I am not even sure Nic has a Y-axis!!!!!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Anywhere you want, Special Agent @Crimsonorblue22
Selden lost his touch today.
Then team lost legs down stretch of regulation and couldn't buy baskets.
Then Self went conservative and pulled Hunter for a mistake.
Then the team started running the weave 3-4 straight possessions and suddenly KU looked completely insecure.
Can't recall but seems like first OT.
Then Self seemed to regain his composure, loosened his grip, and let them play to win it without him.
Good things shortly followed. Players got back in the moment, went after loose balls, kept missing but finally Frank took over in their spread sets and this seemed to take pressure off Wayne. Wayne began to play harder and think less. Soon Wayne was making plays including a great follow of his own miss. Perry was really struggling from fatigue. Finally Wayne got a late look in second OT, gunned it in from threeville, and then Nic made the topper play of the game by stealing inbounds pass off Wayne's made three and Nic made a couple FTs and suddenly KU went from hanging by a thread to the driver's seat!!!
Great win that deserves to go high in the pantheon!
Double over time!
Everyone contributed!
Nic Moore is officially a Jayhawk for life.
Thank you Lawrence Brown!!!!
Julian Debose is a Jayhawk for life!
Thank you Joe Do!!!
Every player did something wonderful, despite the fatigue of so many games in a row.
Roll call: list them all!!!!
Coach Self backslid for awhile and ran the chop. It almost sunk us, but then he loosened up and the boys won it for him!!!!
D1 adopt international rules now!!!!
One of the great wins in THE LEGACY!
Top ten things to do in Lexington:
- Lie to your self.
9 through 1. Wish you had Self.
No more chop
Jerry getting hot
Get dobbers up!!!
Losing our legs!
Frank great pass
Perry too tired
WAYNE!
Bragg and Perry moving well together.
Bragg getting all Jayhawk and going on the wood!!!
Good to see Snacks coaching rather than cheering. Go, Snacks, go!
Thank u LB!!!
Nic!!!
Got to get the juice back in our D
Time for Frank to guard his guy more physically.
KU defense softening
Perry stepping up
Hunter was doubling. First I have seen in the wug games.
This German team seems the best KU has faced so far. Their coach has actually made some adjustments for KU it seems.
But the biggest adjustment is Wayne going cold.
No, no, no, this game is a modern metaphor for the complexity and ambiguity of loyalties in modern life. Live it and love it!!!
Punning PHOF!
No, it's the perfect pedal for crimson and blue Adidas!!!!
Run them on the autobahn!
Go international JBirds!!!!
Jerry looking better coached than some other teams KUSA has faced.
Yes to inty rules!
Bragg looking more comfortable
Nic is all Jayhawk now
Hunter everywhere
Dang, are they doing thigh implants now, too?
As Director of the BIA, I am authorized to...HOWL!!!!!!
Also, the BIA has an opening for a bureau chief and a case officer on the east coast. If I recall that is where you hail from.
I am not authorized to reveal the source of the following, but read it and weep.
"for official eyes only: @brooksmd is hereby ORDERED to volunteer for duty as bureau chief of BIA in Fredrick MD, as part of fulfillment of his USAF Reserve obligation. Respectfully submitted, Woolsey C. Clark III, Over-and-Under Secretary of the Department of Basketball Defense
As my father used to say, no one in the military is ever fully retired, until death.
Basketball is wired to the spiritual center of the cosmos.
What goes around comes around in basketball.
The arc of the moral basketball universe is long, but no lie can live for ever.
Henry Iba coached the first USA Olympic team that did not win the Olympic Gold Medal.
The team played Russia for the Gold Medal and lost.
It is widely reputed that Iba and his USA team got jobbed in the midst of the Cold War by partial refs.
Such wrongs are eventually righted, though it may take a number of attempts.
Bill Self leading his team into the World University Games against Russia is one of those echoing events from a long ago wrong.
Bill Self is the true heir of the Iba legacy.
It cannot be mere chance that brings him to this game tonight.
This is cosmic.
Go, Bill, go!!!!
(Note: I do not wish to re-open old Cold War wounds. Russia is NOT the Soviet Union. And Sasha Kaun, a Russian, is one of our most beloved Jayhawks of all time, and a player we are grateful to Russia for sharing with us. This game is a great game between two good teams. It is an honor to play Russia. Let the best team win. But past is prologue. And this is one small part of the past that needs to be remedied in a small way.)
As Director of the BIA, I am authorized to offer you an exciting and challenging career in the spooky field of basketball intelligence, a subset of the world largest growth industry--Big Intelligence. We spy and sleuth for the inside scoop on all facets of basketball. Alas, we operate on a shoe string budget and on a volunteer basis for now. We hope that if we do great enough service to national basketball security that one day the Senate and Congress will pass the long lobbied for National Basketball Security Act that institutes and funds a National Basketball Security Agency (NBSA) and enables the Director of the NBSA to sit in at cabinet meetings and advise the President on what is really going on in college basketball, so that he can take appropriate action to ensure that KU goes back to getting its fair share of the top talent. But it is not yet clear when this legislation will be enacted. Until that time, I am authorized to gratefully accept you as a volunteer agent in the BIA with similar rank and privileges to @Vailhawk who heads up our Rocky Mountain Bureau. In addition, it is a great honor and privilege to offer you the same Presidential Commendation and Basketball Medal of Honor for being an ABSOLUTE WOMAN for staying up to watch the KUSA-Russia game tonight. Truly, you, too, are acting above and beyond the call of duty. Rock Chalk!
This is WHY guys go whenever they can, and why they should.
Injury is such a huge risk in sport.
EVERYONE gets injured in sport.
Its just some get injured in ways that don't end their careers.
But all injuries shorten careers one way or another.
When the money is there, you have to take it, unless your folks are independently wealthy.
YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE MAN, IF YOU GET UP FOR THIS ONE. MY HAT IS OFF TO YOU, SIR!!!!!!
THE BASKETBALL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY HAS JUST AWARDED YOU THE BASKETBALL MEDAL OF HONOR--THE HIGHEST HONOR BESTOWED ON THOSE IN THE FIELD OF BASKETBALL INTELLIGENCE.
ROCK CHALK!!!
Its possible, but after his candor about Duke's rent-a-players I vote for Bo finally getting sick of being on the adidas short end of the recruiting stick and not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel on stacking. I mean the guy is a proven terrific coach and no matter what he does, no matter how much he develops his players, no matter how far they go, no matter what clothes he wears, and no matter how many times UW goes deep, he still can't get a reasonable share of 5 stars. I am pretty confident that if Self were Bo's age, he would call it quits, too. He might even call it a career, when Tyler is done. Self is up against the same problem. .82 w&L plus 10 conference titles and a ring and he can only attract one 5-star and that is a guy from Africa? Self has to be thinking, well, if the system is so asymmetric that no rings like Stumpy Miller and .550 guys like Johnny Jones and Cuonzo can get long stacks, what is the flipping point? I really think the only reason Pitino is still coaching is to make sure his son Richard has a place to come to if he flames out at UMinn, as most coaches have, or if he does well at UMinn and UL can justify father to son succession. The whole stacking situation is disgraceful and you can bet our bottom dollar that every coach in the profession knows and understands full well what is going on. They are all just trying to milk the cow for their retirement and children's inheritance (there can never be too much inheritance) and hope things change in the stacking game. But someone like Bo? He is old school. He still believes in retiring and going fishing. He has been at it a long time and he didn't get to UW till after a long apprenticeship in the minors. He probably just decided that it was time to exit on an up beat and let younger guys like Self and those younger than Self deal with this mess in their profession.
If you talk to Wooden's players, every practice all season was a boot camp. Never a pause. Every minute of every practice scheduled on 3x5 notecards. A former player said he never stopped to rant, or dress down a player. Nonstop leArning and conditioning. Practice never went longer than an hour and a half. As one of his players said, he crammed more into an hour and a half than any coach taking 3-4 hours. Another said the conditioning never stopped. Another said "those cards, he drove us nuts with those cards!"
Boot camp happens, because it has never really been about conditioning.
It is about building esprit d'corps--about building a team foundation of humans willing to sacrifice for each other--about leaving no buddy behind--about learning the difficult comes easy, while the impossible of carrying the least among you takes a little longer.
Conditioning and timing and toughening and learning and fitting the pieces together are what the next two months are about.
In the stacking era, when KU is apparently denied all the 5 star bigs but foreign ones, and 80-90 % of the 4stars, Self has to go after any and every big not locked up by Nike, whenever and wherever they arise.
A big in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I don't know anything specific about this plAyer though.
I was against the shorter clock, too, but the wider lane, shorter clock, and reduced skill of college players seem to loosen the congestion of D1 style dense packing, and make unlikely the NBA-ization of D1. Plus we need to get on the same page with the rest of the world. I suspect that if D1 had international rules, the percentage of foreign players in the NBAwould fall in half. Our American boys deserve an even break!!!!!
Rock Chalk!
Re Nic: yes, he has short torso and longer stronger legs and that rare combo of powerful legs and leg/hip socket flexibility. He can stretch his foot way out to deny a player one direction and still have the leg strength and upper body strength to body AND drop step/slide the other direction. Nic plays taller than he is outside. He is vulnerable if they can get him inside or post him, but there he just shoves like hell. One of those rare short players that can play with the big guys and ALSO CAUSE QUICKNESS PROBLEMS for them.
I am not sure Bragg's brain development is advanced enough to benefit from trial by fire; that's a judgement call, but at some point he is going to be a very good big. I predict next year, but Self is clearly trying to see if he could be readied for this year for reasons you ascribe.
Everything depends on his ability to guard the post and hedge defend, both of which Traylor can do, despite his weakness in other areas. If Bragg can get to where he can guard the post and hedge, then he offers more offense and rebounding promise. But it's a big if.
PHOF!!!!
And thank god for the DVR function on my cable service!!!!!
Go KU!
It doesn't get any better than this: the miracle on wood AND the Tour de France!!!!! Go TJ van der Garderen!!!!
Same m2m defense with guys that get it now and play it well. Everyone knows how to help but the frosh.
Bad Ball only one game, when they couldn't hit and then only for a quarter.
Lots of Spread out high low offense with Perry floating to 4 out frequently.
Posts running longer diagonal rotations because of wider lane.
Not much third side passing on perimeter.
Mostly two passes and shoot, or drive.
Chop and pick and roll used infrequently, but shown.
Nic Moore a helluva player, despite short, stocky size. Long strong legs and cuts off opponents.
Frank and Nic play super together in tandem and solo.
Selden much better at 3.
Selden has been super with maybe only one minute of the old Wayne in all games combined.
Perry struggling some.
Landen in a weird place and not fitting into flow well but every other game putting up big rebound numbers. Still no b2b game. Still too weak to go up in a crowd and dunk.
Hunter fits international ball well running tirelessly, keeping ball alive with tipping, and picking up lots of put backs. Still struggles with post defense on ball. Seems to fit well with these perimeter players. Not much b2b presence. But a hyper active horizontal player that makes the team play better when in.
Traylor incrementally better, but still no b2b game. Guarding post well. Shoots FGs and FTs better. But no offensive feel yet.
Bragg = sushi, but looks like a player downstream, probably next year. Moxie playing with broken nose. Lots to learn. But a shooting touch.
Julian Debose a defensive specialist who doesn't stand out by improves team defense when in.
Vick = big potential and able to contribute in short spurts. Just needs footwork and speed adjustment. Playing very well for a high school senior that jumped a year early.
Experienced team that fits together freakishly well and has good chemistry.
Everyone plays every game because of daily games.
Self doesn't get to coach much in games, which seems to frustrate him and liberate his players. Everyone is playing and only a few look over at the bench warily.
Sad part is that Nic will go back to SMU and Debose back to FIU and this fine chemistry will be no more. Talent will improve, but you can't improve on this chemistry. Nick and Frank and Wayne are one of those rare perfect fits, like Chalmers, Sherron and Rush, or Chalmers, RR and Rush. Frank and Nic let Wayne be Wayne. It is amazing to watch.
We are witnessing magic.
Self is doing a brilliant job of enabling the magic.
But you can see that he is very pent up and wanting to fix all the flaws rather than let them play.
But to his great credit, he is stifling and letting the team can be what it can be, which is quite good for this unusual circumstance.
All in all an unexpected delight.
But unlike others here I don't see a carry over to the D1 season.
This is a unique team Self has created by adding Nic and Debose.
We are watching "the miracle on wood" on a much smaller stage.
Herb Brooks, meet Bill Self.
Shit happens.
But so does magic.
Savor this moment.
Our D1 team will have more talent, but not the savvy and experience and amazing dwarf tandem of Frank and Nic. It's a one off deal that doesn't duplicate with Devonte and Svi and Green. And Debose's defensive glue will not duplicate either.
The D1 team can be better or worse, but it can't play the same.
And the 30 second clock may be just enough longer to prevent this quick, go get a basket kind of play.
Everyone has learned how to take a step back and shoot it.
It is so beautiful after Bad Ball I almost cried in the Lithuania game.
Once again a small group of young men have saved the game and knocked the callous off my heart.
I am ready for a 24 second clock and full embrace of international rules. It's a better game.
Rock Chalk!