more than 20 mpg and averaged 17 for the season and never dominated his own shadow.
And Kelly? Well, when he was good, he was very, VERY good in the middle third of the season, but for 2/3s of the season he was either a no show early, or he was a decoy down the stretch run.
Add in the operables, walking wounded, and injured players like Lucas and Traylor that were unranked projects that many years would not even have been given scholarships, much less be being counted on as starters, and I have to say that Izzo had a better cards most of the season, and by the end of the season, it wasn't even close. Izzo hand could have taken Self's hand 7 out of 1o games. KU was just a shell of itself by the end.
Re-Bingo!!!
Young fans and players need to recover certain things about the past of the greatest game ever invented and jettison others. Both these players have been discussed in this forum before. But some times some things are so extraordinary that they must be repeated, because they point the way to the undiscovered country that the game might still evolve toward.
Once upon a time on courts long long ago, there were two men that came along and approached the game quite differently than it had been played at the highest levels before or since. Allen Iverson, who came along much later, could have done it had he been born at a different time and played in a more tolerant time. Probably some more existed that I do not know about before and since.
But these two men did it once. They went to the undiscovered country and returned played what could be in college and the NBA. And these are Youtube feeds that capture just the surface of how differently they showed the game could be played. And both of them believed they were the harbingers of things to come, not evolutionary dead ends.
Show these feeds to old board rats grown cynical and doubtful about the future possibilities of the game.
Show these feeds to young boys and girls raised in an age of terror, pessimism, knock-offs and doubt.
These two men were originals.
Uninhibited in their exploration of the undiscovered country.
Infinite in all directions on the sacred wood.
Not harbingers of how it might be.
But of what can be.
Of what is.
When the blinders come off.
I love both men equally.
I wish I could find a better feed of Earl.
Ignore the imbecility of "the greatest basketball player ever." There is NO greatest basketball player ever.
The thing to learn is what can happen on offense, when the defense NEVER knows what the offensive player might do next.
Maravich...
Monroe...
I've missed these Sports Skool videos. Thanks. This one is great. Talk about taking the mystery out of the fundamentals.
"Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."--George Santayana
"Let me repeat: history repeats itself, only with infinite variation within limits sufficient to keep most of us in the dark about exactly what will happen next."--jaybate 1.0
The Princeton is a bone head simple offense that starts four outside with a high post. It obviously derives from the ancient high post offense. It depends on cuts and scrape offs running by screens. Timing is pivotal. A player has to run by a screen and get to a spot at the moment that the ball is in a position to be passed to the hopefully open spot. The antidote to the Princeton is knocking guys off their cuts and off their spots and jumping into passing lanes to disrupt the timing. Once a defensive team does this successfully, the Princeton coaches tend to resort to much more ball screening outside with the lone post man, which is easily countered by telling your post defender to beat the Princeton post man to the ball before the screen can even be set. This puts that post defender and the defensive guard in a double team on the ball. When the ball screen is set it is ineffectual for which ever way the driver goes there is a defender to stop him, and when he tries to dish off to the ball screening post, then the ball screening post, who is not a very good put it on the deck and go type, is 25-27 feet from the basket and able to do little other than pass the ball into the next sequenced play in the Princeton series of plays.
The Princeton tries to wear opposing defenses down with congestion--the crowding of players together and cutters scraping off defenders with that congestion. The Princeton is a fine offense for m2m defenses that funnel defenders to baseline; i.e., use the baseline as a sixth defender.
But the Princeton is a lousy offense for m2m defenses that funnel the ball to help in the middle and use defensive help (defensive congestion) plus the 3 second lane clock as a 6th defender, to ham string offenses. Basically, against Self defense, the Princeton "helps" the Self defense create the congestion that Self Defense seeks to create. It also plays into the hands of Self Defense by its use of the clock. Self teams would rather expend energy on defense than offense. Self's Ball would rather have games in the 60s and 70s, even the 50s, than games >80. The Princeton almost guaranties it. Self was the guy that showed the world how to beat Princeton's every time. It all came down to two keys: a.) being able to NOT get impatient and annoyed with the deliberateness; and b.) fighting over the screens as much as possible and bodying all the time to upset the timing. The best way to do this; i.e., to expend lots of energy on defense, is to play Self's Carolina-Okie Ball Descended Multiple Offense that emphasizes passing to hold energy expenditure on offense to a minimum. Offensive efficiency via passing allows one to spend more of the energy budget on defending the Princeton's deliberate series of six basic plays, or actions.
By playing it exactly the tempo the Princeton wants, Self's teams literally take away the one advantage of irritation the Princeton has. Once this is done, a Princeton team is helpless to adapt to do anything else.
There is of course a defensive component to the classic Princeton System: the zone defense. And, of course, once Self really learned (he always knew the principles because its in the frigging book by Dean Smith, but really understanding it and how to teach players to score on a zone from the Multiple Offense takes some years of trying to pair it down to the essence of how to teach his players to run his same Carolina-Okie Ball derived Multiple Offense (what people call the High Low, or the Carolina Passing Offense) against a zone as they run against a m2m, then every game with a Princeton team became a W waiting to happen with only one risk.
If you spent your energy budget defending a Princeton the first game of a two in three, and had to play a Princeton team again the second game, or even just a superbly well conditioned ball possession offense the next game, you could run out of defensive gas and lose your shooting legs the second game. This was what happened when KU beat first Richmond in a long defensive grind against its Princeton, and then lost to Shaka and his hyper conditioned Princetonians the second game in the Madness some seasons back now.
So: Self subsequently made the logical adjustment. He increased cardio training of his teams and he began more liberal substitutions in the first of the two in three day games. It worked so well he expanded it to most any kind of opponent.
If you go back to Pete Carril, the most visible modern proponent of the Princeton, he said it was six plays run in sequence that could run easily under a 45 second shot clock and then start to be rerun if an open shot were not found. Carril always said that deliberate though the Princeton might be run, there was always enough time under a 45 second clock to run the entire series of six plays and reset and run maybe two more. This apparently made it click with Self that the defensive goal against a Princeton was never to try to hurry it up, but rather to emphasize continually knocking it off its cuts and off its spots and disrupting its timing, and above all just staying with the cutters no matter how long it took. A Princeton offense that generates no open looks is just as annoying to the players playing that offense, as a it is to those guarding it; that is a key.
And if you go back beyond Carril to Caril's coach that taught him some of the six basic plays that Carrill systematized a bit and harnessed to a zone defense, so as to have a complete "system," you find that Carrill's coach had been at KU briefly as a football coach and, I at least hypothesize, likely as not probably kibitzed more than a bit with Phog Allen and some of Allen's great assistants, like maybe Bunn, or some German fellow who's name I now regrettably cannot recall, or maybe Harp was there by then. Football and basketball were not so tightly partitioned by specialization in those days. Coaches often hung around and coached both sports in those days.
So: the Princeton, clever as it is in some ways, and vulnerable as it is in others, likely as not has some small origins in Phog Allen's fertile imagination, even though I kind of wish that it didn't, and would be delighted if it were proven to have no connection.
Next.
Seriously, I agree with you that Tony Bennett is a fine young coach.
But the question was: what coach could have equalled or exceeded what Self did down the stretch last season with what remained of last year's team down the stretch?
There just is no evidence in his record to date that Tony could have come close to handling the adversity Self faced last season remotely as well as Self did.
None.
Some will point to Justin Anderson's broken finger on his shooting hand as some adversity last season, but come on, Self had to start Landen Lucas and Jamari Traylor at center all season and then play them injured down the stretch, plus KU's version of Anderson, Wayne Selden, never played or contributed consistently on offense beginning, middle, or end and was often a flipping detriment to the team, because of wavering concentration ALL season. By comparison, Tony had an injury cake walk with probably his most talented team ever last season compared to Self laboring with one of his least talented, and most injured teams in his KU tenure. And Self just went out and produced a rabbit from a fez the size of a thimble.
It is easy to underrate what Self is doing, because the apparent talent embargo is making sure he is not a serious threat to win a ring as "A Coach in the Time of Petro Stacks," as Gabriel Garcia Marquez might title a novel about this era-- were he a basketball fan and were he inspired to write one about the greatest game ever invented.
Bo maybe. But even Bo never strung together 11 consecutive titles did he? No. And when did Bo ACTUALLY win a B1G title with as many injuries, operables, plus a post rotation equivalent to an injured Landen and injured Jamari, and with his best player as in Wayne Selden, unable to produce for an entire season?
Answer: NEVER. Bo has had to have most of his guys pretty healthy to win the few titles he has won. And while he has had many seasons where his post men are comparable to Landen and Jamari in talent, he has never won spit when both his modestly talented centers were playing on one leg a piece.
Tony Bennett? Maybe the singer Tony Bennett. That guy can do anything he tries. Best pipes in the business. Single handedly has saved the Great American Popular Song that Sinatra shepherded for awhile and that rock and roll turned its back on. Paints brilliantly. Sings duets so brilliantly that he can bring out something good in Elvis Flipping Costello. Turns screamers like Lady GaGa into ladies with class. Reveals to a nation grown too coarse and frankly vulgar to appreciate Great American jazz singing and scat that Dianne Krall is reigning women of jazz good enough to carry the torch through this dark age for the next generation. That Tony Bennett might have left his flipping pumper in San Francisco and his brushes in Manhattan and come to Mt. Oread and found a way to do better than .500 down the stretch last season, but Dick Bennett's kid in Charlottesville?
You're kidding me, right?
What is it with American memory these days, eh?
At Washington State, Tony Bennett finished 2rd, 3rd and 7th in the girlie man Pac Ten. Talk about building down! His last team at Washington State--before he blatantly bailed the burning building--was 17-16 and 8-10 in conference. He went out in the first round of the NIT ferchrisssakes.
At Virginia? Tony Bennett finished 9th, 7th, 4th, and 4th, during the years before he was some how mysteriously able to land draft choice talent in bucket loads and UNC was apparently targeted for regime change in shoe wars and Roy had both health problems and regime change to distract him from beating the spit out of Tony's short stack.
The only thing Tony Bennett has really distinguished himself at, so far, is two straight ACC titles during the time Roy was coaching with both hands tied behind his back, Rick Pitino admitted to agents and agent runners biasing talent distribution, Sleepy Jim Boeheim got caught running a pirate program, and Coach Consonants was getting so old (and perhaps demented?) that he could not win a conference title last season with a 9-stack, and had grown so myopic that he was depending on Jeff "I Can't Win Cheating at OU" Capel for in game coaching advise about a NINE stack and LOSING a conference title!!!!!!!!!! Note: Coach K apparently finally upped the aricept in the Madness and just quit listening to Capel, and quit coaching himself, and let his 9 stack win it by themselves.
Tony Bennett could have actually lost in the first round of the NIT with Self's team last season.
OH. MY. GAWD.
Help me, help me, help me, I think I am going insane.
Make it stop, Basketball God. MAKE IT STOP.
:-)
Oh, and the incredible son of Dick did have to have 8 guys on his roster 6-8 or taller last season and one of the five most talented rosters (dare we call it a stack?) to be outcoached in the third round of the NCAA.
Let me put TB (shall we nickname him Tuberculosis? No, some folks are really suffering from that damned disease still) in vocabulario practical: he has never won a title in D1 with a team as banged up as KU last season, nor has he won a title with centers of the quality of Landen Lucas and Jamari Traylor, much less with them playing injured down the stretch. NOR HAS HE EVER DONE ANYTHING TO SUGGEST THAT HE POSSIBLY COULD HAVE.
Tony Bennett is flatly the MOST overrated coaching America.
The only coaches currently with a strong shot as unseating him are Cuonzo Martin and Johnny Jones, if they win conference titles with their stacks this season.
P.S.: I guess a case could be made for Shaka Smart BEING AS OVERRATED AS SON OF DICK.
@dylans and @drgnslayr
I covered Ratso Izzo late in my post above, and I realize sometimes board rats may not have made it to the end. :-) To wit: I will requote and expand just a bit on Ratso.
"What about Ratso Izzo? Well, think 2005, 2006, and 2010 with Ratso. He was .500 in conference those seasons and finished 6th, 7h and 4th respectively. Hmmm. There is a chance Ratso could have finished .500 overall in conference and finished 5th, or 6th, I suppose, based on his record. But go .500 down the stretch with all the KU injuries and the rotation of Landen and Jamari playing injured no less? Oh, man, I gotta think Ratso would have handed out brass knuckles and would have gone .250 down the stretch at the very best."
Izzo's capacity to get it done appears to depend heavily on officiating trends.
During periods of his career and times of the season, when referees will let Izzo's guys use the brass knuckles and tire irons end to end for 40 minutes, there is no question that Izzo and his teams are very tough to beat and that he can get by with two 5-stars and some pulling guards. Izzo appears to be the one guy outside the Carolina and Okie Baller Mafia (Iba, Hansen, Dean, Larry, and Eddie) that Self has really studied hard and borrowed considerablely from and continues to measure his team's "toughness" against year in and year out. He came up against Izzo on a regular basis up at Illinois and Izzo apparently impressed him.
Regardless, being from the populous state of Michigan, and being a Nike program, Ratso seems USUALLY to get two draft choice types in his starting rotation and sometimes more. I believe this season he will have more domestic five stars on his roster than Self, but someone correct me if I'm wrong. I have been counting Izzo as a hold out against Big Shoe stacking, despite being a Nike program, until last season; this season he appears to have decided that if you cannot beat this thing, then join it.
That's the overview on Izzo and Self's apparent respect for him.
But Izzo's teams struggle in the call it close seasons, and in the games where the refs call it close, far more than Self's do--at least that's the recall of my necessarily biased and typically selective human memory.
So: my final analysis regarding Izzo and last year's KU team is that if the refs were letting them play, he might have equalled what Self did down the stretch...maybe. But without the brass knuckles and tire irons? Heck, Izzo with last year's KU team might have goose egged that stretch run. Izzo is flat out the best at butcher ball, since Bob Huggins cleaned up his act after his rogue UCinn years. But take butcher ball away from Ratso, and he is Minnie Mouse and he knows it. And his record shows it. His W&L statement plots out as a bar graph charting the years the refs are "letting'em play" with tire irons and brass knuckles and the seasons when the refs are trying to tighten things up. Ratso wins big when its rough. Minnie comes out .500 in conference when whistles are being blown reasonably.
I can't think of one, except maybe Bo Ryan.
Coach K? Rat Man? I don't think so. Look at Coach K's record, when he is short on talent and long on injuries. Look at that 2006 season: 22-11, 8-8 in conference, 6th place!!!! No, the Rat Man needs to hold all the aces simply to finish second in his conference on a consistent basis. Since 2007, the Rat Man even with his great run of talent has only won the ACC once! With last years KU team the Rat Man would have been lucky to go .250 down the stretch.
Hmm, who else could have won a conference title with Landen Lucas and Jamari Traylor at the 5, and often on the floor together, when Perry Ellis was resting, injured, or trying to breath with his nose out the back of his head? Let me think. Nothing is coming to me yet.
Wait! What about Cal? No, Cal can't even win a ring with a 10 man stack. How did Cal do in his down season at Memphis? Remember back in 2004-05 when Dubya was starting to get over the glow of Mission Accomplished and Cal's pipeline ran out of helium to keep it clean? Cal went 22-16, 9-7 in Conference USA and finished tied for 6th in what was then a conference full of cupcakes. And remember what happened to Cal's early UK stack when Noels blew the knee? Not pretty. NIT. One and out in the tournament of also rans. Cal with Self's KU team last year would have been like giving a guy an unloaded derringer that only was trained to pull the lanyard on a howitzer! Cal with last year's KU team = goose egg down the stretch.
Fred? Oh, puhlease!!!!! Fred was copying Self down the stretch of last season and planning to flee D1 after only five seasons. Fred was 3-13 his first season. Fred finished 12th back when the B12 really had 12 teams. Fred finished 3rd, 4th, 3rd and 2rd. Fred with last year's KU team with the hole in the middle and the plague of injuries? Fred couldn't even beat last year's team for the title. How the hell could he have coached it to a title? Fred would have been .250 down the stretch at best with last year's KU team. At the very best.
Slick Rick? Rick has won exactly 2 titles in 12 flipping season in the Big East over the course of it going from a great conference to circling the drain. Rick with last year's KU team? Hmmm. In Rick's two down years, Rick finished 11th and 7h in his conference. The year he finished seventh, however, he did dream walk his way to the Final Four. Let's be charitable to another adidas brother, and say he might have either finished last with last year's KU team, or he might have finished mid pack and made a miracle run to the Final Four, but either way, he would not have won a conference title AND finished as well as .500 down the stretch.
How about Johnny Jones and Cuonzo Martin, the two .564 to .600 mediocrities to get medium stacks in recruiting this past season? How would these two mediocrities have done rotating Landen Lucas and Jamari Traylor at the 5 down the stretch, when both Landen AND flipping Jamari were injured. And Oubre was injured. And Greene was operable. And Svi could not get over a pick or hit a trey. And Devonte got nicked up. And Perry got knocked out. Would Jones and Martin have gone .500 down the stretch, won a conference title, and won one game in the Madness?
NOT. A. FLIPPING. CHANCE.
What about Ratso Izzo? Well, think 2005, 2006, and 2010 with Ratso. He was .500 in conference those seasons and finished 6th, 7h and 4th respectively. Hmmm. There is a chance Ratso could have finished .500 overall in conference and finished 5th, or 6th, I suppose, based on his record. But go .500 down the stretch with all the KU injuries and the rotation of Landen and Jamari playing injured no less? Oh, man, I gotta think Ratso would have handed out brass knuckles and would have gone .250 down the stretch at the very best.
Self is a genius.
Bad Ball was a stroke of genius.
LET ME REPEAT: SELF WON A CONFERENCE TITLE WITH LANDEN LUCAS AND JAMARI TRAYLOR AT THE 5 PLAYING INJURED DOWN THE STRETCH.
And board rats are getting hives about the possibility he might play BAD BALL again?
Earth to board rats, come in board rats...if Self thinks we ought to play BAD BALL, or even BAD MITTEN, just nod and say okay, coach.
The guy is .82 overall in 11 years at KU, WHILE FIGHTING AN APPARENT TALENT EMBARGO THE LAST FEW SEASONS.
The guy just won the WUG with Landen Lucas, Jamari Traylor and Hunter Mickelson as his 5s! He won the WUG with Diallo, Svi, Greene and Devonte not even playing!!!!
The absolute last thing anyone needs to worry about is Self's choices about offensive schemes. The guy knows what the hell he is doing for sure.
What we all need to be focused on and engage in changing is this ridiculously asymmetric talent distribution system that is keeping the best coach in basketball from signing his justifiable share of the top talent each year, so that he could win about ten straight rings.
Rock Chalk!!!!!
Self's version of the Dean/Larry/Eddie-developed Multiple Offense really needs nothing but a credible post presence on both ends of the floor to go with what else Self has this season to make his Multiple Offense work BETTER than all the other girlie man offenses run by the remaining half of coaches that are not slavishly imitating Self already.
That was the verbose version.
Now the short form.
If Diallo is someone defenses have to collapse on with the inside feed, all the great shooters and drivers Self has on the perimeter means Self won't have to run any more perimeter action in D1 than he had to in Korea.
Boom!
Now the memorable epigram.
Perimeter action is for suckers.
Howling!
I agree that this team "could" have a lot of weapons and the experience to make wise use of them, too, if....
Diallo can be a credible post defender, rebounder, and low block scoring threat against D1 bigs game in and game out. And if he can play Lottery pick bigs in the tournament to a wash in those categories, then the team has a chance to play for a ring.
But the odds of Diallo being able to do all these things as a freshman at his size are pretty slim.
It would mean Diallo would be way better than Danny Manning was as a freshman. Very, very, VERY big mountain for Diallo to climb. Not impossible, but improbable.
And if Diallo can defend and rebound up to these standards, but still not be a credible low block scoring threat, then this team would be sharply better defensively and on the glass than last season, but offensively the team would be pretty much back to where it was last season, only hopefully healthier on the perimeter, if....Greene heals, and the plague of injuries finally ceases after the last few seasons of playing operables.
If Diallo can't score on the low block and if injuries come in flurries again, Bad Ball may well have to be resorted to.
But even in a best case scenario, Self has to wonder what Bad Ball might do with better players fully healthy played by a more experienced team with more talent in the paint on both ends.
Such a team could be very fierce at Bad Ball.
It will be interesting to see how Self plays it.
@DoubleDD said:
Bad Ball is keeping the ball game close with the hope that you can pull it out in the end. Well as we found out last year. KU didn’t always pull it out in the end.
I say be gone with bad ball.
By this criterion, we have to do away with all the ways Bill has played it, except the 2008 way, because KU has never gotten it done any of the other ways any of the other years. :-)
No, I think I will stick with Bill's version of Dean's, Larry's and Eddie's development of Henry's High Low, thank you very much.
You can throw the baby out with the bath water if you want, but I will carry on with evolution by a contemporary genius any day.
Funny, I have always fancied myself more Grant or Sherman than Rosecrans or McClelland.
I rather enjoy burning things in my path, staying engaged with an enemy, and keeping him uncertain which way I will go next--Savannah, or Mobile, before going for the jugular in Savannah, when he is absolutely helpless to stop me.
But then I see myself as a peaceful type, too.
;-)
Oh, absolutely I believe we were running the high-low, or more accurately the Carolina passing offense, or more accurately, what evolved into what Dean called "Multiple Offenses."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714867.Basketball ↗
Dean, Gutt and LB reputedly evolved it early.
But many disciples joined in over time.
Start with Iba's High Low.
Add Dean Smith action taken from Bruce Drake's Shuffle offense being run by the coach at Air Force when Dean assisted there.
Add in any other kinds of action that surface from time to time.
Shake well and pour.
Self never stops running it. He apparently learned some of it from Paul Hansen. He says he learned some from LB. He apparently learned some from Eddie. He apparently learned more of it from his assistants that have worked with Hartman and Haskins.
He just runs it out of different formations and with less or more passing, and with less or more action, and with different kinds of action.
One of the problems board rats have with the High Low is that they think it is only 3 combos and two posts lined up in the 3 man perimeter and the two posts in the lane.
Not correct IMHO.
The Multiple Offense aka Dean's Carolina passing offense is operating when Perry plays on the low block, or on a high block, or at the top of the circle, or as a low wing outside.
Notice Self calls Perry a stretch 4 when he is going outside and shooting it or creating from there. He doesn't call it another offense.
It helps me to think about it in terms of a basic formation (what some are calling the Four Flat) and shifts because I played a little football when I was a kid.
If you read Dean's old book and the section on multiple offense he makes it crystal clear. He had a keen mind and he didn't waste words.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714867.Basketball ↗
Regarding you notion that Self can't recruit point guards and centers because of his system, well, ummm, I kind of bought into that early on, but once the top centers started turning him down in droves despite his bigs doing well in the pros and despite him winning a ring, and despite KU having the rep of Big Man U, well, I finally had to awaken to the possibility of other more fitting explanations. :-)
So: what I did was I looked around and said where were these top centers going?
I did not see them going to better coaches.
And I did not see them going to programs that necessarily produced better more successful pros bigs.
And so I kind of ruled those drivers out.
What did that leave?
Well, there had to be some kind of incentives involved.
At first in my naivety, I figure it was cash under the table.
But then I read some books about business of college basketball and about Big Shoe.
It wasn't as simple as cash in the palm, or a key in the hand and a typed note with an address and a safe deposit box number.
No, the game had scaled up and changed and there were Petro-ShoeCos and agents and agent runners that I had not known anything about.
I still don't really understand how it all works.
All I can say is that I more or less doubt that Bill Self's offense is the pivotal driver for keeping OAD centers and OAD point guards away.
But I don't believe in any conspiracy theories I have ever heard involving basketball recruiting.
So far, I believe most everything that is driving the apparent asymmetries in recruiting is likely legal and just not very transparent for some reason. I suspect those persons on the inside understand very clearly how it all works and would blow the whistle without hesitation if any of it were really illegal, or clear violation of NCAA rules.
Since they don't, and since I know of no evidence to the contrary, so far, I can only infer that things are legal and just not very transparent for whatever reasons.
I suspect in time we will come to understand much better how the system distributes talent as it does.
But until that time comes, I will have to live with the lack of transparency, and yet also recognize that Bill Self's offense just doesn't seem like a very likely driver in all of this.
Rock Chalk!
P.S.: its only weakness is how much effort your top three players have to expend and how much contact they have to take when attacking to shrink impact space and draw fouls on every shot attempt.
But heck, every system has pluses and minuses.
I am no where near able to say with confidence that BAD BALL cannot win a ring.
Put a top 15 draft choice point guard out front, and a draft choice 5 and a draft choice 3, and adequate glue and reserves, and have them healthy and playing Bad Ball, and I would bet on them as a high probability champion.
It is a relentless offense.
It is grueling for defenses to guard.
It is VERY offensive to the eye, but it is also attack minded and highly efficient.
And almost 100 percent X axis oriented.
NBA Fred realized how effective it was and copied it in the middle of the season last year. He used it at least half the time down the stretch.
Once great players are harnessed to BAD BALL, I suspect it will be damned near unstoppable for awhile.
Defenses always catch up eventually, but it will be very, very, VERY tough to control any game against a BAD BALL team with a Top 15 draft choice point guard. Maybe impossible.
Imagine Derek Rose playing BAD BALL for a season.
Cal and Memphis probably would have beaten our great 08 team with BAD BALL.
It is such an edge in the fouling department.
I hate it, but it is fabulously sound strategically and tactically.
I am not trying to be disputatious here, but I have been where you are and I have felt a great sense of unfairness in the NCAA's treatment.
But the longer and more deeply I look at these instances the more often I find great complexity and grey areas in which the NCAA is making its decisions.
I am not saying the NCAA is without some asymmetric agenda, especially on things that effect the bottom line.
But many of these situations just ARE highly complicated.
D1 and college athletic departments and their fund raising foundations largely exist in a regulatory grey area in many of aspects. They are 501.c3 not for profits avoiding taxes by maintaining VAST overhead that keeps their technical "surpluses" at 6% or less. In some respects they shouldn't even be classified 501.c3s. Tax exempt corporations were apparently never intended to enable coaches to be paid vast sums of money in salaries. The tax exempt foundations created to raise money from alums reputedly have tremendous regulatory grey areas in how donations can be structured over time that seems to put these athletic departments in endless jeopardy with IRS, if IRS ever wants to crack down on them. It doesn't seem appropriate for private oligarchs to be allowed to use donative process reputedly to buy influence within the athletic departments that in turn buys them influence in the university administration that in turn buys them influence with the Board of Regents and state legislature for their political agendas, but it reputedly has been a part of things for quite some time.
But the thing about all of these issues I have raise, and probably the dozens of other issues that could be raised by someone that really knew the inside of these organizations, is that the regulatory grey areas that are being exploited are reputedly in fact real regulatory grey areas. They are realms where there is a lot of discretion left to the participants about what is okay and what is not.
It must be very scary to move through this regulatory fuzziness, unless you have not much conscience.
What I am trying to say here is that I really do NOT know for sure, as you claim to, that the NCAA is hypocritical when it comes to the penalties it dishes out. The regulatory context may be set up so that much discretion is left to them to interpret things on an ad hoc basis precisely because of the complexity involved.
Clearly,as a layman, I believe we would all feel better, if the regulatory grey areas were cleared up, and there was more transparency, and situations like what happened to Cliff and KU did not happen, or if they did happen, it was more transparent why they happened as they did.
But college sports is going through a whirlwind of institutional and organizational and political and economic change.
It seems improbable that changing institutions can keep up with the rapid pace of change in organizations, politics and economics without their being glitches, asymmetries and mistakes, on top of good old fashioned stupidity and corruption that afflicts even stable systems.
I am posing hypotheticals here and some premises that are not at all far fetched. I am not assuming these premises are the only ones possible. It is everyone else that is assuming away Bad Ball's value and that is a very reductive way of thinking about our offensive strategy for the coming season.
What I am assuming is follows.
I assume that Bad Ball is never the only option.
I assume Bad Ball is one of many options, at least after Self borrowed drive ball from Bo Ryan at UW and then extrapolated it to its logical extreme, as near total reliance on impact-space-shrinking BAD BALL.
I am inferring from last season that the results of Bad Ball can really only be rationally interpreted with high probability one of two ways.
The first way--the most conservative assessment--is that Bad Ball was at least as effective as any other option then feasible; i.e., it resulted in a best of all possible outcome under the horrendous injury and talent deficit circumstances. It resulted in a .500 stretch at the end of the season that salvaged the title, won two games in the conference tournament and won at least the first game in the Madness with a team:
a.) lacking a credible low block presence the entire season;
b.) a team decimated by injuries by the start of the late .500 stretch to the point that its best player (Ellis) was reduced to a punching bag with a charley horse (after being highly productive for a short stretch of playing Bad Ball in good health);
c.) its best trey baller on the wing (Greene) was playing operable and growing increasingly ineffectual from trey (or doing anything else for that matter);
d.) its best wing (Selden) could neither create at the rim, nor make open looks at the trey stripe reliably regardless of how KU attacked all season long (and he certainly did no worse playing Bad Ball than he had playing the various approaches Self had tried earlier in the season);
e.) the team's first perimeter backup--Graham--was injured down the stretch and saw his trey balling and play in general falter;
f.) the team's projected phenom on the perimeter--Svi--imploded into uselessness early and despite intermittent trials never recovered to be able even to fight over a pick;
g.) its second best player--Frank Mason--had played so many minutes, because of all the injuries to other players, that his explosiveness was leaving him and he could only really go hard for short stretches of games; and
h.) the probability of Frank slumping from trey down the stretch was rising with each game down the stretch, because he had not yet had his trey shooting slump all season.
The 500 stretch--it was kind of miraculous that BAD BALL yielded even a .500 stretch down the horrors of the injury jungle that took the team completely off the Burma Road and into passage overland by way of the jungle.
But my common sense, and my analytics, lead me to argue that BAD BALL was not just a wash with other possible paths Self might have taken, but an absolutely brilliant strategic improvisation to the most difficult injury circumstances and talent deficits Self has ever faced. And thinking this brings me to the other way of thinking about BAD BALL last season.
Let me restate the above.
The second and more probable interpretation is of course that BAD BALL by going .500 resulted in a vastly superior result to what would have happened with ANY other approach; that it salvaged a title, won two conference tourney games, and won one game and that no other offensive approach would have yielded half as good of a result.
Self could not call in Nic Moore and Julian Debose.
Self could not turn Wayne Selden around apparently in time for him to create at will and make everything okay under any system he tried.
Self could not depend on Svi's trey, because Svi could not stay with his own shadow over a pick.
Self did not have Mr. Keep the Ball Alive and score 12 garbage points without turnovers in Mickelson last season. When he put Mickelson in Mickelson always looked kind of good, but then his TOs and post guarding hurt more than he helped and he was not doing all the good things he did over in Korea. And he got a few looks under both the early style of play and the late style of play. Mickelson just wasn't ready for whatever reason.
Jamari injured his leg to the point he couldn't even do his one trick--exploding out of position on defense.
Lucas? Lucas was like a cadaver in the post most of the season regardless of whatever approach Self tried early or late.
Which brings us to Oubre. Oubre was a shell of himself down the .500 stretch. Self could have played clear out the side for Kelly every trip and Kelly would not have been able to do much more than he did. He had a bum wheel all season that got better briefly in the middle third and then reduce him to a decoy down the .500 stretch.
So: Self had Mason going good all season, Ellis finally finding his ass with both hands in the mid to late conference season, and Greene improving to the middle of the season and then playing operable the second half of the season and deteriorating steadily.
So: Self then had Mason and Ellis. But then Ellis got injured and was basically a shell of himself during the .500 stretch.
So: Self then had Mason.
And Frank had the lingerie and all the signs of wear and tear and gimpy knees from too many minutes played. And Frank played in bursts. And a betting man that plays probabilities had to be betting that Frank was going to slump sooner or later in the season from trey.
Now, I ask you: what offense could possibly have done half as well as BAD BALL did?
Maybe the Knight/Coach K motion offense, but that takes players a long time to learn and really only thrives with effective big men. Oh, and Self has never coached our guys to play that actually reasonably complicated offense a day in their lives before this season.
How about the Dribble Drive? Well, hmmm, wasn't that in effect what Self had the team doing? Putting on the deck every chance they got from all positions and driving it? And he had them doing it without having to junk the High Low formations and team them new formations and new reads, right?
Hey, what if Self had just stayed in the High Low Formations as he did, and he had listened to you and I urge him to spike the 3ptas?
Welllllll, down the stretch he would have had exactly one good trey baller (Mason) inching ever closer to a slump that was not either operable, or on a slow heal from a blown wheel, or concussed, or what have you.
Does anyone seriously think that green lighting operable Brannen Greene, or cotton candy knee Oubre, or leg injured Devonte, or exhausted Frank Mason, or Svi in a season long slump with no D, to salvage the season with trey balling was a remotely sensible strategy that would have won at more than a .250 rate?
I mean last season you and I could indulge ourselves in the statistical advantage of spiking the trey, when we did not know that Greene was operable, that Devonte was going to get injured, that Selden was NEVER going to come around in the season, that Oubre was NEVER going to heal during the season.
But Self knew.
Self was on the wall, as you said.
Self made the hard decision, as you said.
And he miraculously won .500 down a stretch that most coaches would have goose egged by trying to stay with the same old same old, or panicking and turning the injured trey ballers loose.
Self went waaaaaay outside the envelope and bought a .500 stretch that no other strategy I can think of could probably have achieved.
And the scary thing to those that don't like BAD BALL is this: if BAD BALL can win at .500 in that situation, it can probably kick as and take names later with everyone healthy and a couple of new big man adds that might actually be able to score if Frank drives and dishes to them.
With everyone healthy, and with the talent we have, I would really like to see Self spike the 3ptas to 25-30 per game, but really I would like to see all possessions start with a 3pta and then try other things on the rebound. It is so statistically sound it is goofy not to play it that way.
But even I will not rule out the possibility that BAD BALL might win at a higher percentage than any other approach out their with a full deck of talent in good health.
BAD BALL may be to this generation of the game what Dean's Four Corner's Offense was to the late 1970s. Everyone hated Dean's Four Corners Offense that started as a stall and then became an actual offense, whenever opponents tried to stall on UNC. Dean's four corners force a rules change to a shot clock and even then it still worked frequently. And Dean had the greatest talent of his time year after year for several seasons.
Good Lord!
If Self were to break out of the recruiting asymmetry and finally start getting the amount of talent that his expertise and W&L statement and ring suggest he SHOULD be getting, and he plays BAD BALL with the BEST TALENT out there, he might well go undefeated for several seasons.
It is a wicked, ugly thing to do to the game of basketball as surely as was Dean's Four Corners, but the rules permit it and it went .500 with a bunch of injured guys and modest talents that shouldn't have done better than .250 down the stretch.
The ugly, hated offensive strategies that get discovered occasionally are like vampires. They keep coming back to haunt the game until they finally prevail and the game changes the rules to stop them.