@drgnslayr

Much better said than me. Thanks for painting the picture better.

And I agree we need both.

Rock Chalk!!!

@JhawkAlum

You make good points. You are noting the weaknesses of BAD BALL. No strategy is without vulnerabilities.

When you keep it close, so you can win, you can also lose, when the breaks go the other way.

And once in the Madness, where one loss ends your season, all strategies are vulnerable.

Coach K supposedly has had more early exits the last ten years than Coach Self.

Calipari has wound up in the NIT and got bounced the first game.

The Dribble Drive seemed the perfect offense for the new age until one realized it was devised by a high school coach to be easy to teach to play ground players, and now there aren't many play ground players making it to D1. Most of the good play ground players are siphoned off to AAU before they develop the play grounds skills the Dribble Drive appeared to have been conceived to exploit.

Strategies can at most put players in advantageous positions to make plays that win games.

Thus, you have to look at our talent, at what pieces of a team we possess, at level of development of these pieces, and at the injuries and wear and tear to the pieces to decide if we should be running another offense, or playing the offense we run a different way, or be shooting more or less treys.

We have no rim protecting, back to the basket 5.

We two 4s and a 5, each with different, but limited scopes of talent. Self committee-ed them.

We have no dominant rebounder at 4, or5, that can stay on a spot and get a rebound.

We did have a stretch 4 that could draw opposing rebounders away from the basket, until he just went down to a sprained knee. Self decided to play through the stretch 4.

We had one wing, Oubre, with a lot of talent, but no experience. Self brought him along slowly for a month, then force fed him and played through him more and more until Oubre apparently reinsured his knee.

We had a wing, Selden, that could not handle the ball and played as if he either literally lost his pop, or suffered injury psychological scars that made him play as if he had no pop. Self stayed with him through some awful stretches.

He had a very tough point guard learning to play the position on the job, who could not be expected to run a complicated system early on both because he was learning and the players he was playing with were greener than he was.

Self got to a point where he saw that his team could shoot free throws and shoot the trey, and he rode the trey shooting until he felt the law of average were going to start going against his trey shooters and the opposing coaches were going to take the trey stripe away by stretching farther and farther out.

Self seemed also to understand that unless we drew at least one big away from the bucket, there was no way we could stay in a game simply because of being out rebounded.

He decided to play through Perry to get FTs and to draw one rebounder away from the basket.

When Perry wasn't shooting the decision was to attack the 5 still in the lane with one of four guys--Frank, Wayne, Kelly, and Devonte.--whichever ones were in the game.

This was a offensive scheme that could work against teams with even two bigs bigger than ours, if we could get our remaining bigs to be able to take a feed and put it on the deck and drive it also.

The coin of the realm increasingly became attack the defender and attack the 4 and 5 behind him. Play for FTs. Shorten the trips. Reduce the number of times the ball needs rebounding.

This approach necessarily meant that in the first half, bigger, better teams would get ahead of them. And if they couldn't rebound well and release out on the break, it meant there weren't going to be many runs from transition, no matter how hard they guarded.

It mean close games until they got to one and one, or until the referees finally started calling fouls.

If the other team came out way bigger, or shooting threes,the other team was going to get out to an early lead often with KU playing this way. It would take playing from behind frequently. It would take holding down the possessions so that early leads were no bigger than absolutely necessary before the effect of going inside again and again and getting the fouls paid off.

It also means that lesser teams can get out to early leads too, because you are having to play it so close to the vest. You aren't taking treys to build leads and you aren't releasing and getting run outs.

Self tried creating leads with micro bursting treys, and he tried goosing some transition.

But as the season wore on the trey balling cooled and opposing coaches began to figure out how to pressure our ball handlers to create more and more turnovers.

The rising turnovers were what kept us from winning out after the first ISU loss.

Turnovers are an XTReme Vulnerability to playing BAD BALL.

For BAD BALL to have its greatest opportunity for success, it has minimize its lost possessions and it has minimize the times it doesnt create a foul risk for the opponent. Turnovers prevent you not just from get a look, as is the case in all schemes, but they prevent you from accruing fouls. And Bad Ball has to accrue fouls over the course of the game for it to really work.

Bad Ball is actually not a very good offense for winning the conference, because winning conference is about winning your home games and stealing road wins. A home you tend to get the favorable whistle. On the road you don't. For that reason, Bad Ball is a tough way to win a conference. And not surprisingly, KU has a lot of road losses this season.

But on a neutral floor in the Madness, Bad Ball could be a very good way to win.

The weakness of Bad Ball in conference, or in the Madness, is the close games with lesser teams. We don't see the lesser teams in the Madness much. We don't know how to handle what they do from experience. Self tends to long bench and low amp the lesser teams to leave the short bench and high amp for the better of the two teams each weekend. Playing teams close is risky.

But here is the thing. Playing teams by relying on the trey ball is risky too. You never know which night of the two game week end you are going to not shoot well. But relying on the trey ball means you are going to tend to shoot the trey ball better on the first of the two games each weekend because your legs will be more tired the second game than the first. Think about that. That means if you are a trey ball shooting team you are most likely to upset someone on the first game of the weekend, which is the easier opponent. And as the tournament wears on, the second game of each week end gets exponentially tougher than the first game of the weekend. And by relying on the trey ball, then you are biasing yourself to win the first game, and lose the second game. This phenomenon is why so many of the elite teams leave the tournament so early from time to time. The elite teams with all the talent are long benching and low amping the first games of the weekend, while the opponent is at its maximum if it is a trey ball shooting team. When the upsets occur, the trey balling team that upsets the elite program then tends to get mauled the second game, because its legs are tired for the second game and its dependence on the trey works against it.

When you combine the dynamics of the Madness, which is Self's ultimate goal, with our lack of a strong inside presence, Self looked and said, "Well, I would rather play Bad Ball and risk the close games by spending the season learning to play close games, rather than play the three ball game and be faced with winning the first game, then having no way of playing the second game, and later having to face elite teams like UK, with no system for managing their great size at all.

You have asked good questions and you have exposed the flaw in BAD BALL.

My answer is that BAD BALL was the lesser of evils this season in Self's mind, and now later in the season, in my mind too.

I do believe we will see Self resort to some 20 3pta games, when he just can't get anything going attacking in shrunken impact spaces.

If our guys ever get their treys back, he will go back to riding those treys to build a lead and then protect it. Build and then protect. Build and then protect.

But Bad Ball works without trey balling and that is how this team will mostly play, if the loss of Perry can be gotten around with Perry healing, or with a committee of Jamari and Hunter doing a variation on a stretch 4.

I also think there is a chance, if Perry cannot get back, that we will finally see Wayne and Brannen doing their take on a stretch 4.

BAD BALL without a stretch 4 can be accomplished for stretches. But BAD BALL with a Stretch 4 is the way to make it work best IMHO. And if you recall the WVU game, once Perry went out, Jamari came in an filled in the overtime, Self basically used Jamari as a stretch 4 driving to the basket. Self even commented that that looked like the old Jamari. But the difference between Jamari and Perry is that Perry has a credible jump shot up to 23 feet out and Jamari does not. So: if Perry is not playing, the scout will be under no circumstances give Jamarie the drive. Over play him massively to his right hand, which is the only hand Jamari can drive with.

As I said, every strategy has a vulnerability and every tactic has a counter tactic.

The Marines go in and improvise tactics as a strategy to overcome this situation; that is what I mean by tactics becoming strategy.

Self may look a this situation without Perry, and decide that it is time to go balls to the walls with the three ball.

But more likely he will hunker down, stay with BAD BALL, get 5-10 minutes into the game, and begin improvising tactics looking for some new way to attack in shrunken impact space to keep playing for FTAs.

Hope this at least offers you some food for though, if not a definitive answer.

For a definitive answer, we would need the maestro: Bill Self.

Rock Chalk!!!

Bad Ball is a work in progress.

Our players are unquestionably the best at it in D1.

No one else, except Huggie and WVU are even trying to play it, though their approach is quite different.

But we are still developing our ability to play it.

And we have likely lost Perry, our Stretch 4, for the game.

Therefore the march to Myitkyina continues on a narrow jungle trail that passes through a hostile village called Norman.

Play Bad Ball and take no prisoners.

The Marauders rest for nothing.

The Marauders play to win every game this season.

The basics of BAD BALL, which I outlined in another post, do not require a stretch 4.

They require shrinking impact space of your opponent.

To do that we have to attack Hield. We have to attack on offense and defense.

We have to attack their bigs.

We can play this game against anyone, with anyone.

The interesting thing about the OU matchup will be to see if Lon Kruger, usually a quick study, has his guys playing Bad Ball already?

It is a road game, meaning a favorable whistle is unlikely, against an Okie Baller team that we no longer matchup with very well, because of injuries and suspensions.

We just shot 0-fer from trey, so we are sure to come out with trey guns blazing, right?

No, I believe we will try five minutes of BAD BALL first.

I believe we will wait a bit to explore trey balling.

The real question is: what will Self decide to take away from OU?

This I cannot say yet.

But it is important to go down and beat OU with BAD BALL without Perry.

Doing this would be the biggest confidence boost of all.

(Note: I am just kidding around with the copyright symbol. It is an allusion to @bskeet’s funny use of a TM symbol with BAD BALL in his recent thread, which was itself a reference to someone joking about @lincase improvising off my Bad Ball term. This is the cascading, evolving joy of new words responding to new phenomena. Language is like a jazz ensemble improvising together. And it is nice to see so many entering into the jam session.)

Despite the pitiful first half and dubious aesthetics, the win over WVU satisfied me ecstatically. So much so, that I have had to lay around for a few days savoring the win with a metaphorical post conquest skirred egg breakfast (two eggs up barely fried in butter in an ancient 4” Griswold cast iron skillet, then a table spoon of heavy cream, sprinkle of grated pecorino romano, pancetta chips, teaspoon of diced shallot, a table spoon of moscato, roasted under a broiler for a minute and a half) and my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright-pattern, burnt umber cup full of French Roast coffee with a little chickory) lounging on the deck, browsing posts.

But all glows finally fade and the warm, rushing feeling coursing throughout by body and mind after the game, while lasting a record time, have finally subsided. :-)

I sense great ambivalence in posters about the way we played, about how poorly we played the first 20 minutes, and about how ugly the win was, despite the incomparable heroics of our basketball equivalent of Merrill’s Marauders.

I wouldn’t worry about the first 20 minutes. How could young men that have been through so much and built to a great edge for West Virginia NOT have had a let down after learning that the 11th title was in the bag BEFORE the game? I was let down before the game. i was practically giddy. Why shouldn’t they have been. And, frankly, it was the XTReme Drama of "THE COMEBACK” that elevated this team once and for all to the basketball equivalents of Merrill’s Marauders. I cannot think of another team that has ever overcome so much adversity and injury in a single half to will a come back and then win in overtime. The Miracle on Naismith Drive against Fizzou? Well, of course the Fizzou win was more dramatic from a historical perspective, because of the century of antagonism that was finally put to bed once and for all. But nothing in the Fizzou win, or in any other KU come back in can recall the last 50 years could compare with the combination of missing players, state of injury going into the game, limited big man abilities, and the number of injuries DURING the game in the victory over WVU. Not a single comeback in over a century would surpass it, at least that would be my guess.

Alas, I sense my use of the term BAD BALL may have been misinterpreted.

It is not meant as a criticism, or aspersion.

It is a name coined to describe the asethetically ugly game that results from playing basketball a certain way for a certain reason and systematizing it.

Bad Ball is a term for describing the way KU has played the game on offense and defense much of this season.

At first, I thought this way of playing occurred, because the team was young and playing inside out without the prerequisite level of big man talent.

And then it seemed relieving, at first, when they spent a few games developing an outside in form of attack that was a combination of micro bursting treys and attacking MBMAPs (mobile big man attack platforms) charging into the low blocks to try to score in lieu of a back to the basket big man, or a rim protector.

But then a disturbing thought fired across my synapses. It left a ghost neural net burn pattern of a kind of persisting. We were ugly even winning outside in, even against lesser opponents.

But, before I could process this sense of aesthetically challenged outside in play, Self shifted gears, and seemed to go back to inside out, only not quite the same inside out as before. Instead of Perry endlessly trying to spin his way out of a back to the basket position on the block, where he had been largely ineffectual, now Perry was showing up all over the inside and outside and attacking, or trying to, in all sorts of ways…and with decidedly less spinning. Sometimes even none. It appeared as if Self ordered Perry to play without spinning for awhile. It revealed the beginning of Perry's refitting as a stretch 4, at times almost a 3, playing 4.

Combined with the stretch 4 refit, I recall some continued development of the MBMAP concept with our other bigs, especially Cliff, running the floor and Jamari attacking the basket on drives and cuts. But then injury and learning overload reared—Jamari’s hip flexor, and Cliff’s sternum and apparent miscellaneous injuries unreported. Jamari lost all his explosiveness, and increasingly was used as a walking zero digit place holder the first five minutes of games as part of a game shortening strategy regarding the problem plagued 5 position. In turn, Cliff got the toughening box, despite the injuries, and he cratered psychologically, apparently unable to hold up to the toughening box that Self apparently felt necessary before relying even for only 15 mpg on the Big Red Dog for a stretch run. Things got so bad, that Cliff began not to be played at all. And in the tradition of things going completely black after getting very dark, first Cliff’s mentor, and then Cliff fell to off court “issues,” apparently carefully not commented on in combination.

Through the above, Self and the team continued to find ways to stay ahead in the conference race, while morphing more and more into what I have come to call Bad Ball with a Stretch Four. This increasingly unbeautiful playing style relied on Perry Ellis scoring 20-28 ppg with 12-21 FGAs, if I recall correctly post-WVU basketbasm.

Some saw this resort to this aesthetically challenged style of play a failure of imagination on Self’s part and, further, as a stubborn adherence to an outmoded (for today’s OAD dependent style of play) offense (the High Low). Others including me, early on, saw a path through the thicket with the three ball. @drgnslayr mourned the lack of fundamentals being taught. And so on.

Criticisms had reached a fever pitch during the stretch when the team went two and two, and saw its lead vaporize. Many began to argue that the 2-2 stretch was attributable to the way Self and the team were choosing to play the game—to the high low offense—to the declining number of 3ptas—to playing away from what board rats believed was our proven strength at trey balling.

But what I, at least, began to notice was that a certain systematic approach to team play had grown manifest; that there was some method to this madness on the part of the Okmulgee Kid. It was what I was beginning to think of, but had not yet called, BAD BALL with a Stretch Four. Win or lose, strong opponent, or weak opponent, Self and his team were playing each game the same way. They were keeping it close. They ran the stuff for stretches attacking inside and then spread and attacked inside. But notably, there were not even inside out with kick outs to open looks. Ball movement generated what open look treys occurred and they were few and far between--declining over time from a high of 20 or so, to 15, to 13 to 11, to 10 and finally down to single digits against WVU.

It was the best of times and the worst of times. Winning (best) and playing uglier and uglier (worst). And even when the losses occurred, though board rats blamed the losses on the way Self and his team were playing, the more logical inference was that the 2-2 stretch had occurred because of very conventional drivers unrelated to aesthetics. A key motivational coach was lost for two weeks. Injuries had reached critical mass. It was February and a young team full of players that had never been through a long D1 season, and overcome the February wall, was overwhelmed mentally and physically in surprise, surprise, late February. And feeding into it was Self continuing to teach and develop this new way of playing the game—my memory is vague here because of the rush of events and my onrushing age--what I only finally hung a partial moniker—Bad Ball--on after the Texas game and then a full moniker on during the WVU—Bad Ball with Stretch Four. Or was it a game earlier on both counts. Can’t recall. Don’t want to go look. Approximate will do here.

And as I said at the beginning, I think some have misunderstood what my moniker means. And perhaps they have because it has been hard for me to figure this new way of playing out. A lot of hypotheses had to be tested and rejected.

@drgnslayr calls it grind ball, and I have concurred, only adding that it is an evolution of grind ball tactics to be used in certain games, against certain opponents (as in prior years), into something systematic, into strategy, not just tactics, into a way of playing every game against every opponent.

And though I began to see it some in the KSU loss (note: it had been there much of the season, I just couldn’t “see” it), and clearly versus Texas and with almost painful acuity vs WVU, it has still taken me a few days to find a vocabulary and some analogies to make sense of it for myself and perhaps for some others.

Let me cut to the chase on a definition first.

Bad Ball def. a scheme in basketball aimed at closing down the impact space of opponents on both offense and defense.

Bad Ball can be and is played with either tight spacing of our players, or broad spacing of our players.

Bad Ball is NOT a sharp change in offense, or in formations, though Self has added several formations to the High Low Offense that I have noted previously this season. It is not really about inside out, or outside in. Those are modes of attack, if you will, that are largely determined by what the opponent takes away. One could play conventional Self Ball in any of the formations, and in any of the modes of attack. We could play “Good Ball” without changing a thing in our formations, modes of attack, ball movements, and actions. These are not what distinguish BAD BALL from GOOD BALL.

So, ‘bate, what the hell is BAD BALL then?

Bad ball is using attack to SHRINK the impact space. Put another way, it is attacking only in close to the opponent. Put yet another way, it is attacking to create situations where the opponent has to commit to close play and to risking fouling to get a stop…as much of the time as possible.

The reason we are not trying to create open looks with action is that we don’t want open looks with action. We want to make plays in close to our opponents where they can foul us, and where their athleticism and height are not necessarily advantageous.

When one shoots a trey, even an open look trey, ESPECIALLY an open look trey, especially an open look trey created by action, there is NO shrunken impact space where a foul can occur. Oh, you could devise some action to create looks in tight spaces, but what would the point of THAT be? We want fouls! And lots of them! And we don’t want our guys taking shots where the opposing team’s superior length, strength, and bounce give them total advantage.

But ‘bate, Self has always used the High Low Passing Offense to create impact space! What are you saying? Self and this team are trying shrink the impact space? What kind of flipping nuttiness is that?

It is the kind of nuttiness that is actually sound tactics raised to strategy by the Jarhead Jayhawks. It is the kind of nuttiness that lets a team with a small, relatively slight, front court with declining explosiveness from wear and tear and injury, a front court that never had good rebounders or good back to the basket scorers in the first place, rebound and score on and maximize FTAs versus teams with longer, stronger, and more skillful bigs. Recall the Texas win. They are as tall and hefty as almost anyone we will run into all season. Recall the Utah win. They were as tall, though not as athletic, or hefty, as anyone we might run into in the Madness. The point is that BAD BALL,once you learn to play it, works against L&Ss and L&As.

That’s what kind of nuttiness it is.

BAD BALL with a Stretch 4 (and even without as we learned without Perry vs. WVU) is real and ugly, but sound in tactics and strategy.

Wake up and smell the W&L statement people. We are 24 and 6 and undisputed champions of the Big 12 Power Conference without good rebounders, without back to the basket bigs, without height, without our OAD big man, without a healthy front court, with our OAD 3 wearing a down pillow on one knee, without our TAD 2 seeming in constant doubt about his knee (until a play or two against WVU), and with our point guard playing on two gimpy knees. Oh, and our OAD Euro baller is just a long bench warmer. And our Sweet Shooting 2 with the legendary trey stroke that won’t go in any more is now pale as a ghost and god only knows what that means!!!

24-6.

B12 CHAMPIONS!

BAD BALL is REAL.

One of the problems with Bad Ball is that its systematic application all game every game is so unprecedented. It doesn’t have a past example in college basketball that I know of, unless maybe Al Maguire and Hank Raymonds did it sometime when I wasn’t looking. Or maybe some great NAIA coach that Self saw one time did it. Or maybe Hank Iba recalled it as something he saw done once. Or whatever. But BAD BALL does not have a recognizable antecedent in the era of modern basketball.

In situations like this, analogy must be resorted to.

A good analogy for Bad Ball is one time heavy weight champion Joe Frazier’s approach to boxing, adapted from a number of fighters before him. Joe’s wikipedia pages suggests Henry Armstrong and Rocky Marciano as Joe’s antecedents. There are probably many more. Regardless, Joe was a short (maybe 5-11), compact, and powerful puncher, who faced many boxers taller and as athletic, or more so, than himself (e.g., Muhammad Ali), and many fighters bigger than stronger than himself (e.g., George Foreman). Joe fought by relentlessly moving in close to his opponents, where he delivered body blows, upper cuts and a fierce, compact hook that knocked out most of the 27 fighters he KO’d in 37 fights. Joe fought ugly and the ugliness was put in especially bold contrast when he fought a pretty fighter like Muhammad Ali. Joe doubled up his shoulders, pulled his head in, tucked elbows in tight as rib armor, and bobbed and weaved with gloves close to face as he bore in through a hail of jabs and hooks by bigger fighters, be they sluggers or dancers. He took tremendous punishment from boring in as he did again and again in a match. Even in his best fights his face was swollen up at the end. But once Joe got in close the opponent’s longer reach and greater athleticism were no longer big advantages. They were in fact disadvantages, where Joe’s short arms could fire fast and more accurately in the tight confines and clinches he created. And when the bigger fighters found themselves going for clinches, or holding his head down with an extended glove in what seemed a taunt, when done by Ali, Joe delivered vicious body blows and undercuts that often lead to a lowered glove and an opening that Joe delivered the devastating hook over. Joe’s style was ugly, repetitive, and seemingly unsophisticated to those unfamiliar with the bitter Sweet Science of prize fighting. But Joe broke Ali’s jaw once. And he beat Ali once. And Ali was the greatest fighter that ever lived and don’t ever let anyone tell you other wise.

Joe, though ranked the 8th greatest fighter of all time by some, appeared to struggle with many fighters, great and ordinary, because of the style he used. No matter whether the fighter was a great one, or a tune-up, Joe still had to move in close and as he did he had to take a hail punches, whatever kind of fighter it was.

Now are you starting to get the analogy with this KU team? They are smaller. They are lighter. They are doing something that takes a lot of skill—getting in close enough to do damage. They are not pretty doing it. They wade in and convert an opponent’s strength to a weakness.

But ‘bate, why not just shoot the trey outside and forget this Smokin’ Joe approach? You called it using artillery to shape a battle field one back in your trey loving days. Why not do that still? Why?

Because, playing to our strength of trey balling does not turn an opponent’s strength into a weakness. When we are shooting well, it is asserting our strength and leaving the opponent’s strength in tact to stretch out and block our treys, if you are Kentucky’s tall perimeter guys, or to grab all of our misses with footers inside not being challenged by our playing to our strength.

But when we are not shooting it well, then what do we do, if we have no way of playing that turns an opponent’s strength into a weakness? This is the Socratic question Self tried to ask his fan base and instead of receiving a positive answer he received incredulity and ridicule and scorn. No wonder he scoffed at his fan base. No wonder he gave up trying to explain what he was doing and just got on with doing it and winning his eleventh title in….drum roll please…eleven seasons.

At most we can shoot threes at 40-50% accuracy 40%-50% of the games. When Self effectively retired the trey, KU had 4-5 guys shooting around 40-50% from trifectaville. And his team was averaging a scorching trey percentage also. It did not take a rocket scientist or KENPOP grade number buster to anticipate what the second half of the season was going to look like from outside the trey stripe. It was going to look exactly like what it HAS looked like. Someone tell me KU’s trey ball shooting percentage the last three games? We hit a slump at exactly the moment we needed to win games to close out and get an eleventh title.

Self elected to shift to a style of play that avoided that statistical inevitability from keeping us from winning. And for this he has been dissed and ridiculed and disrespected? Frankly, we all owe him our gratitude for in effect telling us all to go fornicate with ourselves.

Proof. In. Pudding.

But avoiding a season killing trey slump was not the only virtue of Self’s BAD BALL strategy.

Remember: even when we make 40-50% from trey, then we have 50-60% percent misses that have to be rebounded and we are not good rebounders in man on man match, box out match ups.

When we are small and slight inside and not a good natural rebounding team, we want to play a way that minimizes the number of times we have to rebound in a man on man, box out match up. We want to force their best rebounder to commit to stopping shots, so he is NOT rebounding; that is why we give a stretch 4 so many looks. And when we do not attack the stretch 4’s man we want to attack the rim protecting 5 with a PG, or wing, so that if he blocks it, we can have at least a chance for the rebound with two of our bigs crashing on their one 4. And we sure don’t want BOTH their 4 and their 5 in position for blocking, or for the sticking back.

But most of all, we want to turn games into FT shooting contests, where we don’t have to rebound at all. Think about the WVU game. We got 43 FT attempts (a home whistle for sure, but it only makes sense to shape how you play to where you play); and made something like 37, or whatever. That is 37 times we did not have to get a offensive rebound, or have to try to contain a defensive rebounder half a foot taller than our guys. That is 43 times the momentum of teams with greater athleticism stopped dead. That is 43 times our guys, who have to bang and slide against bigger guys got to stop and take a blow. That is 43 times an opponent had to adjust aggressiveness to another foul. The benefits of BAD BALL are manifold.

Smokin’ Joe was 5-11 and had only a 73 inch reach. Compare this with Ali, who was 6-3 and had a 73 inch reach, and George Foreman, who was 6-3 and had an 82 inch reach. Ali outweighted Joe 10-20 pounds depending on the fight. Foreman outweighed Joe 20-25 pounds depending on the fight. Foreman was the only guy that Joe fought multiple times that he could not beat. Foreman was just too powerful. The punches Joe had to absorb were just too brutal, and Joe had to fight George when Joe had already taken a lot of punishment in his career.

Joe didn’t win MOST of the fights against these two former Olympians and great pro fighters. But he did beat Ali once. And in the Madness, all KU will ever have to do is beat a UK once. And maybe a UA once. It won’t have to beat them best of seven. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for great talent in terms of probabilities. Of course UK will probably beat us if we play them again playing BAD BALL. They have TEN OAD/TADs for god’s sakes. But BAD BALL can beat them. And it is probably our best chance to get deep enough to get a shot at them. BAD BALL works on the off nights that GOOD BALL does not work on.

But here is where the boxing analogy really brings what Self and KU are doing into full relief.

Joe made these other fighters look bad, even when they defeated him.

And Joe was not the only great fighter to resort to this kind of fighting in his time.

None other than Muhammad Ali adapted partially to this style himself, when the pop went out of Ali’s legs, i.e., when he got too old to dance, i.e., when he met a bigger, more powerful puncher than him. Ali increased his weight to compensate for his deteriorating athleticism. Against George Foreman Ali literally layed on the ropes and took an epic battering from Foreman, in order to wear Foreman out, until late in the fight coming out and attacking like a slugger himself. It was called Rope-a-Dope. And it worked. Once.

And Joe finally cornered Ali in their last fight and Ali had no choice in the end but to surrender float like a butterfly sting like a bee and get almost as ugly as Joe and slug it out with him to win.

Joe Frazier finally could make Ali, the prettiest fighter of all time, fight ugly.

This is what BAD BALL is about.

Bad Ball is cutting off the court on an opponent, the way Smokin’ Joe cut off a canvas.

Some times you attack from this angle. Some times you attack from that angle. Some times you approach slowly and steadily in cutting off the ring. Some times you race forward quickly to your opponent. But you go where he goes and you go to and through his strength and you keep attacking until you get in close where his athleticism and size so that they are no longer advantages, but rather risks of fouling.

And you look bad doing it a lot of the time. It takes time to wear an opponent down this way. It takes taking his best shots early and often. It takes chasing and cornering him. It takes getting through his defenses not to make a pretty impact play, but to close in ever closer to him to force this taller, more athletic, and stronger opponent to either foul you or let you make the shot, or be out of position for the rebound of the block. It is ugly, ugly, ugly.

And when you spread it out into a four corner offense, it is not about blowing by someone to get an easy two. It is about Frank dribbling, and moving this way and that and waiting till the big underneath is in the right position, and then blowing by his man and driving AT the waiting big, and if he isn’t at the rim, adjusting and driving into him and still getting the shot off toward the rim. This play has existed in basketball for as long as there has been basketball. But what is different is that not just Frank, but everyone is trying to get in close, instead of get open.

BAD BALL is about learning to always position for close contact shooting where the shooting arm and hand can reach out and make contact with the raised and sweeping arm of the defender, so that a ref CAN call the contact on every shot, even though he won’t call it every shot.

BAD BALL takes tremendous skill to do it right.

BAD BALL takes tremendous toughness to do it right.

You have to be able to take the early taunting that follows the L&As and L&Ss blocking your shizz. You have to be able to take the forearm smashes and the trips and the throw downs and the nut punches. You have to be able to take their best shots, so you can get in close on them and force them to foul you. You have to do this and build up the ref’s expectation that it is coming again and again and that sooner or later the ref, who wants to swallow his whistle, gets to where he cannot look the other way anymore at the thuggery you are forcing/daring your opponent to engage in.

BAD BALL in the age of the asymmetric advantage given to the stacked teams both because of the stacking and because of the asymmetric whistle they get, BAD BALL is also a little like Freedom Marchers going into Mississippi, or Alabama in the 1960s. BAD BALL is about confronting evil masquerading as righteousness, and exposing it. BAD BALL is about closing the space that evil demands and requires to maneuver in. BAD BALL is about sustained confrontation—persistent pressure, even when the results do not look promising. It is about taking abuse until the powers that be—the refs in this case—finally can’t stand the awful spectacle of their own unfairness and the unfairness in the game.

BAD BALL is about the little guy going up against the big guy.

We at KU are not used to being the little guys.

But Self had the good sense to understand that that was exactly who were are this season.

BAD BALL is about David out maneuvering Goliath without a bolo, because to use the bolo would be to encourage and sustain the advantages of Goliath.

BAD BALL at times approaches a form of non violent resistance.

Gandhi and King would recognize BAD BALL instantly.

BAD BALL is about marching into a meat grinder and winning the asymmetric war the only way possible, when you lack superior weapons, skills and strength, etc.—by taking away the other's asymmetric advantage.

Make no mistake.

Non-violent resistance is war.

It is NOT about not hitting, or being passive and fearful.

It is about hitting by not hitting.

It is about taking away the opponents advantage and strength completely.

Of course, BAD BALL is closer to Joe Frazier’s ugly boxing, because these Jarhead Jayhawks will hit back…in close.

Notice that at the end of the WVU game, the Sultan of Thug, Bob Huggins was not able to bully anyone any more. The refs early intimidated by him no longer were intimidated. KU’s players, early beaten and battered by Huggins players, no longer feared being beaten and battered. In fact, as the game wore on and the combat turned hand to hand increasingly, relentlessly in close, the WVU players began not to like playing without their usual advantage. The even began to play the way KU played. Huggins even appeared to order it. But KU was more experienced at playing in tight. Playing rough up close. Enduring pain, instead of dishing it. Playing to get the refs to call the fouls. WVU could dish out the punishment, but it did not like taking the punishment. Its fouling increased as it tried to play BAD BALL up close and personal. And this is why BAD BALL works against thug ballers. Thug ballers are trained to dish it out, not take it.

Joe Frazier trained himself to the edge of his envelope to take the battering as he moved in close for the fighting. Our players have done the same. They take punches that REALLY hurt. They take the trash talking after a real slam to the floor. They look up at persons trying to hurt them and bounce up and go in tight on them again. It takes mental toughness of a high order to keep doing your job under these conditions. This is what the Marines are about. They are about doing their jobs in conditions that others cannot keep doing them in. It takes playing WITH fear, not intimidating others into fear, though they try to do that too. It takes gauging the abuse one is taking and compensating for it, in ways that let one keep doing one’s job.

It takes getting in close, living with pain, and finding a way to get the basket and/or the FT.

It is about shrinking the impact space and still impacting, when the other guy can’t in the confined quarters.

Perry’s spinning was anathema to BAD BALL, until he began to learn to spin INTO close quarters. It took him 3/4s of a season to break the old habit of spinning into expanded impact space. More impact space from spinning is exactly what kills BAD BALL. BAD BALL depends on EVERYONE moving into the opponent, getting in tight on him, forcing him into commitments that can then be scored on, or made into fouls and FTs. And this is so whether Self calls for the team to run the stuff with closer, or wider spacing. The less Perry spins, the better the BAD BALL we play. And when he does spin, unless he spins INTO another opponent as a way of attacking an unsuspecting opponent close in, it takes the edge off of BAD BALL, as surely as popping treys does. Stopping going in close in BAD BALL is like UCLA under Wooden taking off the full court pressure and stopping running. What makes any approach work is sustaining it until it overwhelms an opponent. This is why you don’t take treys very often, if you don’t have to. It takes off the constant attacking and boring in close.

We can have treys and spinning away very infrequently—as occasional counterpoint to BAD BALL, but never so much that we cease playing BAD BALL. BAD BALL is WHO WE ARE. It is HOW WE WIN.

IT is OUR matchup advantage. It is what we can do better than anyone else, anytime, any place, against any opponent. If anyone tries to play BAD BALL that has not been playing it all season, as we have been, THEY LOSE, unless we are so injured, or so victimized by an unfavorable whistle, that we cannot use BAD BALL to our advantage. And even then the games are close.

KU has now proven BAD BALL can win without making a single trey!!

BAD BALL is not just a way of playing offense either.

BAD BALL is defense, too.

BAD BALL is not just Self Defense, though Self defense has in prior years always been much closer to Bad Ball than has Self Offense.

BAD BALL defense is shrinking the impact space of an opponent trying to offend.

Self defense in prior years is about helping and channeling your man into help, which is a form of shrinking impact space. But it has never been solely about that. It has been about winning disruption stats, and locking down certain players. But that is actually often a beautiful kind of defense. Watching Chalmers and Russ Robb go on the offensive on defense was a think of beauty. They were like leopard going on the prowl for a strip. It was gutty and muscular, and it took a walk on the wild side sometimes, but it took superior athleticism and hinged on athletic impact plays.

BAD BALL defense is about getting into the opponents impact space, both man on man and in help situations. If impact plays can be made, they are made. But BAD BALL defense is about gumming up an opponent. It is about shrinking and muddying up the opponents attack space first and foremost.

No matter where the opponent goes, the defender is positioning not to lock down the opponent, but to get into and then cut down the impact space, or the attack alley, so at the opposing offense happens almost in a kind of hand to hand combat.

BAD BALL isn’t pretty.

But BAD BALL, when you have the limitations this team has, especially as the injuries accrue, is the new good.

@brooksmd

Once one creates the vocabulary for a subject, without trademarking or copyrighting it, it is in the public domain, I reckon. :-)

It is one of the beauties of our language still.

@wrwlumpy

Ah, yes, the medical condition schtick. I love it when the underbelly surfaces in too short of succession for comfort. Always shortly after lackeys ply rhetorical devices old as public relations. ;-)

@HighEliteMajor

Oh, yes, it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay fun.

@KUSTEVE

I'm thinking Self could skip the next two games and KU would still tie for the title. :-)

Seriously?

My hunch is that he sat Devonte for the last game so he would be fresh as a daisy for this game.

I think Devonte and Frank are going to take turns guarding and running Staten till his butt falls off.

Self has always believed: cut off the head and the body dies.

This game will be about breaking Staten.

Staten is one man with not much behind him.

The press masks that by forcing the ball quickly away from Staten.

I believe Self will try to keep the ball in front of Staten, until he runs out of gas and then I believe they will drive him till he either drops, or gets in foul trouble.

Staten is the strength.

Break the strength and WVU will come undone.

@KUinLA

Howling!

@KUinLA

I apologize for all 11 titles.

@DoubleDD

Don't worry about the three. We have already proven we can shoot the trey whenever we need to. Now that we don't need to, we'll be even more deadly when/if we choose to do so again.

Self proved everyone wrong. The team could win a title attacking inside.

No reason to think they can't do it in the Madness.

And now that they have big averaging 22 ppg inside, won't that open those treys up?

Yes, wide open.

Don't fight this with deep think and resistance of what has worked.

Enjoy the bubbly.

And know that Self is now in position to completely switch gears yet again.

He is a wily one!

@KUinLA

ELEVEN

HOWLING!

@KUinLA
Are you referring to the Abrams tank that just blew up your POV for an 11th title?

HOWLING!

We have no friends from here on out, Brooksie. None.

We were never supposed to get past the apparent Nike stack in Austin.

The apparent Nike stackers are getting scared. The apparent Nike stacks are apparently supposed to take 3 of 4 final four spots and a lightweight Cinderella was supposed to be a lame fourth for BiG Shoe Bridge. The last thing they apparently want is Self and the Fighting Jayhawks upsetting the gilded Apple cart. It's KU against the World of the Wrong Way types. The gloves are off. We don't really know exactly who they are yet, but they are leaving tracks everywhere now.

Rock Chalk!

@REHawk

11 is for Perry and you and Coach Selfwho believed Perry could getter done.!!!!!!!!

Congratulations most of all to Perry who carried basketball's Merrill's Marauders through one of the toughest jungle schedule slogs in the country.

This is the point that the team takes a breather and the team physician walks around the locker room and comes to Self and says this team--the 2014-2015 Fighting 5037th--has done the impossible and taken the B12 crown for you, Bill, And it has earned a well deserved rest. What you and these young men have done is nothing short of miraculous. And as he says this Bill is drawing up plans of attack for the WVU, OU, conference tournament, Madness, and a final game against UK in Myitkyina. The team can't do it, Bill, the doc says. You can't do it. They agree to take a walk by the exhausted players. The doc recites the facts. Mason's legs are shot. OUBRE is running on one wheel. Selden can't clear the floor. Devonte could only go 4 minutes the last game. We dont even know what's wrong with him! Perry? He has been on the ragged edge carrying the team for too long. He can't keep doing double doubles without help indefinitely. Traylor? His explosiveness is gone. His hip flexor doesn't even flex. He can barely walk! Lucas? He was never supposed to play this much. He is beyond his envelope. He dunked and fell down the last game. Cliff? He is shell shocked. Even if you get him back he is clueless now from not practicing or playing. Sternum bruised. Eyes puffed up to slits. DNP. And the CO? Brigadier General Frank "the Self" Merrill? You've been driving yourself and these players to the breaking point since October 15. You've been recruiting and fund raising and coaching like you were 30 instead of 50. Same with your staff. Old guys trying to act like they were 20 years younger. And whoever is out to get you and this team by funneling talent out of Kansas, and stacking other programs, and leaking on Cliff, and leaking air travel expenses stories before a big game for an eleventh title, is not going to stop now. No, Coach, the 5037th Fighting Jayhawks is done as a fighting unit. It's not that it doesn't want to fight. It CAN'T fight!

And the team physician looks at Self incredulously as he returns to scribbling actions to get inside looks and searching stats for opposing team's weaknesses. And calling recruits, and dialing for dollars and checking his cell phone calendar for the next interview, and reordering practice drills and ordering flowers for Cin.

You can't ask these young men to go to Myitkina, Frank, they're finished. They've got nothing left. You've got nothing left!

They're not finished! They'll go, because it's the mission. They'll go because this is what they were trained to do. We didn't train just to stop here, at a title. The title was just an objective. Myitkyina was the goal all along. They just didn't need to think about it until now. And if it weren't Myitkyina, it would have beeen somewhere else. In this kind of warfare, in this kind of season, the opponents--the matchups--decide where we go and how we go there. These players will go Myitkyina. They just have to strap them up. And wrap the tape. And lace them on, and put one adidas in front of the other. We ARE going to Myitkyina.

And now no one rationally thinks they can do it. No one believes they can get to Myitkyina, much less take it,, but one leader and the young men of the 5037th Fighting Jayhawks, the new Merrill's Marauders of college basketball --the Bad Ball Brigade that just....will...not....quit!

And so its on to Myitkyina.

It's going to get way tougher.

No one has seen anything like this before.

If you want to go to Myitkyina, the march resumes tonight.

Kick ass picks!

Only add: president Obama writes Executive Order declaring KU is America's team permanently!!!!!!

@DanR

I agree that Rick is important to marketing the Big 12 at least until the B12 opens an EST eastern division.

Rick is from the southeast and he coached Providence. This I believe always gives media an angle for selling Rick directly and selling Texas and the Big 12 indirectly in the EST.

But down the road, it seems like we've got to add some EST teams for WVU to make this dog hunt.

@SoftballDad2011

When you ask a question like this you are going to get as many different answers as there are posts. Here is mine.

29.6 million person live in Texas.

2.9 million live in Kansas.

Media shows content and tells stories about the content to attract eyeballs and clicks.

Stories are narratives.

Narratives tell best when there is a hero to identify and villaing to good about opposing.

Media has learned that you don't have to tell stories with the media and the villain in the same story.

You can tell a story with a hero.

Then you can chase it with a villain.

And best of all, you can keep repeating variations on the hero and the villain until the hero and villain converge in a kind of show down.

Thus, before they meet, you report the hero to his base and you report the villain to the hero's fan base.

And suspense builds as the meeting of the hero and villain approaches.

Rising suspense holds and builds the eyeballs attracted.

How doe media decide who will be the hero and who will be the villain?

It looks at where the most persons live that might watch the contrived drama of hero and villain.

Where the most persons live, it picks a coach that is the hero.

Where the least persons live, it picks a coach to be a villain.

Thus it builds its audience in the larger market.

And in order to compensate for the viewers in the smaller market being alienated, it then tells a new story in that smaller market and picks either the coach that has been villainized, or one of his opponents to become the hero of the new story. And it picks another coach inside the small market, or out side it in an even smaller market, to be the villain of the new story.

This is call exploiting the primary and the secondary markets.

Any persons not attracted by these two stories are treated as tertiary markets that will watch because they have nothing else to do, or not watch. They don't care about the territory market.

If you think about the size of Texas and the portrayal of Rick Barnes, and think about the size of Kansas, and the portrayal of Bill Self that you have mentioned, then I suspect you will see a possible driver.

Welcome.

@HighEliteMajor

Second this motion of @drgnslayr .

@bskeet

If we transform Bad Ball into a ring this season, I suspect so.

If he comes back next season and we win a ring, probably. It is so tough to be a first team all American at KU without being one of those once in ten year NBA talent types.

But it is a pretty tough club to crack without a ring, or first team All American badge.

Self is looking for an every game match up advantage.

He can't find one among any of his guys except Perry.

Perry has been forcibly turned into what Self has always said is the toughest player to guard in D1--the Stretch 4.

Self knows he has the trey guns.

But to him they are complementary at most.

Bad Ball with a stretch 4 is what he has decided is a match up and scheme problematic even for UK, Duke, UA, and the rest of the Top 8.

He has decided that primary dependence on trey ball shooting would be a dead end. Why? I believe it is because he is confident that any of the Top 8 teams could pretty easily drive our trey ballers out to a distance where the trey ball percentage would not stay high enough. I know you doubt this is feasible to do, but everything I have read is that trey ball accuracy goes out 2 percent every foot farther out you go to take the shot. And I frankly don't see how any of our trey ballers except Brannen could get a trey off within a foot of the trey stripe against, say UK even with screens. You just switch off and with 6-6 perimeter guys UK can block Wayne's, Devonte's and Frank's shot every time, unless they keep pulling two feet farther out. Now, if you think about it, Frank's knees are shot. Wayne really can't jump a lick with his lost pop. And Devonte is 6-2 and he is not exactly Trey Burke on the range index. So: UK with four footers in the paint, can afford to guard our trey ballers out to 35 feet if necessary. And they've got a 6 OAD/TAD grade tall perimeter players, plus that one little short guy. So I think Self decided that Bad Ball with a stretch 4 and trey ballers to fall back on if teams packed it in was a recipe that could, if the team got hot, go all the way, plus win an 11th title on the way.

Bad Ball is here to say.

Another driver of the institutionalization of Bad Ball are the problems of the bigs themselves, as the season wore on.

Cliff was going to be the guy that out ran the footer both directions, but then Cliff struggled, cratered and had this NCAA thing arise, which the skeptic in me will not totally believe came up out of the blue.

Jamari, who was explosive at the beginning of the season, and could give us blocks and steals, but no rebounding or scoring, first lost his explosiveness from injury, and is now basically a walking invalid.

Landen--Landen revealed that he really can't take on air and he can't block shots or rebound much. He can guard the post, but that's it.

So: our composite 5 that we started the season with became more and more feckless as the season went on. And so when one fires up the treys, from 28-32 feet, as one would increasingly have to do, there would be little or no rebounding from the 5 and so little rebounding at all, without our perimeter guys trying to get in and snag boards rather than be out running action out 28-32 feet from the rebounds.

The only chance this team has to win a title, or a ring, is Bad Ball in Self 's mind.

And I suspect he is right.

I think the future is treys, but you have to have some bigs that can run and fetch the rebounds and we don't have them. The only way this team can get the rebounds it got against Texas is by playing Bad Ball--where lots of guys can be around the basket when we are blocked. :-)

I know its ugly and counter intuitive.

I know the future of the game is trey ball.

But for this team?

Bad Ball is the most logical path forward for it.

This team is decimated by injury, by wear and tear and by Cliff's removal.

Bad Ball with a stretch 4 and some trey balling to fall back on is not a bad scheme for this bunch of walking wounded.

Frank was our most reliable full time trey baller until February, then his wheels gave out and he can't hit shizz inside or outside now.

Wayne can make his hop shot--he can't shoot a jump shot--from three.

Brannen, for whatever reason, has not been making what few open look treys he takes.

I know if we took 30 treys a game, Brannen's shot would come back. But do you really want to hang the season on Brannen? As much as I like trey balling, and as much as I like Brannen, I would rather gamble on Perry than Brannen. Wayne? He couldn't get his hop shot trey off against the starting perimeters of the Top 8 teams come madness no matter how much action we ran for him. Devonte? If he could get them off they would just butcher him till he started coughing it up everywhere.

I don't know if Self can find a way to get Perry to score 20-25 points against the Top 8 teams in the country. But I know this Bad Ball keeps it very close, however he is doing it.

I know you emphasize that KU is 2-2 the last four games. And if we were playing conventional basketball, with everyone healthy, and a credible front court, 2-2 would be considered a near complete melt down.

But given the injuries and removal of Cliff, and the limits of our players, I think 2-2 is good enough in Bad Ball.

The object right now is to win the Conference Title the surest way possible, then blow off the Conference tournament and buy our guys the maximum amount of time to mend.

I am not leaving the faithful about the future of trey ball.

But the train left the station on this team being a credible trey balling team when the legs began to fail inside and outside,

Bad Ball with a stretch 4 shifts this team into scoring through its two best players--Perry and Kelly, and defaults into FT shooting, which this team does pretty well.

I have even rationalized the taking the repeated blocks.

The blocks lead either to fouls and FT shooting which we don't have to rebound.

Or the blocks lead to rebounds where the other team's shot blocker has already committed to shot blocking rather than rebounding. Our 5 simply cannot rebound ever, So it is best to drive at his man, get him to commit to blocking, and then he fouls some, and misses the block some, and when he does block it, our non 5s have at least a chance at a board.

One of the things everyone has been overlooking in the Texas KU game is that KU rebounded about evenly with a vastly taller, stronger and better rebounding team that KU. Think about it. Cliff was in street clothes. Jamari couldn't jump and didn't play hardly at all. Landen but for his one stuff barely took on air. So, how did KU stay even on the boards. One key was giving Perry 21 FGAs that drew his big out of rebounding and into chasing a stretch 4. The other key was all the driving by Frank and Kelly. Each time they drove and Perry was on the stretch 4 movement away from he basket, Perry's big was with him away from th basket and and the other Texas big was committing to the driver, which meant KU's other guys had a good chance for a rebound, or Perry did, because he knew what was coming and would crash after pulling his man away from the basket.

Bad Ball infuriating, nerve wracking and counter intuitive.

But the team has proven it wins sharply more often than Fred's offense, more often than Scott's offense, more often than everyone's but Lon Kruger, who is playing conventional Okie Baller offense, because he has a viable set of bigs to work with, plus some outside shooters.

The OU KU game will be really fascinating to see if Bad Ball can beat conventional Okie Ball.

If WVU were healthy with Staten playing at the same level he did in Morgantown, I reckon WVU would beat us again in Lawrence, given how beat up Frank is. And what a poor ball handler Wayne is and how limited Brannen is in that regard. I know what Self has up his sleeve for Huggie. And Huggie knows it too. Self SAVED Devonte for the WVU game; that was pretty clear. Self was determined to spend his already injured Mason for a win against Texas, which doesn't press, so that he would have Devonte ready to go big minutes against WVU if Frank's health continues to deteriorate.

Will we beat WVU? If Staten is healthy and they play as they did in Morgantown, no, I don't think we can hold our TOs down enough to beat their press.

Bad Ball with a stretch 4 requires at least holding TOs even to have a good shot at winning. You really have to be plus on minus on TOs and plus on strips to have a good chance of winning.

I suspect Self will assess how we do with handling the press and how Perry fares scoring on them. If we don't handle the press well, or Perry struggles against them, I suspect we will see Self give Kelly a huge number of touches, everyone will just drive the entire game in hopes of a home whistle and winning it at the FT line, and past that Self will just basically say, WVU is a bad match up for us (which they are), and wait to try to win it in Norman.

Could we see a burst of trey balling either versus WVU , or OU? If Bad Ball doesn't work for sure. But I think Bad Ball will be tried no matter what. It just offers too many different advantages given our weaknesses from talent, injury, and suspension not to do it.

Rock Chalk!!

@drgnslayr

Have you heard of the Buffalo Germans?

They were 792-86 and once won 111 straight games.

They are one of only five teams inducted into the BHOF.

They were coached by Fred Burkhardt, who learned the game from James Naismith, when Burkhardt was among the boys that played at the Springfield YMCA, before Naismith went west to University of Denver to get a medical degree.

In the Naismith coaching tree, Burkhardt is the forgotten branch--the YMCA branch.

Basketball had at least three distinct branches until WWI.

The branch that Naismith brought with him to KU--the college branch.

The professional branch that grew up entirely beyond his influence in the eastern seaboard cities under the influence of both entrepreneurs and gamblers.

And the YMCA branch, of which the Buffalo Germans were the most famed members of.

The Germans were a group of German-American youth that started playing around 13 and played for a decade or so. They played all comers any where any time, pro or college, if I recall correctly, but mostly other YMCA teams. They played lots of town teams. They played games in streets and in YMCAs, and in parks and where ever. They sometimes played 5 official games in a day and I suspect probably many more than 5 in a day unofficially.

YMCA ball was its own kind of basketball. The Germans were the best of it, but it is believed that at the time of their greatest dominance they were not as good as some professional teams of the time. They were probably better than many if not most college teams.

The boys played a brand of basketball that came and went; that was eclipsed by pro and college styles of play, not because it was better, but because the college and pro games were more economically viable.

But they accomplished the following.

Won Pan American Championship, 1901
Won Olympic exhibition title in St. Louis, 1904
Went undefeated in five of first eighteen seasons
Won 111-straight games, 1908-10

These things may be willingly forgotten. But by anyone that knows the game and really understands it, what this handful of boys did in the game's early years stands with anything KU has done, anything the Harlem Globe Trotters did, anything UCLA did, anything that ever happened in the Rucker Leagues, anything any ethnic group has ever done , anything any religious group has done, anything that ever happened in the NBA, the ABA, or the Olympics.

And yet, we do not begrudge the future for not being like them. For being different. For evolving to fit the new economics that have always underpinned the game.

My father, who played high school and some college ball in the 1930s, was unequivocally mornful through my time in the game in the 1960s. The fundamentals of shooting and passing had been jettisoned as a result of the jump shot of Hank Luisetti (encouraged by Allen Disciple John Bunn at Stanford), by the height of the early footers and later by the jumping abilities of African Americans. Height, jumping, dunking and physical contact killed off most of the beauty and skill of the game he had grown up with and loved. And he was as absolutely correct in his way regarding his game, as you are regarding the game of our time.

Meso-Ballers would hate what their game has become, even as they would love the monies and education once could get from it today.

I am supremely confident that Wayne Selden, when he is in his 60s will look at the game of his time and feel pity for the players and the way they play it.

Loss is a bitch.

And when one reaches the time of one's life where the game has morphed from the game we grew up with, the loss is enormous.

You are so right that today's players really have little conception of what you are talking about.

I look at the OAD players today and I can increasingly see that they know nothing at all about anything that cannot be learned in AAU ball, when they start out at UK, Duke and KU. Nothing.

I can see that Cal just goes with it.

I can see that Coach K and Self still try to teach certain aspects of the old fundamentals, knowing their isn't time, or personnel, or will to learn, to teach them all.

But Self, Cal and Coach K are practically anachronisms already.

But I don't feel bad for them.

I feel bad for Kevin Ollie.

He and his generation of coaches and assistants are the ones that change are going to obsolete soonest.

Ollie grew up the old way. He probably even played some street ball, unlike Wayne, and Cliff, and Kelly.

Ollie coached in the L when it was still full of street ballers and full of coaches and assistants that had been street ballers.

I really believe the street is dead.

Frank Mason appears the only guy on the KU team, for example, that plays like he spent a lot of time on a playground, or even a neighborhood gym.

Ollie could easily soon going to be eclipsed by the AAU coaches and the college assistants that came up through the AAU system.

And if Ollie isn't eclipsed, then he will soon be this dinosaur talking to kids about stuff that you and I would recognize but that the other assistant coaches and so on will have no clue of.

And the economics of the situation will not favor what Ollie know any better than the economics favored what Iba knew with in five years after he won two rings, or that Ted Owens knew after he didn't quite win his rings, and got the force out, because everyone had forgotten the significance of what Owens's knowledge of Bruce Drake's shuffle, and Dick Harp's and Phog Allen's games meant in the changing game of basketball after Wooden did what he did and made persons think that Drake no longer mattered, that Harp and Allen no longer mattered.

Dean Smith adopted the high low post offense from Iba's olympic team innovation, because he had been running Bruce Drake's shuffle that he had picked up at Air Force Academy, but believed that the Shuffle was too hard for the guys to learn at UNC. Running the Shuffle meant you had to teach one offense for m2m and a different offense for zone. Smith thought neither of the offenses he taught really let his super athletic players impact the way they could if he just taught a single offense--Iba's new high low.

Is it the game that is dumber today, or the players?

How can the OAD players of today not learn an offense
that was devised in 1964 to be learned in 3 weeks by players invited to the Olympics?

Simple, today's OAD players have only played AAU ball when they are asked to play high low. They don't have the fundamentals the four year college players had that were invited to the 1964 Olympic games.

But the problem is: look at UK's new guys trying to play the Dribble Drive. They really don't have the fundamentals for that offense either.

The basic high low offense is a brilliant offense. And it is super easy to learn.

Frankly, I've looked at the Dribble Drive and the reason iits days are numbered is that it relies on basic play ground abilities and fundamentals. The high school coach that developed it was coaching mostly play ground kids at his high school. And as we both know, basic play ground abilities are disappearing rapidly. So: the Dribble drive may actually be tougher for players to master than Iba's old high low. In fact, I suspect that one of the reasons that UK consistently performs so far below its talent levels is the Dribble Drive offense itself. Cal relies on OAD players that haven't grown up on the play grounds. Even the poorest among them have been plucked off the play grounds by they time they are 13-14 and shoved onto the AAU conveyor belts. But I digress.

My point here is that the game changes, as the economic framework supporting it changes.

The Buffalo Germans and their way of playing the game were no doubt things of great beauty and fundamentals of their times fully mastered.

But the game changes.

The fundamentals of one era are often drastically different from those of another era.

But it does not mean there are no fundamentals being taught.

I am sure the AAU coaches are teaching a brand of fundamentals.

And economics of shoes and agents may finally determine those will be prevalent for a generation or so.

But that too will change.

The irony of all of this is that it could turn out that the High Low becomes (maybe already is) easier teach to these AAU players than the Dribble Drive. life is full of little ironies like this.

But of course the next big thing that will replace the Dribble Drive and the High Low is being born somewhere on some court more fitting to these times of disappearing playgrounds and rising foreign inference and most importantly of all, in the suburban gyms where the African Americans are moving into suburbia and playing with Caucasian Americans, Hispanic Americans and every other kind of Americans. Its going to produce something awesome.

Trust me.

Wayne is going to be okay.

He will probably turn out to be the guy that comes up with the new offense suited for the suburban AAU context.

Often guys that were great talents that get injured and have to learn to play another way give the game much deeper thought than the ones that didn't.

Its the greatest game ever invented.

Rock Chalk!!!

@wrwlumpy

Yes, one must be very careful how one intervenes in the folding and unfolding holomovement that physicist David Bohm described at least metaphorically for we laymen once upon a time. :-)

Any imagery involving archetypes has to be handled with greatest discretion in order to manage unforeseen consequences.. :-)

Rock Chalk!

@Lulufulu

It is always important to reiterate that the apparent Big Shoe talent stacks observed at handful of programs remains only a hypothesis.

Big Agency could be driving this apparent phenomenon, alternatively, or in combination.

Personal charisma could be driving it, as some argue.

It could even be random asymmetry that will quickly disappear.

But what is crucial is that SOMETHING has to explain the phenomenon, if it proves real, rather than simply apparent.

Both the phenomenon and the mechanism triggering it have yet to be fully documented by any relevant authorities that I recall so far.

At most, we fans can say, well, it looks like duck from our vantage point.

And, further, even if it were a random phenomenon, those looking after the game seem like they ought to be thinking about whether or not it were good for the game for UK to have randomly 10 reputed OAD/TADs and Duke to have randomly 9 reputed ones, where as KU randomly has only 3, and some other elite programs randomly have the same or fewer. Would this sort of randomness be desirable in the game, or ought it be instituted out?

If KU joins the 10 reputed OAD/TAD roster club, it would be good for us, but it would only mean that talent were even more heavily concentrated in a few programs.

The real casualties of this recent, acute talent asymmetry are the major schools like OU, ISU, and OSU that are making every effort to compete seriously in basketball and increasingly cannot even sign one reputed OAD/TAD, or what used to be called a difference maker. OU has no Blake Griffin now.

I mean, it used to be that if one could sign just one difference maker to a D1 program, one could be a serious threat.

Recall when Texas signed Kevin Durant. They were an instant threat, just as OU was threat with Griffin.

Now, imagine if the next Kevin Durant were to come along and sign with say, Arkansas, or Alabama, in the Soft East Conference, where UK were to have 10 reputed OAD/TADs. Even a Durant lead team would appear to have little chance of winning the conference title against UK with 10 reputed OAD/TADs.

There have always been teams with more talent and others with less. But there has always been a chance for a program that signs a difference maker to compete for a title and make a run at a national championship, also.

When Larry Bird dropped out of Indiana, in part reputedly because he was overwhelmed by how much talent Indiana had, and in part because he was not used to the big scale of IU, and Bloomington, after French Lick, and went to Indiana State, he lead his team to a conference championship in a lesser conference and made it all the way to the national finals, before running into an MSU team with Magic and more good players across the board. It was still a good game.

That kind of asymmetry is what we ought to shoot for as tolerable. IMHO.

But letting concentrate so much talent on a couple teams, so that they become overwhelming favorites not only to win their conferences, but dominate their regions and the Final Four before the season starts just doesn't make sense to me. And this collateral effect of sucking the mere majors and the mid majors dry of difference makers REALLY concerns me.

Time will tell if this is a brief, random phenomenon, or the new normal.

But it is worrisome to me, regardless of what triggers it.

This is why I want the powers that be to approach this not from the POV that anyone is breaking any rules, because I doubt that they are. But rather from the point of view of what is best for achieving a desirably competitive degree of levelness in playing field.

Pursuing blame and punishment seems a waste of time IMHO. If something really illegal were going on to produce this phenomenon, it might suggest a kind of corruption that might be beyond being held accountable, or it wouldn't have gone as far as it already appears to have gone.

What we need are enlightened participants recognizing that a more level playing field is probably better for the game and the post season tournament over time, and so better for their and all of our enlightened self interests.

Rock Chalk!!!

@Blown

Ah, progress. :-)

Serendipity has always a role to play.

@globaljaybird

Shades of Wayne Simien's dominance.

Bad Ball is already proven to be no fluke.

The team has played it and won with it for nearly an entire season.

It has taken a loooooong time to break the old habits of trying play Good Ball, but starting sometime 3-4 games ago, despite a couple of losses, and what seems a 1300 mile slog through the basketball jungle of one of the toughest schedules played in basketball Burma, Brigadier General Frank "The Self" Merrill and his Basketball Marauders have crossed over into some kind of mastery of a new form of basketball warfare.

@drgnslayr rightly points out that this is "grind ball," but this is not "just grind ball." Grind ball was in prior seasons something Self used to resort to for stretches of games. And grind ball was something that still involved traditionally good basketball play. Grind ball was, shall I say, tactical.

What we are witnessing is something systemic. We are watching the result of early season Marine Corp indoctrination and training. We are witnessing tactics becoming strategy, as I have described on and off during the season.

We are watching anything and everything at hand being weaponized. Kelly Oubre plays soft? Go with softness. Landen Lucas can't dunk without falling down when he does? Go with it. Dunk and fall down. Perry can't shoot 50% from the floor as a big man? Go with it. Base the offense on him shooting 9-21. We have a half a roster full of 40% trifectates that go in slumps? Play as if they were always in slumps. Don't use them. Lose shooting 13 treys? Shoot 8. Jamari Traylor is so badly injured that he cannot jump at all? Start him. Use his limp for some sympathy from the refs, or something. Jamari Traylor is so badly injured that he cannot jump at all? Hold him out of the game till crunch time and have him, at a likely 6-6, block a shot simply holding his hand up. Need to get FTAs to win the game? Have Frank Mason drive 50 times and get 1 FTA. Go with what doesn't work, and stay with what doesn't work, to win.

This is waaaaaaay beyond grind.

This is the tactic of grind raised to the strategy of Bad.

This is a season of work and discipline and practice aimed at playing systematically Bad Ball.

This is getting a double double shooting 9-21. This is riding the back of a player that fades, and disappears at times. This is embracing what is not supposed to be good ball. And it is working. In fact, the more Self embraces Perry's deficiencies, the MORE this team wins. Perry has not gotten better at all. Self has simply embraced what he was doing wrong earlier this season, as part of the new standard of Bad Ball. Don't fix a weakness. Use the weakness as a strength. I don't know exactly how this works, just like I don't know exactly how Tesla can make a better car than the established majors after only 3 years, but this is clearly what is going on here.

This is the biggest innovation, no make that the biggest unforeseen consequence, in how to play winning basketball, since Dean Smith dreamed up the four corners as an antidote to his greatly talented teams be stalled to death, and instead stalled other teams to death.

I suspect within a year or so, we will begin to see the teams with the talent-stacks playing Bad Ball, too, of Self has any success with Bad Ball in the Madness, at all.

But this is a bigger, more counter intuitive leap than the 4 corners.

This leap redefines good.

Bad is good now.

Bad is not bad anymore.

Such inversions of values at the heart of anything are very difficult to adapt to at first.

America used to pride itself on winning wars.

Now it prides itself not losing them--on only starting them preemptively and intermittently stirring the pot to keep the factions fighting each other until an opponent is too exhausted to resist internally, or externally. It is Bad War, the war equivalent of Bad Ball in basketball.

We don't beat teams. We muck things up so badly that they finally lose the ability to operate coherently; then we back into the W. And they stand their scratching their heads thinking how can that be? We out hustled them. We out intimidated them. We shot a better percentage. Hell, we have better players. But they won. Its like William Westmoreland muttering and deceiving himself by blaming politicians and American kids, and the Cambodians, and the Chinese, and the jungle canopy, and the for Ho Chi Minh having a strategy he could not only not defeat, but could not figure out how he could not defeat it. Its like Howe, and Gage and Burgoyne and Cornwallis not being able to really understand how Washington prevailed by losing every battle, but one.

This is the essence of Bad Ball. Don't win a single battle if you have to, maybe even botch it intentionally, if it makes sense situationally, but the last battle.

The only battle Bad Ball is geared to win is the last one.

For most of the season I have noted @drgnslayr rightly pointing out all of the most basic things that this team is NOT coached to do properly. No shot fakes. Players aren't hedging worth a hang. Guys aren't keeping track of who is behind them on defense. A true point guard plays mostly backup at the 2 and 3, or in a very big game, like Texas 2.0, barely at all, while the starting point guard, a guy learning the position on the job, is having an absolutely horrendous game statistically.

And then it occurred to me.

Self no longer thinks those things matter, at least with the level of talent that he now possesses.

All that matters to Self, and to his team, is winning the last battle.

They don't care if you beat them 39 minutes and 59 seconds. This KU team only plays to win the last second.

Self, the new George Washington of college basketball, plans not how to win every battle, but rather how to win the last battle.

Self and KU are metaphorically speaking, willing to sit across the river from NYC, or in Valley Forge, or wherever, as long as it takes to get to the last battle, the only one it actually schemes to win.

Self and his team have gone through the looking glass again.

Maybe never to return.

People think I am being too harsh on this team saying it plays Bad Ball.

I am not.

I am actually paying it the highest strategic compliment possible, as an out of the box thinker, and long time admirer of George Washington, assessing what is going on here in the asymmetric world of NCAA Division I.

There is a way to beat what Self is doing. But it is not just by winning a game against it. One has to go deeper into it. And I am not going to do that here, because I don't want anyone to beat us.

This team has left the box people.

Frankly, it has put the box in the recycling shredder.

The basketball equivalent of Merrill's Marauders left the program long ago. Maybe even before the season started. But it has taken a lot of training and practice and games for the players to really unlearn their old habits, and really learn the new ones, and then adapt and reshuffle when the inherent flaws have been exposed game by game by smart opponents.

This team is playing another kind of basketball with another kind of criteria of what is good.

And it is playing it consistently and it is playing it apparently exactly as the Mad Man of Edmond and Okmulgee, Oklahoma, envisioned it could (and would) be played all season.

Sometime near the middle of this conference race there was a moment of truth where the team began to lose faith in the concept. Self in effects stared his team down and communicated someething like, "I don't care about your doubts. We are going to play Bad Ball and keep playing Bad Ball, and we will lose as many games as we have to, until we learn how to win the last battle of every game we play. Or let no player come home victorious ever again in a Kansas uniform!!!!"

What once we thought was bad became good.

And I am not kidding at all here.

The last loss to WVU. They were playing very good Bad Ball. They just got caught by a little more asymmetric home whistle that what is increasingly egregiously normal in D1.

That close win against TCU? They were playing almost text book Bad Ball.

KSU? Superb Bad Ball. That just got beat by a few defensive maneuvers by Helmet Hair down the stretch that Self will adjust to for the future.

Texas 2.0? Bad Ball mastery.

Can they win every game winning the last battle?

They don't have to win every game.

They only have to win the last battle of six games in March and April.

That is all they are designed to do; that and win, or share, a conference title.

They are expressly designed to play against superior teams, to constantly be beaten and out talented, and even out hustled and outshot and be given raw calls, so that they lose every battle for 39 minutes 59 seconds, but win the LAST battle.

If in time, Self ever writes a book about this new way of playing basketball, I am confident that we will look back at this team and say, "That was the genesis of Bad Ball. Those guys were the first ones that played it the way it was supposed to be played. They were the bunch that Self finally put it all together with.

If Self gets his roster of 10 OAD/TADs like UK and Duke, Bad Ball may go in the still born ash heap of history. It maybe forgotten by all but the coaches that really know the game--just as much of what Iba developed was forgotten, even has his high low/Carolina passing offense came to dominate basketball. Many play at Iba, but few understand Iba. Wooden deeply understood Iba. He understood Iba so well, he understood the underlying principles could be applied in full court, or half court, in single high post, or single low post, or double post, or 1-4, or four out one in.

Mark these words: the coaches that really know the game are watching very closely what Self is doing this season.

No one liked Hank Iba's discovery that you could slow the same to a snail's pace and win not one but two straight national titles. No one liked that Iba eclipsed Phog Allen's reign as the greatest coach. Iba was never loved anywhere but Stillwater.

No one liked Dean Smith's Four Corners outside Chapel Hill. No one. They actively hated it. And they actively detested Dean for doing it. Even Dean hated it. He wanted a shot clock to prevent stalling. Dean invented the four corners precisely because teams were stalling on his teams with superior talent. Dean was happy when the shot clock was added to prevent stalling for entire games. He got the shot clock installed the only way he knew how. By making everyone else hate stalling as much as he did.

I believe Bill Self does not really like Bad Ball. I am convinced he is sick of home whistles. I believe he is sick of talent stacking certain programs. But Bill Self has been faced with the rise of thug ball, and the ever increasing predicatability of a home whistle his entire career. Note: the modern home whistle is a product of systematically engineered hostile environments. I believe the home whistle and home court advantage are consistently greater now than in the old days. In the old days, the home court advantage was much more uneven. Now every road game is an exercise in overcoming engineered asymmetry. But I digress.

Back to Self. Self has at what is supposed to have been the greatest years of his career been confronted with asymmetric talent stacking at a handful of schools that makes a mockery of college basketball. And I believe he has responded to his circumstance with as much contrarian genius as Iba and Smith before him responded to their circumstances. Like them, he has inverted the game of basketball and what defines playing it well. Self seems to be saying, "Fine, you a-holes don't care enough about the greatest game ever invented to keep the playing field level, call the game the right way, and police those that seem apparently to be stacking talent asymmetrically, well, then here is how the game can be played that will upset all of this "wrong way" stuff that has been imposed on the game. Take this Bad Ball and see how you like it!!!!! I can play the game this way with a third the talent of the talent stack programs. I can win a conference title playing this way. I may win a national championship playing this way. And I can do this even if you deny me all but one difference maker.

And isn't this basically what Bob Huggins has been saying at WVU? Isn't the way his team is schemed a response to being denied the same level of talent of the talent stack programs? Huggins left KSU to get home to his alma mater--a program with a proud legacy in basketball. And suddenly the recruiting dynamics took a sea change on him. Where once he could haul in Michael Beasley to Manhattan, KS, now he cannot sign comparable talent at a more advantageous location to recruit from--a place where John Beillein, no charismatic recruiting type, was able to sign a lot of talent to. Bob Huggins has found himself crossing time zones to play every road game without the level of talent he has always been able to sign at UCinn and KSU, and so he has reschemed the way he plays. He has inverted the game of basketball. He plays Bad Ball Mountaineer style.

This talent stacking is going to backfire.

It is already backfiring.

It may work this season. UK is 29-0 playing in the Softeast Conference. But come the Madness, if it ever plays a game without a favorable whistle, against an accomplished Bad Ball team, it is very likely to be upset....the last second....after leading every second for 39 minutes 59 seconds.

Talent stacking is going to produce some counter strains of basketball that are going to change how the game is played.

To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And in emerging complexity in a heterogenious game space, like college basketball, the reactions are going to be largely unforeseen consequences.

The last KU-WVU game, and this upcoming one, are laboratories testing two of those unforeseen consequences.

Get ready powers that be biasing the greatest game ever invented for to the benefit of a few for motivations not yet adequately understood.

Here come the unforeseen consequences.

@wrwlumpy

First team all conference yes.

First team Bad Ball All American, DEFINITELY.

@stupidmichael

OMG, how I hope you are right.

I won't be able to stand the tension of going to Norman with 11 years on the line.

Win it now.

Win it in Lawrence.

Bad Ball the Mountaineers into submission. Don't let Huggie mug us in our own crib.

Its going to be quite a coaching match up, if the players on each team play to their unique styles.

Now that I think about it, KU plays Half Court Bad Ball and WVU plays Full Court Bad Ball. KU plays without a back to the basket game. WVU plays without shooters.

This is one of those meetings of two variations on a new theme that could shape the future of how D1 non-apparent Nike stacks play the game for the next few years.

Rock Chalk!!!!

@Blown

You are welcome, sir.

Strawberry, or raspberry, on the crumpets, sir?

Or shall I get you some fresh ones?

Rock Chalk!!!!!

@jayhawkbychoice

"Its what he does. Its all he does. And he absolutely will not stop until he has paradoxed you."
--Michael Biehn 2.0, as Kyle Reese 2.0, in a little seen sequel to Terminator called "Synchronator: The Rise the Okie Ballers"

@BeddieKU23

I am running out of fingers to cross in hopes that things do not evolve to damage this team's accomplishments.

But something has seemed awry all season with the BRD. Had hoped it was injury.

Oh, well, I've still got toes to start crossing.

@wrwlumpy

love that pic!

Caption: To Bad Ball!!!!

@drgnslayr

You got my morning rolling!!!! Thx.

"Jayhawk Worry and Wheel Company. Worried? Come to the Wheel!!!"

@Blown

You are right @Blown. @Lulufulu and I are old and running out of time, and so we were at a philosophically weak moment, because of the outrageous asymmetries of talent distribution. I cannot speak for Lulu, but I repent. We have to better understand the mechanisms of the asymmetries before we try to fix them.

Is it Big Shoe, Big Agent, Cal's "dribble drive", or Coach K's ongoing claims to be graduating players, while coaching a roster full of OADs that are driving this?

Or are we just caught in a mid stream transition to 10 man roster OAD ball?

Thanks for giving the old guys a gentle nudge.

Play BAD BALL and protect.

Also known as the Rule of Tens.

TOs under 10.

3ptas under 10.

Get 10 strips.

Perry makes 10 FTs and grabs 10 Reebs.

Kelly goes 10/10.

Frank drives ten times.

Hunter plays 10 seconds.

@Lulufulu

It might work.

@ZIG

It was a hard fought game.

We won a must win game.

We protected.

Perry got 28 on 21 FGAs and double digit boards.

Kelly went 15/9..

The Frank played through what seemed two bad injuries.

Heroic effort.

And textbook ugly.

@konkeyDong

Hunter moved pretty well during this second TEXAS game. And he has seemed to move without suggestion of injury the last few times he has made brief appearances. If I recall correctly the last time he seemed to show any stiffness in bending down to pick up a loose ball suggesting possible limited range of motion was back in December. If he had any significant injury, it seems to have resolved now. Rock Chalk!

Talk about some huevos!

Talk about a time when two teams are going to leave it all on the floor.

Talk about ANOTHER match up between two guys that have been around the block!!!'

Talk about clash of styles of play!

Talk about a fun game to look forward to!

Bill Self vs. Bob Huggins.

KU vs. WVU.

Half court vs. full court.

This KU team has been playing with a monkey on its back this season that has grown to the size of King Kong.

Win the eleventh title.

Fulfill eleven years of hard work in one game.

Or find yourselves tied with Boomer Sooners and having to go to Norman with no other tomorrows regarding this big, hairy ape draped over your shoulders.

Come on guys!!!!

You've reinvented the game of college basketball no matter how people bitch and moan.

No one has ever won a B12 title this way before.

Not any of our previous ten.

Not any other team that I recall has ever won a B12, or a B8, title with Bad Ball.

Bad Ball is the new good.

You guys have a patent on it.

No one right now has a flipping clue how you are doing what you are doing.

And its all to your advantage and all to your credit.

When they roll the balls out October 15, no one says win a conference title by playing pretty.

No one says, win an eleventh straight title inside out, or outside in, or upside down.

They just say, play ball. Come the first week of March, the team with the best record is the Big 12 Conference Champion.

You, gentlemen, are in the lead at 12-4.

And you, gentlemen, if you can win just one of these last two games, can sing along with Frank Sinatra....

And now, the end is near;

And so I face the final curtain.

My friend, I'll say it clear,

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full.

I've traveled each and every highway;

And more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few;

But then again, too few to mention.

I did what I had to do

And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;

Each careful step along the byway,

And more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew.

But through it all, when there was doubt,

I ate it up and spit it out.

I faced it all and I stood tall;

And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried.

I've had my fill; my share of losing.

And now, as tears subside,

I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;

And may I say - not in a shy way,

"Oh no, oh no not me,

I did it my way".

For what is a man, what has he got?

If not himself, then he has naught.

To say the things he truly feels;

And not the words of one who kneels.

The record shows I took the blows -

And did it my way!

--"My Way"
Songwriters: DUPRI, JERMAINE/SEAL, MANUEL LONNIE/RAYMOND, USHER

Well, glad everyone weighed in here and the consensus seems to be that Self and the team can probably expect to find their way through this thicket without losing the title...if we can nail it down the next two games.

Rock Chalk!!!

Self has done the impossible. He has apparently won a conference title playing terrible basketball for an entire conference round robbin, and without a single big man that can score back to the basket, or guys that can credibly drive it to the rim. And down the stretch he has done it with a team that lost its eye for the three point shot.

And now the most improbable conference title of all time may just as improbably be taken away from KU.

If Cliff Alexander were to have been found to be ineligible, then KU would probably have to vacate its wins this season and so its improbable title.

To lose a conference title, because you played a guy as your second or third center would be the pinnacle of irony.

And irony would surely be the definitive left motif of this most amazing and bewildering season.

And, yet, the very freakishness of this freakiest of seasons makes me wonder if this remarkably resilient bunch of Jayhawks may now only be fulfilling their destinies as the reincarnation of Merrill's Marauders on the basketball floor.

All looked lost for this team again and again this season.

But always it bounces back.

How it won a game today after discovering that all of its work might have gone down the toilet because of this thing with Cliff is amazing.

There seems no doorway forward through this.

The team seems stranded on a mountain jungle trail trying desperately to make it to Myitkyina to fulfill its destiny. The trail seems to have given way in a landslide.

There seems no way through now.

And yet this is the moment that separates the teams of destiny from the others.

Total hopelessness is the final obstacle all teams of destiny must achieve at some point.

They must go on to Myitkyina even though all APPEARS lost.

They must go on, because that is the mission, no matter what the chances of making it are.

So: I told everyone it was going to get a lot tougher and now it has.

From here on are the stuff that legends are made of.

No team should be able to overcome this.

Not one in history.

But the mission still exists.

Myitkyina still exists.

The orders stand.

And so the young men will go there.

One or another.

And Self will lead them.

There is no other choice, even though the trail is gone they must find their way through the unknown now without landmarks. Just a plan. Without reliable elevations. Just directions.

It is on to Myitkyina.

"They're looking for us, for all of these months, and (Brigadier Gen. Frank Merrill) was brilliant. We all had our exact orders. We would move in a direction north, northeast, south, we all had proper tools to tell us where we were going, for exactly seven minutes and stop and break off a quarter of a mile or a mile away. Thirteen hundred miles of jungle fighting."
--Stanley Sasine, one of the last surviving members of Merrill's Marauder's, finally awarded his Bronze Star for service in Burma, after being refused for decades because of a paperwork error that made it appear he had not served
ww.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/25/one-last-surviving-wwii-merrill-marauders-finally-receives-bronze-star/

Playing terrible is the new good.

Self has apparently discovered that in the OAD era, the team that plays the worst wins.

KU came out mediocre, and then systematically got worse and worse, until Texas seemed not to be able to take it any more.

Twice in frustration, Barnes appeared to call for Butcher Ball more out of frustration than anything else.

Texas could stop everything KU tried.

Texas could hold KU under under .9 PPP for a half and under 1 PPP for an entire game, and still they could not separate.

Self's new Bad Ballers simply wouldn't let Texas separate. When Texas squirted into a lead, KU would close the game, so that they could get another lead. When KU got a lead, Self would coach it back to 1 or 2 point lead.

Self masterfully kept the score close the entire game.

Self refused to let either team hold onto a lead.

His Bad Ballers simply would not quit keeping it close.

The team played furiously bad to let Texas get leads and then moderately bad to close the gap down to 1 or 2.

Self's Bad Ballers leaped out to a 6 point lead in the game and and then clenched their jaws and gritted their teeth and beat themselves several times down the floor to keep it close for their coach.

It was easily the most remarkable and counter intuitive performance on a court I have ever witnessed.

Self turned the game into a FT shooting contest, by systematically reducing his team's FG% to 36% and 12% from the trey stripe.

Self seemed to coach his team into playing so bad that it elicited an unfair advantage of 32FTA for KU to 18FTAs for Texas. The referees seemed to take pity on KU for how bad it was playing the game of basketball.

Perry Ellis scored 28 points on a lousy for a big man 9-21 shooting performance that was countered by a brilliant 10-12 from the charity stripe.

Kelly Oubre showed that he can get 15 and 9 playing the softest he has ever played at KU and that is saying something.

Frank Mason pulled off the near statistical impossibility of driving repeatedly to the iron, going 5-13 and getting to the FT line only 1 time!!!!!!

And all most as a foreshadowing of Self's and the team's commitment to finding themselves as Bad Ballers, Cliff Alexander, perhaps the biggest bust in the history of OADs may have ended his tepid KU career not with a bang but a DNP because of reported NCAA inquiries.

It was almost like KU dedicated the definitive Bad Ball performance to Cliff.

KU found themselves today and James Naismith Court.

Make no mistake about it.

After working their butts off to become the best good team they could be, it appeared the team had an epiphany: if we can't be the best good team, then we will be the best bad team.

They were an atrocious team team today.

They did everything wrong on a basketball court that a basketball team can do, except for three things.

1. They shot FTs well.

2. They protected the ball for the first time in a month (only 6 turnovers).

3. They won.

They didn't even play good defense, not in any conventional sense of the word defense.

They never stopped Texas. Texas just was terrible.

In fact. Texas proved today that a team can play too bad to win.

KU never played too bad to win, the way Texas did.

KU played just bad enough to win.

There is a fine line between Bad Ball, and crappy ball.

And KU has found itself right on that line.

If beauty walks a razors edge, Bad Ball treads a laser beam.

It is not at all clear that Self and KU can stay on this laser beam of badness required to win out and ensure themselves of the 11th title.

Bad Ball is perhaps more difficult to play than Good Ball.

A coach has to constantly deny you your strengths without you breaking down in disillusionment.

A coach has to constantly coach you back from 6 to 1-2 point leads.

A coach has to find wrinkles that help you come back from six down.

A coach had to keep a his team from ever being in control of a game AND keep the opponent from ever being in control of it.

You have to be able to deny yourself treys, so that you only take 8, 13 is too many.

And even 8 is risky, because if you shot a good percentage of 8 you might open a lead that the coach might not be able to narrow back down for you without you getting beaten.

But today the Bad Ballers were at the peak, or is that the trough, of their Bad Ball.

They whittled down every lead the opponent had.

The whittled down every lead that they had.

The kept it close till the end.

It was like no win in the history of basketball.

It was the complete book end win to the first win against Texas.

In the first Texas win, this team played as good as it could for a win.

In this second game, this team played as bad as it could for a win.

I don't see how even Self can find a way for a team to play any worse than this and still win.

And we know it was being orchestrated this way by Self because he was smiling the entire second half whenever he was not baiting the refs to keep it close.

Poor Rick Barnes. He is so old fashioned. He still sends his team out trying to play well and they just don't play very well for him. It was apparent that Texas out hustled KU and out intimidated KU, and pretty much out everythinged KU and without referees pitying KU and giving KU a home whistle, Texas might have spoiled this KU self discovery of themselves as Bad Ballers.

On the other hand, KU seemed so skillful at Bad Ball that this team of Bad Ball destiny might have found a way to keep it close even if Texas had not played too bad.

This team no longer has to fear competing with teams of great talent anymore.

The playing field is no longer level.

We are no longer competing to be the best good team; that was hopeless. They had the footers and we didn't.

Nooooooooo.

We are competing to be the best bad team.

We are competing to drag others down to our level, then keep it close, then win by one.

And sneer and ridicule all you want, or all I want, but this team is about to win a conference title playing this way.

No one can say anymore this season that Self is hide bound and stubborn and unwilling to innovate.

This is an innovation like none I have ever witnessed before.

Welcome to Bad Ball.

@HawksWin

What's great here is posts are kind of like peer reviewed articles. You learn new things and then you learn doubts about all or some parts of the new things.

I spend most of my writing energy trying to find what Self is doing and why, because he is smart and logical and systematic in what he does, whether it proves to be the best way or not. I learn a lot from Self.

But Self cannot, does not and should not reveal everything to us. This is his career and the most he can do is do what he does and toss us a few bones along the way. He tossed us the bone of playing a junk zone with 3 out m2m and 2 in zone. I missed it until he mentioned it. They try to mask playing it from an opponent and they in the process mask it from us. We all miss things; that's why it's so fun to come here. Share what we see, learn what we missed. Net smarter.😄

I also try to what might be done differently not to knock Self but to see if I can guess what he might try next. If he doesn't try what seems obvious to me, a layman, then I figure he is up to something--another way to skin the cat, rather than wrong. He usually is.

When he is doing something that appears wrong it is usually he cannot figure out how to make the change without greater costs out weighing the benefit gained. Being a professional he often knows these costs better than we do. He has been through this or that 8 years ago, or faced it at Illinois, or Tulsa, etc.

We posters here have our own knowledge bases. Some have quite a bit. By proposing and debating alternative approaches, we are trying to pool our knowledges to see if we can figure out what he is up to, or come up with a better mouse trap. Mostly we discover what he is doing. 😄

The huffing and puffing and frustration here is the pain of learning, or struggle to learn. It is like in a weight room when persons are grunting with loads they are sometimes not used to yet. Afterwards, they are ok.😄

Self is a great coach. He has pedigree, philosophy, systems, innovation, experiments, guile, and gambles coherent enough to study and learn some of. Lesser coaches have lesser amounts of these.

But the very coherence of what he does can open him to more criticism, because there IS a logic to it and logics can fail, or produce unintended consequences, or randomly err.

Our goal should be to be kind to Coach Self and each other, we will learn more.

No doubt we find flaws in him and in each other. There are flaws in everyone and every thing. Perfection is for suckers. Our universe is one of emergent complexity, of making the best of the incompletely understood. No one has a be all end all formula for correct action.

But I really enjoy learning what basketball has to teach. I never go a day here without learning something. I cannot say that about every aspect of life I engage in. I could say life mostly sucks, but instead I choose to say basketball suggests that if I could open up to life the way I do to basketball, I could learn more about life, too.

Teach, learn, play, love.

In no particular order.

It's a pretty good life, if you can stand the occasional pain and not always getting your way. 😄

Rock chalk!

@JayHawkFanToo

Never knew that about John R.

Thanks for mentioning it.

Our problems at the 5 distill to the following:

None of our 5s can guard the post AND rebound, only one or the other.

Two of our three 5s cannot steal.

Two of our 5s cannot block shots.

Two of our fives can run the floor, one cannot.

None of our fives can score in close.

None of our fives can score away from the basket.

None of our fives appear to be able outlet passes quickly and with length.

This long list leads me to question why we are limiting ourselves to these three fives.

@Jesse-Newell does a fine job of documenting how KSU simply ignored Jamari Traylor down the stretch and double teamed Perry Ellis.

I said in my immediate post game analysis that it might have been best to have played four on five instead of take the seven fouls our composite five got.

What to do.

When Self wants to play through Perry, it seems obvious.

No matter how long and strong the opponent's five is, we would be better off rotating Wayne Selden and Brannen Greene at the 5 and playing junk zone (3 out man to man and 2 in zone) when they are in.

We are apt to get threes from Wayne and Brannen on offense, and we are apt to give up twos with Wayne and Brannen taking turns guarding the 5.

Also, Wayne and Brannen are good enough at shooting Fool's Gold threes that the opposing 5 would HAVE to come out, which would make Perry's scoring a cake walk one on one with a rim protector out chasing Wayne or Brannen.

And junk zoning would let Wayne and Perry, or Brannen and Perry, help and double on the bigs.

This dog will hunt.

Wayne can't dribble penetrate effectively. Brannen can't guard the perimeter very well. Fine. Tell them both to shoot treys, don't dribble penetrate, and double all they can.

Will Self do it?

Probably not.

But necessity is a mother of invention.

Self needs to consider this option and engage in it to build leads for about 5-10 minutes each half, then defend the leads with his composite 5 of Jam, Landen, and Cliff.

Snacks needs to put the spurs to Cliff for 20 minutes, an the last ten minutes should be whatever else works on a gvien night.

None of our 5s can score back to the b

@DanR

Sports is full of endlessly fascinating characters that make us think about all facets of a life lived.Certainly Greg O being a multi millionaire with a long NBA career has made many think about what success and accomplishment are about. I like @drgnslayr's take above because there an athlete's respect of another athlete in it. Greg O has some guileless goof ball qualities to him. But he also has some guile about him too. I think any athlete that has plied his trade professionally has to have some respect for any other athlete that finds a way through the thicket of that difficult career and amasses a small fortune.

@joeloveshawks and @JhawkAlum

There is a crucial basketball quote by one of the greatest basketball minds the game has ever known--Red Auerbach. It goes like this:

"Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up."--Red

As far as I can recall, the chop is apparently a reworking by Bill Self of the Henry Iba weave dating back to the late 1930s, according to my late father. And according to @drgnslayr the weave was earlier developed by the Harlem Globetrotters. The Trotters date back to 1929 and back to 1926 as the Chicago Globe Trotters. And as I have read more and more about the early days of the game, I suspect we would find evidence of some version of the chop, or weave play back to the turn of the century. American football and ice hockey variations and games I probably haven't even heard of, probably preceded using versions of the chop and weave further back. American football has seen the reverse expand to the double reverse and the triple reverse, each with a flea flicker add on at different times. Who knows? Maybe @drgnslayr's and my at least mythically venerated meso-ballers chopped and weaved down their high walled courts in Chichen Iztza half a millennia, or more ago?

The point I want to make here is that offensive innovations become themes that recur in variations over time. But each recurrence usually has a shelf life extending until a defense is found to curb, or stop it. If defenses can only curb it, the shelf life can be long. But if the defenses discover how to stop it, the shelf life probably comes to an abrupt end.

One curiosity I have is whether Self originated the latest version of the chop, as I recall it, or if someone else around the country resuscitated it before Self did and I missed it? Whatever, it was one of those borrowings from the past that was inspired, for it has slowly spread in use for seven years that I know of, which is a pretty long shelf life for a situational offensive play.

Since Self began running the chop I have seen partial stops of it with switching, and just sticking with it.

But I had not seen it stopped dead in its tracks the way KSU did by playing a 3 out zone and a 2 in man to man.

Unless Self can come up with a way to make it work against Weber's counter defense, its days may be numbered in this recurrence of it.

@drgnslayr

I LOVE THAT schematic of a basketball court.

Just like some are drawn to study the geometries of antiquity--The Great Pyramid, etc.--I am drawn to the geometry of the court. I can look endlessly at that schematic. Its symmetry is ideal to the point of mystery. It is complex, but not too complex, so it has balance in complexity as sure as it has symmetry of form. Even the three point line, a late addition, adds to its elegance and beauty.

The greatest game ever invented. PERIOD.

@brooksmd

Thx. That means something coming from "an old military guy." Rock Chalk!