🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@HighEliteMajor

Forgot to mention that you were right on about bunny slumps not being viewed the same as trey slumps.

The reason bunny slumps are infrequent and rarely last even a full game is that conventional offenses are geared to generate large numbers of close in shots. As a result, teams shoot their way out of bunny slumps, or more generally short shot slumps, within single games. And the same would of course happen with trey shooting were teams to take as many treys as they do short shots. Trey slumps would end during single games, rather than drag on for several games.

@HighEliteMajor

Sorry to have mischaracterized your position on trifectation and Hi-Lo fealty. Thanks for clearing it up.

Alas, I will have to paddle down Paradigm Shift Creek without you. :-)

Awhile back there was a thread about FIFA controversy in soccer and a possible PetroShoeCo connection. I didn't have time to comment then. I don't have much insight to add except this: if a global PetroApparel oligopoly market regime were to be imposed, and if it were to have to be implemented in part by gaining control of crucial sports institutions to be used enable the implementation of the global PetroApparel Producer Oligopoly regime, well, then it stands to reason that FIFA, like the NCAA, has to be subjected to regime change in order to subordinate it to the new order.

One historical way to subordinate legacy institutions is apparently to insinuate your agent producer oligopoly firms into business with them, then have your agent organization engage in whatever form of corruption that legacy institutiona requires them to engage in, then engage the USA legal/regulatory system (backed by USA military force and central bank force) to "look into the corruption," make your agent organization pay a fine that it passes the cost of onto its consumers, then mobilize to destabilize and regime change the corrupt institutional organization that was your target for regime change all along.

There are reputed historical examples of this sort of thing involving oil companies paying bribes in conflicted third world countries, after which those third world countries legacy institutional organizations get a serious dose of regime change. Same in airlines seeking access to airports globally and seeking to sell planes in foreign markets, especially during the era of airline deregulation and reregulation. You read about it every once in awhile when the Anglo-American private oligarchy is expanding into foreign markets and wants to impose its agenda of producer oligopoly regimes on the new foreign markets. It is apparently just how business is done in the rather more anarchic international realms.

Foreign legacy institution is corrupt to some degree or another.

Pay it bribes that are its normal mode.

Leak and investigate.

Have the Anglo-American firm apologize for paying the bribes and say its the only way for American producer oligopolists to participate.

This generates a rationalization for legal/regulatory intervention in the publics mind in foreign countries' institutions and that in turn opens up the option of swinging the big military stick if the foreign legacy institutional organization won't reconform to new producer oligopoly regime needs.

Go sick'em.

In five-10 years, voila, the legacy institutional organization is "reformed" to producer oligopoly regime needs.

FIFA and its hold on crucial soccer would appear a prime candidate for such regime change.

So: hypothetically speaking, let's epigram this Jim Carville style as: its about the regime change, stupid.

Then wait and see if evidence accrues over time that supports or refutes the hypothesis.

Next.

@Texas-Hawk-10

This is pretty much what is being said by some about stacking footers; it just won't work consistently for this or that reason.

It is also what was said about Luisetti's jump shot. You'll never find enough jump shooters to build an offense around it.

It is also what was said about Iba sloooooooooooowing the game down to a crawl and driving everything with defense. Basketball was about offensive attack.

Paul Westhead proved some aspects of what I am proposing at Loyola Marymount a long time ago, but he de-emphasized defense to get the increased number of trips, because he didn't have a new 30 second shot clock to converge with stretching match-up zones to hamstring conventional offenses.

Now we have the 30 second clock and refs that will allow a lot of contact on defense again.

My argument is essentially this: if you take sharply more 3ptas and they take sharply more 2ptas, and you both play good defense, and you shoot enough 3ptas per game to shoot through slumps in a single game, then the percentages and rewards are always going to favor you. That does not mean you always win. You begin to always win by working and fine tuning the cascades to your advantage, the same way Iba/Edde/Self and Iba/Larry/Dean have done with the Carolina passing offense and the percentage of outside and inside shots, plus FTAs, plus trips needed to make the diversity of the offense your friend.

In my offense you have to do all the same things to make the specialization of the offense your friend. For instance, because one plays so little offense in shooting the trey in the first five seconds of shot clock, it might make sense to only play offense with 4 players, or even three and keep two players permanently in defensive positions enabling full court zone pressing EVERY possession. This would likely give my team a fantastic edge in defensive scoring percentage over the course of a season. Conventional opponents would make zero transition baskets. Conventional opponents would make far more turnovers and routinely start their eventual half court offenses five feet farther from the basket and this would make the 30 second clock a sharply greater constraint. And so on.

Also, the more you do anything, the better you get at doing it. A team shooting 60 3ptas per game would become sharply better at shooting 3ptas that would conventional teams. 3pt percentages would go up both because of the higher reps and because you are recruiting to always have a perimeter rotation that keeps 3 trey fingers on the floor 40 minutes per game, and maybe 4 or 5 trey dingers on the floor.
But I respect your opinion and thank you for sharing it just the same.

@justanotherfan

Thanks for the assist. That's what I mean about cascading implications. I missed that in a first pass. But yes, definitely. And against footer stacks, its best to have the ball coming off long, when you do not have footer stacks yourself.

"Winning with Operable Injuries" by by Gill Innerperson, chapters on Leeth Klangford, Casha Pawn, Viral Seed, Davis Ankleford, Prophet Bombsome, Raul Brokeback, Shane Welden, and Granville Treen. Learn when simply not to report operable injuries to catch opponents by surprise and avoid uncomfortable questions about playing with operable injuries. Learn the effective spin terms like "battered" and "nicked up" for characterizing operable injuries being "played through."

"Cheap Shotting for Championships The Coach Mik Way," by Ike Miklishzevski; chapters on the Adams apple chop, the forehead elbow crack, the karate chop to the temple, the right or left nut kick, the stiff screen, the trip from behind, the trip from the side, the trip from in front, the up-ending on the drive, plus kicking and falling on opponents when they are down. The book also contains a chapter on arranging field trips for the team to Guantánamo Bay torture prison and School of the Americas torture training school for teaching U.S. Army torture techniques that are adaptable to Division I basketball.

"Coaching Not to Know," by Yon Dingaliberry; learn plausible deniability the Coach Dingle way. Get the benefits of ringers and none of the personal career costs. Learn how to time motion plays relative to vacated seasons. Don't let NCAA investigations put a damper on recruiting. And it's all legal.

"A Guide to Mid Major Exits to Stack Schools," by Blocky Grinder and Sclock Dolt; learn how to jump from a mid major straight to a planned elite major soon to be stacked by a Big Shoe-Agent complex without ever having to pay dues at a lesser major!! Learn how to sign more and better players than coaches far better than yourself do. Learn five certain signs of a planned stack school.

"Motion Plays to Majors Getting Their First Stacks," by Bozo Newsome; learn to take humble credit for top talent showing up inexplicably; suddenly master coaching OADs; learn the can't miss "it just felt right for my family" justification for taking a job.

(Note: these are all satire and fiction. No malice!)

@VailHawk

HOWLING!

No reason. Just had to ask. 😈

@nuleafjhawk

I just want to win one ring with the XRTO, then have the NCAA outlaw it!

@nuleafjhawk

And a bull on the floor the last 5 minutes!!!!!!

Travis Ford did OSu decide to keep him?

Without a big name to recruit with, or a stack agreement, ISU is irrelevant in two years.

Until they hire, the question is unanswerable.

But their stalker has to be monitored regardless!!!!! :bowtie:

@JayHawkFanToo

Sorry, guarding two Princetons in a row will usually wreck the shooting legs of a team the second game; that was largely what happened here. Shaka knew it and lengthened his cuts and KU just could not fight over screens and chase long cuts for the last 20 of 80 minutes in a 2 in 3 tourney and make shots. KU completely cracked cardio and the rim shrank.

The other killer was Shaka had a 6-9 260 big that ran the asses off the KU bigs and they cracked completely down the stretch.

The combo killed us.

Self learned his lesson too.

He never makes them chase, fight over screens and not switch off the first game of a two in three once conference starts. Second he massively increased cardio fitness of his team's after.

KU was relying too much on weight gain and depth, to muscle teams, and allowed the cardio to be less rigorous.

Two Princetons or Princeton like teams exposed their starters couldn't go hard 2 in 3.

It was the most classic case of inadequate conditioning being broken by superior conditioning, since the UCLA era.

@JayHawkFanToo

All those plus KU had played a Princeton the previous game against Richmond, and Self was big on guarding and chasing the Princeton in those days rather than switching. KU's legs were toast from Richmond's Princeton, then they hit Shaka's XTReme Conditioned team that Shaka schemed to run mostly lonnnnnnnnng cuts every possession. KU's legs gave out.

@DoubleDD said:

I’m all in on Colby Cheese

Had Colbey gone to Texas instead of KU, would he have been known as Colbey Longhorn?

:goberserk:

@Texas-Hawk-10

I wonder if that were the date the loan papers were recorded, or the date when the loan was negotiated, or the date when the loan was first formally proposed, or the date when the idea of some kind of bridge financing were first informally remarked upon, or the date some one got the original idea? Do you catch my drift here? If it were the date of recording, then one would expect there to have been a process with a time frame leading up to the recording. Just an idle thought. Still doesn't really mean anything that I can see.

@Texas-Hawk-10

Thanks, I will. Good stuff.

Like all systems it will have trade offs.

Like all systems it will have to be what-iffed and linear programmed some to find an optimal trade-off between total attempts and a defensive strategy.

Though I agree with your of these numbers you present, one has to think through a lot of the assumptions about make rates on both teams and cascading effects of making this radical of a shift in shooting. For example, independent of my XRTO, the 30 second clock is expected to create more possessions but to reduce total scoring, because defenses will be reschemed to more matchup zones that crowd the offense up against the 30 second limit. If we take this dynamic and add the XRTO to the mix, and assume the XRTO team shoots ever trey at 5 seconds into the shot clock, several things cascade. The XRTO team's shooting legs are much fresher on each shot so over a season their 3pt% is going to be higher. The number of possessions in the game will sharply increase and so will the number of treys taken at the higher percentage made. There will be many fewer injuries to the XRTO team and so this too will drive up their shooting percentages and FT percentages over the course of a season. Next, they will have more energy for defense and so their defense will hold the conventional opponent to a lower shooting percentage over the course of a season. And of course the more possessions there are in a game the more chances there are for the XRTO team's defense to exploit the score constraining effects of the 30 second clock on a conventional team.

The above is just the simplest cascade that occurred to me without actually stopping to think it through; i.e., just typing off the top of my head. There will be many more positive effects. And there will be other negative consequences that I have not yet evaluated. But the point is that looking at the numbers you kindly found for me, and which I greatly appreciate, requires one to think through the cascades and arrive at new proportions and new percentages that should be reasonably expected in this XRTO strategy posed against a conventional team.

And, of course, I have not yet thought through what the cascades will be against another XRTO team.

So: thanks for giving it some thought.

New strategies need holes shot through them to get them to where they find (or fail to) some feasible fit with the likely processes and cascades that will result.

Rock Chalk!

@JayhawkRock78

Well, its always okay to weigh in an ask for civility. Nothing wrong with that.

I haven't been participating much lately so I couldn't address the last week or so.

Now, regarding your live-ins: enroll one at New Mexico State University and get him/her in the radio engineering (RA), or something like that, BS degree program. The school is affordable. The program trains engineers that go to work in the near space and deep space communications network infrastructures operated by NASA, US Space Command and their contractors. All of their kids get good jobs immediately.

Enroll the second one in U of Tulsa's cyber spy BS program. All their kids get good jobs immediately.

Live-in problem solved.

Rock Chalk!

@DoubleClutch

Totally serious.

There was a coach back in New England somewhere at a small private school that won an enormously high percentage of games over a long period of years playing more or less this way. He was a math teacher if I recall correctly. Any way, the principle is very sound. Shoot only treys all the time. Shoot through the slumps and rely on the high rate of payback of three point baskets beat your opponent.

@Texas-Hawk-10

Interesting hypothesis.

I wonder every once in awhile about the closeness in times of the reputed arrest and the reputed inappropriate loan activity.

Not sure why it might matter, but it seems an anomaly.

@JayhawkRock78

XTReme Radical Trey Ball advocacy.

THE DRAKE GROUP will love it.

It helps restore "academic integrity to collegiate sports" by making the game more determined by non stack players.

How's that for "de-chip-ification?"

By the way, what chippiness were you referring to?

I hadn't noticed any.

@DoubleClutch

Okay, then @HighEliteMajor's brand will be Radical Trey Offense at 30 3ptas/game.

Mine will be XTReme Radical Trey Offense at 60 3ptas per game.

The crux of XRTO is that at team can shoot through a slump in a single game with 60+ three point attempts; this solves the only real problem with three point oriented offenses. Three point offenses are said to be feast or famine offenses, because if a team has an off shooting night, then it loses. But the beauty of XRTO is that by taking 60+ trey attempts it becomes a feast only offense. Why? Because the high number of trey attempts assures that even if the team misses 20 straight (i.e., has a slump), then it will still take 40 attempts and make probably 50-60% as a part of shooting to its 40% 3pta average. 40 attempts making 50% is 20 treys x 3, or 60 points. Add in 5-10 made FTs and that's 65-70 points on the night you slump. Play Self defense on the other end, and you almost never lose even during your slump.

But the XTReme Beauty is that most nights you are NOT slumping. And on those nights imagine 60 3ptas and you average 40% makes; that is 24 treys. 24 x 3 is 72 ppg. Add 5-10 made FTs; that is 77 to 82 ppg. That dog hunts. And all it takes is three .40 percent trey ballers starting and two rotating. And if you find a stretch 4, or a stretch 5, that can trey ding at 40%, then you are basically unbeatable.

Screw the stacks.

You can play this way with sharp shooters.

The stacks never soak up all of the sharp shooters the way they do the footers. There are too many sharp shooters for a supply blockade.

@globaljaybird

Marshall to ISU?

That is just TOO flipping weird.

What would be next?

Weber to WSU?

Then LB to KSU?

Then Snacks to SMU?

Help me, help me, help me, I think I'm going insane!!!!!!!!

@Texas-Hawk-10

The key is who does the ISU stalker want?

I wouldn't go against his wishes. :neckbeard:

@JayHawkFanToo

Thanks for the assist!

@HighEliteMajor

YESSSSSSSS!!!!!

@HighEliteMajor wants to amp up the trifectation probably to 30 3pta per game.

I have been hypothesizing that 80-90 percent 3ptas would make a good shooting team almost unbeatable with the old clock. I am now naming this approach the Radical Trey Offense (RTO).

It now stands to reason that cutting the shut clock to 30 seconds should make RTO even more sound stochastically.

Please god, let their be a coach out there somewhere in DI that embraces the RTO.

It will work.

I know it.

BELIEVE!!!!!!

@HighEliteMajor

It IS critical to get a footer now.

It didn't used to be critical.

Unless of course you have learned to luv the BAD BALL. :-)

@ParisHawk

Yes, Jeff Withey IS the greatest KU triafectate of all time!!!!!!!!

Imagine how much fun Jeff will always have holding that over all the great KU shooters he meets in the L and later at reunions in the coming years.

Yeah, Xavier, you were a pretty good trey dinger, but I never missed one, dude!

@Lulufulu

Great point. I don't think so. Maybe he was the turning point.

However, he did start going down in rank while AT KU!!!!

Self had to give him a few stat builders to get his rank back, as I recall.

@JayHawkFanToo

Right you are and we absolutely don't need a great footer.

We just need an adequate footer to match up so we are not completely mismatched and lose solely because of that.

Chuckwu appears just good enough to fill the bill to me.

Just good enough; that's all our non stack program need to go along with its great coach who is good at gerry rigging defenses to over come talent deficiencies, if he at least has the physical match up covered.

Gotta have a footer in today's game to face the footers at the 8 or so stack programs.

Gotta have it.

Chukwu be da only option on duh table now.

Coleby will be a great match up for Ratso Izzo's 6-8 to 6-9 prison bodies, but he is exactly NOT the right match up for the footers.

To parody T.S. Eliot, or someone, we need to prepare some footers to meet the footers that we meet.

Rock Chalk!

@Texas-Hawk-10

Lots of near footers (@JayHawkFanToo and I have decided on this new term based on international standards for weights and measures and my childhood experience of guarding guys 1 inch taller versus guys 2 inches taller :-)) still.

Maybe not as many footers and maybe not a four stack, but likely enough to put two stack programs with a footer or two in each region and weed KU out early, because KU lacks a footer, eh?

On the other hand, you make a sterling case for the non recruiting related ways that KU should get better.

Jump shift.

What about Snacks?

Is he being kept in place only until all the risk of blow back from Cliff is gone, or has Self put him on a very short leash and is making him a reclamation project for the long term?

Snacks seems conspicuous in his absence from the Cliff drama and from current recruiting news.

What do you think?

Does anyone know if Snacks has been reported to be out on the recruiting trail this off season?

@JayHawkFanToo

Cool, then Perry could form the 501c.3 now and be a well heeled pro before the NCAA ever gets around deciding the appeals and whether to go back 5-10 years and look at Perry's 501.c3.

Oh, this is so fun. :+1:

I know, I know, its all just jesting.

@JayHawkFanToo

Yes, but the marketing of his likeness consistent with the Obannon judgement might square it.:video_camera:

I mean why can't Perry form a 501c.3, like KUAD, and the Drake Group, and the NCAA, have formed, and take a nice salary as overhead for the corp and do a not for profit TV show syndicated to local TV stations around Kansas that donates syndication fees to Perry's scholarship fund for unusually bright high school ballers like himself?

Can you imagine the NCAA trying to stop him from doing that?

HOWLING!

Would THE DRAKE GROUP be champin' at the bit to advocate for him and against the NCAA, or what? :heavy_check_mark:

(NOTE: tongue is in cheek here, but maybe its not so far fetched after all.)

@globaljaybird

Sonny = Dapper Dan Tourney in Pittsburg

First Dapper Sonny reputedly staged jointly with his reputed boyhood pal--a fellow who became big time concert promoter and talent agent, or something.

Shoes + agents + recruiting = waaaaay back.

@ParisHawk

Agree with you down the line.

The biggest opportunity this KU team will have is Devonte's improvement.

Devonte hung in out on the floor as a freshman sub; that was pretty impressive, even though he couldn't really stand the heat down the stretch (to be expected).

Diallo and Bragg are going to look great against our easy opponents and get schooled all season long by our good opponents.

Vick? I see a potential Michael Cooper kind of guy (a skinny old Laker player from long ago now) in two seasons, once he gets the sinew a little stronger, and finds out what intensity is, but this season we will be lucky if he can give us what Devonte gave us his first season.

I agree Frank will get better, but he is likely not to have as fiery hot of a trey ball this season. Guys can't usually sustain that two seasons in a row.

This should be a good roster for Self to try to get another conference title with, especially with Fred gone, Bruce doing his usual neutron bomb think in Manhattan, and Shaka finding his way in Austin his first season.

Never very worried about Drew, though he will have some players as usual.

The guy I am worried about is Trent Johnson at TCU. If he can get a player or two that can score, he is going to be dangerous. He is a very tough customer. If I am Big Shoe and Big Agent, plus the new African American coaches association and Drake Group, I would be networking for him and targeting him for a stack like Johnny Jones at LSU and Cuonzo at UC Berkeley.

Everything about player distribution and which coach gets the talent has always appeared to have had a strong network dimension. Self came up through the Okie Baller Mafia and has always been able to rely on that in tough times. Pitino's disciples are a formidable network. Pair these networks up with Big Shoe and Big Agent and you've got what we've seen up till recently.

Now there seems to be this emerging network that converges the new African American coaches association advocating for African American hirings, plus Big Shoe, plus Big Agent, plus some of the sports think tanks that have evolved political clout on a few campuses (e.g., Harry Edwards institute at UC) plus The Drake Group advocacy helping blow up a few programs and thus potentially creating some openings to be filled, plus the long established assistant coaches association that has long been a force in recruiting. If I am this apparently new convergence group, I have to be looking at Trent Johnson and think he is in the right city, with the right eye ball count, and recruiting base, and a power conference, so STACK HIM, STACK HIM HIGH! But so far, Trent hasn't been getting the love. Not sure why. He's a Mike Montgomery guy who played at Boise State. He did the usual .500 thing at UNevada first time out, then had a .625 run at Stanford but the black eye came when he fell back to .500 at LSU. Boot. Landed at TCU. At first I thought he was a chump. But he's not. Hmmm. Montgomery just got run from UC for Cuonzo. And Trent got run from LSU for Johnny Jones. UC has a stack. LSU has a stack. Hmmmm. Maybe Trent and Mike are on the outs with the stackers. I don't know. But the guy can coach muscle ball with guys that can't shoot. Give him some scorers and he could put up Ws. Its hard to admit, because he comes off as kind of a jerk sometimes. But I believer in meritocracy, not networkocracy. So: I'm changing my tune on Trent and I'm saying, get this man some scorers. And if he's on the outs with the stackers, then he's probably doubly alright with me.

@Lulufulu

I so hope his back heals. He is one of the greatest center prospects I have ever seen. NBA Hall of Fame was within his grasp pre injury. But back injuries are just killers five years out, even if you recover pretty fully initially.

Unless every thing fits together just perfectly and you do just the right amount of muscle building to augment any enduring structural changes in the spine, then disk deformation and arthritis converge down stream and your career is shortened.

Larry Bird is the poster boy for best case scenario of this back injury phenomenon, but even he is a tragic case of what might have been. Watch tape of him his first season and a half in the NBA and at Indiana State and you know why Red Auerbach thought he had a chance to be the greatest NBA player ever and drafted him because of it. But then after his back injury--the exact nature of which I cannot now recall--he had to completely retool his game from this running, jumping, high flying hick from French Lick style into that long, low shuffling X-axis game that he became famous for. He was so great he could play with a bad back for a career and win a couple rings. But without the back injury, there is just no telling how many rings he would have won.

I put Embiid in this same kind of category, even though he was sushi from having grown up not balling.

Embiid has it all but a money shot and that will come, if the injury permits.

He is just so awesomely gifted athletically.

But the back is just such a complicated place.

Only time will tell.

@JayHawkFanToo

Highly recommend finding and reading "Sole Influence:Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth," by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger. It was published back in 2000.

Here is a Kirkus Reviews link that briefly summarizes it even without ordering the full review.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dan-wetzel/sole-influence/ ↗

Its been awhile now since I read it, so I am working from recall, but the book has a ton about Sonny, about Sonny and George, and so on. The Sonny, Jordan, Dean and Roy thing early gets some mention early, if I recall correctly. KU and Roy get a brush stroke or two, also, regarding the Piggie, Jaron Rush and Roy story and some mention of Roy parking players places.

And after you read it, do a little digging on Don Yaeger's background. Wetzel was just a sports writer. Yaeger was the intriguing one to have gotten involved in all of this stuff.

I keep hoping Wetzel and Yaeger will team up for Sole Influence Part II.

@approxinfinity

Looks like it can stay on its spots so far.

Rock Chalk!

@globaljaybird

Do you know if Roy and Sonny are appearing together to speak out on Big Shoe's role in D1?

@JayHawkFanToo

Post Script: There wasn't one guy in the top eight teams in the country last season with a footer stack that had even one footer as good as Embiid. Not even Kaminsky. So I'm with you step for step on not annointing anyone the next Embiid. Chuckwu is absolutely vital because he is a footer and KU doesn't have one.

@JayHawkFanToo

I always draw the line at 6-11.

I believe doing so is established by international weights and measures standards, isn't it? :-)

Seriously, you have to draw the line at 6-11, or we are not talking near footers.

I have never had trouble guarding a guy because he had an inch on me.

But anyone that has two inches, or more, on me always got harder to guard late in the game when I could jump less.

So: yeah, 6-11, or taller is the "near footer" guideline.

Will miracles never cease?

@globaljaybird

Last I looked a few weeks back, Sonny Vacarro is listed on the advisory committee for THE DRAKE GROUP!

Hmmmmmm.

@Statmachine

It seems something has changed.

KU's recruits used to go do in rank after signing.

Vick has risen.

Is this a new trend?

Or just an anomaly?

To everyone denying Self needs footers...

Things changed last year.

The game went from general talent stacks, to footer stacks.

No teams without footers seriously challenged for the ring last season.

MSU backed in, then got exposed in the FF.

Footer stacks, or "near" footer stacks, if one wants to pick nits, makes the eight or so teams with footer stacks very dominant.

Stacking has changed everything about footers except the way we think about them.

@Texas-Hawk-10

So to distill your reassurances that this is one of the best rosters, since 2010-11, and a team that can challenge for a ring--here goes:

Svi will be good but probably not as good as Oubre. Well, ummm, we didn't challenge for a ring even with Oubre. How exactly are we going to challenge with someone not quite as good?

Well, adding Diallo and Bragg makes us way better, right?

But Diallo has no back to basket offense, which was the problem with our bigs last season.

And Bragg appears so slender he will not be able to stay on a spot, nor knock an offender off his.

Of course, Diallo has a 7-2 wing span, same as Oubre had, and is only an inch or two taller and Oubre, and I don't recall Kelly's wing span compelling Self to use Kelly as a post defender against footers. Not sure this makes me sleep better.

You're not worried about facing footers without guys that can defend footers, because KU won't see many footers during the regular season...though they will play in a post season tournament in which last season 8 of the top ten teams in the country that got into the tournament had 1 to 4 footers and KU will inevitably face and likely not be able to matchup with the footer . Again, you are not making me feel like swaggering about my birds here.

You say we have depth and experience on the perimeter and appear unconcerned about the following things impairing that depth and experience:

a.) Selden's inability to dribble drive, his enduring psychological scars from knee surgery, reduced hop and pop from knee surgery, sharply limited ability to elevate except on a full speed run, extremely uneven focus, and a tendency to disappear for several games at a time;

b.) BG is coming off a hip surgery known for long rehabs and was not good enough last season to take 20 mpg away from Oubre, when Oubre was wearing a gauze gob on his injured knee, and Selden was disappearing 2-3 games at a time.

Vick's contribution to our depth seems questionable, because he is so thin he likely will not be able to stay on a spot, or keep from being shoved out of his cuts on offense; nor will he likely be able to play physical defense his first season.

You figure Coleby meets a "profile" Self has for big men, which apparently includes Jamari Traylor, Hunter Mickelson, and Landon Lucas; this is not making me more confident.

That pretty much covers the list of the confidence enhancers, right?

@Statmachine

Has Vick actually improved his game that much?😀

@JayHawkFanToo

Might "near footer" account for slight amounts under and over 7 feet?