izzo, Pitino, Fred, Bo, and everyone have adopted drive ball with 15-20 treys. Our desire for outside in Trey ball has been kissed off by the best coaches.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Bad Ball got us to 6-5 with injuries and suspensions.
We clearly would have been 3-8 playing relying on Trey balling, and given the slump and leg injuries on shooters maybe 2-9.
Bad Ball was the only way to 6-5.
No doubt.
7 out f 10 driving possessions UL runs identical driving action.
9 out of 10 driving possessions MSU runs identical driving actions.
Counted.
All teams offenses hAve converged on driving action and drive out of identical sets.
Izzo,like Self, only runs his old stuf for brief stretches early, or when he is trying to defend a lead.
Zaga needs to play on the blocks every possession.
It's the the post men and the injuries.
Now that everyone is using what I call the Wisconsin Drive, which is where I saw it used first (and what Self adopted for BAD BALL), in which the backside wing shades (or runs a crossing pattern from the opposite wing) a bit toward the lane, then runs toward mid court to receive a pass about the free throw line and dribble drives in a hook pattern into the lane and then down the lane to iron, here is a good but vicious defense for it.
As the wing receives the pass and begins his hook move outward and catches the ball, the post defender prepares to leave his post man. As the hooking wing hooks and just as he starts to commit down the lane, the post defender pivots rapidly on his post side foot so that he is standing in a rebound crouch with his back to the wing as he commits to his lane drive so that the wing driver takes two steps AFTER the post defender is set. The wing driver looking first the opposite direction and then with vision sweeping in a half circle across court and then down the lane will not see the post defender until it is too late. The collision will be tremendous and the wing driver will be called for a charging foul every time, unless he anticipates having to make a course correction which will require two things: slow down and prepare for course change, or dish. This defense is applied unpredictably, so that the wing driver cannot anticipate the ploy every time. When ever the ploy is used the wing driver's defender switches off onto the post man and jumps into the passing lane should wing driver try to dish to the post man.
Voila! The days of the Wisconsin Drive are done.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
• How can ten draft choices and four footers beat Notre Dame by only 2?
The Trey.
UK WOULD HAVE STOMPED ND WITHOUT ND'S TREY.
• How can UA with 7 draft choices and including 4 footers lose to 1 draft choice who is a footer?
The Trey.
BADGERS SANS TREYS WOULD BE LIKE CURDS WITHOUT WHEY.
• What will decide MSU VS. UL?
The Trey
BOTH WILL PLAY GREAT DEFENSE, SO WHICH EVER HAS THE HOT TREY GUN WINS.
• Duke vs Gonzaga? 9 draft choices and a footer versus 4 Euro Lugs?
The Trey.
NOTHING CAN GET THROUGH THE PAINT. Mark Few will counter cheap shot with cheap shot and so the team with the hot hand from trey wins.
CONCLUSION: all strategy and tactics exist to get you in position to win with the trey. In March Maddness from Elite 8 on most teams are too deep to foul up and win without the trey. Trying to win without the trey is fool's gold that can only be accomplished against teams without depth before the Elite 8, and even then there is only marginal and rare payback to learning to play that way.
UW has a chance to make history, as THE STACK SLAYER!
They can shoot the trey.
And they can play "Drive Ball."
And they have the hardest player of all to guard: a stretch 5.
They proved they can beat a four footer team in UA.
They have experience, too.
But UA did not go a full 10 deep in draft choices,
Refs could be decisive.
On Wisconsin!
It would be fascinating to talk to LB about anything.
I don't know what a coach might decide to do.
If something were going on a large scale, it could be very costly for any one coach to speak out.
Missed it. Thx for the heads up.
From the muck raking books I have read that have had sections on actual documented game throwing and point shaving, players and/or refs shape outcomes by intervening as often as discreetly, but as often as necessary and as situations arise and permit, at least that's what I recall. Its been a few years since I read them.
Throwing who wins is rarely the objective of those shaping games. They tend to try to fulfill, or counter, betting spreads in one way or another. I don't know, but perhaps in single elimination tournaments, who wins might also influence their actions. I haven't read anything that commented on that distinction one way or the other.
This sort of corruption appears not to be tightly choreographed. Rather, a game presents a series of possession-opportunities and corrupt players and/or refs would intervene as expediently as required.
One book described a preference for players to intervene via defensive lapses, and refs to intervene via no calls, because errors of ommision are reputedly harder to gauge than errors of commission.
Why didn't you call that is easier to defend with "I didn't see it," than is why did you call that with "because I..."
However, it is hardly a science.
And I can at least imagine high stakes situations, where there might be significant pressure to make a decisive impact late in a game, when the opportunity presented itself.
I am only speculating here, but it would seem there might be at least two types of interventions.
Early game: The first type might be to structurally bias the game in its early stages to the favor of the desired winner Team A. One might call an asymmetric number of fouls on Team B to hamstring its defense for the rest of the game.
Late game: The second type might come on the heels of the former type. As the game winds down through the last ten, or five minutes, one favors Team A , which has already been advantaged, as much, or as little, as is needed to deliver the score to the spread desired.
We can learn something about inappropriate interventions in games from the coaches that have over the years sought to enable their teams to be able to foul more by fouling frequently from the beginning to "normalize" the fouling from the start. If fouling is frequent early, the refs appear to call quite a few fouls early, and if the fouling continues, there appears to come a point in the game where the refs finally give up and permit a rougher game than they started out trying to permit.
It occurs to me that if referees were involved in cheating, more frequent errors of commission early might condition and so desensitize most involved, involved including fans, to view this kind of error of commission as "just a part of the game."
Regarding this goal tending call, it is an error of commission, if it were anything inappropriate at all, so it does not fall into the reputedly preferred way for refs to intervene. This favors your point of view.
On the other hand, it was a close game, and SMU was about to beat UCLA by some amount of points. The call made highly probably UCLA would win by a given margin.Have you looked at the point spread on the game? I haven't. Might it have helped that in some way? Alternatively, did UCLA help attendance and/or viewership?
Not sayin'.
Just wonderin'.
Thanks for mentioning it.
Totally on board with using an effective sports psychologist!
Buy cheaper carpet for the new housing and hire two!
Coaches, however, should see them too.
Coaches and trainers are traditionally the single biggest obstacles for sports psychologists, or so I have heard. It has to do with coaches wanting to control team psychology and individual button pushing and not knowing how to collaborate with a sports psychologist. And trainers are reputedly often ignorant of the therapeutic process and reputedly sometimes undermine sports psychologists to coaches and players.
Self, because of his psch background, and brilliance at maneuvering players in and out of comfort zones, could revolutionize mental fitness as he has physical fitness with Hudy, but he apparently has not yet found a way to collaborate....and he should.
Sports psychology is a great way to get better.
If adidas' sponsorship cannot leverage us into more OADs, it can at least lever us into top sports psychologists.
The key for a coach is to see what a good child psychologist does for a teenager, which is only a small part about venting and talking about myths of the childhood past and largely about developing specific approaches to situations that work!
Go Bill go!!!!!!
One of your best, most insightful and potentially helpful takes and you've had a lot.
PHOF!
Science is a search for explanations that fit and techniques that work.
I will be a volunteer subject for testing your hypothesis. 😎
Interesting. This does feel vaguely like speculating about a possible ground water contamination plume under a closed service station's possibly leaking tanks. Hard to say where it might extend to without systematic inquiry, if it were proven an actual verifiable phenomenon at all.
The crucial thing is to avoid a witch-hunt, which the unsavory types would appropriate for inappropriate ends, and just focus on things actually verifiable.
Sorry for the ambiguous writing. I meant Oswald claimed to be a patsy.
So you agree with the Church Committee and the National Geographic that a conspiracy assassinated JFK and you are not one of those anti conspiracy nuts? Good.
You just think the conspiracy hired one shooter, right? And it hired confirmed US Intel spook Lee Harvey Oswald for the job, when there were many more qualified and experienced assassins available, right? In order to make it look like the Intel world--Soviet, Castro Cuba, etc.-- hired him, right? And the conspiracy wanted to do it on the cheap without a team?
And one of Sam Giancana's guys--Jack Ruby--so loved the President--a President sleeping with Sam's girl Judith--that he decided to whack Lee in front of the cops, right?
And Lee could make 2 great shots that record as three, and the one shot could do the crazy trajectory changes that Kansas boy made good Arlen Specter asserted, right?
And more killing would have been required than silencing US Intel spook Oswald, who was claiming patsy status?
Hmmm.
This is why I mostly left this stuff behind after the Church Committee findings. i saw Stone's JFK for entertainment (great entertainment) and found the National Geographic story (sound and informative to this Rip Van Winkle of JFK Research) in my doctor's office. I just am not qualified to figure this out with the evidence destroyed and more still classified and lots of books and articles written by anti conspiracy nuts and pro conspiracy nuts.
All that I accept is there was apparently a conspiracy that killed JFK, that Spook Oswald claimed to be a patsy, and he was silenced by a gun running strip club operator and associate of a Chicago mobster, and the mobster's girlfriend slept with JFK. And this all happened after the mob helped JFK win election in places like Chicago and West Virginia, etc. And it happened after JFK failed to deliver Cuba for the mob (casinos) and for the sugar trust (sugar, land and oligopoly benefits), after JFK s-canned Allen Dulles at CIA and authorized the Special Forces and SEALS to report straight to him, and after JFK printed his own currency--$4 Billion silver certificates--that he could use at his discretion to fund special forces and SEALS perhaps if his authority were challenged as a result of the preceding. Oh and he was inadequately protecting the Golden Triangle of heroin, oil, tin and rubber in Southeast Asia, while, as I said, setting up his own Praetorian guard of special forces and SEALS that could take over operations in that region from CIA and the ousted Dulles. And JFK was the first since Lincoln to print his own currency and the last.
These are the few facts I have kept in mind all these years, while the anti-conspiracy nuts and pro conspiracy nuts have spewed out books that I have been told often try to marginalize these facts, and focus on minutiae while truckloads of evidence are reputedly destroyed, missing or classified, and they can't even find the President's brain! Even Inspector Clousseau could not accidentally solve this beyond a reasonable doubt! How can I?
But I don't buy your logic that the killing had to go beyond JFK and Oswald. Killing JFK and Oswald, plus losing evidence plus classifying tons of evidence solved all the problems but public doubt, which rarely solves anything.
Hey, after all these years, this is kind of fun. Maybe at this late date I can become a "JFK researcher." 😄
Not!
Rock Chalk!
You seem interested in conspiracy. You have used the term, whereas I have not.. I confess I am not up to speed on conspiracies. They are so tough to substantiate, especially If done by pros, that I don't think about them much. What is the point?
But since you appear interested in them and in JFK, the citizen in me, who has never read systematically about this subject--but have lived with a sad memory of my grade school teacher weeping and telling our class that our beloved President had died from being shot, plus the recollection a day or so later of watching Jack Ruby gut shoot Oswald who had claimed to be a patsy live on TV--has to ask you something.
Didn't the Church Committee Investigation and hearings end the discussion of whether there was a conspiracy in the JFK. assassination long ago? I thought all the debate since, which I have never followed closely, had been about how many shooters there were, 1 or more, and who hired them? Right? Holy cow! Did I misunderstand the Church Commitee all these years? I kind of stopped thinking about it much after that, figuring any conspiracy capable of whacking our President and getting away with it for a decade was likely never going to be found out.
Do you know some binding government inquiry since the Church Committe that proves some thing different? I don't keep up much with this stuff. The last thing I recall was a non binding but seemingly credible National Geographic inquiry I read in a doctor's office a year or two ago that concluded unequivocally that JFK was assasinated by a conspiracy and probably by more than one shooter, if I recall correctly.
You sound informed about Oswald and the JFK assassination. Has there been some new binding government finding I have missed? Or do you think National Geographic AND the Church Committee are lying, or involved in conspiracy?
I tend to trust the Church Committee and all these years later the National Geographic.
But I haven't read systematically all these years to reach a fully informed opinion as you perhaps have.
If you say I have missed something, then I reckon it would be my duty as a citizen to read up on this issue further.
Rock Chalk!
MORE obvious than I say. I saw it clearly on TV before the replay at a worse angle than any of the refs had. And I was just a kiddy game ref.
I don't want to get rid of Hudy. I want her to get on the stick and fix the problem NOW! It's killing us.
Hit that Boss Button and take the baton! 😄
That's what I figured. 😄
It was completely out of the cylinder. Not even close. So far outside the cylinder that 3 refs calling the game from the cheap seats would have seen it. The burden is on you to prove how three guys could blow the call. 😄
You know, I love you too, and I am soooo used
to raising issues that folks have not looked from certain angles and hearing the conspiracy scare card played and then having what I raise become conventional wisdom within a year or so that I just don't worry about it any more.
Oooooh, conspiracy!
Conspiracy boo!
😀
What is the rule that says a shot falling outside the cylinder cannot be rebounded by a defensive player or grabbed and dunked by an offensive player? Just curious?
People forget that the 2012 runner up team had the following injuries.
Travis Releford was in a boot.
EJ was suffering the residual effects of an unreported shoulder separation (@dragnslayr called that one right).
Tyson played on a scoped knee the entire season.
The team only had 6 credible players and one of those was Conner Teahan.
Regarding 2008...
Kaun was playing on two knees requiring surgery. He literally could not clear the floor much of the time.
Rush was playing on a not fully rehabilitated knee (ACL surgery).
Rush's back up was injured and missed the March Madness.
Sherron Collins injured his knee during that season and was playing on it in March Madness. It was the injury that would over time increasingly hinder Collins legendary high school explosiveness until his senior season when he was basically not remotely the same player that came to KU.
It used to be you would have a season with injuries, them fewer injuries for a few seasons. Repeat.
During Self's tenure, injuries are always an issue--often a big issue.
I have watched 6 games now in the Madness.
KU was more banged up and gimpy than any other team I have watched in the Madness. It was the same story last season. It was the same story the year before with EJ's team. It was the same story the season before THAT!
This is no longer a run of bad luck.
This is incorrect training and perhaps the teaching of a high-wear-and-tear style of play.
THIS HAS TO STOP.
It creates a lot of drama. We get to talk about how tough and courageous our guys are. I get to invent metaphors like Basketball's Merrill's Marauders.
But what we really need for March Madness is a team full of reasonably healthy players. Period!
And while I am bitching and complaining, Bill and Andrea need to stop crafting and re-crafting body morphologies for players.
Jeff Withey comes in a reasonably healthy, but soft guy. He goes through at least three different weight distribution schemes: strengthen what weight he has; then make him gain weight down low; then lean him up down low and add some on top; and then just lean him up and let him play wiry.
Cole Aldrich they blew up so much that his knees obviously couldn't carry the below the waist weight he carried his last season.
Jamari Traylor looks like an absolute stud for two seasons; then by the end of this season he looks like he's been to Jenny Craig.
Landen Lucas comes in like a long and slender and play him one season that way; then they inflate him like a Pillsbury doughboy. What's he going to look like next season.
Come up with a flipping plan for these guys that is right for them and stick with it. Develop who they are, not who they could be. This whole $6 Million dollar man experiment in reconstructive weight training is waisting a lot of time with redistributing weight around experimentally, then that way, then back this way, is a waste of development time. Each playing weight these guys play at enables a certain kind of play and a certain kind of cardio-pulmonary conditioning. We need these guys working on skill sets for the same weight and same conditioning.
Better yet, recruit guys with the body morphologies you want coming in and then focus entirely on their cardio-pulmonary efficiencies.
I wouldn't be quite so down on this issue, except for the fact that I am tired of watching our guys always moving around at about 3/4 function, while other teams are playing balls to the walls with 100 percent function.
It was pathetic watching Kelly Oubre's decline in pop and function over the season with that big white gob of cotton candy wrap on his right leg.
It was pathetic watching Frank Mason never get well.
It was pathetic watching Perry Ellis limping around on twisted knee never recovering from it, and then having to play with his nose sticking out the back of his head.
We need to start recruiting guys with body morphologies tough enough to take what is being dished out in D1 the last 4 years.
Our guys are incredibly athletic, but too many of them just can't take the wear and tear of even a 35 game season, much less the Madness.
You don't use thoroughbreads for draught horses.
STOP IT!
GET SOME DRAUGHT HORSES that can stand the loads they are being asked to pull.
Next.
The minute Marshall is out of Wichita, I will go back to being a Wichita State fan. I have loved all of their good teams of the past. I loved what Turg did for them. I loved what Ralph Miller did there. Really, everyone of them.
But Marshall?
Get out of town as fast as you can, Greg.
Texas not biting on Marshall even gives me hope for Texas.
Alabama and Marshall?
The only thing better would have been Guyana and Marshall.
Alabama and Marshall?
Something finally happened that could make me root for UK in the SEC.
But what is it about the SEC these days? Its like a fecal magnet. Cal. Fizzou. And now Marshall!!! Hey, maybe some of their schools could hire Jim Calhoun, and Quinn Snyder, and Jim Boeheim!
Next.
Thanks, Irish, we owe you one.
WSU couldn't degrade the opponent's top two players two games in a row, huh?
Honestly, Chita State just isn't a very good defensive team, when they have to play the other team's starters, when the other team's stars haven't had their noses beasted on, and their privates stiff screened.
Oh, and 3-18 doesn't feel so hot, does it Schlockers?
Chita State equals Chump State.
Welcome back to your pumpkins, Cinderfellas.
Now, here's the good part: next season, if Greg Marshall doesn't get scared and let his Schlockers go .500 on purpose, we will be matched up against them again, and we will frack them like a coal layer.
I am sooooooooo looking forward to NOT scheduling them in the regular season, because the are light weights, and then beating them into the next century when they are a 16 seed and KU is a 1 seed.
Next.
Same here! :-)
To paraphrase you, you're crazy!! :-)
Or maybe you have had a little too much late night espresso and have misread me.
I am happy we got Wigs and Embiid.
I would like to have all ten of UK's draft choice players.
I am a recruit and play the best players, if they are better than what you already have.
We probably would have won it all last season with Embiid healthy and Naa laying off the wild thing for six games.
If Embiid had been able to play in the tourney, Wigs would never have protected the merchandize against Stanford.
Rock Chalk!
The difference in energy between the UK-UCinn game and the SMU-UCLA game that followed it astonished me.
The guys in the UK-UCinn game were like Autobots and Decepticons going at it. Or maybe Decepticons fighting Decepticons. :-)
Whatever those two teams were really going at it and really rocking each other around the wood.
It seemed like war out there part of the time.
UCinn's Ellis really turned it into an alley fight and UK's bigs looked like they had really not had a taste of that level of toughness. But do do the UK players justice, they did not wilt, even though they needed the refs to gift wrap the game for them.
By comparison, SMU and UCLA appeared to be a couple D-II teams playing back in 1965. They seemed almost prissy by comparison. Never thought I would say that about an LB team, or an Alford team.
Interesting point.
Does anyone have any stats on average betting line movement during that period before round of 32 tournament games? That would be interesting to know.
I am bummed I missed the game. I will have to catch a replay.
Leave it to a Big Ten team, especially an experienced Bo Ryan team, to know how to respond that sort of thing.
I hope Coach Self has our young Jayhawks watch Bo's Buckies to learn the etiquette of dealing with such things, if in fact a cheap shot occurred.
I'm getting out my UW grad school sheep skin and hanging it up over my computer screen right now.
ON WISCONSIN!
FIGHT FOR VICTORY...
I hardly think we have heard the end of adidas, that just spent $45M on Louisville, at either the college, or pro level. I would suspect we are, rather, seeing a restructuring of their strategy, wouldn't you?. :-)
You have nailed the operational end of the constraint set I identified. Thanks.
Self is going to go for the best players he can get.
This recruiting is kind of like Salmon fishing on the Rogue River in Oregon.
There are a lot of elite boats lined up out there with a lot of lines in the water waiting for the elite salmon to come up the river toward you.
But there is this additional constraint. It is like the river is divided 3/4 where the Nike salmon swim and 1/4 where the adidas Salmon swim.
So: Self has to park his KU boat in the 1/4 part of the river designated for adidas boats, and then he has to catch the best of what swims toward him. even though he cannot see clearly which adidas program they are leaning to.
But every once in a while a Nike salmon swims close to the divider, and once in awhile, that Nike Salmon jumps over the divider. So: Self has to keep two lines out for possible Nike Salmon like Andrew Wiggins that jump the divider. One for those that have jumped into the adidas one quarter, and one that he tosses out over the divider on a long shot for those that haven't jumped yet, but might like to.
He will keep the best of whatever he catches, and try to juggle needs the next season with keeping the best of whatever he catches next season.
In between salmon season, he will go fish the inland lakes for some smaller fish, and maybe go trolling out in the ocean in hopes of landing some big foreign catch.
The thing to remember is that the nucleus of the 2008 ring team had a lot of 6-8 to 6-9 bigs and 6-11 Kaun. They had no high first round draft choice point guard. And in the first three years they had flame outs their first three years.
The teams cornerstoned by the Morri were 6-7 to 6-9 bigs and they flamed out fairly early, and no high first round draft choice point guard.
Aldrich, who after the fact was revealed to be only 6-9. had 4s for help, and no high draft choice point guard, and had teams flame out early.
I'm not trying to be argumentative here.
Gathers is a great player to have.
But to go deep on an annual basis, I really think you have to have the high draft choice point guard and/or elite true 5.
Without one or the other, and preferably both, you have to wait several years for the stars to align and the pieces to fit for deep runs.
What you are suggesting makes some sense, but it implies a considerable irony.
Self spent several years trying to amass open look, make it on the kick out, three point shooters.
And now you are saying he is shucking those to shift to drivers that can create a shot off the drive and get a foul.
What a world!!!
I am not sure how this will pan out. I just don't know enough yet. But its a good question about adidas.
Yes, down the line, and the issue of youth is big. It seems Self either has to get up to 10 draft choices, or start thinking more about maturity. It was interesting to see UK get a little shaky against an older UCINN, even without UCINN having anyone that could shoot.
That is an interesting way to look at it and it vaguely agrees with what I heard from someone back in the mid 80s that claimed to have once had knowledge of NCAA investigations in the 1970s.
I don't see a PetroShoeCo conspiracy. I have been hypothesizing something similar to the process that Rick Pitino described--a process involving ShoeCos, agents and agent runners--what I have called a SHOECO-AGENT complex. I have used this term in the same way Eisenhower used military-industrial complex; I.e., not a conspiracy at all, just a constellation of working relationships that may or may not produce a desirable outcome.
I believe all the characterization of what Rick Pitino described that you refer to as a conspiracy started with others, not me, or Rick Pitino. And if I recall correctly, Rick Pitino's remarks indicated he understood that the NCAA had indicated it thought nothing inappropriate was going on.
The question in my mind is not at all about legality, but rather is a fair and equitable recruiting outcome occurring from KU's POV?
But thanks for responding.
I have watched four games end to end this March Madness. Of those 4 games, three seemed to have outcomes decisively determined by the referees.
Of those three games decisively determined by referees, all three appeared spooky and borderline intentional gimmes to the winning team, but I can't say for sure.
Question: referee determined outcomes (RDO) or thrown games?
Don't want to be coy about such serious business.
Take KU vs. WSU. Puhlease!
The game started with 7 fouls called on KU and one called on WSU.
Hmmmmm.
When KU begins to pull away, a WSU player beasts on the nose of KU's star player. Despite a video replay that makes it appear flagrant to some, neither a flagrant foul call nor an ejection.
Hmmmmm.
KU stops pulling away and instead starts losing its lead and then falls farther and farther behind.
Sure.
Take UK and UCinn. Puhlease!
UCinn plays them even, or up, for a good part of the game. UCinn seems not the least bit intimidated playing UK even with its 10 draft choices and 4 near footers.
Then the refs intervene and UK gets 28 FTAs to UCinns 14. Even though UK is hacking as much as UCinn. Basically UK appears to be given a free pass to hack UCinn to pieces, and UCinn appears to be called for minor contact and some phantom fouls.
UK pulls away.
RDO or thrown game?
Take UCLA-SMU. Puhlease!
SMU pulls away.
UCLA doesn't even look very good.
The refs intervene.
The UCLAN come back on some questionable foul calls on SMU and no calls on UCLA.
With seconds to go, UCLA, trailing, hoists a desperation trey.
Not only is there no chance of going in, the ball appears completely outside the cylinder.
Not even a doubt in the replay.
If a UCLA rebounder had been there, it would have been called a lob for a legal alley oop.
Instead, an SMU player taps it aside.
Goal tending is called.
The goal tending call gives the UCLAN a score needed to win.
RDO or thrown game?
RDOs seem to be going viral.
Or are thrown games going viral?
Watching the NCAA tourney feels more and more like watching the Friday night fights (or was it Saturday) on TV in the 1950s and 1960s.
My late father said he could never be sure if the basketball games were fixed back in the early 50s point shaving scandals, and again in the early 60s point shaving scandals, but it felt like they were.
He also said he could never be sure if the Friday Night fights were fixed back in the 1950s, or not.
But it felt like they were.
Years later it came out that many were fixed.
Now, I can never be sure if the NCAA tourney games are fixed, or not.
But it feels like they are sometimes.
But I just cannot be sure either way.
Years from now, will I find out many of them WERE fixed?
Imagine all the scams that might be run in computerized gaming, if they were, in this age of fiber with varying speeds.
Some have suggested surprise at our early outs the last two seasons. I did not feel much surprise at an early out, when Embiid quit playing, and Naadir Tharpe was our point guard. I also did not feel surprise at this year's early out, when Landen Lucas was our starting 5, Perry Ellis was injured going into the game and got punked during the game, and Frank Mason, much as I have grown to love him, was headed to Towson State before coming to KU.
But let's focus on this season as a microcosm of the problems facing Self and KU for many seasons.
And lets try to get past the surprise of some, and let's get to the probable cause of the problems some found surprising.
If Self had the weakest front court this season out of his eleven years, and it appears reasonable to say that he did, and if an OAD 4/5 in the weak front court not only struggled to perform even adequately as a substitute the entire season, and he did, and also then has to be removed from suiting up for the team the last month to remain in NCAA compliance regarding eligibility issues, then why would one NOT expect for this team to have had more troubles than any prior team in the Self era, especially when it apparently played as tough, or tougher, of a schedule than any other team in the Self era?
It appears to me that board rats are letting the mind-stings of "inconsistencies" and an early exit obscure the trigger the team’s problems.
The trigger from which a problem plagued season cascaded, does not appear to me to be either how Coach Self schemed and coached the roster he had, or what his players injured and not, suspended and not, did with the schemes he provided them, but rather the roster of players he had to work with.
It was the players, or put more accurately the players he did not have.
This lack of players hardly exonerates Coach Self on its face, for he is, after all, responsible for the players that he attracts to the roster, and those he in effect drives away from it.
But what Coach Self is not entirely responsible for is the players that choose to go elsewhere for reasons unrelated to Coach Self and his staff and facilities.
Self and his staff had a reputation of being exceptional at recruiting, when he and his staff were hired at KU some eleven years ago.
During his tenure, he has attracted some very talented rosters of players to KU and rosters of players that included most of the "pieces" needed for successful teams. The team he inherited his first season had some good, but not NBA grade returning players, but then some obvious missing pieces--players not up to replacing the likes of NBA grade players like Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison. It showed, though Self made the best of it and won a conference title the first season.
But as the years ensued and more and more of Self's recruits populated the roster, his teams improved to 27 to 30 game winners going deeper and deeper in the Madness despite some early round upsets by mid majors not at all inconsistent with early round upsets of other elite programs, like Duke.
If I recall correctly, somewhere along there KU shifted to adidas, a Petro ShoeCo sponsoring a small minority of AAU teams where elite players play, and from which agents and agent runners apparently informally influence recruits toward certain of those programs (see Rick Pitino's comments this season). KU shifted from Nike, a competing PetroShoeCo sponsoring the lion's share of the AAU teams that elite players play for, and which it is reputed that agents and agent runners also informally influence recruits toward programs for.
KU basketball made a windfall of cash for switching from Nike to adidas--for KUAD. And it shortly won a ring in 2008 with a great deal of apparently originally Nike-leaning talent, something that might not have been necessarily consistent with Nike management's marketing strategy. After all, why would Nike have wanted players it might have hoped to groom as endorsers to win a Ring for an adidas school instead of for a Nike school? And if I have the chronology incorrect, and KU switched to adidas after the 2008 ring team, why would Nike wish for players it hoped one day to endorse the Nike brand, to continue going to KU, when KU became an adidas contracted school? Do you see the problematic nature of the issue either way?
Regardless, winning the 2008 ring was a moment, when it was logical to expect Self would have a windfall in recruiting. A ring finally allowed Self to be considered among the game’s elite coaches by recruits, at least if recruits valued winning rings, and conference titles, and winning 82% of games played.
And, indeed, Self and KU did appear to start to get recruiting "access" to more highly ranked recruits than before. KU appeared increasingly to make the lists of the most highly ranked players. Most KU fans were cheered by this prospect and readied for Self having as many draft choice grade players as schools like UNC,Duke and some other elite programs were then regularly getting.
But, instead, of a recruiting windfall at this moment, Self began to manifest trouble signing 5 star 5s and 5 star point guards, especially OAD grades of either, that he gained access to recruit. It was around this time that Self also began to have to rely as much, or more, on 3-5 year players, and on formerly highly ranked transfers that either did not like the schools they initially signed with (e.g.,Jeff Withey), or backed out of programs imploding because of scandal (e.g., Xavier Henry, Josh Selby). Though Self was obviously open to recruiting and signing the best 5s and the best point guards, he consistently failed to sign them.
Conspicuously, these elite 5s and point guards did not always sign with other elite programs. Sometimes they signed with less storied and then recently less successful programs and coaches than KU and Self.
These failures were always rationalized one way or another, as KU not having enough PT, or as Self not being willing to promise PT, or Self being too demanding of a coach. This of course contradicted the facts that many of these players were going to play for certain elite programs, like Duke, that had every bit as demanding of coaches, and had lots of talent on hand, while others were choosing to play for all manner of coaches--demanding, not demanding, older, younger, more successful, less successful, nearer their homes, farther from their homes, and so on.
These explanations and rationalizations, whether accurate, or not, in a limited sense, appeared to tend to ignore, marginalize, and rather incompletely explain the dynamic, if any, of Petro ShoeCoes and agents and agent runners on the recruiting process, even though books had been written between 1990 and around 2000 documenting, at least partially, a highly problematic influence of both shoe companies and agents on the recruiting process previously, and there having been no apparent reform of that process broadly engaged in in the years since those books had been written.
Self and KU were hardly without recruiting successes in this period, as the number of draft choices Self and KU produced during the period suggests. But these draft choices conspicuously still did not include a steady flow of elite 5s and elite point guards signing originally with Self and KU that were among the most highly prized recruits both by colleges and the NBA.
KU's front court players that were high draft choices were exclusively 5s like Jeff Withey and Cole Aldrich that had to play for a number of years to develop into players the NBA wanted to draft with high draft choices, and 4s like Thomas Robinson and the Morris twins, that also had to play 3 years before attracting the interest of the NBA.
KU's point guard position produced no Top 15 draft choices at all, and few first round choices.
KU's wings produced first Xavier Henry as an OAD high draft choice, but he reputedly had only attended KU as a second choice to the then imploding Memphis, and even then reputedly entertained the notion of decommitting to KU and recommitting to Kentucky (to which former Memphis Coach John Calipari had moved shortly before the Memphis ineligible player scandal) before finally settling on KU. After Henry, KU then attracted Josh Selby apparently avoiding the impending UTenn implosion under Bruce Pearl, but Selby turned pro and failed to be a high draft choice, then failed to make it in the NBA. Next came BenMac, who had to sit out a season, because of high school academic defficiencies. He blossomed and played brilliantly one season and was drafted highly.
On the heels of BenMac, Self had his one great recruiting class of reputed OAD grade players. Andrew Wiggins, a reputed Nike lean in AAU ball, who signed with KU, starred one season for KU, was drafted Number 1 overall by the NBA, and then signed with adidas as a pro. The second reputed OAD was Wayne Selden, Jr. Selden played, but reputedly struggled with injury, his first season. He played wildly inconsistently his second season. It is unclear at this writing whether he will go pro, but it appears he might not. Joel Embiid, who was signed not as an OAD, but as a probable 2, or 3, year project with a very high ceiling, surprised many and played well enough for the NBA to draft him Number 3 after only one season and with an injured back, too.
The thing to keep in mind about Self's "best post ring recruiting class" is that even it only included two reputed OADs, while other elite programs were signing 5 or more.
This past season Self had another 2-OAD/TAD recruiting class in a year when Calipari added 5 OAD/TAD types to five returning reputed OAD/TAD types for a total of 10. And Coach K at Duke achieved 9 total OAD/TAD players on his roster.
Self and KU are aligned with adidas.
Calipari-UK and Coach K-Duke are aligned with Nike.
Frankly, Self has never been able to amass enough OAD/TAD recruits that played to a draftable level in a single season to be remotely as talented of a program as UK and Duke since Cal moved to UK.
Self has proven that he can, with less talent, and with the pieces fitting well together, and with favorable match-ups in the Madness, go deep in the Madness one in three or one in four years, which is about as good as anyone does without having the elite 5s and elite point guards on his roster year after year.
It is NOT comparing apples with apple to compare Self with Calipari, Coach K, Roy Williams, Sean Miller, Billy Donovan, Rick Barnes (most seasons) and the last two seasons, Bo Ryan, because they have elite 5s and/or elite point guards on their rosters most every season, while Self does not.
Even Joel Embiid was not an elite 5 while at KU. He just had an enormously high ceiling. And even when he improved dramatically, he was injured a third, or quarter of the season to go and Self had no elite 5 to back him up, as, say, Calipari has three to call on in the event of injury to one this season.
It is even hard to compare Self with Tom Izzo, because though Izzo has struggled in recruiting, he has often landed an elite point guard.
Elite 5s and/or elite point guards are pivotal to being a powerful team likely to go deep in the Madness. They don't guaranty it, but they are the best insurance. There are exceptions, like KU's own 2008 ring team, where there was neither. But the pieces have to really fit together well, and there has to be a whole lot of talent on such teams to go deep go deep.
Self has to be compared with other coaches that are coaching without Elite 5s and elite point guards. When he is compared in this way, I would argue that he probably stands head and shoulders above all coaches in this class.
My hypothesis here is this: Self’s problem is that he cannot get enough elite 5s and elite point guards to sign with KU consistently (or at all), because KU is an adidas school with adidas related agents and agent runners that do not provide the right linkages to attract elite 5s and elite point guards.
Now, if a board rat thinks Self SHOULD be able to sign elite 5s and elite point guards, and increasingly an OAD/TAD type player two deep at every position, as Kentucky has done, and Duke has nearly done, then Self needs to be fired immediately, because Self has never shown an ability to do this in his eleven seasons.
To conclude, I think the entire debate about schemes and so forth is intellectually stimulating but utterly inconsequential to solving the problem of making KU make deep runs in the Madness on a more regular basis.
Nothing but a steady run of elite 5s and elite point guards will make that happen consistently. Without them, and with 2-3 OAD/TAD types at the 2, 3 and 4 positions, 1 deep run every 3-5 years is the best we can hope for.
@stupidmichael is not the only board rat that can get scared.
Every time Coach Self and KU lose a game, or even when they win one ugly, I find myself reading a lot of column inches, as they used to say back in the AGE OF NEWSPRINT, about Self being NOT NEARLY as good as I think he is, or about him being too basketball IQ challenged to recognize that schemes he chooses have failed, and the in game choices he makes, are repeatedly wrong, THEN I get really SCARED!
I am almost conditioned in a Pavlovian way, maybe even on the verge of de-patterning in a Gitmo-esque way.
Its not so much that I want to be right--though I have as much vanity as the next board rat about that sort of thing. It is more that I fear being wrong--fear getting so old old that I have drifted into dementia without even knowing it.
Think about it.
As I understand dementia, once one is demented, one will never know one is demented. When one is sufficiently demented, one could say Bill Self never coached at KU, neve won 82% of his games, never won eleven straight titles, never won a ring, and never have an inkling that one was completely bat evacuate disconnected from the reality show everyone else is watching.
So: I want everyone to know that I, jaybate 1.0, gets nearly paralyzed with @stupidmichael levels of fear after everyone of these losses and the ensuing deluge of doubt about Coach Self's diminished capacity to coach.
Some early stage dementia patients begin taking notes about things they never used to take notes about, so as to cheat the devilish dementia nipping at their neurons.
I have decided to pre-trial this method.
I have taken notes on Coach K's early outs since 1980 in order to see if Coach Self's early outs were unforgivable, or not? I wondered after the Chita State loss, if two straight outs at the level of 32 meant that Coach Self was hopeless, as some suggest, or if Coach Self might have some potential left in him akin to that of Coach K.
I have a feeling someone else did this earlier this year, a kind of dementia vu, but I cannot help myself.
I have to post this, because it relieved my fears and it might relieve the fear of some others.
In fact, it makes me down right optimistic about Coach Self's future.
This is a list of Coach K's early outs, records during those seasons, and conference finishes.
1980–81 Duke 17–13 6–8 T–5th NIT Third Round
1981–82 Duke 10–17 4–10 T–6th
1982–83 Duke 11–17 3–11 7th
1983–84 Duke 24–10 7–7 T–3rd NCAA Round of 32
1984–85 Duke 23–8 8–6 T–4th NCAA Round of 32
1995–96 Duke 18–13 8–8 T–4th NCAA Round of 64
1996–97 Duke 24–9 12–4 1st NCAA Round of 32
2006–07 Duke 22–11 8–8 6th NCAA Round of 64
2007–08 Duke 28–6 13–3 2nd NCAA Round of 32
2011–12 Duke 27–7 13–3 2nd NCAA Round of 64
2013–14 Duke 26–9 13–5 T–3rd NCAA Round of 64
I do believe that Coach K has had his share of early outs and shabby records, more so than Coach Self.
Ah, I can feel the chest tightness go away.
Rock Chalk!
I sincerely hope not too, but...
Remember: KU pulling away after 7 fouls called on KU and 1 called on WSU.
A chance to get to the Sweet 16 maybe slipping away.
Playing a team with probably more OADs and 5 stars and reputed depth than WSU had. Playing a team with better three point shooting and a tenacious defense that could be very tough to come back against. Playing a team with a point guard that is keeping up with your star player--a point guard.
Remember: Self calls the stretch 4 the toughest player to guard in college basketball.
Perry is a stretch 4 and he scored 17 and 9 playing with a recently elbow-smashed nose and some apparent possible fogginess.
Imagine what Perry might have scored and rebounded had he been able to breath freely through a nose without probable swelling and inflamation from a recent elbow smash so hard that he had to be lead to the locker room for treatment. Imagine what he might have done had he been able to act and react without any apparent possible fogginess, and had no recently bloodied nose to protect.
Imagine if instead of leaving the game injured, Perry had stayed in the game and KU had continued to pull away from WSU to say, 10 points, or even 15 points by half time, before WSU could get into half time and try to adjust.
That replay was something.
Perry appearing to be leaning back some, face completely unprotected.
Right, and then toward the nose with the elbow.
I sincerely want to believe, too, but...
It appeared a complicated context and moment IMHO, that I wonder if the refs saw clearly than the replay?
Way to dig into the issue!!!!
I agree that Self and his team got their asses kicked and one of their noses smashed.
I disagree that there was much Self could do about it after the nose was smashed.
The team was pulling away after the asymmetric foul calling.
No matter what one concludes speculatively about the motivation of the elbow smash of Perry Ellis by Fred VanVleet, the result of the elbow smash of Perry Ellis was to sideline our best player, and a player they could not guard very well, and sent him to the locker room at the moment KU was starting recover from the absurdly one sided foul calling to start the game to pull away from WSU.
Now, put yourself in in Self's position on the bench at that moment.
The team's scheme was BAD BALL.
BAD BALL tries to attack from the guards and wings while running the stuff. It usually samples a couple treys early to see if anyone is hitting. If that doesn't work, Bad Ball tries to attack from the bigs pulled out. If that doesn't work Bad Ball spreads it to four corners and attacks from the point guard. If that doesn't work, Bad Ball stays spread, and starts attacking from the stretch 4. Self tries to proceed through this cascade one before the 10 minute mark to see which options work the best against what the opponent is taking away defensively, and then the second ten minutes of the half, focuses in on what worked best and begins to attack that way.
Self probably noticed by that time that Selden, for whatever reason was just not a factor. Self was proceeding through the cascade,when Ellis got the elbow smash that sent him to the locker room. He appeared at the point ready to try to play through Perry, having found the early options of the cascade working some, Selden being a no show, and the sample treys not falling.
Out goes Perry.
Who does he turn to?
If I recall correctly he defaulted to Oubre at that time, but Oubre was getting man handled by Cotton every time he got a touch. Kelly was completely out of his comfort zone.
If I recall correctly, Self next went to Frank to drive it, and also to try a trey or two.
Frank did okay for awhile, then tired, then Self brought Devonte to try to get something out of the two where Selden was a walking 0 place holder.
Devonte gave some spark on defense, but Devonte could not hit the broad side of a barn from 3, then was erratic inside also. WSU plays high contact, lane jumping defense and they are very good at it. The point of driving on them is to eliminate the passing offense they like to lane jump on.
So: its back to Frank, with a brief test of Landen inside. But Landen is completely overwhelmed with the intensity of the contact and double teaming and instead of turning to the rim to try to draw contact on his shots he does running jump hooks away from the pressure and neither hits anything, nor gets fouled.
He also gives Brannen a try and Brannen makes nothing from trey.
He goes back to Oubre, who is in the early stages of going 3-9.
Self realizes they cannot win the half without Perry, and when Perry gets back he realizes that Perry is woozy and has a tender nose and blocked sinuses from the swelling and the bloody noses. Playing through Perry more than intermittently is not going to happen. He is not mentally sharp, he will be playing to keep his nose from getting smashed again, and his cardiovascular will suck because of the obstructed breathing.
Self decides that to play it close to the vest the rest of the half to keep the game from getting away from them the first half. He starts going inside to Perry and driving Frank and using Devonte, when Frank begins to tire. The idea is to foul them up, keep the possessions low, guard hard, and hope to go into half even or a little down, then regroup at half time, get Perry rested, maybe figure out some action for Wayne, hope Frank's right leg holds up, and come back out after halftime, brace for the onslaught of energy and contact by WSU, kind of rope-a-dope, then try to shoot the trey, and play through Perry to get a lead that can be defended.
They didn't hit the treys.
Perry did okay for awhile, but was never well enough to go on a one man tear.
Wayne went to absolute zero.
Oubre wound up being horse whipped by Cotton, until Kelly was like a tall, skinny AAU player from the suburbs on a Rucker League game in Bed Stuy. Kelly was out of his depth in the hard knock game.
Self threw one legged Traylor into the game at times, but this game Traylor could barely even clear the floor, so while he could guard a bit, and shove enough to get 5 boards in seven minutes, he was in no position to stop any of WSU's short, brawny, Rico Gathers style bigs. Traylor, who is not a stick, looked like one out there.
Self saw the way his strongest bigs were being mauled and shoved around, so Self decided that putting Mickelson in, while it might buy a block or two, would probably buy Mikelson a night in the hospital, if he actually did get a block.
This was a very, very, very serious and tough WSU basketball team that was going to take no prisoners the entire game.
If an opponent does not come at WSU the same way, the opponent is in grave danger of cracking eventually; this is what happened.
Why didn't Self retaliate for the elbow smash the first half to keep WSU from getting so bold?
The answer to that is not pretty, but it is increasingly obvious to me.
Remember that Tom Izzo is one of the toughest customers that ever walked the side lines, and really knows no limits to the rough stuff he will pull when he has the kind of players to play that way. Well, when Izzo has not had those kinds of players, Izzo has not played that way. Same with Bob Huggins. He will pull almost anything when he has the players that can take it when its dished back. But not when not.
KU's players, while they are incredibly willing to suffer and persevere just are not physically and capable of playing thug ball. And to take them into a thug ball contest is not only to take them into a contest they cannot win, but into a contest they are going to get hurt very badly trying to play.
There is a difference between going out and persevering through adversity and being able to fight it out in an alley.
KU's players are too young and slight for alley fighting basketball, and alley fighting was exactly where WSU was trying to push the contest every chance it could. It was what they were good at and trained to play. It was not what KU was good at and not trained to play. I misread the team late in the season about that because of their incredible heroism playing through injuries and suspensions, etc.
It is not a knock on them to say they are not capable of alley fighting ball. It is just a fact.
Maybe next season, with some more maturity and some more muscle added on, they will be. But this season? It would have been a crime to send them into that kind of a contest.
So: once again, I think Self made the right choice in the moment, even though I doubted it in the moment and briefly afterwards.
Now, why didn't Self just start shooting treys?
Because the team shot 29% from trey on 21 attempts. I guaranty you that if the team has shot even 37% he would have let them hoist 30.
So: what else was there to do?
He could have told them to get out on the break, but in the second half look at his troops. Perry couldn't breath through his nose and he was hardly at his athletic best with a sore knee and a punchy brain. Frank's right leg went dead sometime in the second half. Wayne was a no-show. Devonte and Brannen could run, but no one else could. And both struggled with handling the ball that day.
The only thing he did not try that I thought Self should have tried was Hunter, but would Hunter have made the difference? Probably not.
So: down the stretch Self slowed it down enough that Perry could do what little he could do in his condition, because by then almost no one else was a threat against the intense and physical defense being applied.
Sometimes you get cornered in a blind alley when you are outnumbered.
It just happens.
And when it does, you can struggle and fight, and take some with you, but in the end you are going to get the shizz beaten out of you.
And that is what seemed to happen in that game.
I don't think Self could have done much else.
I don't think there was much else to do.
HOWLING!
I agree with you that board rats ought to cheer up and stop calling names. I'm happy as a clam (oops, i just called myself a clam, disregard that) right now. I don't see why everyone is so glum and/or angry.
I will always be ecstatic with 26-9 and a conference title, especially when we have no rim protector and no b2b players, lots of injuries, the suspension of one of our OADs down the stretch, and a shoe-agent complex relationship not correlated strongly with 9-10 draft choice roster stacks!
26-9 with one of the youngest teams in the country playing nearly the toughest schedule in the country and with the aforementioned shortcomings?
ITS. A. FLIPPING. MIRACLE.
And I am speaking as one that predicted before the season started, even without anticipating most of the adversity this team faced, that the team was missing a lot of pieces and so would likely lose ten games, or more. So: factoring in all of the adversity that so many others here seem simply to view as some dandruff, I am DELIGHTED with the 9-loss season, and only briefly saddened at watching the wheels come off, after our star player was victimized by an elbow smash against Chita State.
Regarding Chita State, I can't speak for others, but I look on the KU-Chita State relationship as a win-win. They put the spurs to us, and I, at least, get to satirize how they did it.
Speaking of which, don't forget the upcoming basketball clinic being given in Wichita this Thursday night in a dark warehouse at the edge of town by a leading expert in basketball cheap shotting, whose name has not yet been revealed to the public, or myself. The three top presentations are reputedly going to be: "The New Dribble-Drive and Smash Offense," "How to Smash the Nose of the Opponent's Star Player without Getting Ejected," and "Classless Post Victory Sniping at Losing Coaches." All the proceeds of the clinic will go to the "The Cheap Shot Foundation for Sinus Reconstructive Surgery." Be there.
(Note: all fiction and satire about the clinic. No malice. No bullying.)
Yeeeee hawwwww!
KU didn't get it done this time against Chita State, but there WILL be a next time for that without EVER having to waste a slot on our regular season schedule with them. (Note: keep ignoring them and building our RPI and recruiting exposure, Coach.)
Trust me: the NCAA seeding committee will see to a rematch!
Remember: Self has a habit the last eleven years of squaring scores and coming out ahead on the W&L statement.
Rock Chalk and be of good cheer, Jayhawk nation.
Its sweet to be alive!