This is a new basketball offense centered around driving on the opposing team's star player and smashing his nose. It is the next big thing in college basketball.
Note: This is a joke. This is only a joke.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink.
Why do we have to get over it?
Why can't we ridicule and satirize nose smash offense?
Thx. I try to be as authentic as I can be here. WYSIWYG. Like I tell people: I have known the Black Dog in my life, so I am not always up. But having walked the road I have, I always want others to know that being human, light and dark, pretty and ugly, warts and all, is okay, if you are trying to put it all to some good purpose for your fellow man and woman, especially your fellow Black Dog fighters, and this is so when you succeed and when you flop. Rock Chalk!
@HighEliteMajor said:
We didn't have the personnel to do what coach Self wanted done within his offense.
The High Low.
There is something to this, but I'm coming at it at a slightly different angle.
You are clearly correct that he lacked the front court personnel to play High Low offense the way it was conceived to be played and the way it always has been played until this seasons.
Self tried to find a way to adapt the High Low to a BAD BALL offensive scheme that relied on perimeter drivers and attacking face to the basket from all five posiitions.
I, of course, think he was much more successful and innovative in this undertaking than you do.
And I think he stuck with the high low offense this season in order to get this group used to playing it and thinking about playing it for continuity for next season when Self expects to have some more capable big men to go with his current bunch of front court players. I think he viewed this season as a development year. What he has done is developed in a group of front court players the ability to play the high low offense as mobile big man attack platforms, i.e., as face to the back attackers. My guess is that what he is hoping to do is add at least a pair of big men next season that can be trained to play conventional back to the basket high low basketball. What he will then have is a back court able to attack teams EITHER WAY. I realize that to you, who reasons that BAD BALL is a failed approach, this would not seem a sensible thing to do. But to Self, and to little ol' me, who think that playing BAD BALL is a very, very effective way of attacking teams, being able to play BAD BALL b2b, or f2b, any time circumstances suggests either, this is going to be a very heady mixture of options for next season.
So: where is our overlap and agreement that I was alluding to.
If Self had not been trying to build continuity for next season by sticking with the high low despite front court personnel that did not seem suited to it, then I think he should have found another offense to run that did fit his personnel better. And when I look at this past season's personnel, what I think would have worked exceptionally well was Tex Winter's Triangle Offense that could have incorporated two of our perimeter players and Perry at various points around the perimeter with a variety of action involving the three players in the triangle at any given time. The triangle just keeps flipping around the court perimeter to involve two more perimeter players and Perry each flip. This would have put all of the offense in the triangle action and would have kept all the offense involved with our best offensive players, and would have allowed the inside player to focus utterly on rebounding and nothing else.
I suppose others could come up with other offense.
I would be very interested to read about what offense you would have liked to have seen this team run instead of the high low formations of 1-2-2, 1-3-1, 1-4 and 4-1 that Self improvised as formations for the High Low. I suspect you will have some very interesting ones.
Lastly, I think you may be underestimating the impact that injuries and suspensions this season would have had on any offensive and shooting schemes any of us might have preferred over what Self in fact used. I am still of the opinion that BAD BALL played through the High Low Offensive formations that Self devised was the best way to bridge our way through the injuries and the suspensions.
But it is the off season now and you have started us off with a thought provoking bang!
Thanks.
It was a very good year for learning more about the game; that's for darned sure.
I was amazed at everyone's stamina.
And good humor mixed with seriousness.
A hearty thanks to the proprietors as always, too.
And this really is @drgnslayr 's and @HighEliteMajor's locker room with a lot of others pushing them every day.
The thing I am most excited about is that it feels like there are some serious challengers coming on--contributors that have broken through the counter posting phase, which is the equivalent of smack on bad days, and gluing on good days--something a lot of our wise older members engage in to their eternal credit, and into real impact posting themselves. This is the great joy I have had over the years--watching board rats make the jump and seeing the established impact posters turn around and glue back. Like any activity, its easy to do it once you get the hang of it, but getting the hang of it, of coming to realize that you really DO have something to say and the tools to say it, takes a few reps and a little build up in confidence.
IMHO, the board really got into a sweet spot the last month. Persons were going off in all directions in their own words and instead of the board flying apart, the discourse wove increasingly together and made a sweet jazz of words.
And the proprietor's make it work great and when I go to the commercial sites, which i do so as briefly as possble, I am in awe of how much more user friendly and efficient and fun our sight is than the commerical sites.
And I want to tell everyone here how much I appreciate a bunch of vital young men and women letting an old duffer be apart of this invigorating activity still.
Thanks.
Rock Chalk!
@HighEliteMajor said:
Bad Ball An Unequivocal Failure:
Bad Ball carried KU to a conference title and 26 wins and a two seed with the weakest big men KU has ever had. 26 wins is the same number Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins achieved their first seasons starting without the '08 ring team as relatively young playersm though probably not so young as this team.
A early, limited version of BAD BALL carried UConn to the title.
Fred adopted BAD BALL and it carried ISU past us in the B12 Conference tourney championship and into March Madness with juco transfers.
An XTReme BAD BALL carried Wichita State to the Sweet 16 and beat us.
To the contrary, BAD BALL is here to stay, I fear.
BAD BALL will grow increasingly prevalent.
BAD BALL will dominate all small ballers (like WSU) that can shoot 35%, or higher, from trey in BAD BALL sets.
BAD BALL migrate down into the high schools, where there are more small players capable of driving it than there are trey ballers and play above the rim types. As a result, players will increasingly come out of high schools trained to play bad ball and drivers will become the new staple of all non OAD recruiting.
And this trend will likely continue until a coach has the huevos and the shooters to ramp up to 100% trey attempts per game where trey balling can finally become accurate enough, and its droughts short enough, that one no longer has to worry about off shooting nights from trey. Instead one shoots through the trey slump in a single half and comes out hot the second half. Think about it. When KU shoots 15 3ptas per game, it rarely takes more than 5 games before the shooting slump ends. 5 games x 15 treys/game is 75 trey attempts. That means that a 100 percent trey ball shooting team can get out of a slump in 1 to 1.25 games at the most. And 5 game shooting slumps at 15 per game rarely happen more than once a season. So: this means that if you shoot 100% trey attempts, you are likely only to lose one game a season due to the mother of all trey balling slumps. That is incredible.. Losing one game a season to bad shooting? And the rest of the games your PPP is off the charts.
But until then, I just don't see this BAD BALL thing going away any time soon.
Hope it does, but I just don't see it, so long as there is increasing asymmetry in talent.
Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post as usual..
The key thing I believe you are both giving insufficient weight to is at the moment that KU was pulling away from WSU, Perry flagrantly attacked Fred's elbow with his nose and caused himself to have to leave the game with a bloody, perhaps broken nose, a dazed look, and needing to be helped to the locker room for treatment. This completely gratuitous attack on Fred's elbow by Perry with Perry's nose, left Perry operating significantly impaired when he finally did come back into the game. My point here is that Perry, our best player, calculatedly injured himself and took himself out of the game and significantly impaired his performance for the rest of the game, simply to indulge in a violent calculated attack on Fred's elbow. That it backfired and did not injure Fred in the least, meant that KU really was never the same the rest of the game and in fact grew continually more tentative, then timid and finally it just cracked entirely. I can't be sure of course, but all signs point to the appearance that if Perry had not engaged in egregiously weaponizing his nose against Fred, then KU, with its best player performing up to pre-nose attack standards, would easily have won the game.
Though I am a layman and do not keenly understand the rules, the key appears to be the no call loop hole that appears to enable so much thugging in college basketball and encourage so much counter thugging due to lack of a viable appeal process.
As I understand it, one can only contest a call that has been made, not one that has not been made.
For instance, if an offensive player were to drive into a defensive player and withdraw a concealed Glock 9mm and shoot the defensive player in the face repeatedly and the ref saw it and heard it and called it a flagrant foul, one might appeal the call, though perhaps not successfully.
But, if an offensive player were to drive into a defensive player and withdraw a tiny, well silenced, small caliber pistol and quickly shoot the defensive player in the face a few times and then quickly return it to concealed position, and if the referee did not see, or hear, the event and did not call a foul, an appeal to review the shooting in the face could not be made, even though a police investigation likely would ensue.
I am of course using XTReme Exaggeration for illustative, conceptual purposes only, and as I said I am only a layman and engaging in opining and speculative conjecture, at best. I would willingly defer to an expert opinion on this off course. :-)
Why would WSU need to put KU's best player out of a game, and risk its star player doing it, if WSU believed it were the better team?
Logical answer: It wouldn't.
Hypothesis 1: WSU decided it wasn't the best team with Perry on the floor in pre-elbow smash condition. WSU apparently decided KU was, because KU was pulling away despite 7 fouls called on KU and one called on WSU. WSU probably anticipated a whistle swallowing period coming up. WSU apparently decided its only chance to win was to put KU's best player out of the game, and leave him so degraded when/if he returned that WSU could win. End of Hypothesis 1.
Isn't the above an interesting hypothesis?
I welcome data for testing purposes.
Another thing that occurs to me: Perry returned to the game and appeared foggy and still hung 17 and 9 on the Schlockers.
OMG! How many would Perry have hung on WSU had he not been apparently intentionally elbow smashed in the face so badly that his nose bled, he looked woozy, and he had to be lead to the locker room before returning and never looking sharp!
Maybe 27 and 12? Maybe 32 and 15? These would easily have been in his reach and enough to make it either a KU victory, or a one possession game, which KU has been superb at winning.
Apparently WSU had no one that could really stop Perry, even after Perry was significantly degraded by the elbow smash.
Hypothesis 2: WSU wouldn't have had a prayer without that cheap shot by VanVleet.
I think it was appropriate of Coach Self to put Perry Ellis out in front of the media and show them the player that appeared to have been intentionally elbow smashed, so that the media could see for themselves how WSU apparently played the game.
Interesting that the media appeared to duck.
Just some grist for the off season mill.
Rock Chalk!
LOL
(Note: for Mrs @drgnslayr)
It is with regret that I have to inform Jayhawk nation that the 2014-15 Jayhawk Expeditionary Force affectionately nicknamed by me this arduous season as Basketballâs Merrillâs Marauders were repelled today at the Battle of Omaha on their long slog to reach Myitkyina.
The team fought through 36 games of unparalleled adversity and appeared to have found a way to play and win in the face of the most difficult condititions a team might be expected to face.
Their long slog through the metaphorical Burma jungle ended at an arena in Omaha on 22 March 2015.
It was a tale of two games.
There was the game from tipoff to the moment in the first half when talented, experienced, savvy, hard nosed, and apparently win at nearly any cost, Fred Van Vleet drove the ball beautifully into KUâs jumping Perry Ellis and then apparently opted to use his elbow as a weapon to strike Perry Ellis in the face hard enough to not only bloody Ellisâ nose, but also to appear to leave Ellis dazed and confused for a time, and to never thereafter appear to recover full clarity of athletic state of mind the rest of the game.
And then there was the game after that moment in which KU chose not to retaliate for the egregiously unnecessary foul of Ellis by Van Vleet.
In the first game, we saw a business like KU team playing its now patented brand of BAD BALL and methodically pulling away from a clearly less physically talented WSU team.
After the apparent punking of Perry Ellis, we saw a KU team appear to grow tentative, then intimidated, and then finally fall briefly apart the last minute before the end of the first half.
After the half, we saw the second of the two games continue with KU still not retaliating against WSU, or getting any more physical in a non-retaliatory way, and we saw a flurry of high energy, high contact horizontal basketball played by WSU help WSU begin to steadily pull away from KU until the middle of the second half, when the tentative and intimidated Jayhawks found themselves fully abandoning BAD BALL and retreating into long passing at angles that the exceptional WSU lane jumping defenders could make make strips in. Still the game was not out of reach, given the time remaining in the second half, if stops could be had, and offensive flow restored even partially.
But then WSU began a series of BAD BALL possessions in which the WSU version of BAD BALL was played perfectly and KU began to collapse from the overwhelming physical beating it was being administered inside and outside.
Boys that thought themselves men, because of the terrible rigors they had overcome this long season, soon found themselves to be boys still. Scared boys. Increasingly frightened boys. And finally as whipped currs, as granny jaybate 1.0 once said of little jaybate 1.0 coming home whining about a bully having punched his lights out and being sent back out to get the bully, or not come home to grannyâs house. They grew some grannies pretty tough in those days still.
This was a point when the team was ten down with some six or so minutes remaining, if I recall correctly, and had the KU team been able to regain its fortitude, and composure, defended cohesively and generally found its cojones, it could have surely made a game of it, even then.
But instead, WSU played exactly the way KU has played BAD BALL down the stretch, and exactly as ISU played it down the stretch on KU and in the end, today, KUâs players finally broke and beat themselves, the same way other teams have beaten themselves for KU. Jamari Traylor on one leg could not keep up with the ferociously motivated, much stronger inside players of WSU. Landen Lucas could not play 40 minutes and take the pounding that was dished out by the WSU players and stay effective. Perry Ellis did not ever appear to regain normal consciousness looking a bit foggy in the eyes and a bit slow in the reactions. Frank Masonâs right leg, reinjured some time in the first and second half jousting administered to him by Fred VanVleet, when VanVLeet was not busy punking Perry Ellis, finally went dead and became an appendage mostly good for dragging around behind him the final ten minutes. Kelly Oubre learned that he doesnât really weigh enough yet, nor carry enough muscle mass to bang with anyone that he cannot out jump, or outrun and he could do neither to those that guarded him today. Devonte Graham hung in and continued to scrap on defense, but could not finally cope on offense with the constant contact and lane jumping that the entire WSU defensive team employed more and more brilliantly as the game went on. Brannen Greene, who seemed to have found the range versus NMSU, lost it as swiftly as he had found it. The basket became a chimera from three point range for him and the rest of his increasingly weak kneed and demoralized Marauders, who finally ran out of weapons to fight with at a village called Omaha.
But even I, a devotee of the trey, doubt that this game would have been won by good three point shooting, or more 3ptas. KU shot 21 and made 29%. WSU shot only 20, while making 50%. Making half our treys would have made it close for sure, probably would have reduced it to a tie game and we are good at those kinds of games. But something else would have been necessary. Shooting more treys probably would surely have have been a dead end today with the amount of body contact WSU was putting on every shot all over the floor and getting away with.
This was a Bad Ball versus XTReme Bad Ballâa contest that would never have let either side decide the game with three point shooting except maybe on the last possession. One team was going to have the hotter hand; that was all, and one team was going to be shooting from intimidation; that was all. This kind of game has to be won another way.
This was BAD BALL without the punking and win at any cost cheapshotting (KU) versus XTReme BAD BALL with the punking and win at any cost cheap shotting. (WSU)
In this tale of two games, KU faced a choice after the punking little Fred Van Vleet gave big Perry Ellis. Get down in the mud with Fred. Or not.
It was a decisive moment.
Play it anyway they want, or donât.
On the playground there is not even a momentâs hesitation.
Among my fatherâs generation, those that played in the 1930s, there was no hesitation at any level of the organized game. You ran under, or flipped the guy the next time he left the floor. And if he wouldnât leave the floor you found their most important player.
It was a kind of moment that a coach like Coach K probably would not have flinched at unleashing a torrent of counter cheap shotting at, as he appeared to do in a national title game against Butler a few years back.
It was a kind of moment that Bill Self at times has even appeared to resort to Cheap Shotting lite as a counter, and at times has not.
We will never know what yard stick Coach Self used to make the decision of whether or not to retaliate, because such retaliation is never discussed publicly by any coach that I recall.
I suspect he may use a rule of thumb that goes something like this: if we intend to foul them up, then you donât retaliate in hopes of getting the refs on your side and getting a bunch more calls to go your way. If you intend to win a grind game and fouls be damned, then you retaliate shortly.
In todayâs second game, the referees were not won over by our peaceful turning of the other cheek, and our players, not surprisingly grew first tentative, then intimidated, and then cracked completely.
Selfâs decision was a calculated risk. He had seen how tough his team had grown in recent weeks. He had seen them overcome incredible adversity. He bet that they could stand up to the inevitable ground swell of intimidation that ensues when a bully is allowed to get away with an egregious play.
He bet wrong.
His young men, my beloved Basketballâs Merrillâs Marauders, were not up to just playing ball and standing up under the attacks to follow.
The Marauders had a metaphorical rabid pitbull down in the first game.
Their lack of retaliation, combined with the refereesâ apparent refusal to right the wrong themselves, appeared to let a rabid pitbull get off the leash in the second game.
And the rabid pit bull finally chewed the KU team to pieces.
I have a hunch that Coach Self is very shortly going to get a lot chances to avenge this loss.
I have a hunch that Greg Marshall may shortly be the head coach of the University of Texas.
He would be my choice, if I were the University of Texas, if I were to have grown tired of Coach Barnes.
But if/when Greg Marshall gets hold of a major program allied with the Nike brand, that has already had one season's talent stacking and could get another very quickly, and were it to play the kind of XTReme BAD BALL that Marshallâs Wheat Shockers displayed today, unless Coach Self joins the 9-10 draft choice talent stacking club, I am not sure if Coach Self will capitalize on many of those opportunities to avenge the loss.
That failure to retaliate, however much I respect Coach Self for not doing so, and so not risking the safety and reputation of one of his players, and even though I might have been tempted not to be so principled, may turn out to have been a tipping point in his KU coaching tenure. But that is grist for the off season mills.
In this tale of two games, there remains one thread of the story obviously dangling and unaddressed.
Wayne Selden, Jr.
Wayne was a no show, as he has been intermittently all season.
It was an odd thing to watch.
I donât know if anyone on the teamâCoaches, players, or Wayne--will offer an explanation or not. He has played very well of late. Not today.
I donât know if there is an explanation for this was not so much an off day, or a poor performance, as a non-day.
I have not yet read the stories, or watched the press conferences. Maybe an injury, a death in the family, or a broken heart will surface. Such things happen in the course of a long season.
But for now, sans any extenuating circumstances, Wayne was a guy that ought to have been able to play well, or at least hard, in this kind of a game.
But he disappearedâŚcompletely. He played so poorly that at crunch time he was not put in. A 17 year old bench warmer from the Ukraine was.
Perhaps a sports psychologist can help Wayne.
Good players are not supposed to disappear in big games. They may have off shooting games. Or they make mistakes. But they are not supposed to dematerialize.
When one goes down the box score, it could be said that Frank and Van Vleet played to a wash. For the record Frank got 16 points.
Perry was not sterling, but despite getting his bell run, nose bloodied, and playing on a sore knee, he still showed up and recorded 17 points and nine rebound, about what I had hoped for.
Kelly Oubre had the kind of bad game a good player has sometimes and it cost us. Mr. Draft Choice got 9 points and Tekele Cotton, all 6-3 muscular inches of him torched Kelly for 19. Clearly Kelly was not quick enough to cover Tekele and Kellyâs extra four inches and 7 wing span didnât help spit.
Landen Lucas could not get in the offensive flow, but he grabbed 10 rebounds and made no TOs. I donât see Landen as the heart of the problem, though most teams have a center that can at least get 9-10 points.
Jamari Traylor played one of his okay games with 4 points and 5 rebounds in only 17 minutes on one working leg, so on the list of the usual suspects, he can released on his own recognizance.
We even contained Darius Carter okay.
But a lot of this, fully 12 points of this loss, comes down squarely on Wayne Selden, Jr, getting smoked by Ron Baker, who played 37minutes, scored 12 points and shut Wayne down to 0 points in 23 pitifully played minutes by Wayne.
It was easy to see last season against Stanford that Andrew Wiggins appeared to phone one in perhaps to protect the merchandize, after Embiid apparently decided not to come back.
But what was Wayne Selden, Jr.s excuse today?
Is the NBA drafting him on his potential?
It is interesting, if painful to look at the box score and note that KU accomplished much that I thought it needed to do to win this game.
KU was even on TOs and near even on Steals.
Frank held his own with Van Vleet.
KU was +6 on rebounding.
Devonte played a lot of minutes and gave Frank some blows on and off the court, even though Devonte was inefficient shooting (5-13), after Frankâs right leg went dead.
KU played to even on FTAs, which was the kind of wash I kind of expected from two teams that try to get to the FT line and try to keep others off it.
But KU couldnât get anyone fouled up early, or late; in the first game, or the second one.
KU could not guard WSU in the paint, which it seemed a certainty that our size would allow us to do.
And KU could not score efficiently in the paint (35%).
KUâs bench even outscored WSU 21 to 8. KU hardly ever loses when that happens.
In the end, four things decided the outcome of this game.
Wayne Selden, Jr., folded like Optimus Prime getting his All Spark yanked out of his chest.
Freshman Kelly got torched by sage old Tekele Cotton, which happens sometimes.
Normal offensive and defensive production from those two alone would have made us easy winners, despite the next two items.
Our guys got intimidated after Van Vleet punked Perry and they never regained their manhoods.
WSUâs players were much more fiercely competitive on the 50/50 balls.
What I cannot explain is why items 1, 2, 3, and 4 had to happen today against WSU.
I like WSUâs moxie.
I like WSUâs aggressiveness and willing to win at any cost (well, I donât really like it, but in a tournament known for whistle swallowing I appreciate the efficacy of playing that way).
i like how tough WSU played.
But bottom line, KU had to play one of its worst games of the season to go down 78-65.
So: I am going to conclude that the loss had much more to do with what KU did not do, what game KU did not bring, what will to stand up to intimidation KU could not muster, rather than what WSU did do.
Beat us at our best, WSU, and youâve got something to brag about. Beat us at our worst, and punk us to do it, and youâve got something cheap shot artists that will soon be wearing their asses for hats get to talk trash about for the off season.
WSU could have played that exact same game against KU, if KU had hung on to its cojones, and had Wayne and Kelley come to play, KU would be advancing to the next game.
That was WSUâs best game. Congratulations. That was KUâs worst game. Weâve got some more soul searching to do.
Coach Self and Kelly and Wayne are going to have to look in the mirror together on this one.
Coach Self has to decide how to respond more effectively to a punking of his star stretch 4 and he has to ask himself why he kept Perry at the high post in the middle of the floor clogging up Frankâs driving lanes so much of the game?
6-7 draft choice Kelly has to ask himself how he let 6-3 Tekele Cotton eat him alive, and what real NBA 3s will do to him next season?
And Wayne Seden, Jr. has to ask himself why he appeared not even to try hard in the biggest game of his life? What is it about trying hard that is so elusive? I didnât notice anyone else on your team not trying hard. Some played ineptly, but they tried, Wayne. I didnât see anyone on WSU having trouble lighting the candle for this game. You stuck out a bit out there.
And we are all going to have put up with the echoes of Mrs. @dragnslayr using the P-word for the entire off season.
I don't want to fly under false colors. Its an adaptation of the speech that Ike gave the troops on the eve of D-Day.
Rock Chalk!!!!
Pitino's position is the only logical, ethical, and strategic position for him to take.
I agree with it.
Likely the only way to get rid of the 9-13 draft choice talent stacking at apparently informally selected Big Shoe-Agent-University Complexes is to change the rules so that guys go straight to the pros and either the pro franchises, or the D-Leagues have to foot the cost for player development.
But the NBA apparently wants the college subsidy to continue, and will even increase from one to two years the length of the college subsidy, because it is a win win for the NBA. It increases the Big Shoe-Agent-University complex's control over the draft choice supply and improves branding with two years of exposure in the NCAA tournment that the D-Leagues could not match. In essense the NBA gets tighter control over development of its draft supply (by cementing the channelling of it to informally designated programs), more development subsidy, AND better branding.
The adidas school coaches should favor Pitino's approach.
The Nike school coaches should decline to have opinions on the subject and let the NBA decide to extend the stay to two years, which is exactly what the shameless Coach K has done.
I recall Self has sided with a two year stay, but I believe if he gets skunked in recruiting this season, he will change his tune to sing harmony with Rick.
FRONT COURT MEN, BACK COURT MEN, AND WINGS OF THE JAYHAWK EXPEDITIONARY FORCE,
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of Jayhawk-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Big 12 Allies and brothers-in-arms on
other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the WSU war
machine, the elimination of Koch and Cessna basketball tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Kansas, and security for ourselves in a free NCAA tournament.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well
equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 2015! Much has happened since the WSU triumphs of
2013 and 2014 against lesser programs than ours. The Big 12 Basketball Nations have inflicted upon the our enemies great defeats,
in open battle, man-to-man. Our BAD BALL offensive has seriously reduced their
strength in the air and their capacity to wage basketball war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in skill and athleticism
of basketball war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting players. The tide has turned! The free men of the basketball world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in
battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great
and noble undertaking.
SIGNED: Dwight J. Eisenbate
There is something about the folks upstream of Louisville in that Ohio Valley that like to bring pain. just ask the Confederacy.
Good point. The goal of the mission is Myitkiyna. But the intermediate objective is get Kentucky one way or another.
MEMO
TO: KUBucket.com Board Rats
FROM: Director, BIA
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: For Board Rats Eyes Only
SUBJECT: INTEL ESTIMATE FOR KU VS. WSU
SIMILAR TEAM CATEGORIES:
â˘Offensive FG%
â˘Defensive FG% (Selfâs most highly regarded stat)
â˘Reb Margin (+5)
â˘Assists
â˘Offensive PPG
â˘Toughness
CATEGORIES FAVORING KU/DEGREE OF ADVANTAGE
â˘Offensive 3pt % (Large)
â˘Defensive 3pt % (Large)
â˘FT % (medium)
â˘Blocks (large)
â˘Height (significant)
â˘Athleticism (significant)
â˘Depth: (large)
CATEGORIES FAVORING WSU/DEGREE OF ADVANTAGE
â˘Turnovers (Large)
â˘Steals (medium)
â˘Defensive PPG
REMARKS:
SHORT FORM: In close games of similar teams, its about the last ten minutes and the referees, stupid.
LONG FORM: KU is playing a short team, like itself, that appears as tough as KU is, that likes to win games at the FT the same as KU does, and a team that guards inside as well as KU does, but does not guard the trey stripe nearly as well KU does. KU has a sharp edge in trey shooting, too. But KUâs biggest edge is its depth and using it to wear down WSU for a beat down the last ten minutes. KU may want to speed the game up for stretches to get the lead to enable substitutions to defend and repeat for the first 30 minutes, and then come for the kill the last ten. The most concerning stat for KU, and the only thing that makes a W against WSU less than probable, is WSU being sharply better at protecting. WSU makes far fewer turnovers and steals significantly more. Protection is the Achilles Heal of BAD BALL. KU has to protect nearly as well as the opponent, unless it is shooting the lights out from trey, to win at BAD BALL. Marshall and WSU will be trying to do what Fred and ISU triedâto out BAD BALL KU at its own game. This will be much easier for WSU to do, since it has been playing a very specialized version of Bad Ball through its two guards all season long. But BAD BALL is about attacking from all five positions, not just 2-3. Which version of BAD BALL can prevail will depend on which team can impose its style of play the longest. The referees will determine that. Both teams are going to want a slow pace much of the time, but I think both teams match up closely on so many key strategic stats and player matches that this game will come down to the refereeing. There are always three teams on any floor. In this case it will be KU, WSU and the Referees. Both coaches will be working the referees early to get the calls going their way to win this game at the foul line. KU, with more depth will be working hard to use two guysâMason and Graham--to wear VanVleetâs legs down for the last ten minutes. Thus, Marshall will try to get the ball into other players hands whenever WSU has a little or a big lead, so as to try to preserve VanVleet for the last ten minutes. WSU tries to avoid putting teams on the foul line in a different way than KU. WSU tries to put the bulk of its pressure not on the ball, or the player, but on the passing lanes, thus WSU gets lots of steals, and triggers lots of turnovers, because of the disrupted flow of passing dependent offenses. KU forgoes overplaying the passing lanes for jumping into the impact space of the man with the ball and shrinking the impact space of the man one pass away. This results in fewer turnovers and steals, but much more acutely disrupts offensive flow of the opponent, and this is the secret to KUâs tremendous defense the last month and a half. Both approaches hold fouls down and thus create an advantage in FTAs. But the WSU approach yields more transition baskets, where as the KU approach yields more stopped possessions and more conventional trips up the court for half court offense, where KU drives the ball to get fouls. WSU is in a very, very difficult position, if Self adjust KUâs offense so that the passing lanes are not vulnerable to WSU. How would he do that? The simplest way is to spread the offense immediately and let Frank start driving on VanVleet. VanVleet and WSU cannot afford to send anyone on KU to the FT line repetitively. Frank has a fine trey that VanVleet has to honor. Thus, speed being equal, Frank should be able to blow by VanVleet almost every play for the first 30 minutes of the game, while Marshall is saving VanVleet for the closing ten minutes. In turn, playing through Frank should guaranty Frank getting to iron to attack which ever short big of WSUâs is at the iron. In very short order, this strategy would have WSUâs big fouled up and that would then open up KUâs size advantage to indefensible proportions inside on Frankâs drives. When Frank tires, repeat with Devonte. Self does not like to play this way early on. He likes to play this way for the key stretches late in both halves. But this is how you STOP any chance for WSU to rely on stealing and turnovers from passing lane disruption to occur. Once you get a lead, then you run the stuff and defend it. Then repeat. But if KU start baking pop tarts and getting stripped, and gets behind WSU, KU likely will lose, for the same reason that teams get behind KU and lose. It is very hard to come back on BAD BALL, except by playing BAD BALL and getting lucky.
KU by 7.
(NOTE: The BIA apologizes board rats in the field for the lateness of this report.)
I have had to learn a good deal of QA over the years. I'm glad you ran the numbers and showed the chart.
This is exactly why I have argued that to really be successful with Trey balling a coach and team need to be schemed to take at least 75% of their FGAs as treys, preferably more.
All core strategies have to be primarily used to become reliable. Self Defense would never become so effective if he did not recruit guys that can play it, and then develop and rely on it.
Every strategy requires tireless development to execute it well.
The only way to get the most out of the Trey ball is to develop it the most..
All balanced attacks still have a cornerstone.
We have to thank Huggie for prepAring us for presses. WVU's was so much tougher than NMSU's thAt NMSU felt like a cakewalk.
I want to root for WVU, but Turg's Maryland would be a lot easier for Self and KU to beat. Self knows more about Larry Ball than Turg does and Self has always handled Turg, even when Turg has had good talent.
Huggie is very tough for Self even with inferior talent. I know Self has been beating Huggie at KSU and WVU, but Huggie plays a one off kind of ball and Huggie has more experience than Self. In big games, I want the more experienced coach and the elemen of surprise. Huggie has seen KU a bunch this year. Better we play Turg who hasn't seen us for awhile.
You have nailed the essense of this game. Thx.
Your compliment is very kind, too. Thank you.
There is so much to be learned from the greatest game ever invented.
Rock Chalk!
Beat Marshall's Munchkins.
This captures the essense of BAD BALL!!!!!!!
PHOF!
Hell, yes, we are going to beat Marshall's Munchkins!!!!
This IS the BEST thread on a college basketball game I have ever read!
"This is where all the posting, all the reading, all the arguing , all the analysis, all the up votes, pays off! No other online community in the world could move from a winter battle trying to figure out what this team ought to be, pack up after a 3 in three grind in Kansas City, move 180 virtual miles to Omaha Nebraska, change themes, unify and get behind this coach and team. God, I love these men (and women)!"--jayINAWEbate 1.0
Maybe we can get someone to do it.
Some years back, I watched a several part series called "Cathedral," by a British scholar, if I recall correctly. He studied the gothic cathedral in its era of Christendom. He likened a great Gothic Cathedral to major public works undertaking, like the space program, or the Panama Canal, or a great city subway system. The project not only was a product of a Christian world view, but it was a economic program to jump start a city that would be strategically beneficial to nurture. It was a project that bound generations together. It was a project that triggered the development of new technological advancements that could then trickle down to the private sector so to speak. And it was a crowning achievement of sacred beauty that all the community could take pride in and be ordered by. It was even a kind of anchor store in an urban regional mall. He said Gothic cathedrals were one one of the earliest intentional Mixed Use developments. I always admired Gothic cathedrals, but this show made me like them and relate to them more. I had a similar experience when I realized the the Great Pyramid, all of the pyramids, of Egypt, were not only these great tombs and works of architectural art, but also surveying bench marks and seasonal weather forecasting tools to be used in conjunctions with the sun and stars. It made them purposeful in a diversified, and human way that made them less ominous and more human.
I have a hunch someone could do exactly what you suggest with the modern area and stadium and tracking its evolution back some to Rome.
Who knows? Maybe its already been done.
@KansasComet and @JayHawkFanToo
It is a privilege to talk hoops with both of you.
No "strategy" survives contact with the enemy.
But the "tactics" become strategy.
This is the Marine Corp way.
Those adroit at developing strategies intended to default to tactics are usually the victors in any battle where overwhelming superiority in all feasible realms is not the determinant.
And any activity with management from beyond the heat of battle is increasingly, even in the moment of battle, a combination of QA and strategy top down, and improvised aggression and cunning at the point of contact with the opponent.
In playground ball, where there are no coaches and no referees, the idea of players in the moment of battle determining everything holds.
But in organized warfare, politics, business and sport, the managerial component, for better, and for worse, intervenes more and more, not less and less, because parameters, variables and technologies increasingly enable the intervention.
The totally independent warrior, or group of warriors, has gone the way of the totally independent grocery stores, into serious eclipse.
In every huddle our players are being fed instructions based on QA and strategies and tactics based on QA. These become parameters players take onto the floor that shape their actions.
Too many persons bog down in either or.
No organized human endeavor is ever solely improvisation, or solely ordered.
Parameter and variable.
Variation within limits.
Its there on every play.
Some plays more and some plays less.
Thinking and deliberation occurs on every play.
As the play unfolds more and more reaction occurs.
But what science has confirmed is that outcomes in emerging complexity are often sensitively dependent on initial conditions, sometimes in predictable ways and sometimes not.
But initial conditions tend to have a cascading effect on the players menu of options, and the kinds of counter moves and psychological states they make them in.
So strategies, even though they do NOT survive initial contact, nevertheless do bias the cascade into tactics becoming strategy.
And as an aside, Moltke, who never lost a war, and beat Austria and France, would be the first to want the best QA and strategy to go along with developing all other elements of a military capability including the training of the solider, the technologies that assist him, and most importantly the logistics that enable him to do what he does in the moment of battle.
QA should be a HUGE factor in deciding who we attack and how we attack in all fields of endeavor.
Competition requires resources. Resources come in quantites. Thus they are quantifiable and manageable with considerable specificity.
Logistics.
Then grand strategy.
Then more logistics.
Then strategy.
Then more logistics.
Then contact.
Then tactics become strategy.
Then more logistics.
Logistics, logistics, logistics.
Logistics is QA in motion.
Teams are collections of persons with resource needs in motion.
"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on."--Ulysses S. Grant
Self now gets it. You attack the man to get the basket. You don't attack the basket. You find him defending what you want--the basket, and you attack him on the way to the basket. And you keep moving on. This requires logistics and intelligence and a strategy to find him, and trained techniques and tactics of attacking him and sufficient resources to attack effectively. And constant logistics for moving on. Organized attack is about bringing all of this to bear, not just the competitive greatness in the moment of attack. All are necessary. BAD BALL is what results, when Self gets it.
We used to attack the basket. We used to create space to attack the basket. Now we attack the man at the basket on offense. By doing so in the right way, you turn his athletic advantages into disadvantages. You shrink his impact space--his room to operate and his time to bring help.
Help is the other key.
You have to disrupt the flow of the opposing team, for that is where the real strength of the individual warrior lies in a team contest. If you attack a man, and he has help, you lose. He is much easier to attack, when he is alone, than when he has help. Disrupting flow prevents an opponent from bringing coordinated effective help, from concentrating force at the point of attack. This is another essence of BAD BALL.
All of the above requires QA of an opponent and of one's own players.
It requires planning and schemes--strategies and tactics--to manage the initial conditions as favorably as possible, in order to begin the cascade from strategies to tactics in the moment replacing initial strategies.
This is all going on in something as inconsequential as a basketball game.
Some things matter to winning and somethings do not.
But the things that do matter? They ALL matter.
Rock Chalk!!
(...I tried to post this over at CJOnline in response to a catch-all story @Jesse-Newell had written after the KU defeat of New Mexico State. Alas, they have a word limit and this apparently was too long for there. So, I am posting it here instead. Without putting too fine a point on it, it is long and arcane, even for me. :-) )
...JNew, I am glad to see you write this kind of catch-all story after the game. Make this an every game thing, if time and resources permit. It is a good way to brain dump odds and ends and I have always liked this kind of story the most, and the best, of all basketball stories. It takes more technique to do well than other kinds of stories, but its easier to do in a hurry on the days, when there isn't time to reach for the stars; i.e., when one is in the bottom third of Self's performance distribution. :-)
So much of what happens around a game occurs in little dramas and comedies and documentaries. When I read this story this completes the quadratic, i.e., the second hand experience of a game in four aspects--game story, star story, coach story, and story of miscellany. I am a miscellany guy. God is not in the details for me. Details are the pieces of a process for me. God is in the miscellany. Miscellany are the elements, often independent, sometimes not, occurring in a kind of compositional field of gravitation around some central process in our everyday events of interest.
Sports coverage should be un-obviously like the John Steuart Curry mural of John Brown in the Capitol Building in Topeka. The whole mural is the big picture. John Brown is the star story. In the present, when we are so star oriented, we think John Brown is what is important. But in classical composition, everything is important. John Brown really exists in the mural as a focal point of a great upheaval of story and history. And he is not even at the center, his unseen navel is. A case might be made for something slightly lower, but in the interest of decorum, and hopefulness about truth the artist's intent, I will work here with navel. đ
Classical composition in painting often strives for nothing at the center and all the elements exist in a kind of static mobile arranged around that nothing at the center. There are lots of more subtle tricks going on, but that is the pivotal essence. Most effective composition, whether in figurative, or abstract painting, in film or TV, or narrative history and fiction and reporting, usually has, or should have, a focal mid point of nothing around which everything coheres.
In writing, the journalism schools teach you either to do the inverted pyramid, or the three act narrative structure (some times a five act without a tip of the hat to Elizabethan dramatists and earlier ones I probably have forgotten), or a hybrid of both, to compose your stories. They always try to get you to start with a lead until you feel a flow, and then it is supposed to unfold from there and kind of tell itself, when you get proficient at it. Once in awhile they teach you to string some beads from a lead to a closer, or something like that. There are probably other newer gimmicks, since the dark ages, when I was taught.
These gimmicks are better than nothing, but they are not usually connected to any deep, solid cultural-philosophical foundation--just the shifting sands of time management expedience and the efficacy of emulating techniques that produce story forms that readers are conditioned to, and so used to, reading easily. These are good, practical objectives. But to really connect with a subject, to build word edifices, or buildings for it, it helps to set footers and infrastructures a little deeper, not just copy the above ground frame and siding of story telling technique.
Every writer has to write his own way--I suppose--not so much because you want to, but rather because there is no other way--and has to get that first draft out his own way. But the real trick--and there is nothing at all wrong with tricks--is to "see", or at least sense, a center point from the moment you start--however you actually write. Writers benefit from a bit of painter's technique. Painters benefit from a little bit of writer's technique. It can be the center point of the narrative, or it can be the center point of the meaning you aspire to make sense of and communicate.
These stories of the miscellany around the game can be beautifully composed when a center point is seen and written around. The readers never see it. Most of the writers and editors never see it. But its always there in good writing.
Readers think they are just reading odds and ends in a story of miscellany. But the center point is what the miscellany all coheres around--not a mid point of an item of miscellany itself. Its a bit paradoxical that the center point of something is nothing. But eastern cultures and their eastern philosophical embrace of paradox have nothing on we westerners and our embrace of the same. We are just so used to our ways of embracing paradox, even just complete enigma, that we don't even notice that we do it as a matter of fact.
John Brown's navel conceals nothing at the center of the mural. Without meaning to sound pedantic, it is the navel of the mural's universe. Navels, paradoxically, are, once something is born, useless nothings holding the center of things together betraying origins that are now unknown, or beyond comprehension. Thus they are--with no little paradox and irony--known unknowns. Curry obviously had a great and ironic sense of humor, as well as a profound mind to go with his good taste, deft hand, keen sensitivity, and great generosity of spirit.
Curry is careful to balance his elements around the unseen navel under John Brown's tunic (or something close) and to make the elements so interesting that we cannoy really look more than briefly at the navel of John Brown under his tunic, even when we try, because, well, it is a hidden nothing at the center of so much exciting stuff--action scenes of tornadoes, civil war skirmishing, etc.
Of course, the center, the unseen navel, is at the same time the still point of the turning world, as T.S. Eliot once wrote in "The Four Quartets," which was a long, four part poem arranged around the nothing at the center of four parts--four literary beads on a string emulating a musical experience--each individually and together emulating the forms and tones of piece of chamber music played by a symbolic quartet that isn't there. Despite being from Missouri, Eliot, like Allen, had some talent. There is no fifth bead, no fifth quartet. It doesn't even look, or feel right, to write "fifth quartet."
Overtimes in basketball, despite their dramas, provoke a similar dissonance to fifth quartet. Something perfectly balanced, a game with two halves, has not resolved elegantly, so it must be resolved in a coarse, expedient, but unfortunately necessary way--a "5" minute overtime. Notice it is NOT a 4 minute overtime. 4 would signal another quaternity.
An overtime in basketball is a recognition that error can plague even the greatest game ever invented. So, imperfection in basketball is a given, as sin is in Catholicism.
Introducing some subjectivity here, I dislike overtimes, about as much as I dislike sin, though winning and going to heaven are relieving ointments. Two overtimes make me feel much more harmonious. And would make me feel even more harmonious were they 4 minutes long instead of the aesthetically inharmonious, and so vulgar, 5. But I digress.
T.S. Eliot could easily have written a fifth quartet, but then there would have been something at the center, and that wouldn't have been organic to either his theme, or his composition--the still point of the turning world--at the center of the quaternity. This nothing at the center with elements arranged in coherence around them connects forms (and their meanings) organically to the idea of a four sided frame with an illusion of a possibility at its center...
...(Note: I know people hate this word, "organic" but it really is a useful word to reflect that form itself can communicate meaning as well as meaning can communicate meaning--that an organ's form can, actually cannot help but, contribute to its function, if you will.)
And isn't basketball an illusion of a human possibility for play and teamwork enabled at the center of a rectilinear court that is a four-sided frame, a quaternity?
A game of basketball within the black lines hints at a human possibility in much the same way that Curry's painting hints, not just at a historical event, but at an eternal human possibility at the center of an imposed frame--sometimes an intolerable one.
But there are, after all, multiple reasons why paintings are so often square. The 4-sided form echoes our rectilinear walls, of course and humans like those kind of harmonious echoes. And if you've ever measured twice and cut once to build something out of wood, you know how much easier it is to work in square forms than in circular ones. But, regardless of ease of use, the square form is inescapably conveys a quaternity, whether one wishes it to, or not.
Quaternity is a very profound concept in western culture--just as profound as the interlocking circle is in eastern culture. And both cultures make use of the quaternity, and the circle, so we can infer that both have not only profound practical utilities, but also may be used to communicate profound meanings, or at the very least betray the structures of human logic that constrain and determine our tendencies in thought and action in constructing our games, also.
I want to communicate a bit more about about rectilinearity and its philosophical equivalent--quaternity-- and the temporal organization of a basketball game, in order to build a small bridge between the game of basketball and writing about the game of basketball.
Basketball games are arranged in two halves around a nothing cloaked in a halftime in the middle. Those halves in high school are composed of quarters, which makes the quaternity manifest. In college ball, the quarters are suppressed even though the action on the floor, the coaching substitutions and strategies, and the commercial breaks, all operate in recognition of an implicit half way mark of each half, i.e., as if the ten minute mark were a buried bench mark at the center of each half--as if it were a buried brass cap bench mark at the meeting point of four square townships in a grid coordinate survey system overlain not on America, or the earth, but on the temporal form of a basketball game.
The court is itself a quaternity, so are the backboards and free throw lanes. The center circle fulfills, if you will, the function of John Brown's navel. Note, what I am doing here is not telling the "meaning" of what a poet or novelist told in the form of his or her story, which is one of the stupider aspects of literary academics at any level of education to engage in. I am rather pointing out the obvious, but usually overlooked "construction" of the court and the game. You make of the meaning of it what you will.
To continue, on James Naismith court, the enormous Jayhawk obscures the center circle that our minds never the less know to be buried there. Thus the mythical bird, like the mythical John Brown, holds at its center the navel of basketball's universe of action, at least for us Jayhawks. Again, this is not an interpretation meaning. It is a description of the construction of the court. And the free throw circles are symmetric echoes of that great navel center circle that is itself painted at the center of the whole basketball mural that is James Naismith Court and environs (a kind of Howth Castle and environs once crafted by another Jimmy, James Joyce, in a myth of a commodius vicus along a river of paradoxically eternal return to...what I think as the greatest game ever invented...now you may justly accuse me of waxing a bit poetic.).
We think basketball is just a game with lines arbitrarily drawn to give boys something to do, and so keep them out of trouble, on a winter afternoon, or eve. And while it IS first and foremost born of that and so at least that, it is something more--not by interpretation but by simple description of its elements of construction and what the elements actually do mean in our culture, whether Naismith, or others after him, adding this line, or that stripe, gave a whit of a thought to their cultural functions, and meanings, or not.
The game's forms, and their elegant geometric simplicities, which continue outward into Allen Field House's geometric and engineered forms, are composed, not just by Naismith's rules, but by the accrued modifications to the game, and, in turn, that composition unavoidably is an externalization of the logical structure of human minds at work and at play, in an economy of costs and benefits, or wishing to be; this is the cultural and intellectual importance of sport underlying its pursuit of athletic excellence, its sporting drama, its entertainment value, its power to bind culture with myth and athletic drama, and its capacity for keeping boys and girls out of trouble on a winter day, or eve.
These forms do not communicate meaning so much as structure of mind. Like a great Gothic cathedral expresses not so much meaning of Christianity as theology, as it reveals the mind's logical structure operating, when it chooses to believe in a Christian world view, so too does our Allen Field House and its court within reveal the logical structure of minds with a world view of competition and play.
But the word meaning is hardly a bad, or irrelevant word to make use of in these remarks either.
This is the structural "meaning" of sport underlying its dynamics of performance (i.e., there is meaning in the game that is played in the structures of rules, courts, fields, arenas and stadia). There is meaning in the shell it operates in and leaves behind, like a crumbling Roman coliseum, or a jungle surrounded Meso-American Ball court in Chichen Itza, when a culture, or civilization, recedes, or dies, and another preserves those structures. And its informing power of structure and myth is working on and informing coaches, players, fans, and everyone else involved with sport whether they grasp it or not, without reflection and thought.
A sports journalist that consciously worked at emulating these underlying forms in his writing, especially in his composition, while taking care not to get caught with his technique showing, could make a great composition to sports journalism and to culture...for all deeply harmonious and organic forms of expression are embraced without deception and inspite of it. The truth...is...the truth.
In form and in fact, (Note...
Love it!!!!
Great compare and contrast.
Great request of JNew.
I see them as very different physical packages with a lot of similarities in abilities and different every-game-matchup-advantages, yet a shared extraordinary degree of toughness.
Sherron was a point guard in a full backs body. Frank is a point guard in a small leopard's body.
Sherron was much more outwardly fiery. Sherron talked a lot of trash and beat his chest and snarled and roared and tried to run over you and through you. Frank is a quiet assassin, who blows past you like bottle rocket.
Sherron came as a point guard.
Frank came as a 2 guard that could dribble and that Self wanted to turn into a point guard project.
Sherron started out crazy explosive.
Frank started our with cat like quickness, phenomenal acceleration an great straight-line speed.
Sherron had a weight problem from the git go.
Frank is like the perfectly lean weight.
Sherron could create his shot outside and shoot 39 percent from about as far out as he had to go to get it off.
Frank still mostly just takes open looks. He shoots it a little better than Sherron, but that is partly because he is not being asked to create so much outside.
Sherron always had at least one well rounded big man to work with and flourished because of it.
Frank spent half a season with no effective big men and flourished in spite of it.
Sherron was only once in four years handcuffed (by Izzo and his MSU thugs.)
Frank can't seemed to be handcuffed by others, but he can handcuff himself sometimes.
Sherron struggled defensively, because of short, piston like thunder thighs. He was great the first side, but he had to struggle to keep up after that first step.
Frank seems the consulate defensive player already. He can stay with short or long point guards sliding despite Franks short height. Frank is flexible like nobody's business.
Sherron could board some, because he could bull guys out of the way sometimes better that the bigs he played with. But Sherron always played with some great rebounding bigs, so he didn't have to rebound much.
Frank is the best rebounding point guard I have ever seen at any level of the game, except maybe for Magic Johnson. He is like the Bill Bridges of point guards. Like bridges at forward, he is just too small to be getting all the rebounds he is getting, but he does with the instinct of a great rebounder and the moves of a great athlete.
Sherron is Self's greatest point guard.
Frank could join him, if he can get lucky and be on a ring team.
i love both guys.
I love ya Comet, but I'm not going there with ya.
I have faced this kind of reductive point of view from both sides of the center for the last 35 years. It doesn't make any difference what field it is, persons insist EITHER psychology/group dynamics/human inspiration are crucial, or persons insist QA and strategy rule are crucial. It never fails. I don't know why persons cannot see these are BOTH not only crucial, but they are completely interrelated and so interdependent.
Don't tell Coach Self you said stats don't mean (fill in the blank). He makes a ton of use of them to understand his players individual strength, cardio, focus, dynamical capabilities, as well as stages of fundamental and skills development, plus all manner of capacities to fulfill team roles, etc. And of course QA and strategic analysis is critical to breaking down opponents players and team dynamics on both ends of the floor for a scouting report and a game plan that actually gives the individuals and the team the intelligence and scheme needed to play winning basketball. And all of this measurement, and analysis is central to getting better, and identifying what else can be gotten better at how, and is critical to helping players learn how to self monitor, gain insight into how the team is interplaying.
It is just plain foolish to reduce sport, business, or politics to inspiration and competitive greatness and a team deciding to beat another team. It is as foolish to do that as it is to overemphasize QA and strategy and underemphasize the factors you refer to--human spirit and the synergies of individuals and teams driven to excellence, and competitive greatness in moments.
John Wooden convinced me in 1976 that QA is indispensible to winning basketball. He measured shooting percentages of every kind of shot and of every kind of form taken everywhere on the court. He measured every player's ability at every one of those things and he knew exactly what kind of things to allow and disallow players to do before they EVER began to scrimmage even.
Wooden also convinced me great talent and a fiery competitive spirit able to access competitive greatness are indispensable to excellence and winning when it counts.
His pyramid of success is seminal still precisely because it forces coaches, players and fans not to be reductive in their thinking, to fasten on any one aspect of what excellence requires, as you have just done.
Everything that matters to winning IS important.
And there are a lot of things that matter.
And we are growing closer and closer to the time when KU basketball players will be wearing bio feedback suits and brain sensing swimming caps intermittently to build to map their brains and and their performances to help these athletes begin to get better and better and reproducing those peak states more and more frequently. And it will be done by blending QA and the human spirit.
The human adventure is driven by the inseparable interplay of human spirit, human body, and human technology. It is the triad that produces the roads that lead to Allen Field House, the cars you drive their in, the field house building, the court and the baskets, the lighting overhead, the clothes and shoes the players wear, the balls they bounce, the energy they expend, the fundamentals the rely on, the skills they attack with, the team play they cooperate in, and the peak emotional states the enter into individually and as teams. And "getting better" is the simple, unpretentious, but profoundly truthful phrase that holds it all together.
No one is getting aneurisms, or infarcting, or erupting in rage, or sinking into despair, or maintaining an even strain from learning and thinking about QA and strategy--not the fans, not the players, and not the coaches. Those things all come from the struggle to achieve directly and indirectly and the beautiful, powerful, redeeming human will to keep getting better, and the realization that despite all the efforts, all the commitments, all the times spent working, practicing, thinking, analyzing, and learning that outcomes and expectations still vary and vary for as many reasons as their are permutations and combinations of things that matter to winning.
Embrace both.
Fear neither.
Love it to the fullest.
Think next as soon as you can.
Hell, yeah, we're gonna win.
This is on the way to Myitkyina!!!!!!
There's just going to be more hellfire, brimstone, and tornadoes than usual on the Burma Road.
KU +5
It turns out Greg Marshall likes to win ugly, too.
The Wheat Electrocutionists beat the Indiana Izzo Lites by going positively Medusan.
You remember Medusa. Wikipedia says, Medusa "...was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Medusa looked like this.
!587px-Medusa_by_Carvaggio.jpg â
15% from 3.
40% FG overall.
The Wheat Electrocutioners won by winning the TO stat by 6, the strip stat by 6, and getting 15 more FTAs.
Sound familiar on the FTAs? They shoot them about as well as KU does, too.
MEDUSA BALL is like BAD BALL, only with protection and with all of the driving being done by two guards, not spread all around guards, wings, and mobile big man attack platforms.
MEDUSA BALL does share one more thing in common with BAD BALL: perimeter guys shag a lot of rebounds.
When KU and WSU square off, if you don't like a lot of perseverative driving and ugliness, I suggest you watch with a blindfold on.
If you want a work of aesthetic grace, I suggest you go to the Joffrey.
If you want some beauty, I suggest you catch a Kate Hudson photo shoot.
You aesthetes out there, you basketball purists of the run like a gazelle and shake and bake off a ball screen, and run some action to create space to impact in school might as well get a case of Murine and plan on serial eye dropping.
This KU-WSU game is going to be Close Encounters of the Worst Kind for you Percivals and Julius's.
Now there is a man who is going to have the time of his life watching this matchup and his alias would be @drgnslayr.
His only complaint about this match up is that it is going to be held in a big time arena in a small time town, instead of some asphalt playground in south of Eight Mile in Detroit with chain link fences woven with barbed wire and metal nets filed into razor edges by some sadististic hit men tandem putting on their silencers under the Fist Statue in downtown Detroit before driving their Black Mafia Staff car to the play ground to shoot the losing team in honor of the second coming of Meso-ball.
Oh, and there won't be enough head fakes.
@drgnslayr's wife is NOT, I repeat, NOT going to be using the P word to describe the guys playing this asphalt dance of Thunderdome Death.
To steal from PAUL m!@#$%^ f!@#$%^& STEWART ANDERSON, THERE WILL BE BLOOD!
AND OIL!
AND FRACKED COAL GAS!
AND WHAT EVER ELSE BELCHES AND ROILS UP OUT OF THE BOWELS OF BASKETBALL HELL IN THIS CONFRONTATION OF THE GET CLOSE PITBULLS OF COLLEGE BASKETBALL.
You remember the guy in Vegas that used to shout, "Let's get ready to rumble!"?
Well, that guy was a pussy and Vegas was a church retreat.
If the right guy were announcing this KU-WSU game it would be Vin Diesel in a chain vest, ammo belts, and black leather pants and tactical boots wielding an M-240 at the score board, shouting "LET'S BRING THIS F!@#$%^ING CRIB DOWN, and shooting the scoreboard until the lights go completely black and then after another belt firing the whole flipping scoreboard comes crashing down on mid court and they play the Neo-Meso Ball game AROUND the cratered scoreboard!!!!!!!
JUDGEMENT TIME IS AT HAND IN THE LAND OF JOHN BROWN.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/John_Brown_Painting.JPG â
You're a renaissance man-engineer!
Way to stand up for the B12!!!
Watch the rest of this WSU-IU game for me. I've gotta run some errands. Wish I didn't have to, but duty calls.
Now I didn't say anything about either one beating us. :-)
I just don't see a clear match up advantage for KU with either team.
The above said, I think Indiana is a more talented team than WSU. Both guys are good coaches. Crean assisted Izzo years ago. Marshall is just one of those guys that come up through the cracks in tobacco road at the smaller schools that is very, very good.
@JayHawkFanToo says no. So go with it.
Its always a dilemma.
Playing an MVC team always means them playing with chips like giant killers.
Still, I would rather play an MVC team than a B1G team, because of how much B1Gs bang all season long.
It is not so much that IU might upset us with banging, but that we are already pretty tender with injuries and IU's banging could give us more.
But I have to say that WSU has more studs inside than I expected.
It seems a toss up.
The emotional high WSU would be on would be sky high, so there is probably more risk of an upset against WSU.
But there is more risk of injury against Indiana.
Hate to be a wimp, but its a toss up to me.
I trust your augmentation. :-)
Our guards drove into their guards and bigs.
Our wings drove into their wings and bigs.
Our bigs drove into their bigs and dished to wing and guard cutters driving into their bigs.
IMPACT SPACE....WAS...SHRUNK.
KU SHOT AD MADE A FEW TREYS.
KU FLOW WAS SUSTAINED.
NMSU FLOW WAS ELIMINATED FOR 40 MINUTES.
FRANK SPENT THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF TRYING TO SPEND AND DEFEND THE LEAD TO SHORTEN THE GAME, BUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE TRIED, NMSU COULD NOT GET IN A FLOW TO SCORE, after a little flurry cut it to 5 early in the second half.
THE LOOKS ON THEIR FACES NEAR THE END MADE CLEAR: NMSU HAD NO CLUE HOW THEY WERE BEATEN.
THERE IS A TERM FOR IT.
BAD BALL!!!!!!!
ROCK CHALK!!!!!
Search me.
I hate it when you have such good reasons. :-)
Complicated topic.
Easy answer is we have no control over it, so waste no brain waves on it.
But thinking about it helps understand our opponents a little and cuts the tension about the NMSU game against a pressing team. :-)
So...
Like what I read of Barnes off the floor.
Appears slightly above average on the bench consistent with his career winning percentage, but not exceptional.
Seems like he recruits very well.
His kind of ball is so rough at times that it appears to contribute to players getting hurt, so I don't like his kind of ball.
If he were at KU, I would have wanted him replaced long ago.
But he is at Texas, and it is always best for KU to let that sleeping giant sleep in mediocrity, while the private oligarchs down there fight over who can get their guys in control of the oil reserve endowments of the University and the less important governor's mansion.
Just joking, Tayhossians. :-)
Seriously, they will find a good coach, or stand pat, depending on whether Rick faced unusual circumstances, or is just not getting it done. They are a problem for us either way.
If we were in a period where we were certain to keep getting all the pieces we need to compete at a high level, I would be pulling for them to be as good as they could be, because the B12 needs another marquis team and ISU is likely not going to be it, no matter how much rivalry we have with them. But Self and KU appear to be in a period of adjustment to the sudden asymmetries in recruiting, and to this fan, it is unclear presently how long this transition will take and where it will equilibrate. Until it sorts out, in purely metaphysical terms I would wish for Texas to stay mediocre until we get our ducks lined up. :-)
Animal Husband the Aggies!
All good engineers have a touch of poet in them and all really good poets have a touch of engineer in them. If you can ever get an engineer to wade through the old English of ChAucer, or Milton, and show them that these great poems were engineered and "built" the engineer marvels at them. Same with the architectural sound of great classical music. Engineers often get that better than other persons. Engineers are just impatient with all the horseshit "about" the poems and music. đ
Ok.
YES!
Good question.
What I notice is that he some times still does, but not always.
So my inference is that he still uses time outs as other coaches do. He uses time outs to disrupt flow only when his BAD BALL fails to and he cannot afford to save the time out for time and flow management late in the game when the need for clock and flow management may be most accute.
This is the dilemma on faces with any strategy of play in a game of emerging complexity with limited time outs. Do I intervene now, or wait till later? Now I know what is happening, but what if later things get really dicey? Should I intervene now and risk not being able to later, or will intervening now keep things from getting worse later?
My guess is that all the FT shooting and varying tempo and varying offensive formations are supposed to disrupt so much that he does not have to call timeouts. This enables him to save his time outs till late in close games when he can intervene to clock manage and flow disrupt as much as possible when a close game hangs in the balance.
So: in both GOOD BALL and BAD BALL a coach is trying to let his system--impose flow in GOOD BALL and disrupt flow in BAD BALL--accomplish its purpose as much of the game as possible, so as to conserve his TOs till the decisive moments late in a close game.
ALSO, and this is a really kind of weird QA notion Self probably doesn't consider, but the geek in me might, but if flow were disrupted and a run was still occurring, you might consider it a random run not to worry about; I.e., you might stay the course because things ARE disrupted and think stopping the clock during disruption and giving them an escape from the disrupted flow might enable to get organized enough to reimpose flow. This is pretty arcane and extreme, and there is a rule of thumb that any strategy extrapolated to its logical extreme can lead to outsmarting one's self. All strategy and tactics have realms where they hold and limits or frontiers where they break down. The skill lay in recognizing and adapting near those limits.
Regardless, your question is the best kind.