Howling!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Look at all the genetically engineered cows in the purple shirts behind those nice milk cows in the foreground. Looks something went very wrong out at the Experimental Barns. :-)
Mount me now!
Please God don't let KU wear anything but the home whites versus the Shorthorns.
And let every student bring a picture of A bleached out longhorn skull!
"When I find my self in times of trouble
Iowa State comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Here is a title just for thee
Let it be
Let it be...
Maybe the funniest line I ever read!!!!
Same kind of thing. Love Larry live. Love Larry in interviews and on paper. But Show makes me chuckle, not laugh. Know everyone loves it. Glad everyone loves. . But not in my funny spot. Same deal with Gary Shandling. I saw him live once and I laughed so hard I got as hernia. On TV, not funny. Newhart just the reverse. On TV = funny. Live = not funny. Go figure!!!!
I'm a schmendrick! What zit mattuh? 😄
Posting often isn't for every one. I hope we have kept things interesting while you have been reading.
Thx for posting when things get tough! Now is the time we need all hands. ISU turned it over to us against Baylor. Now we have to convert by beating long, tall Texas!
All the points you raise are significant.
Communication--team personality is an amalgam of key players. Perry has slowly risen like cream to the top. He is a quiet man who has been learning to play more physically. It has been hard for him to lead by example, while learning to bang and do all Self has added to his plate. But he is almost there. He is a true stretch 4 now scoring every where! But he is quiet! The team was at its best last TEXAS game when all the the guys were most focused and decisive. Since that beautiful first Texas game, Kelly hurt a knee and lost a little swagger. Frank has hit a wall that younger players hit their first season starting.Jam Tray got a hip injury that has sapped his explosiveness. Devonte got less bubbly. And so on. The answer to this is to finally let up on working on getting better, and telling the team they need to "find themselves"as Self has just done. He has communicated to them that what has turned into a late season "time of getting better" where the team has been adding new stuff and working on old stuff as if it were semester break instead of February has ended. It's about playing again, about being and not becoming. I think if injuries permit, you will see more of the personalities reassert themselves and see communication and that 6th sense of "team intuition" reassert.
Talent vs brains--brains take time to develop literally. 23 is the age most neural net connection are complete. Thus the younger teams need to have more talent to overcome neural deficiencies, than older teams, at the same level of competition. This is a YOUNG team outside Traylor and Perry. And then some just are smarter than others-in book IQ, basketball IQ, and street smarts. But I am no determinist. Nothing is written, because teams are manifestations of emerging complexity where many unexpected solutions happen to overcome constraints. Youth and certain kinds of dumbness can be overcome or there would be none of those occasional great highschool teams the rise beyond their talent to greatness. This KU team is so young and has some over grown kids on it that the real model for what greatness it might attain is the rare unexpected great highschool team. We saw it the first Texas game. It's in this team, if they can find it again. No one on the '07 team was really ready to win a ring. The '08 team knew what it needed to know to win a ring. Each team is different in when it can attain this knowledge. Some young teams attain it rarely. I saw it in the Texas game. Self saw it. It was so over powering that Self became obsessed with accelerating teaching to give this team everything it might need to win. In the process he coached them past their breaking point. Now he is trying to let the team identity reassert. Nothing is written. It might or it might not.
The Dooley Effect--Janks was a great loss. Dooley could replace him. Manning was a great loss. Roberts could replace him. Dooley was a great loss. Howard was supposed to replace him. The jury is out on Jerrance. He made a mistake six months ago that made big shoes even harder to fill. KU won a title last season with Howard filling the shoes. But sustaining success is different than having it once. The pressure may have gotten to Howard. Or maybe a bad habit just finally hurt him. One thing for sure: he can't coach and contribute suspended at a pivotal time of the season. If we need all hands on deck, he ain't here. That is real. What if Howard hasn't been his best the last six months? What if he is were like most other folks and needed his best to be his best over time? What if Okafor, or some other near footer 5 might have signed had Howard been just a little nearer his best six months back? Maybe it's not mattered, but being gone the past two weeks did. Yet nothing is written. Jerrance Howard might turn this into a game changer for himself and for this team, when he gets back. He could be better when he comes back. He could reach the players on a new level when he walks back in that locker room door. Great teams have great dramas; this thing with Howard rates as a great drama IMHO. Time will tell.
Bottom line: it's still a championship season til it isn't. Nothing is written. Great young teams can happen. Ad Astra per Aspera!!!
GREAT IDEA!!!
We need every edge we can get for Texas!!!!!
Gotta go in bold and strong and RED!!!!!
I love it!!!!
PS everything seems to work.
PHOF!!!!
Winning is our business. Our only business!!!
We are going to go through Texas like crap through a goose, then we are going to slice Huggie's man bra and his stinking press like a thousand razor blades, then we are going down to Norman and we going blaze through Lon's unibrow and his little red defenders like Auric Goldfinger's industrial laser cutting the steel table between James Bond's legs and say, when Lon is asking if we expect him concede, "No, Mr. Kruger, we expect you and your team to die!"
Rock Chalk!!!
Eleven is our lucky number.
Just goes to show how tricky humor is to do, and that trickiness is what I like about it so much. I used to roar at Fred's droll put downs of Ethel. And think Ethel was not funny. loved Lucy and Desi in the TV show. They made one of the worst movies ever towing that house trailer. My boyhood friend used to roar at Ethel. You found neither funny. My dad used to split a gut at MASH to TV show, which I always thought had been neutered from Robert Altman's movie of MASH. My father hated Altman's movie. I used to love Jerry Lewis Nutty Professor and hated Eddie's version of it. And saw Jerry Lewis interviewed and loved Eddie's version, which Jerry put up the money for. I love every Chris Rock stand up I've ever seen, and find all of his movies not funny. Adam Sandler? People love the guy and I have never laughed once. One of my best friends can't get one yuck from Woody Allen and I laugh the minute I see him walk across the screen even in a drama. Jack Benny supposedly could not keep from cracking up if George Burns just walked in the room. George was never funny. Only Gracie was funny. George Carlin? Funny before the existential crisis. Funny after. Gallagher? I have set in a room full of people laughing and I want to leave. Sam Kinison was the funniest human I ever saw. Period. Ever. I have a friend that actively hated him. My brother and I loved Ernie Kovacs. I always keep a DVD of his. My mother? She thought Ernie sucked. I loved everyone on the old Mary Tyler Moore show but Ted Baxter. Everyone else I ever met loved Ted Baxter. Mel Brooks movies? Hysterical. Mel Brooks live? I want to flee the room. Ben Stiller in almost any movie? Funny. Ben Stiller interviewed on a talk show? Billy Crystal doing anything but the Oscars? Funny. Seinfeld stand up? OMG, I am laughing so hard I am crying. Seinfeld TV show? I was desperate for it to end, so I would not have to listen to any more people talking about it how funny it was, because it NEVER made me laugh. Billy Crystal doing Sammy Davis Jr.? Wetting my pants funny! Billy Crystals doing the Oscars? I literally gave up watching the Oscars for years afterwards. Oscar Levant is the only guy that ever made me laugh no matter what he did. Books, movies, concerts, TV, it didn't matter. The guy could not be NOT funny. But I am in this club of 3, or 4, that ever liked him. Victor Borge reading punctuation and doing schticks at the piano? I can't stop laughing even after I know he's dead. But Victor didn't do anything else. I probably would have laughed, if he had though. And so it goes.
Howling!
Its only a wild guess about Brannen, but he probably grew up funneling offenders to baseline. Some say old habits die hard. At KU, in past years, it would have been a violation of all that were defensively holy to forget and funnel baseline. Perhaps some of what limits Brannen's minutes are little pecadilloes like forgetting to funnel middle. As you said, the help defense does not seem to be what it once was. Maybe Brannen is a small part of the problem, part of the time. Or maybe Self lacks the interior defenders needed to help, and he has made a change to let certain players like Brannen, struggling with defense, funnel to baseline. It will be interesting to watch for and see. I had not thought about this issue this season.
BRAVO!!!!
Way to bring it.
How could Coach Self, defensiphile that he is, argue with anything you've laid out? He would not.
He might pick one nit, and plead for a bit more time in making his transition to the OADs.
The nit: there are two defensive approaches to M2M. One is where you force offenders baseline and use the baseline as a sixth defender. Roy Williams and Dean and back to Dick Harp, who developed pressure defense, have forced things baseline.
But the other way to play pressure m2m is to force offenders to the center of the floor. This is the way Self has coached m2m defense his entire KU tenure, and I believe, his entire career. The middle is where the most help is. So: KU wing defenders are supposed to over play baseline and funnel their men to the center, where center where there is supposed to be help. For this reason, Self has always highly valued explosive athletes that could slide and help on defense.
Now about the plea for more time. It takes time to transition recruiting and roster to optimize playing a new way with new kinds of players.
I believe Self would argue that he is involved in a migration to OADs, IF he can get them. He is signing and playing as many as he can, but he obviously is not yet attracting the kind of numbers of them that the Nike Stacks are.
It will take awhile, if ever, to make this transition.
And as he migrates from one OAD in a specialized role (like Xavier), to 3 OAD/TADs and two 4 year types, there are certain things he can still try to do, and others he has to let go of partially.
And when he gets to 5-10 OAD/TAD rosters, then somethings he will let go of entirely and other things will be added.
I think last years team was a big move away from his core and peripheral philosophies.
This years team is an interaction back to his core philosophies, while still flexing on his peripheral ones.
Much depends on how fast he can ramp up to the new standard of 5-10 set by the Nike stacks.
Thanks for the response.
Does Jason support Olivia's right to work?
Was Steve Martin funnier than Stiller and Meara?
Is Chris Rock funnier than Ralph Abernathy?
Should we root for Batman over Joker?
Should we root for Superman over ISIS?
Do we want Patton to break out of the hedge rows or be assassinated by a sniper team sent by Reinhard Gehlen?
Are we for underwire bras for Dolly Parton, or boom cranes?
Should one support America over a private central bank?
Was Abraham Lincoln a better leader than Hosne Mubarach?
Is steak au poivre preferrable to boiled kale?
Should we call Travis Ford a little person, or a dwarf?
Should we hope for Kevin Spacey to be assassinated in House of Cards, or become First Emperor of the American Imperium?
Were the Gabor Sisters classier gold diggers than the Kardashians?
Should we root for George Clooney or Amal in the rumored divorce and settlement?
Is Bill Self better at coaching'em up than John Calipari?
Are KU fans more basketball literate than KSU fans?
Was Fred Mertz funnier than Ethyl?
Was Fast and Furious Six better than Fast and Furious?
Is a dog a better pet than a hungry Grizzly bear?
Is a Borsalino Fedora better than a Shriner's Fez?
Would we rather sleep with Kate Hudson or a angry gorilla that wishes to sodomize us?
Would you rather see the Hindenburg go down, or be in the Hindenburg as it went down?
YES. OF COURSE WE SHOULD ROOT FOR BAYLOR AND SCOTTIE.
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND (IF ONLY BRIEFLY).
(Note: this is a gag. It is only a gag. If it were a really serious post, you would be asked to turn to 581.33333333 megahertz on your radio dial and await further instructions from your Civilbate Defense Warning System.)
Losing to a second tier conference team, when KU plays poorly and that team plays its best, happens once each season, or at least every other conference season, if everyone were on their aricept as they should be, and recalling things with even partial clarity.
Losing to KSU on the roads means NOTHING other than the team has to bounce back. It cannot lose its self-confidence, as some board rats are doing, and bounce back. Our players are young, but they are increasingly tough. They will do it.
The more concerning losses to me were Okie State and West Virginia. We lost both places because we couldn't handle what they threw at us. They threw some really good guard play at us on both sides of the ball.
But think about what KSU did to us. They, too, threw some good guard play at us.
Light bulb over head flashing.
There is one common thread among the recent OSU, WVU and KSU losses that, in fact, extends all the way back to the ISU loss, the Temple loss and the UK loss.
We have been overlooking it, because we have all been focused on lack of standing height, a black hole at the 5, whether to play inside out, or outside in, and--and this is a very crucial and--we have been making an assumption that our perimeter play has been the strength of our team, despite Selden stinking things up regularly, Devonte vascillating between productive and unproductive games, and Frank playing consistently well until the last two games.
It has frankly been an odd assumption to make, and I myself have been making it, so I am not picking on anyone any more than myself. Svi imploded under the early pressure of trying to play on the perimeter. A reputed fine shooter, good passer, and able defender de-patterned before our eyes. First perimeter player gone. Brannen Greene has distracted us all with his trey gun. But, in fact he has very fitfully improved his defense to mediocre, and still has trouble following the most basic instruction of waiting for the ball to reverse before shooting (this is an astonishing deficiency after almost two full seasons, like continuing to take too big of bites after 20 years of parental correction). The great news about Brannen is that he has discovered a rebounding bone (recently) and the team is certainly the better for that, because Wayne Selden, Jr., all 6-4 and 230, or so pounds of broad shouldered muscle that he is, has come to view rebounding as something that is off his post-pop menu. Wayne Selden, Jr., averages only 2.7 rpg and really needs a post devoted entirely to his short comings this season. Wayne Selden, Jr., cannot dribble drive without losing control of the ball about one out of four attempts; this is a significant flaw for a perimeter player on the back side wing, who is often presented with driving opportunities as the ball reverses. To put Wayne Selden, Jr.'s ball handling woes in perspective, Wayne Selden, Jr., is tied for the team lead in turnovers with 57. This turnover number astonishes, because: a.) Wayne Selden, Jr. is tied with the team point guard, Frank Mason III and wings hardly handle the ball in comparison with point guards; Wayne Selden, Jr. averages playing nearly3 mpg less than Frank Mason III, and Wayne Selden, Jr. is completing his second full season of starting. Wayne Selden, Jr. has distinguished himself at times on defense, during certain games when his concentration can be sustained for an average of 30 minutes out of 40 that defense may have to be played. But there have been a number of games, where concentration on defense has been sustained for something significantly less than the defensive portion of the 30 average minutes that he plays. And Wayne Selden, Jr. appears to average 30mpg largely because Brannen Greene's iffy defense, and Devonte Graham's slight build and modest height are behind him pressing him only modestly. To Wayne Selden, Jr.'s credit, he has a very Brady-esque assist level of 85 (second on the team), and has overcome a very difficult early trey slump that most excused as adjusting to changed shooting mechanics, and he presently resides at a Brady-esque 40% from trey, playing a Brady-esque number of minutes (when Brady was also not being pressed by an OAD), although with, as noted, an un-Brady-esque team leading number of turnovers. Without putting too fine a point on it, Wayne Selden, Jr. needs to get better at putting the ball on the deck and protecting, and hope and prey that an offseason with Hudy can rekindle some pop, or else study film of Travis Releford's old man's game. Presently, Wayne Selden, Jr, is very vulnerable to another Brady-esque experience; that would be finding his minutes falling to 20mpg next season, while playing behind an OAD. And this of course leaves us Devonte Graham and Kelly Oubre to contemplate without assumptions. Devonte, we have all been rightfully grateful for simply because freshman playing even backup rotation minutes at either 1, or 2, have been rare as chicken dentures under Self and we had a SERIOUS need for him to play, since Conner Frankamp ditched this team for home cooking and reputedly perhaps a little home brew. Devonte averages 16.5 mpg, shoots 44% FG and 39% treys, makes 70% of FTAs, and. Devonte, playing half the minutes Wayne Selden, Jr., plays, has about as many assists and fewer turnovers per minute than Wayne. Where Devonte costs us most relative to Wayne Selden, Jr., is that he rebounds about half as much as Wayne per minute played, and Wayne, as noted, is not doing an imitation of Bill Bridges, who was at about Wayne Selden, Jr.'s height and weight, and with two bad knees, compared to Wayne's one bad knee, one of the great rebounders both in KU history, and in NBA history. But I digress. There is a remaining stark contrast between Devonte and Wayne Selden, Jr., that needs to be made manifest. Devonte makes 48% of his 2ptas, whereas Wayne Selden, Jr., makes only 35%; that is an enormous difference. The point here is that Devonte is who should play, when Self wants to score inside the trey stripe, hold TOs down by a couple less per game, can get by with one or two less caroms, and the other team has a slender, not too tall two guard to defend, and Wayne is who should play when Self wants to score outside, doesn't care about a couple more TOs per game, needs one extra rebound per game, and the opponent has a long and strong 2. Self actually has a hard choice between these two. Both are adequate but both have costs. Wayne costs you TOs and is a free mason inside where Self wants to play the short trey game so often. Devonte can't really handle the long and strong 2s that are increasingly prevalent with the muscle ball coached teams. Plus Devonte has to spell Frank 5-10 mpg. And last but not least in this stroll past perimeter assumptions, we have OAD Kelly Oubre--he of the 7 foot wing span, who is supposed to be a junk yard dog disrupting on defense and a high scorer on offense. Well, Kelly averages a merchandise protecting 20mpg, while scorching the nets at, um, 44% FG, 39% from trey. and 68% FTs. Kelly's FG% is behind Perry's, Frank's, Cliff's (yes, you read right), Brannon's, Devonte's, Jamari's, and Hunter's (what few times Hunter has not been frozen stiff in his cryogenic bench chair). This is quite an extraordinary number of non OADs to be ahead of an OAD on a team that is NOT stacked with any likely first round draft choices on the perimeter OTHER THAN Kelly, is it not? Ah, but our one freshman OAD starting has a 7 foot wing span and so he must necessarily be leading the team in rebounding and strips, right? I mean this team is known for having short bigs that are height independent, frankly, shall we say, carom challenged. And sure enough, Kelly is averaging nearly 5 rpg, which puts him, uh, behind Perry, and, uh, Cliff (you read that right). Still, he is a strapping 1.5 rpg above Jamari Traylor and Landen Lucas, but that says more about the abject shortcomings in carom-snagging of Jamari and Landen, than it does something shining about Kelly's rebounding. But wait! There is the category of steals that Kelly must be an avaricious bird of prey at--must be distinguishing himself at. Kelly has 29 steals!!! Why, that is ten less than Frank's 39 and only 3 more than Perry's 26. And get this! It is only 6 more than Jamari Traylor's 23 steals.But there is more to being an OAD that will go pro in a few months than being average or below in all the above stats. An OAD going pro needs to be a prolific scorer, too, right? Well, Kelly hardly lets us down there either. He is scoring a whopping, um, uh, well, he is scoring, @Lulufulu, please get a grip here, Kelly Oubre, our ace in the hole, our perimeter OAD, our difference maker, our go get a basket man, Kelly is averaging....drum roll please...8.6 ppg.
Now do folks see why Coach Self has decided to go inside, ooh, say, whenever opposing teams decide to take away our perimeter trey balling with some decent guards? Take away our trey balling, and well, our perimeter doesn't look quite so sterling, even though we fans have been counting it as our strength for most of the season.
It seems that not so long ago, Coach Self looked at the statistics that I have been looking at just now, instead of looking solely at our perimeter players rather gaudy three point shooting numbers, and noticed that there were a lot of holes in the outside game TOO! And if this team focused solely on three point shooting before long it would be facing defenses that were forcing it out to, oh, say, Naismith Drive, or maybe even 23rd Street, to take our shiny treys, and since trey percentage diminishes substantially with each additional two feet farther out the shot was taken, Coach Self revealed a touch of the poet and called the three point shooting phenomenon a kind of fool's gold.
Let me put some words in Coach Self's mouth here that Coach Self was probably too wise to articulate until after the season. Yes, we have some good trey ball shooters. But presently, our perimeter guys are as much Swiss Cheese, as our big men are. And if both our outside Swiss Cheese, and our inside Swiss Cheese, don't learn to play some ball generally, we will be running ball screens and come backs and fade curls just to get 35 foot jump shots. And Coach Self apparently asked someone to run the numbers on the likely trey percentage with everyone on the other team laughing their asses off at the KU guys running action out on Naismith Drive for open look treys, and said, "Well, then our three point shooting is fool's gold."
Coach Self also apparently noticed that despite all the bad mouthing, and all the ridicule, and all the scorn, the only guy on this entire team with respectable D1 numbers were Perry and Frank and over time moving Perry all over the floor has kept him productive in a way that other teams not been able to rein in as much as they have been able to rein in even Frank.
Now, @REHawk, I think we all owe you an apology, because you have kind of been Perry Ellis' godfather here, and you have had to listen to a ration of fecal matter from all of us, regarding Perry's shortcomings, of which, as with all players, there are some, but as the season wears on, and the bottom line of statistics keeps getting bolder, Perry is, at the very least, the leper with the most fingers on this team.
The team has played inside out for a stretch. The team has played outside in for a stretch. Now it is back to inside out for a stretch. This seems, for better or worse, determined by which part of KU's game the opponents get it in their minds that they can most constructively take away from KU.
Overall, Perry's 48% FG, 40% Trey, and 70% FT numbers, plus his 14 ppg are approached only by Frank, and whereas Frank is trending down a bit from the wear and tear and greater minutes, Perry appears to just be hitting his stride.
And Perry is doing this without a flipping 5 registering on the radar screen for the last month.
If Cliff ("If Cliff" should be his new nickname) could just turn a corner here, even a very wide radius one that just got him back into the next parallel universe to this one, instead of being unstuck in the chronosimplstic infindibulum of College Basketball Universe 9, we could get on with the business of making something special out of this season. But I am digressing into the black hole of the five that has so preoccupied us all, and Self too, probably, this season, when what I hoped to do was explore the unexplored perimeter.
So let me get back to it.
The limitations of our perimeter limbed at length above trigger an unfortunate cascading dynamic, when combined with our black hole at the 5.
When our guards cannot hold serve, that is, when they are equaled or exceeded in talent by the opponent, that starts a default down into our black hole at the 5, and that is a no win for KU, which in turn leads to requiring our perimeter guys to drive to iron to try to get some short treys, which cascades into our perimeter guys losing their shooting legs, which cascades to three terminal conditions.
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Our perimeter guys lose their shooting legs for treys and treys start clanking, which means we lose our ace in the hole--the timely cluster of threes that build leads, or close them.
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Our perimeter guys turn the ball over more and the opponent converts those to more points that shorten the shelf lives of our leads and make it much, much harder to come back from even a small deficit.
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Our perimeter guys cease to be able to guard hard enough to get stops and force turnovers and a Self Defense that cannot stop a run, and get more possessions for a Self offense is a prescription for disaster.
This all tracks back to black hole at the five, which emboldens smart coaches with good guards to figure KU cannot beat them inside if they cheat outside, and KU's perimeter players have such faulty floor games, that if you just push them back far enough from the trey stripe, either they are going to miss the treys, or wear themselves out and mistake themselves out going inside that this is the recipe for beating KU.
And it is.
This post is not about solving the problem.
This post is about clearly delineating it.
We have a few days to kick the solutions around before Texas.
There are always solutions to clearly, accurately defined problems.
Sometimes the solutions may not make things better, but often they do.
Yeeeee hawwwwwww.
I love this game.
Chaplain, dial up a rain for us, too. We are in good with the almight of all cultures and if you dial up the rain dance, I am quite certain the almighty will be listening and do his part!!!!
Dismissed.
KSU doesn't seem athletic enough, or good enough shooters to stay with ISU, wherever they play. ISU will shoot the trey, where KU would not against KSU. But then I never dreamed KSU would beat KU at home even if KU played with their pants on backwards. :-)
I think OU is very strong, and mobile, and is, like KU, a tough combination for ISU to handle. So: I still like OU stealing one from ISU when ISU will be at the end of 3 in six.
And we might catch OU weakened.
Or WE might be weakened and lose two, or three.
It is going to be one wooly, wild ride, and as always in sports, it comes down to want to mixed with some match-ups and breaks.
Rock Chalk!!!!
Chaplain, we need that weather prayer NOW!!!!!!!
I am very confident we will bounce back with a week to prepare for Texas.
I expect KU to win 2 of the last three and tie. If we win out, we are gold. We should lose to OU on the road after Texas and WVU. But OU has to play ISU and KU in a short span of time, so we have a 50/50 shot of beating OU in Norman. If we do we are guarantied a tie and probably an outright title.
I expect ISU to win two, or three of its last four. They have to play 3 in six with the last one being OU. They should lose to OU, because of the 3 in six schedule. Then they get a breather and play TCU, who they should beat. I expect 3 of 4.
All in all, I see what we are going through as quite reasonable.
Any team that gives KU the outside from here on, will see KU shoot 20 treys.
Any team that stretches to guard the trey stripe, will see us go inside.
I suspect most teams will play to deny our trey game.
We will spend much of the rest of the season being lead in scoring by Perry and Kelly and Frank and that is as it should be. Frank has hit a wall. He will bounce back. Devonte is ready to make another little incremental improvement. Greene will find the range.
The bad news is Perry's is back to 10-16 productivity, which will not cut it. We cannot afford an inside game that only makes 10-16 at its best. I disagree that Perry played a great game. He played a great half. But the minute his spin moves start, the team's goose is cooked. Perry spinning as The Blender is guarantied to produce 10-16 games inside. We only want Perry dunking and drive to iron. Every spin move needs to be kicked out for a trey, or dished to a driving Oubre. Everytime Perry starts spinning the rest of his game goes soft. It is a barometer of his backsliding. The first half Perry was efficient. Didn't take too many shots and played forcefully. The second half he went into spin mode and that was really when KU lost its momentum.
Wayne has continued to give us Brady defense, and Brady numbers without the Brady 40% trey. It isn't what we were hoping for from Wayne. And when Devonte comes in we get Tyrel defense and Tyrel numbers with some better ball handling, but without Tyrel's 46% trey his junior season, but rather with Tyrel's high 30s trey his injured senior season. Since I have been a great fan of Tyrel and Brady, I don't consider this knocking Wayne, or Devonte. Quite the contrary, we had 30 win seasons, conference titles and ups and downs in the Madness with Tyrel and Brady. So: I am confident we can have the same with Wayne and Devonte this season, and even better out of them next season. Wayne is playing up to some of their numbers starting as a soph, and that's something Tyrel could not do, but Brady could. And neither Tyrel, nor Brady, could start as frosh, or play rotation minutes as frosh, the way Wayne did, and now Devonte has done. So: weak as Wayne's play has been and up and down as Devonte's has been, these two guys are good enough to get us to 30 wins...if....they have three guys to carry them the way Tyrel and Brady had. Perry, Frank and Kelly are the carriers. What is missing is that 5.
So: I am still optimistic for this team this season. If we could win 30 games and conference titles with those Tyrel and Brady teams that essentially had one, or no, OAD/TAD types, we should be able to match that with 3 OAD/TAD types on the team, even if only one of them is now playing like an OAD. The light can still go on for OAD type players at any moment.
I do think Wayne is going to have to pick it up a little to match those teams, but not much.
But the decisive issue is the 5 and what to do about it. Those teams had some effective post play at both the 4 and 5, not just the 4.
We just can't have any more 3 point, 7 rebound, 7 foul games out of our three man committee at the 5. If we can't get any productivity in scoring and points, then we have to start Landen and know he will at least hold down the fouls, as he puts goose eggs up on the rest. If it were up to me, Landen would be starting. I was content with Jam Tray, but since his hip flexor issue he just has not been able to bring what was needed. We don't need much, but we do need something. And Self is right to try to keep giving Cliff looks in hopes something clicks for the BRD. Nothing much to lose doing it.
But what to do at the 5 is another post.
Anyway, I am still pretty confident we will eek out another title.
But I certainly understand everyone's disillusionment and dashed hopes after the last three games. The team has hit a February slump and we are not sure if it is because the team has hit the usual January, or February funk, or if it is because the team has a black hole haunting it at the five that is slowly inexorably eating away from the inside out.
At times like these I recall the Texas game. 3 Turnovers. Crisp passing. Timely shooting. Aggressive defense. Good rebounding.
I know Texas wasn't a great team, but they were a stinker either.
Keep taking your vegetable and fruit juices, keep giving us your wisdom and insights which help me always, but don't give up the ship.
Rock Chalk!
I have not reviewed any video, or stills of the situation. But Assistant Coach Kurtis Townsend has always appeared one of the coolest, calmest coaches on the bench, and in interviews, in all the years I have been watching and listening. Rock Chalk, Coach Townsend.
Dear To Whom It May Concern:
I was terrified.
It was the largest hog stampede I have ever witnessed.
I am concerned for our players exposure to swine flu.
One of the KSU players was vomiting at one point in the game.
Has CDC been alerted?
(Note: just joking here, but the the practice of storming the floor needs to be stopped. PERIOD.)
By god, any man that can work Elizabeth Kubler-Ross into a basketball post HAS TO BE SAVED!!!!!!
Alright, board rats, we are going to pull out of a winter battle in Lawrence, Kansas, move half a continent in a winter storm, and we are marching into Bastogne, Vermont, and we are going to kick these last three B12 paper hanging sunnsabitches all the way back to Bennington!!!!!
CHAPLAIN!!!!!
We need a weather prayer!!!!!
@Lulufulu is trapped in sub zero weather and snow up to his kanakas.
We need a weather prayer for Lulu.
Its bad enough we have to fight Texas, West Virginia and Oklahoma. We should haven't to fight this weather too.
(Note: yet another shameless allusion to Franklin J. Shaffner's "Patton," starring George C. Scott.)
I like it when you get purposeful!!!
This is the kind hit you have to take to get better.
These obstacles stand between not greatly talented teams that aspire to greatness.
UConn last season took some serious lumps before their run in March.
The '88 team looked like a lock for a time as a champion and then was decimated and reduced to Danny and a bunch of stiffs. But then they became the Miracles.
All that is happening is that we grow increasingly near the discovery of how much fight is in these guys.
We are still tied for first.
We need that first place finish to have our best angle of attack in March.
But I am not giving up on this team even if they lose the rest of their game.
The trey guns have rusted.
But guns can be oiled and their actions restored.
Come March, we are going to be dangerous.
We are going to find a way to learn to play around the black hole at our center.
One way, or another.
Rock Chalk!!!!
You are both efficient and accurate.
I wrote another post on another thread in response to a sound response by @DoubleDD and @KUinLA that indicated the defense was a significant problem also. I attributed the defense failure to the decision to begin attacking with the guards in the second half to try to turn it into a FT contest on the road, which is always a tricky proposition, because of the difficulty in getting a favorable enough whistle to off set the wear and tear on the guards. Self got the FTs he wanted and those FTs are what kept us in the game as long as we were in it. But the cost of the FTs was energy sapping driving by Frank, Devonte, and Wayne. And so when it came to the last 10 minutes, our perimeter guys had spent their reserves trying to score the hard way, and could not stay with KU's perimeter guys down the stretch. KSU made some shots on the open looks. Just a few treys, but more than we could counter with. They could a lead late the way we like to, then they defended (milked it) and overguarded the trey stripe on us and we could never get back in it.
Again, Weber just used Self's strategy on us and his guys played harder and longer than our guys did on defense.
I am in an awkward place to discuss this issue. I am essentially on the side that we could be shooting more treys and having another set of problems to deal with, but I am trying to defend the idea that Self's approach is valid also, even though it brings with it its own set of problems.
When you lack as big of a piece of a basketball team as a credible post man that can score and rebound to go along with your stretch 4, this is going to be an enormous problem to play around which ever of the above approaches one takes.
I don't see the High Low Offense as any more the cause of the problems than would I see the dribble drive being part of the problems. Each offense applied to these players would face serious costs and benefits without a credible post man. I mean look at how many footers Cal signs just to be sure one works out; that's how important coaches think these big centers are to a successful team.
I agree that we cannot blame our shooters for not suddenly being able to pull treys out of their hats at the end.
Desperaton shooting is desperation shooting whether you are doing it inside our outside. It rarely works.
This is why I don't judge this game on the shooting at the end. The plan wasn't for them to have to be shooting desperation threes. I am confident the scout and the game plan did not call for us to be shooting desperation treys. Likely the plan was to build a ten point lead and defend it at the end.
The reason I keep repeating the Merrill's Marauder's angle is that no matter which way Self might have turned early in the season, he was going to be facing a big, big, BIG hole in the middle of this team, and the only way this team was going to become great was through a harrowing march through extreme ups and extreme downs. It was inevitable.
You put this roster of players in any offensive and defensive schemes you want and you are going to run into a very problematic season of the kind we have been watching.
And to reiterate, this team has not seen the last of the horrors.
The only way this team can become great is to make pain its friend and hell its zip code, and go deeper and farther into sacriice and suffering than other teams are willing to go.
I know I would have schemed this differently than Self has this time, but it is the first time I have ever substantially differed from him in eleven years. But...
I also know there was no silver bullet scheme with this roster of players.
Too many holes for it all to fit together tightly.
Name me one team that has ever won a B12 conference title, or B8 conference title that had no back to the basket scorers. Never been one.
Name me one team that has ever won an NCAA ring without a back to the basket scorer. Maybe UCLA's '63 ring team, but other wise not one since then.
Self is trying to do something that has never been accomplished in any power conference that I can recall.
Win a conference title without a player with a big man with a back to the basket game.
It would be a staggering problem whatever offense you run, and however many 3ptas you decide to take per game.
First, the premise of your argument that this has to do with playing the High Low Post is a false one.
The team has won playing the High Low all season. It never runs another offense. When it runs out of the 1-4 all it is doing is pulling its post men out high. And when it runs 4 out one in, it is leaving one post man low and playing Perry outside. It is always the High Low Post Offense. Always. It is the offense Larry Brown and Dean Smith and Roy Williams have run. It is the offense all the Okie Ballers have run. It is largely what Bruce Weber runs.
The issue hinges entirely on where Self decides for the team to try to attack an opponent, which formation of it they run it out of. If the opponent tries to take away the outside shot, KU attacks inside. If they take away the inside game and give away the outside, KU shifts the high low formation to the 1-4, or the 4 out one in.
The team has won several games outside in this season, so we not only know they have the shooters to play that way, but they also have the offense for the shooters to play that way.
The question of whether Self could, or would, evolve his High Low Offense so that he could take advantage of his good outside shooters was answered almost a month ago now. He did.
The question is why has he decided to spend the last month playing inside out with the High Low in its conventional 1-2-2 formation and 1-3-1 formation.
The answer is we have played a series of teams that have decided like KU fans have decided, that the strength of the KU team is its outside shooting game. The opponents have either zoned us with matchup zones outside that make the 1-3-1 formation of the High Low Offense the appropriate formation, and make attacking the seams inside the appropriate place to attack the zone.
When we see zones pack it in, Self stays in the 1-3-1 formation and the number of 3ptas rises to 20.
When we meet teams that decide to pack it in on m2m, then we see Self shift formation to 1-4 and four out one in and the 3ptas rise to 20 and the bigs either drive or cut to the blocks for scoring.
For several games now we have had opponents that have taken away the outside game, so KU goes inside.
KSU clearly over played our perimeter to take away our treys and gambled that their bigs were strong enough contain our bigs.
So: Self responded not with going to the big men on the blocks to score, but to feed cutters, and also to his strength, his guards to drive the lanes. We got quite a few feeds to Kelly cutting to the rim early, or Perry across the lane. But Weber adjusted to that. The next line of attack was from the guards. Frank, Wayne and Devonte went to iron, but were not up to the challenge, though they drew some fouls and made some FTs that kept us ahead and then even for awhile.
But finally, our defense broke down, which I think happens often when we start asking our guards to drive a lot. They take a beating and they expend a lot of energy and it shows in their defense on the other end after 5-7 minutes of doing it.
That was when KSU squirted out into its little lead that it then began defending.
Basically, we had done to us, what we do to other teams.
Weber took away our outside game, kept it close, kept adjusting his defense to shutt off our various attacks inside, waited till our guards tired from our attacking, had his guards squirt free for some treys and a few easy inside baskets, and then he told his players to tighten it up again and defend the lead. Then when our guys tried to run some stuff for threes in desperation at the end, KSU's guys played 3 man zone out front on the weaves. Then when we shifted from weaves to fade curls they anticipated them and just dogged our guys as far as they ran their curls.
The weaves were run out of the 1-3-1 formation.
The curls were run out of the 1-4 formation.
Neither worked.
Why?
Because Weber is a good defensive coach that schemed defenses to stop exactly what he had seen Self run in the past, when he decided to shoot treys earlier in the season.
The reason Self did not go to the trey earlier in the game was because he knew he would see exactly the kind of defensive schemes earlier that he finally saw when he had no choice but to run some trey action.
Weber is not a great coach, but he is a good defensive coach. He schemed defenses for a lot of years for Gene Keady at Purdue, who was the only guy that could beat Bob Knight very often back in those days. Weber learned Okie ball from Keady who learned it from Eddie Sutton, who taught Self a lot of what he knows about it.
Self knew exactly what defensive schemes he was going to see if he ran his outside stuff.
Self gambled he had the better inside scorer in Perry, plus Oubre who could get inside, plus guards that could attack and draw fouls and FTs. He played take what they give us, as he always has. He played the percentages. He played money ball. He knew his team was in the bottom third of its performance distribution. He tried and played nine guys double digit minutes looking for some combinations that would get some stops and gets some buckets. Nothing worked.
And we saw what happened the minute the team started running action for threes against Weber's defenders. Zip.
When things go wrong for Kentucky, does Kentucky quit running the dribble drive?
When things go wrong did Phil Jackson opt out of the triangle?
When a coach's team struggles, he doesn't junk what they practice all the time.
You keep looking for ways to attack within the scheme and within what the opponent is giving you.
Young players facing very aggressive m2m defense with perimeter defenders that match up well without an inside option that can go get them a basket in a pinch run into hard times from time to time. This was one of them.
Playing inside didn't look good at all.
But playing outside looked worse.
When you aren't hitting your shots, nothing looks very good, and it is at that point that you need to go to your got to guy to get you some impact buckets.
Who are KU's go guys?
Frank, Kelly and Perry.
How many FGAs did Frank, Kelly and Perry get?
Perry 16 FGAs
Kelly 13 FGAs
Frank 8 FGAs
Self went to his go to guys.
Sometimes your go to guys crap out.
He gave Brannen 6 FGAs and Brannen went 0-4 from three.
The more I reason through this for you, the more I understand what Self did and the more it appears he coached this exactly right, given his scheme for this team.
The only thing I would have done differently is I would have become an outside shooting team early this season and been shooting 30 treys a game minimum, and as I've noted, may be would have been willing to experiment with shooting all treys all the time. But i'm an outside the box kind of board rat.
But there is hardly any guaranty I would be tied for first place doing it.
And the fact is Self is STILL tied for first place.
And he is just now getting to the number of conference losses most folks predicted would win the conference.
So: while this was a horrible, ugly loss and one we should have won, if we had shot better, bottom line is: what we have here is a bad performance on the road by a young team and a loss to a rival.
How much of a barometer of doom really is such a game? Not much.
How unexpected was such a loss coming sooner or later during a title winning season? Frankly most expected it. Teams have bad games and lose when they shoot horribly, no matter how much they try to get good at winning on bad nights.
Did anyone seriously think a team that is a donut with a hole in the middle was going always going to luck out on the close games? Nope. Well, I did for a brief period, when I got over optimistic and predicted they would win out. But my latest wild hair prediction of them winning an NCAA Ring this season, in no way precluded them losing some games before the Madness. It assumes a hot streak by a not huge team like UConn last season. But I willingly admit it is a wild hair prediction.
But these gloom and doom predictions of the end don't do it for me. They could lose the rest of their conference games and probably still make the Madness as 4-6 seed and make a long shot run almost as easily as from a one or two seed. Frankly, the better season they have the more likely the NCAA seeding mavens are to put KU in a stacked region to ensure they exit early. The worse we play, the lower our seed, and the more likely we are to be just ranked in any old region, and,thereby, slip up on someone. But i digress.
When Cliff began to play better for while this team's fortunes really picked up. As he has tapered off, its fortunes, not surprisingly have turned downward.
But either Cliff is hurt, or opposing coaches have found his weaknesses and cliff cannot correct them till the off season, or Cliff has a mentor relationship with Snacks and can't function without Snacks. KU needs Cliff to get back at least to the level of productivity he was at a month and a half ago, when he could at least give 15 decent minutes.
Can we blame Self for Cliff's current flame out? Hmmm. Cliff had four fouls. Did Self call those fouls on Cliff? Nope. Has Self been saying since the beginning of the season the guy was too foul prone to cornerstone a team? Yep. Has Self been trying to coach him up? Yep. Has it worked? Well, he was getting better for awhile, and then he cratered. Surely part of the blame must be Self's, if Cliff is not injured. But have you ever seen a single top coach that never had a promising player crater on him? Nope.
I wish we shot more treys, like you and others.
I wish Cliff played like the OAD that stifled Jahlil Okafor in their famed head to head meeting that got Cliff ranked so high.
But not if we shot treys the way we did tonight.
And what would it matter if Cliff played up to expectations if he fouled out of every game before half time?
The most logical response to this game is: recruit some big men that can play productively without fouling.
And keep recruiting more and more of them.
Duke, UK, UA, UL and Zaga have 4 near footers.
It can be done.
With the right shoes and agents, apparently.
Bad shooting nights occur and this was one for KU. 39% over all and 15% from trey. We caught the rare fair whistle on the road and made FTs, or this would have been a blow out.
Our usually productive guards--Frank, Wayne, and Devonte--were horrendous. They combined for 5-18. They combined for 7 turnovers; that's a lot from your best ball handlers. Wayne played particularly poorly all over the floor.
And yet if we had shot decently, we would have walked away with the game. We were +9 on the glass, plus 4 on strips, even on blocks and we only made one more turnover. We even were +3 on total FGAs. You are supposed to win games with those kinds of edges.
Two Okie Ballers played it the old fashioned way. Not an eyelash worth of differences in the approaches to the game. Keep it in the 70s. And shoot 13 (KU) to 14 (KSU) 3ptas.
The only real difference was this: Bruce Weber played this way because he had to. He has no good outside shooters. Bill Self played this way because he wanted to. He has the trey shooters that would have let him not play this way. More about this later.
Next the benches. Take ours. PLEASE!!!
KSU Bench: 30
KU Bench: 14
No sense piling on futher. The numbers speak for themselves.
And then there was the "Committee to Animate the 5" aka Cliff, Jam Tray, and Landen.
5 Rebounds
Ciff 4
LL: 2
JT: 2
Total 8
5 Points:
Cliff 0
LL 2
JT 1
Total: 3
5 Assists
Cliff 0
LL 1
JT 0
Total 1
5 Fouls
Cliff 4
LL 2
JM 1
Total 7
So, our composite big man had 3 points, 8 boards, 1 assist, and 7 fouls.
It is arguable that it would have been better to have played 4 on 5, than to have played 5 on 5 with our composite big man.
We outscored them 38 to 32 in the paint.
But we lost.
And we were beaten by a not very good team.
And we brought a knife to a knife fight.
And because we have no credible center, we brought a pocket knife to a bowie knife fight.
We had a machete called three point shooting in a scabbard. Its edge was dull from lack of use and so we only pulled it 13 times and made only 2.
It was a very long way to come for the JarHead Jayhawks to come to crap out.
The team has lost its focus. in mid February.
It has forgtten what it has learned.
And it has spent so much time working on inside out attack the trey gun has rusted and won't fire.
They are tied for the lead in the B12.
If they hole out from here, they are assured of a tie for the title.
But can they?
If the trey gun is rusted, or they are in a slump, likely they might not hole out.
But bottom line on this game is the shot horribly and lost by seven to a not very good team.
Next game they should shoot back to their average and win.
Next couple of games probably.
The game may not matter that much, if its just a bump in the road from bad shooting.
But it matters a lot of the team has lost its way.
But this team has always bounced back.
It should bounce back from this one also.
I told people a few days ago.
The Marauders of Frank Merrill were going to go through more horror, before they got to Myitkina.
This was one of those horrors.
They got ambushed on a jungle trail on the way to Myitkina.
But there is no stopping.
They must march on now.
They must catch up on their rest as they march.
The next meeting with the enemy is a week away.
Texas.
They can take some breaks.
But on they march.
Then West Virginia.
Then Oklahoma.
A brutal three games.
They are way out in enemy territory.
No reserves and no more supplies.
No more help.
And it doesn't matter now whether it should have been done this way or not.
It was done this way.
Now it is march on.
No more nothing but fighting.
And Myitkina.
No one wants to be them now.
They are alone.
The going just got tough.
And its going to get tougher.
It was a pretty pitiful sight to see, whatever Coach Self's purposes were.
Olivia Wilde will only be at the game in my preservative states; that's bad.
Bruce Weber will crack and refuse to coach tonight and no one will notice that he is not there.
Bill Self, succumbing to his focus on what matters most, will insist on having slightly darker hair plugs implanted in a pattern that reads "Man-up."
Snacks will enter Betty Ford to withdraw from Oreos.
Scott Pollard will become the spokesperson for SpaceX.
Chris Piper will take over as "before model" for "The Hair Club for Men," while Jay Bilas will take over as the "after model" The Hair Club for Men will promptly go bankrupt.
Ten OADs will commit to KU tonight and Self will announce that none will see much action next season.
Kurtis will sell advertising space on his plasma screen cuff links.
Norm Roberts will order a pizza delivered to the bench during the game and share it only with Fred Quartlebaum.
adidas will announce it is getting out of the athletic shoe business and will begin designing Mars Mission chukkas.
Greg Gurley will develop laryngitis and sign the game in English with one hand and a Crimean dialect Svi's parents will recognize with the other. No one in the radio audience will realize it.
Max Falkenstein will be found naked shortly after the game on the Vermillion River bridge in Onaga, KS reciting his broadcast of the 1988 national championship game.
K-State will announce it is giving up basketball and converting the Octagon of Doom to a swine breeding barn without any retrofitting required.
(Note: All fiction and humor. No malice. Neuter the kitties.)
Welcome.
(Cue very weird musical theme)
Some call me 'batetradamus.
Here are some of my predictions for what Bruce Weber will, and will not, do tonight to try to inspire his players toward a victory that cannot happen in this universe.
1.) Bruce Weber will wear a life like. latex Bill Self mask to try to fool his players into thinking they have a coach that knows what he is doing.
2.) He will deliver his pregame and half time inspirational speeches in Liki, a critically endangered language that is spoken on only a few Islands near Indonesia, in order to keep his players from knowing he has nothing inspiring to say.
3.) He will reveal to his players that his helmet hair is actually and incomprehensibly complex comb over taught him by Gene Keady in hopes that its technical virtuosity would inspire his teams to believe in the feckless plays he draws up.
4.) He will reprogram his cell phone ring tone to something other than "Nowhere Man" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
5) He will cheer for both baskets the team scores during the game.
6.) He will not wear his favorite custom made dress shirt with the monogrammed pocket that reads "failure."
7.) He will not stand around muttering in the huddle how much he wished Snacks still worked for him, so he could get some talent.
8.) He will not challenge his players to "leave it all out in the experimental barn" for him.
9.) He will wear nose glasses and pretend to be a new coach, so his players will once again believe in what he tells them to do.
10.) He will threaten suicide and not be stopped.
These are just a few of the many predictions of 'batetradamus.
(Cue very weird musical theme and fade out.)
(Note: all fiction and comedy. No malice. Rock Chalk!!!!!)
It's public domain!!
Rock Chalk!!
PHOF!
There is absolutely hilarious spoof of Kevin Spacey and house of cards!!
I don't know, but in preparation for the game I bought my first MAD magazine in 45 years. I still love it!!
Well, that is a bald faced lie, but I will.
(Note: headline all fiction. No malice.)
HOWLING!!!!
Chance of KSU upsetting KU:
1/Graham Number
Ooh! I like it when you bring it about their interim head coach!!!!!!!!!!
Rock Chalk!!!!
C-Chips?
PARTY AT YOUR HOUSE!!
KUBUCKETS.COM INCOMING!!!!!!!
MAKE XTRA FOR SNACKS!!!!!
ABSOLUTE PHOF!
The important part of your post (for me) is the offense enabling defense.
I wrote at length about this recently and then expressed it as an epigram. I will condense it further.
Defense starts offense.
Offense starts defense.
Now I will crucify it further.
D-------------->O
D<--------------O
If one does not energize the other in one direction and then back in the other direction the engine runs roughly and inefficiently.
And it is not only an energy thing.
Made baskets eliminate transition baskets and stop one from being sped up.
Forcing the opponent to guard tires him for offense.
A made 3 means you only really have guard the three to build a lead.
Rapid ball movement up the floor tires the defense more than the offense and so makes them easier to guard at the other end.
Everything you do on one end alters what can happen on the other.
Defense is never fool's gold.
Offense is never fool's gold.
The only fool's gold is thinking both are not started by their opposites.
Now, practically speaking, defense is not as fun to practice and play, as offense so, coaches that emphasize defense get a bigger incremental bump toward getting better and toward balanced offense and defense than coaches that emphasize offense, or even balance.
Kids by them selves on a court do not fantasize stopping the winning basket.
They fantasize making the winning basket.
If I were Self, I would require players to fanticize about game winning defensive plays AND game winning offensive plays. I would have drills devised to play them out. Software games, too.
Anything you want to happen, positive imaging of it helps. Role play it. Then practice it.
@JayHawkFanToo and @ralster...
NEVER ENOUGH HISTORY!!!!
Thank you both for enriching my reading day with these recollections.
Yes, timing is an element of every process. Getting interested in cooking rekindled my acute awareness of what Self is trying to do with a team. A team is a bunch of ingredients and each can bring something desirable to the team if they are brought together in the right order, in the right amount, and at the right times.
Ever cook something and get to a point of the recipe, where you need an ingredient you don't have, and if you go to the store to get it the dish will be ruined, and if you don't it won't taste right? Given my increasingly crappy memory, I have. :-)
That's kind of what Self is up against. He apparently expected to have Embiid this season. Oops, missing ingredient.
He expected Selden's confidence in his knee to come along sooner. Oops.
He had to have expected Cliff to come along quicker so he could add him to the dish. Oops.
And then there are ingredients that show up later but not too late, like Oubre.
And then there are those that add more to the dish in more ways than expected, like Devonte, who turned out not just to be a good back up PG, but also a guy that could add base stock to both 2, and even 3 on occasion.
Self is like a chef. He is trying to get the dish ready by mid January and then fine tune it. But sometimes the ingredients don't show up on time and it takes more time to get the dish ready.
And sometimes some ingredients don't show up at all and you have to get creative and change the dish into something that is a variation on what you had in mind.
And so on.
Sorry to belabor the metaphor, but you are on track and it seemed worth it.
Oh, yes, the USS Nimitz is formidable. And if I recall you know something about this sort of thing from experience.
Too, thanks for the assist in recalling those additional aspects of Nimitz. You are so right. He is too often reduced to Midway. The broader picture of his accomplishment is vastly more important to our legacy, even if Midway were perhaps the most dramatically pivotal in isolation. The fact is war is a process, not events in isolation. There might have been another way to win the war had Midway gone the other way. But it is the long process of winning that enables us to endure as a great country, not just anyone single individual, or single action by a single individual. Still, I do like driving down any freeway named for him and thinking of him letting it all ride on those carriers once upon a time...and betting right. Rock Chalk!
Cue Anchors Away! and a Naval metaphor, because I am also fond of my US Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard!!!