I saw Perry's dunk on something on ESPN last evening late. Not sure if it was SC or something else on ESPN.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
For sure. This is a very important game in a lot of ways. Each game reveals if we are continuing to grow and develop. Each game takes us closer to our mission objective of an 11th title and a 1, or 2, seed. And it also tells us if we can go into a hostile environment and get'ter done. We need that kind of reinforcement to wash out the bad taste left in losing in Morgantown. And its just plain fun to beat KSU.
Apology accepted. Rock Chalk.
I felt hurt by his post.
And I feel intimidated and hurt by your post appearing to broad brush fellow members as piling on, when all I can recall anyone doing was responding. All I did was ask a question.
And I feel hurt by your post asking me if I am a troll.
And I feel attacked and intimidated by you.
Might the vindication of his approach be 22-4 and first place in a power conference AFTER playing the first or second toughest schedule in America with perhaps the youngest D1 team in the conference AND America?
Thought food.
Rock Chalk!
A helluva good piece of writing even if I disagree on the substance. Great metaphor. Solid logic. I read the premises differently. You have probability on your side. I have a wild hair on mine. You will probably prevail, but like Nimitz, I see what I see and so, like you, I have to go another course. But I would recommend your take to anyone that looks at mine and says, "Nope, not buying."
Rock Chalk!
Thx. Imagine how much Self sees. It must seem like A whole other game at times.
Exactly coach. The opponents now don't know where the attack will come from. Self has overlain a tic tac toe matrix on the half court and devised thee attacks from each of the 9 squares in the matrix. And each of the attacks can run inside out, or outside in, or in 3 man weaves, 4 man weaves, cuts, or pick and rolls, or this bizarre new cross buck/scissors play. The attacks can start out of at least six different formations, all varying ways to set up the high low offense, which still runs regardless of the formations, but just varies which cells of the tick tack toe matrix the high low offensive actions originate from. It's brilliant if it's any where near what i am describing. Maybe better if something even more elegant. Iba would be grinning up in heaven like a big old bear looking down. The idea of the high low offense back at the '64 Olympics was for one offense to be learned quickly that could be run the same against m2m or zone--one offense that was easy to learn that condensed everything Iba had learned about Offence and suited to enable players with great athleticism to impact. Congestion and timing plays had to be kept to a minimum. Ball movement to deform and reform defenses to create open looks had to replace complicated, timed cutting and screening. Action had to be brief and involve picking to run out of congestion. Spreading out over the floor to maximize forced defensive movement by passing was the coin of the realm. One offense learned in three weeks by the best defensive players that could also shoot long and score inside. One offense.
What Self has done I believe is to adapt the high low into formations the way the T-formAtion has been adapted to various forms of the T-formation. I form. Wing t. Split t. Wide out with slot bank. Double wide outs. All the same offense but setting up in different spots to alter and improve angle of attack on a weakness and increase element of surprise.
I am not sure why you erased your post. It was a good one.
There have been a few short teams that have won the ring. The shortest I recall was UCLA's '64 team with everyone 6-5 or under. It can be done.
KU's '08 ring team was not much taller than this team but they were brawnier and 3 years older and shot the ball as well outside and had 4 eventual pro grade bigs that could rebound.
But this team has a new way to play, a much more experienced coach, and a bunch of Trey Dingers. And it has the intangible of a bunch of underdogs getting a shot at Apollo Creed.
This team is better than everyone thinks it is.
This team has vastly out performed my expectations.
I expected an 8-10 loss season. They are 22-4 and likely will be 26 and 4 end of the conference. In turn, they will likely win 2 of 3 in the conference tournament and so be 28-5 when seeded.
Despite more holes than swiss cheese, every time the team has been given the ten count, its bounced back up.
Therefore this is a coach and a bunch of young men to be reckoned with.
They really have become the jarhead Jayhawks.
Most of the generals of most of the great armies of the world have looked down their noses at the US Marines, their generals, and their strategy and tactics. The Marines do everything the hard way. The Marines take too many casualties for what they accomplish. The Marines aren't sophisticated in their strategy and that is why they are always defaulting to tactics. Marine generals spend too much time trying to lead their men and not enough time on the big picture.
But the Marines find a way to win the battles that the Army couldn't, or wouldn't, or didn't.
The Marines are given the least advance equipment in the least quantities and told to find a way.
The above is at any rate my father's version of things in WWII.
What people are not reckoning with is that you can't win pretty, when you don't have the most talent.
You can't win pretty when you don't have the biggest front court.
You can't win pretty, while you are trying to invent a new way to play winning basketball.
You can't win pretty, when your most talented players are freshman that have to spend half a season just trying to see if they can play at this level and then the rest of the season trying to be good at this level.
You can't win pretty, when your best center turns out not to be able play much, for whatever reason.
And yet like the Marines who kept winning despite muddling through the island campaigns of the first two years of WWII, in which every island invasion was virtually a new kind of warfare for the Marines, this year's Jarhead Jayhawks have kept winning, despite every kind of new attack and defense thrown at them.
And this team has been learning to play new ways about every 2-3 games now since late December when Self settled on a rotation and began installing new offense, after new offense, while simultaneously banging on his short big men to learn to play inside out, AND outside in.
Board rats are not giving due recognition to how much of an advantage Self has been creating for his team by laboring so long and hard on continually adding new dimensions and new ways of attacking. It has been frustrating to fans, because they wanted the team to arrive by mid January and to spend the rest of the season perfecting what they were.
But instead, Self has apparently decided that this team can be no one kind of opponent to all teams. It has to be able to play inside, outside, and mid range. It has to be able to play half a dozen formations. And it has to build leads and defend leads. Self is not even wasting his time teaching how to create blowouts, because he knows he does not have the inside size needed to blow opponents out and keep them out.
With the above said, let's get to the tournament.
The team doesn't have as much talent as 8 of the other top 10 teams in the country. Those eight all have enormous standing height. UK, Duke, Louisville, UA and Gonzaga all have 4 near footers in their front court rotations. But KU has a very talented perimeter with some depth there and as good of shooting outside as anyone, and better than several.
Fortunately, it won't have to beat all eight of the other top 10 teams. And it will probably only have to beat two of UK, Duke, Louisville, and Gonzaga to get to the Final Four.
Assuming KU winds up with a 2 seed, which I believe is likely, even if KU wins the B12 title, which I believe it will do, KU will be put in a bracket stacked with 3 of the Top Ten teams, two of the 4 footers teams plus Villanova.
KU is going to be given an absolute murderers row to keep it from getting out of its regional.
Why do they want to keep KU out this season?
First, KU has no marquis players to make up for being from a small media market.
Second, the powers that be have stacked three Nike teams with massively favorable talent and the three teams are located conveniently in three different regions. Kentucky will be the 1 seed in the South region. Duke it appears will probably be the 1 seed in the East region. And Arizona will be the 1 seed in the West region. Louisville, or Virginia, is likely to be the 1 seed in the Midwest. This seeding will maximize the likelihood of a Final Four with three EST teams and 1 PST team.
KU will have to buck huge odds and it will have to do it without a 4 near footer rotation of the kind it is sure to meet.
It looks very bad for the Jarhead Jayhawks at this point, right?
Well, here is where the optimism starts.
KU has learned to play taller teams and it has learned to play brawnier teams.
KU has also learned that against taller teams it can pull either or both of its bigs out and force at least one of these two near footers away from the basket, and it can run the 4 man weave with Perry and put a ton of pressure on a 2 near footer team.
KU has also learned to play hot outside shooting teams by taking that the trey stripe away and still guarding inside.
KU has also largely mastered zones.
KU's big remaining weakness is against pressing teams, but it is going to play WVU in AFH and it is going to fillet that bunch of thuggers with great ball handling and great shooting.
Thus, when the NCAA tourney rolls around, KU is going to know how to play every kind of team it is likely to run into.
KU can beat most any team it faces by shooting 30 treys on a decent shooting, something it has not yet done, but will resort to unhesitatingly when a tournament game against a big team requires it.
And on the night that KU cannot hit the trey ball, it has put in three months of learning to muddy it up and play grind it out inside. or by attacking inside from the outside.
What I am saying is that Self has this team diversified in ways that all of the other young OAD/TAD type teams, except UK, are probably not going to be ready for.
Finally, there is no easy way to get around UK, if UK does not beat themselves before we face them.
But that is the night that KU will play great defense and shoot 30 treys and make 45-50% and we upset UK for the championship.
I know, I cannot believe I am predicting them to win a ring.
No one with their bigs playing as they have up to now can possibly win an NCAA ring.
But the four remaining conference games and three tournament games give the Jarhead Jayhawks ample time to develop their inside game just enough more to be ready unleash their outside game and so beat ya both ways.
It is a fantastically improbable prediction, the longest shot I have ever predicted. A million to one shot really.
But I cannot help it.
I have a feeling.
There is something different about this group of guys, like there was something different about that '88 team of guys.
I know they don't have a Danny Manning.
But no one else in the tournament does either this season.
What they have is the Jarhead Jayhawks and a ton of brains.
What they have are a guys that have been through incredible adversity and have kept bouncing back and ket getting better.
What they have is potentially great outside shooting--so great that it could torch even the best opponent of the season, if they play it smart.
I don't WANT to make this prediction.
I want to say its UK's year and we'll be out by the second game, because we don't have the great talent.
But as of tonight, guys this committed to being Jarheads find ways to win.
I have only had one other feeling like this: the '68 Orange Bowl team.
We didn't get it done, but I knew we were going to be one of the great teams of KU history that year of 1967/68. I felt it down deep after the third game of the season and everyone told me, "No, you're just a kid in love with the Jayhawks. That would be a million to one shot. And those kinds of feelings are just feelings. You'll see. Nebraska will slaughter us as usual. We play them in Lincoln. No one can ever beat them in Lincoln. But I looked at my father and said, "I know what you are saying, but Bobby Douglas and John Riggins and Keith Christensen, and John Zook, and Donnie Shanklin, they are different than any guys you've ever seen on a KU team. And Pepper Rogers is different. These guys are a team of destiny, pop, like you said the '52 basketball team was, like you said the '57 team with Chamberlain should have been." It was early October, I think. I said, "By January they are going to turn into a kind of team you will not recognize." And when they beat Nebraska at Lincoln and I brought my Dad the copy of Sports Illustrated with the story and color pictures titled "Hawk in a Cornfield," I said, "See, dad, these guys are for real. You gotta believe me now." And shook his head and said, "I'll be damnedi if you weren't right, son." It nearly broke me in two when they lost in the Orange Bowl. I thought I might die before the night was over after that game. But one thing I took away from that season that has stood me in good stead many times since. When you get that feeling, when that inexplicable clarity comes on, when you look and can see HOW this thing might be accomplished inspite of incredibly long odds, and inspite of everyone's believing it can't be done, BELIEVE.
This season that I thought was not possible to have a 30 win season--this season that I was confident they lacked the basic pieces even to win a B12 title, this season they are very close to that title, and if they win out and get two of three in the B12 tourney, and then get even just two in the tourney this team will have done the impossible in my eyes and have won 30. I am in awe of what these guys have accomplished right now.
A Towson State point guard.
A center who lived in the streets before he took up the game late.
A one time OAD who has never recovered from a knee injury and who has changed his shot.
A brainiac who probably ought to be going into physics instead of playing D1 power forward.
An OAD with a gimpy knee.
A big lug of a backup center who grew up in Japan.
An OAD who is supposed to be our savior and who can't play more than 15 minutes.
A young man with a gun and no conscience.
And a baby faced assassin in his first season.
And these beads have been strung together and in the face of the toughest, or second toughest schedule in the country, put together a fine W&L, reinvented the way the game is played, and are about to win our 11th conference title.
Oh, yes, Ray, they most definitely will come.
Anyone in need of a booster, go watch McFarland with Kevin Costner.
Or reboot Hoosiers.
The KU Blue underdogs are on the way.
The Jarhead Jayhawks are scrambling and clawing through the hand to hand combat, campaign by campaign.
Cliff isn't done.
This season is already a miracle.
And the best is yet to come.
Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!!
To start with, Trent Johnson owes Self some amour for Self keeping it close and not turning up the bunson burner on Johnson's TCU job at a tie of year when lop sided losses get a coach at a low echelon program sacrificed. Trent's got just enough talent in Shepherd and Washburn, and just enough bodies around, that all it takes is couple big losses and a cost shifting AD to let some up and comer that can bring in two perimeter scorers in next season to go with Shepherd and Washburn, and Trent is bound for a non power conference pronto.
Self long benched both halves to have a full energy budget for KSU and in the process made sure it wasn't a blow out. He gave Devonte a bunch of practice work handling the ball and creating shots. He continued the "Where's Clifford?" show. He experimented with Oubre at the two and Brannen at the 3, which I really liked and Brannen responded with 6 boards. Are you listening Wayne? Trey fingers on both wings. Oubre snagging 4 and BG snagging 6. Self about ready to shout, "Show me the rebounds, Wayne?" And Self gave Wayne some drives, which were hairy to watch from a wince index perspective. And Self even tried the weirdest variation off the weave yet, when he went deep into his Bud Wilkinson box of football memories and had the wings run a...drum roll please, a freaking cross buck that has been run in football since the single wing days, after which the PG, can recall if it was Mason, or Devonte, runs right off the hip of the cross buck, penetrates and makes a play. He may even have kicked out. Hell, Self even experimented with making Perry laugh out loud with joy at a couple straight dunks. What they hay!!!!! Self even played his flipping manager. For a minute there, I thought I saw CBernie and ShayZing unzipping some warm ups.
And Self owes Trent zip, because Johnson's guys were still putting KU's guys on the wood down the stretch. And Self just looked the other way at the bush league stuff. Fine he seemed to say, my guys need more toughening, and if I ever need to beat you into the next century, Trent, I will. Until then, I will just use you and you poorly coached bigs as practice game fodder.
Professional curtesy in coaching is a complex thing. Coaches have a code. Don't cost a guy his job if you don't have to. But never give a guy an even break. EVER. This is not tiddly winks.
If Trent Johnson could get some guys that could shoot, he could build a decent team, like Bruce Weber could , if Bruce could ever recruit as many as he inherited anywhere. Trent is not an idiot. Neither is Bruce. And Trent's guys did wind up +4 on the glass, mostly because Self long benched both halves and worked on "stuff."
But Trent couldn't recruit enough at Stanford, and he really couldn't coach up the guys he did recruit. Like Weber riding Self's talent and prior coaching at Illinois, Trent rode Mike Montgomery's talent and coaching at Stanford. Both places got both coaches their only distinguished stretches of W&L statements. Then boom! Both brought in a few recruits, but not quite enough, and then both didn't really coach'em up.
Ya have to do both.
And its apparently getting tougher to do both.
With the talent stacking at the major Big Shoe repository programs, it leaves fewer difference makers that can filter out to the coaches trying to start new programs, even the cheaters apparently, which Trent and Bruce do not seem to be, to their credits.
Trying to turn a program around without a difference maker is VERY tough.
And if you land a difference maker, like Shepherd, or Washburn, and then you can't coach'em up, well, life is very tenuous.
Like I said, all it takes is one hot young coach out their with two perimeter scorers on the line, and such perimeter guys are not so rare, as Fred Holberg has shown, in his short stint as the Mayor of Ames, and boom! Good by Trent. Hello new guy with the two scorers to go with Shepherd and Washburn. And after the new guys says a few gratuitous nice things about being able to build on the foundation Trent started, it is Trent who?
And Trent is back in Reno...if he is lucky.
The life of a D1 coach is insanely tenuous.
Self has dedicated his life to coaching also. Its been a lot better to him than it has to Trent, or Bruce. 82% W&L. 10 titles. One ring. But he only has 3 OAD/TADs this year, only one non OAD/TAD commit in Bragg, and he is having to really gut it out and rewrite the way you play winning basketball, among fans throwing tantrums about how he is too inflexible and stubborn, and even though he's in first place and likely to get the incredible 11th title, he could be .500 next season if the OAD/TADs jump, no OAD/TADs sign, and one of his returning guys blows an ACL.
You can't coach up what you don't have.
Self has got to get some OAD/TADs signed. He needs three more just to stay even. But that's just to keep walking the tight rope another season. He needs 7=10 to say yes in April. to seriously contend with the Big Shoe-Agency stacks.
He is an amazing human being.
I don't know how he does it.
I don't know how how he keeps finding the next invisible door.
But he does, and when he gets them here, compared to the way freshman and sophomores play for these other Big 12 coaches? It is stunning how much better he coaches his guys up through their flaws into being title winners. Just flipping amazing.
And all the while he has time to just toy with Trent Johnson and used that game for a practice game in late February to keep working on "the stuff."
Amazing, just amazing.
Any other B12 coaching this team would have 5-7 conference losses. Easy.
I still say, that despite all the problems and poor showings, all the unfulfilled expectations, the guy is 22-4 and in first place with a group of guys that can't score back to basket ever, and can't rebound about a third of the time. This is a team that is so young and is learning so much so fast that it actually masters things like protecting the ball--3 TOs against Texas on the road--and forgets how they did it by February, because they are learning to do so much other stuff.
Hey, I even have a new hypothesis about what is the real problem with Cliff.
The guy just can't keep up with how much knew "stuff" Self keeps "stuffing" into the offense and defense game after game. Cliff may not be stupid. He just may not be a rocket scientist and able to keep up with how much keeps coming at him every week.
It is insane, but Self is taking this youngest team he's ever had, and he is turning it into team with as rich of an offensive variety, maybe THE richest offensive variety, of any team he has ever had.
Self has apparently decided that the hub of his team, Perry Ellis, is REALLY smart in raw IQ; that Frank Mason is really smart; that Lucas is smart, and Selden and Traylor are going to have learn how to be smart, because if this can't be one of his most talented teams, then it is going to be one of his smartest teams.
I have been trying to tell board rats for quite awhile: the team has been learning to play a new way. They have been learning to play to win by 5 plus or minus 4. Each game is an exercise in trying get a W, while working on trying to learn to play and win this new way.
It is an insane way to play the game, and Self is borderline mad for trying to do it.
But he is doing it and he is forging a new way to play in the OAD/TAD era, and the birthing pains are often ugly but its being born. It was only one point in error in Morgantown. And versus TCU it was a close game all the way, not because TCU was any good, but because this is the way this team is learning to play. Close. Close. Close.
When it isn't close, Self coaches to keep it close. He works on stuff and tries new combinations until it is close and then he puts his starters back in and says win it. And then he pulls them and tells a different combination to win it.
And Perry, the brain at the center of this team, is slowly learning how to play rough this way. Perry was out mixing it up for the third straight game. This is the most consecutive games of seeing Perry bang around inside that I have seen. He is getting it. And because he is so damned smart he is carrying the team on his back learning the rest of the new stuff. When they falter, he scrambles to make it work.
All of which brings me to Frank Mason. I've never read if Frank is bucks up in the class room, or not. But I will tell you what. He is now Phi Flipping Beta Kappa on wood right now. He has up games and down games like everyone, but he "gets" what Self is trying to build and he is building it for him out their on the sacred wood. Frank is going to be a success in life. Frank knows how things fit together. I don't know if he can make As in class, but if he can't, its only because he never got the right classroom coaching early and he's playing catch up there. Frank has the right stuff. And he has the brains. But cut the TOs frank; that was unsightly to have 4 after such a sterling series of games on that count. On the other hand, when you're coach is still running and R&D program implementing more and more new stuff in February, well, maybe 4 experimenting against a cellar dweller is tolerable. But not Monday night.
I can hear Coach Self already. He winks at Frank, and say, "better tighten'er up on Monday, Frank."
And the Gunny says, "Done."
Maybe not Self most talented team, but well on the way to being his smartest.
Rock Chalk!
Let's keep this focused on Trent Johnson and his drain-circling career trend, since this is TCU game day.
Then redirect to Weber after we beat Trent Johnson and his likely decent kids trained to play bang-ball, rather than coached to develop skill, into the 22rd Century.
I hold Trent Johnson in the same level of esteem I hold Bob Huggins and Ratso Izzo and John Thompson 2.0 and John Thompson 3.0 (thug ball with a smile and daddy's modified Princeton) to name just four in the Thug Ball Hall of Shame. They didn't just bring thug ball to the game, they sustained it, and helped enable its normalization. Each one probably has his own rationalization about the unfairness of the system that made them do it. For that they are IMHO deserving of installation in the inner most ring of Dante's little known Basketball Inferno. And screw their rationalizations. Other Caucasian Americans from mining and timber country have played it the right way. Other African-Americans have coached it the right way. This bunch hasn't IMHO.
The chief difference between Trent Johnson and the group including Huggins and Izzo and JT 2.0 (JT 3.0 seems to be too mediocre to rank with these three, even though he got off to a quick start with the W&L before he got on the wrong recruiting list), is that those three are/were pretty cunning and inventive in how they have destabilized opponents with thug ball, and Trent and JT 3.0 never have appeared to be as much so. Of course Trent and JT3.0 are part of a large club of not very effective thug ball copycat coaches, so let's not pick on just them for their mediocrity, okay?)
IMHO, the chief difference between Self and this bunch is that Self's philosophy is: we will play you anyway you want.
We will start out playing our way, which is actually pretty modest contact, but once the game gets going and we see what you are doing, we will play you however you want AND TRY TO BEAT YOU DOING IT.
It has proven sound strategy over time, even though Izzo got the better of us for awhile.
Why has Self's approach worked so well (82% W&L statement, 10 conference titles and a ring) even in the face of thug ball? Or as one might say, "while hell has been in session?"
Hypothesis : because thuggers don't like it when they get thugged. They don't like it when their biggest edge is equalized. They are not much different really than play ground bullies that way. They cry to the authorities like big, BIG babies every time what goes around comes around. No one cries as much as Izzo and Huggins, when their guys get thugged, and it might help them win an edge with the refs.
But here is the thing about Self's approach that is both subtle and apparently effective. It seems that when Self thinks the refs are a bunch that want to call it the right way, every time he waits and lets his guys thug first, it seems to set a precedent in the minds of the refs. Refs are human. They try to be objective, but they appear to remember who started the thugging. Some refs are anti-thugging, some appear not to care.
With the refs that appear to care, and with those that don't, Self then is pretty much free to unleash retaliation. And because Self's teams start out playing aggressive, in your jock defense, it is a very, very small step add the constant banging, and cheap shotting, without ever going to full time thug ball, and it does not stick out like sore thumb.
Cheap shotting, which Coach K appeared to implement the season his team beat Butler for a ring, appears to be a strong antidote to thug ball. And Self appeared to adopt it the season after, as best I can now recall.
Thuggers appear to really hate what appears to be skillfully coached cheap shotting. This sort of cheap shotting seems to be the basketball equivalent of marital arts. You don't have to be a prison body to cheap shot. And every thugger is in position sooner or later to be cheap shotted. It appears to take away all the comfort zone of thug ball. Much as I despise cheap shotting, it does seem to chasten the thuggers everytime it is used and so in lieu of referees calling the game properly apparently becomes a default tactic versus thuggers. This is not of course new. My father who played the game in Kansas in the 1930s said getting even with rough play with cheap shots was infrequent, but utterly conventional at time. Eggregiously violate the rules of play and you got a cheap shot.
Big bad thuggers of today, especially those seeming to be coached to play thug ball, seem not to like being up ended in the air, or tripped from behind, or chopped in the adams apple, or eye gouged, or stiff screened in the genitals. Really, really, REALLY the thuggers don't seem to enjoy this stuff. Its kind of ironic, but that is how it appears.
Not sure what it is about the thugger mentality that makes them so afraid of cheap shotting, but it is probably just as simple as not liking no net advantage to intimidation and exploitation. Its like thieves reputedly will knock over a house without a alarm/surveillance sticker in preference to one with. It is risk management by the exploiters.)
I would love to have seen Self's KU teams play John Thompson 2.0's Hoya Paranoia teams that were in my recollection among the most effective and innovative at thug ball in their time. I never studied them for cheap shots, so I have not recollection of that. Maybe someone else can recall that.
I reckon it would have taken about two, to maybe 4, games for Self to figure out JT2.0s bully button and push it the same way he has figured out all of these other thug ballers. Even Izzo has become someone that only thugs Self's teams, when he is absolutely sure he has the a clear advantage in muscle and no star that is physically vulnerable to what is inevitably going to be triggered. IMHO, Bob Huggins has never even tried full blown thug ball on Self since WVU entered the B12. Thug ballers have rational expections of their strategies just like everyone else. If there is no net benefit, they don't do it. Risk management again. This is why it has been such a crime against the game to let the referees let the ThugBallers thug. The thug ballers stop as soon as the net benefit is not there.
Self and Coach K have appeared to have had to impose an "anyway you want to play it" philosophy in lieu of sound refereeing. I mean, its ridiculous to play basketball the way it is played today, even after the alleged "clean up," and it is ridiculous to play it any other way than Self and Coach K play it, when someone like Ken Williard of Seton Hall will give a guy ONLY a two game suspension for Setoning that guy on Villanova, and the NCAA, with full video coverage of the incident, lacks the decency and nut size to either suspend the kid for the rest of the season, or bounce him out of D1 entirely, either of which, combined with a year of state of the art counseling, would far and away be the best thing for the player involved.
The game is still in a sorry state of violence right now.
And the best thing we as fans can do is keep talking about it often and frankly.
The players finally are the once suffering most from the way the game is being called and coached and played. The players are the ones that wind up having to play the game looking more and more like Merrill's Marauders on the way to Mitkyna. The players are the ones that have to bear the wear and tear of playing it this way. The players are the ones that have to watch OAD teammates being allowed to protect the merchandize, while lesser players have to go out there and take the full force of thug ball abuse. The players are the ones that have to degrade themselves into thuggers. The players are the ones that have to degrade themselves into cheapshotters and counter cheap shooters. And its all because the referees, and their directors, and the coaches, and the NCAA and Networks and Big Gaming NEED the thugging to keep the games spreads sufficiently close that the coaches can keep from being fired when they lack talent, the NCAA and media companies can keep the ratings up with close games, and media companies and Big Gaming can manage the point spreads before and (if history is any guide) during the games, so that everyone can keep cutting a fat hog.
Protect the players.
They are the ones laying the golden egg.
Rock Chalk!
Trent Johnson's winning percentage at the school's he has coached are as follows, according to his wiki page.
Trent Johnson Winning %
UN-Reno .515
Stanford .625
LSU .391
TCU .429
Compare his record to Bruce Weber.
Bruce Weber Winning %
SIU .656
IlLINI .675
KSU .632
Neither man is a great coach, but Trent makes an otherwise seemingly average Bruce Weber look like a giant of the profession.
And even if one ignores the considerable similarities (both started at non basketball power mid majors, both inherited a major program in great condition, both went to lesser majors after screwing up the major they inherited in good condition) and lesser differences (Weber has not yet washed out at KSU and gone to a TCU, as Johnson did) of their careers and the varying conditions of the programs they inherited, the most one can say in Johnson's defense is that he isn't as good of a coach as Bruce Weber by some not particularly significant margin.
And we all know the modest esteem Bruce Weber is held in, because of his record.
If this were cyber bullying, so should it be. No, let me change that; this IS the farthest thing from cyber bullying I can think of.
You see, I did not like their one-dimensional, once-beaten-by-KU-at-their-crib players, dumping their probably coach-sourced-with-plausible-deniability tripe in the media well, likely as not for some venal psychological warfare benefit for the coming game against our still young, impressionable players. I hope Self suspends grand strategy for a game and beats this team and its mediocre, to sub-mediocre coach into the next century. But Self probably won't suspend the strategy. He will probably do the right thing; i.e., long bench and keep it close, both to conserve his team's energy budget for KSU, and as a coaching curtesy to a fellow coach, Johnson, who appears to be circling the drain of his career--for his accrued, declining W&L statement,
Next.
P.S.: And as a digression, it appears this "cyber bully" term is drifting (perhaps inexorably) into the mold of other once substantively terms like "liberal" and "right winger" and "conspiracy theorist" as being weaponized into smear words used to manage public opinion by smearing the point of view, when it cannot otherwise be argued away with facts and logic. I frankly still can't believe that cyber-journalist Tom Keegan over on the old site appeared to "cyber bully" his own cyber readers/cyber clickers by appearing to suggest cyber bullies were picking on Perry Ellis, and leaving an impression that the cyber readers he appeared to be calling cyber bullies were his own! I still like to read Tom's commentaries, even though I don't as much because of the insulting nuisance toll of having to answer marketing questions to do so. But I thought appearing to call his own cyber readers cyber bullies, or at least leaving that impression that he was, was a wrong turn in online journalism.
Here is how these terms appear to evolve, at least to little old me. They are identified and picked up out of common usage by professional opinion managers, then the opinion managers train their hired lurkers how to weaponize them and spread them as smear words, and as counter smear words. Then the copycat types with shared agendas pick them up. Then the
Look or the next oreo shipment? :-)
20 3pta/ 45% made
45 2pta/52% made
+8 rebounds
22 of 25 FTs
+5 strips
+3 blocks
-7 Turnovers
Pinch of ground point guard nuts (note: a pinch is all you can get out of a TCU point guard)
Two tables spoons of Trent Johnson's brains (note: that equals half of Trent Johnson's brain)
One cup of beat down sauce
One cup of kiss my ass
(Note: kids, don't try this recipe at home.)
I have long advocated full time sports psychologists for teams, because I believe players could be helped not just with their games, but with their lives.
Good sports psychologists could help the young men sooooooo much.
Andrea Hudy for muscles and flexibility and weight.
Dr. X for their minds, competing skills, and social skills.
Dr. Y for diet.
We would get the most out of our players and give them the most.
So this existential, electro-chemical basketball doubt flashes through my neuropasta: OMG, its Thursday afternoon! Is KU playing TCU tonight, instead of Saturday afternoon at 1 PM Central Daylight Sun Dial Time? Is this one of those weird Thursday night games we do for the gamblers and I've forgotten about it?
I'm ancient. So far around the bend I'm in the home stretch to Heavens Gate, Anti-Wyoming. I'm lucky if I can remember which drawer in the chifforobe has the Ex-Officio synthetic briefs I've migrated to and which has the retro tech cotton tubes covering up the old black alligator skinned box with my grandfathers gold cuff links and stick pin I cherish but never look at. i'm getting almost as old as he was when he was old. But even death cannot distract me from missing a game.
My palms sweat at the key board. You see: I am committed to doing a bunch of stuff with the significant other tonight thinking the game isn't till Saturday. So if it is? OMG! What have I done?! I've already told her I had eatten some bad crab meat last week to get out of duties that would have kept me from another recent game I forgot the tip off time for. She won't believe another lie this soon. Hell, she didn't buy the last one.
So real quick I click on a KU hoops site I used to work out at, because I recall they used to post the date and time of the next game at the top of their page, which I wish KUBuckets did but can understand why it doesn't.
Tap, tap, tap. Click.
Window boing.
Ahh!
All the tension goes out of me, like it does when once every six months I actually do look under the tube socks to make sure the old cuff links are still there--still as gold as ever.
The game really is Saturday. I don't have to start lying about not feeling good to get out of these commitments, so I can watch the game. I can just get the duty out of the way and be ready for Saturday. Thank god for micro favors!
But then I see a headline criticizing (bullying?) cyber bullies for bullying (criticizing?) The Designer after the Bill Self circulatory stresser--the 1 point, hair plug killer loss to West Virginia in Hugginsville aka Morgantown.
Why, I wonder, are pro journos critting their own cyber bullies? Why don't they just give them the flipping boot?
And are cyber bullies really getting that bad out their in the commercial iGyms I'm not moving words in anymore, because of KUBuckets.com aka our eeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, net invisible, bully free iLocker Room full of stinking retro virtual Bikes hanging humid in the iLockers of the mind?
My first impulse is curiosity. How bad can this cyber bullying of The Designer really be? Can it be worse than what The Designer catches at practice, or what he hears when he misses an assignment running by Self in a loss? Or the trash he hears out on the shellac from long and strongs? Or what his mom and dad say, when he drops laundry and stays out late with his pals on the holidays (like I used to back in another century, when dead persons voted and eVoting machines didn't just have backdoors to Excel spread sheets for operators to just key in another zero or two to, by god, in the old days you had register the dead people and stuff the ballot box one at a time)? Anything is possible, I suppose. The latest Western renaissance is at least late in a late Baroque phase, and some say there are hints of some spent twilight creeping in to the fresco al a Photoshop.
I start to click on some threads to see how bad it is out there in answer-the-marketing-questions-or-don't-get-your-Jones phase space?
But then I think: why click at all? WTF do I care about pro journos critting their own cyber bullies and about cyber bullies brain dead posts that trigger the critting? I mean, I still really enjoy it when those wonderful pro journos are doing their thingz about the gamez, and the playuhz, but, well, like I sez, sometimes I can't tell which drawer is which in the chifferobe, and, like, my own private atomic clock is clicking' down, and, so, I REALLY ain't got time for cyber bullies, or critting them either.
Ain't my problem.
Ain't on my iDocket.
Ain't getting paid no pre-selected Presidents to put up with'em for clicks.
I'm just a sclerotic board rat trying to squeeze in a few more work outs before the final buzzer--before the big hard drive demagnetization.
I just wanna know when the next game is and read something intelligent, or funny, or authentic takes from someone like myself, only smarter, trying to get through another solar day, before the next clash of the titans in the valley of the shadow of Daisy Hill.
Don't want me no cyber bullyz.
Just want to mind me my own monkey business and to type what I type and try to barter me some of what I know about the sacred wood for some of what others know about it in hopes of getting a little deeper insight into the greatest game ever invented a'fore I leave this mortal Cloud encompassing this oh so real and finite coil within.
Go ahead, you white jet MOFOs up their in the once saintly sky, spray your scuzz clouds, bounce your microwaves, and poison me a few games earlier than I would gone with out the atomized barium lung baths.
I just want me some dots and an iLocker Room to connect them in.
Here, I get me my dots without cyber bullies, and without pro journos critting the cyber bullies giving them head aches,
Props to @approxinfinity and @bskeet.
So help me, James.
Also, I didn't notice the travel at the time of the game, but it stands out in this feed. However, I could not re-run it and so could not actually count what appeared too many steps.
Great question. After I posted, it occurred to me that you probably cannot review a call that was NOT made, only those that were. Pity.
Howling!
@JayhawkFanToo
What is the trick to watching it again instead of the Attila feed?
Great forensic. Thx. Maybe we need an assistant coach dedicated to watching for missed calls that need appealing to the monitor.
You are so right.
Thx for posting Jesse. Here are my thoughts his take triggered in me, which is what stats are supposed to do.
Post Duties on the defensive end:
Guard the post--big edge JT
Hedge defend--big edge JT
Block and alter help--edge JT
Block out--even
Rebound--big edge Cliff
Outlet pass--even
Run the floor--even when Cliff runs and JT not injured
Note: JT does more things well on defense, but doesn't score or rebound well. Guard the post means most to defensive FG%, because it stops easy inside shots. Cliff sinned guarding the post by trying not to foul and giving the easy inside basket. Thus, if Cliff can't do the most important thing for defensive FG%, his other edges over Jamari don't matter.
Kevin Young is the key player to compare JT to. Their motors, abilities and limits are most similar. Kevin avoided injury. JT has not. Kevin had a knack for anticipating caroms JT lacks. Kevin played with great rebounders that other teams had to double blockout. JT plays with a lesser rebounder in Perry.
Jamari seems injured.
Jamari seems much less heavily muscled on top this year and much more flexible and long muscled and it's really diminished his ability to muscle around the basket.
Cliff appears injured and not skilled guarding the post.
Jamari appears injured in a way that limits an already weak knack for rebounding.
Self started the season not having the short post men jumping, blocking and altering and instead focused on guarding, rebounding and blocking out, but it made them not aggressive enough to achieve a low defensive FG %. When he let them start jumping they could hold down the DFG%, but their rebounding numbers suffered. When both Cliff and JT got injured rebounding caved in. When they met a long and strong team, it was a perfect storm.
LOL
Ah, to travel with a team again. Its been soon long. How sweet it would be. Yes, he could be the manager. But so could I.
One of your best.
I believe everyone is missing the biggest question about the World Games team.
DOES TYLER MAKE THE CUT?
:-)
@drgnslayr said:
I have nothing to base it on except reading recruiting junk online. So take it for what it is worth... nothing.
Absolutely classic!
Still laughing.
Yes, I agree that 15 might have gotten the job done. And my heart is with the free the three movement.
But when we were in the lead +10, almost won at the buzzer, and lost by only 1, though we three-phisti might wish most for a trey being a solution, almost anything might have avoided our loss in Morgantown.
Two more made FTs.
One more offensive rebound with a stick back sometime earlier in the game.
One more made 3pta of the number we actually shot would have done the trick.
One stinking strip and runout would have done it.
Just two more foul calls on our inside treys and two more made FTs on those would have won the game.
One more miss by WVU.
One more turnover by WVU followed by a two point bucket.
When a coach gets you that close, whether or not we prefer he do it with the trey, Coach Self has to have been doing something right with a young team, without a dominant inside game, to and on the road against a coach that will probably be in the BHOF,
And this is why I am both able to explore a different way, but simultaneously say Coach Self's approach makes sense, too, even though it sometimes takes me awhile to figure it out later.
Good to see you defending the realm.
Yep, Staten was pretty impressive. Any point guard that can stand up to KU's defense, which as @Jesse-Newell's recently story called attention to, has gotten pretty traditionally Self-esque in its stinginess about Defensive Field Goal percentage, deserves our respect.
Cannot agree with you on reducing this to manhood, but I can in part.
Cobbins and Nash are better than Ellis and Traylor, or Ellis and Lucas, or Ellis and Alexander (so far as he has shown).
Barnes' bigs at Texas are better than ours even though Rick can't get them to play well as a team.
Baylor's bigs are as goods as ours, but they are nearly completely uncoached.
Oklahoma's bigs appear better to me than ours.
Self has been beating teams by trey shooting into leads and then basically just hugging the paint until the other team catches up, then shooting more treys to get a lead, etc.
So far as I can recall, we have not been able to beat a single good team with our bigs generating the leads.
I have agreed with you most of the season that softness and outright lack of manhood was involved in our weak play inside, I do think that we have improved in this regard significantly the last month or so.
I really do think Perry had a break through when he ran into that guy on Baylor in the second half and finally got a full tilt bell ringing and realized it wasn't so bad.
Perry played like he liked contact this game against WVU. He's not an enforcer, or anything, which is what you need against any Huggins team, but he was mixing it up pretty much all game. To me Perry is the key to this team taking the next step. Selden lacks the hops to become a great offender now. And he is not at the point of temperament as a soph to really become a hard case, apparently.
But Perry is at the right moment to become a guy that likes to mix it up and so leads his team to at a least like to mix it up.
No enforcers on the team this season.
None.
But a team full of jarhead jayhawks will follow a guy like Perry into mixing it up; that far they will go.
And I do believe there truly is a potentially angry man inside Perry still.
It may never come out, but his will to competitive greatness and fury, though still coming and going, is coming more often than going at least at this point.
Remember, just as it was Perry kind of fading against the Staten at the end, it was ALSO Perry that broke out of no where when there seemed no hope at all and almost saved victory from defeats jaws on the cherry pick.
There are two Perrys.
The longer the season goes on, the more we see the one desperately trying to win the game, and the less we see the one fading from Staten.
We have to believe.
The team has to believe.
They have to keep fighting through the beatings Self is exposing their weaknesses to and getting better.
There is no other way now. And as wise old Self knew from the Kentucky game on, there never was another way.
Softness must become hardness.
Whatever the cost, because we aren't all that talented inside, and we were soft.
Perhaps he needs saving?
I have distilled your question about Self to some colloquial bluntness.
Excuse me if I have put the wrong words in your mouth. Let's just call them mine. :-)
The subject is a little complicated, as anything really worth thinking about is.
We get to be a bit reductive as fans watching results, just like the media folks do.
When we do our part right, we discover what Self is doing, or trying to do, and we can admire him for it. And occasionally find he makes an error or two that any human being makes in real time from time to time.
We tend to go astray, when we stop at seeing him do something apparently illogical and simply conclude he was wrong, and say, "ah ha, see, if he had done what we say then he would have won."
In the instances where he does something that appears illogical, it seems wise to return to "why" he would logically be doing.
First, let me describe the team just a bit. Self has a Swiss Cheese team. It has holes everywhere.
It has a championship grade perimeter shooting team with a championship grade point guard, but this perimeter strength of the team has serious holes. Devonte is only a credible back up to Frank, when the action is not hot and heavy, because Devonte is a true freshman, not an OAD. At the 2, Selden just HAS lost his pop and cannot get up unless he is on the end of a very long run at the hoop. Behind Selden there is Devonte, who, again, is a more credible back up at the 2, but still not strong enough to handle many opposing 2. He also has Brannen and Svi. Brannen is a great shooter with defense issues that have improved some, but not a lot, and a proclivity to shoot before he is instructed to, even by February. Svi cannot make shots in games. Svi cannot guard over a pick by February. At the 3, Self has Oubre, who keeps getting better and prettier each game, but who is not migrating into the junkyard dog Self thinks the team needs him to be to steal the extra possessions (rebounds, strips, disruption) the team needs to get more FGAs than the other team, and so score more points. At the 4, Self has Perry, a finesse scorer, who as of February his junior season, is finally just now deciding that contact is fun and productive for his game. Perry has been a microcosm of the Swiss Chesse team. He has been an unquestionable strength with a hole in it. Behind Perry there is, um, well, Jamari Traylor, who has, or used to have extraordinary explosiveness, but no knack for rebounding and no credible jump shot. And now Jamari has a hip pointer that seems to make the once explosive one, move about without even the pretense of trying to rebound. At the 5, we have, uh, hmm, well, we have Cliff Alexander, the enigma inside a riddle wrapped in a mystery. Cliff can be play for, oh, say anywhere from 16 minutes to 6 minutes, and still be on the NBA draft board. And perhaps the only person that could reach him, Mr. Oreos himself, Snacks Howard, is, um, suspended for misdemeanor cannabis possession he forgot to tell his mentor about. And when Self has to sub Cliff out, he has, uh, well, he has some options that are kind Swiss Cheese themselves. Let's see here, he has Jamari, with the holes he has, and whom he can only go to when Jamari is not spelling Perry. And Self has Landen Lucas, who moves well, guards the post some, outlet passes well, but has no discernible offense and gets rather few rebounds, especially the offensive kind. Self gave up on Hunter Mickelson apparently because he had to make a triage choice and develop either Landen, or Hunter, and Hunter seemed not to offer as much ballast, which Self felt KU would need more from time to time, than Hunter's better shooting. This is the inventory that Self has to try to win a B12 conference title with, and which even after losing on the road in Morgantown, finds himself still remarkably in the lead of in mid February, 2015 Common Era.
I am not trying to knock our team, just paint an accurate picture of it from which to proceed with remarking on Self's choices.
Self appears to assess the Swiss Cheese this way. We can shoot the lights out over the course of a game from outside. If we could just develop our inside game to even just adequate, we could be a dangerous tournament team. If we don't, we are little more than a blue blood program with mid major Swiss Cheese.
A person, as humans are apparently constituted, has to believe in something to get on with it everyday; this is why we have so many religions and so many gods, and their equally extraordinary counterparts of agnosticism and atheism, and their umbrellas in epistemology--philosophy. We apparently don't do well starting each day entirely from scratch, entirely with our memories erased, our personalities de-patterned into complete openness to receptiveness to all possibilities that random context, or Big Brother, or well meaning culture, can implant in us at the drop of a hat. Even Lao Tse, who pretty much rejected everything about conventional culture as bogus, had "a way" he got to get up with each day.
Bill Self has a philosophy with two givens he starts each day with:
Given 1: We can get better at what we work on.
Given 2: When they can and do take something away from you, you have to do something else to try to survive.
Given 2, though expressing an operant logic, is also kind of an animal faith, if you like Santayana, or maybe a postulate if you are more prone to geometry and math, but I am going to call it a theorem, for the sake of further discussion, and say it has at least three corollaries, for the sake of some kind of at least linguistic coherence.
Corollary 1: They can't take away our god given, or existential, rights to play defense, so we work tirelessly on defense as our cornerstone.
Corollary 2: They can rarely take away our rebounding, so we pursue this as if it were our god given, or existential, right and work tirelessly on rebounding.
Corollary 3: They can and do take away parts of our offense, but they can't take away all of our offense, so we play take what they give us.
There are three basic things worth doing offensively in the Self philosophy: play outside (shoot high effective percentage long treys), play inside (high raw percentage shoot short treys), and transition off pressure defense triggering stolen possessions and high percentage open looks at the end of a fast break (i.e., this and offensive rebounding and defensive rebounding converging to yield more total FGAs than the opponent and so more made baskets in most cases).
If one believes one holds that any part of one's offense can be taken away, and one believes in getting better at things, then the only logical thing to do is to make sure you execute well what you are good at, and get better at what you are bad at, because you ARE going to have to do both, sooner or later, whether you like it, or not.
This is what Self gets up everyday believing. This is the wheel, at times it seems, even the Mandala, he does not reinvent.
There may be no truths outside the Gates of Eden, as Bob Dylan sang, but inside the game of basketball, you gotta believe in something to get each day started and not waste one.
Herein is the great advantage of unwavering faith, and a blue print for building with, assuming neither is completely misguided. One never wastes a day, if one wakes up with the same philosophy, and keeps working on it. One may make more, or less progress, one may make mistakes and miscalculations, one may cut errantly because of only measuring once, not twice, but, more days of work and measuring twice can correct that, and that correction contributed to the net progress in building to our goals.
Here is the secret of all great persons. They spend more days building to their goal than the other guys do. They never waste a day, some not an hour, some like Self, not a minute.
This getting better thing is very big medicine, when it is applied to a sound philosophy with a good blue print.
We here that point out apparent logical truths like 3>2 are in some sense willing to junk Self's philosophy that you have to be able to score inside and score outside, because sooner or later, they will take one away from you.
Self says, "Fine, you take a few days off and create your new philosophy. My season has a time constraint. I blue printed the team this way and I am not wasting a single day of getting better on building from my blue print. I keep making adjustments and tweaks to try to get through game to game, but in mid February I have to make certain hard choices. If there is something we are not good at in February, then I have to play as if we were and keep working on it, AND, if there are players that just can't get it by now, then they have to sit. If they can't do a simple fundamental task that I ask them to do after 4 and a half months of me telling them, teaching them, coaching them, reassuring them, upbraiding them, and benching them, then I have no choice but to bench them both to keep trying to wake them up, and to keep them from doing damage to our pursuit of getting better at being a team capable of playing consistent with our philosophy, theorems and corollaries. There are not days to waste. There are no games to waste in our pursuit of our goal, which is not so much winning as becoming the team that can win. That Self wins and develops teams that can win is a testament to his ability to race and wrench simultaneously.
But how does this justify losing a game in Morgantown that might have iced the eleventh title by not taking more treys, and by not playing your OAD center more than 6 minutes?
Strategically speaking, Self was mastering the obvious. This team can afford to lose this game, because it is a road game and we are in the lead, and we will beat this WVU team at home, but this team cannot afford NOT to keep getting better, not to keep trying to get better, at what we are trying to become. For this team to be the best it can be in March, it HAS to:
a.) learn when to take a trey consistent with our blue print;
b.) learn to score inside; and
c.) learn to beat bigger teams within the blue print of our team.
Self believes in playing take what they give us.
Self believes in getting better and that anything can be gotten better at.
Self believes that this team does not need to become exceptionally good at scoring inside, just good enough, and he thinks it is within these players abilities to get that good.
He was willing to take a road loss he could make up at home to "keep working the problem people," as NASA's Gene Kranz was reputedly famous for saying.
And the team came within one of doing it.
And that is what the team and the fans need to carry away from this game.
WVU is a pretty strong, robust test of this team's ability to get better at scoring inside, at playing ruggedly against a rugged opponents, at taking what they give us, even when it is NOT our strength they are giving us.
Coach Self is staring his team down again.
He appears to be saying something I will paraphrase as, "You all thought life wasn't easy, wasn't fair, because of the many disadvantaged places you came from, and the many obstacles even the prosperous among you have sprung from. Well, I am here to tell you that you are absolutely correct. Life is never fair, because the other guy always tries to take from you WHATEVER you are good at. That is how the game of basketball and the game of life are played. And you better learn it now, and you better learn it fast, because it is February 17th, and our season ends less than a month if you don't learn the lesson, and it ends in April if you do."
There isn't going to be any reliance on crutches.
There isn't going to be any reliance on what we are good at.
Not until we have gotten enough better at what we are not good at--not until we do not need crutches at all.
If we rely on crutches, they will take those away from us.
And we can't be champions that way.
Thus, while we can argue that there may be other ways to skin the cat of this season, other ways to make use of the sketchy material at hand, other ways to win, other philosophies to embrace, Self's philosophy and use of his material is sound in its own way and given what he is trying to accomplish.
Always remember what Self said: "If I did the popular thing, I wouldn't be around here very long."
He is, behind the fracture syntax and Okie dialect, a professional and when push comes to shove part of a shaman class descended from Henry Iba that believes in a particular philosophy of how to play the game.
There will always be disagreements about such things. Forest Allen reputedly though Henry Iba was brilliant, but at a certain point he began to strongly criticism Iba for reducing the game to deliberate perfectionism of execution, the same as Allen criticized the dunk and gamblers as bad for the game, too. Note: it was probably no coincidence that Allen grew irritated with Iba, since Allen was a bon vivant and tireless experimenter with the new that believed in innovating so as to let other teams beat themselves in confrontation with the new and different. Iba was saying, I'm going to let you beat yourself with being new and different, because my deliberate perfection allows me to make fewer mistakes and biases total FGAs, FG% and defensive field goal percentage in my teams favor every time. See why Phog might have been a bit exasperated?
We have as our coach the latest, greatest, apostle of Henry Iba's approach to basketball that largely determined John Wooden in his adaptation of the philosophy to a full court game, Bob Knight in his fanatical commitment to precision offense, Dean Smith in his fanatical devotion to a single high low post offense (the Carolina passing game), and Larry Brown himself. And this is leaving out Iba's hand picked disciples Doyle Parrock, Paul Hansen, Don Haskins, Jack Hartman, and Eddie Sutton. And even someone as far from the Iba tree as Ralph Miller referred to Iba in the same breath with Allen.
When we talk here about 3>2, we are applying a deceptively simple formula as foundation shattering to the epically influential Iba school of basketball, as e-mc^2 was to Newtonian physics.
To apply it without understanding that the Iba school of basketball is an ice berg of which we fans mostly only appreciate the small tip sticking out of the water, is to be both careless and less than serious about the game.
I happen to think that 3>2 will over the next 30-50 years force a complete reformation of catholic basketball philosophies, but that it will be slow in coming and will almost certainly not come in the way that anyone today might simplistically expect.
To put what I am saying in a metaphorical perspective, Einstein rewrote theoretical physics with specific and general relativity nearly about a century ago. But as a working physcist once told me in some confidence, its all very interesting what Einstein did, but when I actually figure out how a satellite must be sent to Mars, I still use Newtonian physics, and when I study particles in the CERNE accelerator I use quantum physics assumptions of paradox, spooky interaction and absence of locality that Einstein insisted absolutely could not hold. In short he was saying there was no doubt that e-mc^2 and the formalizations it was embedded in were descriptively accurate and enlightening in helping us conceptualize the universe, but human beings often have to "operate" in a universe differently than their descriptions permit. Process differs from conception. Execution differs at times from conception. And all along the way uncertainty and action on incomplete information are yielding unexpected outcomes with unforeseen consequences.
Self and the entire Iba school of basketball are, metaphorically speaking, like contemporary physicists staying grounded with what works understandably in Newtonian physics, and what works without complete understanding, like Quantum physics, because they are in the business of getting on with it each day, of applying it each day, not just thinking about it. But they know 3>2 as surely as contemporary physicists know e=mc^2. And they think about it. But so far, it remains, however logically valid, a formalization they view as a gross oversimplification without a proven philosophical and theoretical framework underneath it.
Working physicists say to the theoretical physicists, well, fine, but I still have to get some instruments to the Martian surface now.
Likewise, the basketball coaches are saying, you may be right, but this season is here now, and March is less than two weeks away, and my blue print is the blue print I have to work with for this season, and I have fit it to my players the best i could, based on the philosophies that have made Bill Self win 82% for ten season, and win 10 straight conference titles and be leading for an 11th in mid February.
Pudding is, as they say, at least a partial proof.
And the more successful something is, wrong or right, the harder it is to give up.
Thanks for the assist.
I don't call him Coach for nothing.
Remember when Roy Williams said he had more want to in his little finger than all the people of the state of Kansas put together.
Never underestimate the fire in the coach.
All a coach, a good coach is, is a fire under control most of the time.
I don't know. If the guys were afraid of something, would Brannen and Svi have even taken those shots? If Cliff were afraid, would he have just been sitting there calmly in his warm up the entire second half?
I am not sure feared, or scared is it.
What I saw was guys that seemed to have gone a little past their breaking point from the stresses and strains of a long season and 2 in 3 days no longer really with the will to go on down this strange path of playing that has won 20 games and put them in first place, but that they just couldn't quite leave it all on the floor for tonight. One of the posters commented insightfully about Perry carrying us much of the second half, but then at the end finally just seemingly not being able to make his exhausted body do it just one more time and stay infront of some player at what seemed a crucial moment. And he just couldnt' ask his body to any more and finish that cherry pick, even after the herculean effort of breaking free to receive the desperation pass. Jamari Traylor just walked around the court for much of the game as if he were one of Merrell's Marauders that just hasn't got anything left to give.
Maybe what the fear and scared-ness you noticed was what happens when a fighting unit finally has given all it has to give at a point in a campaign and they are too good of soldiers in to desperate a situation to stop fighting, but they just don't have anything left to fight with,
I keep remembering how fun it is to do things you are better than the other guy at in basketball, but how incredibly hard and unfun it is to have play guys that are bigger and/or better than you all the time. For a while you take it as a challenge, but then over time the struggle, which you seem to learn how to do, begins to wear you down, and, finally, some time, in some situation, you realize you just can't do it again, you can't play at a disadvantage again, you just aren't resilient enough to respond to peril and turn tactics on the spur of the moment into winning strategy, and you finally just get the milliion mile stare and keep going through what you know by rote, but not with the level of intensity it would require to win.
Maybe these jarhead jayhawks have just been in the jungle too long, been in one too many fire fights recently, and found themselves in hostile surroundings where the bigger guys were just leaning on them too much and the refs were giving the other guys just too many calls, and the unit just finally cracked.
Maybe they need a short break, or the acknowledgement of their leader that maybe they did break, and maybe he pushed them to hard, but after a short break, he is going to stand them back up, put helmets back on their heads, and rifles back on their shoulders and they are going back into action, because this IS what its all about. Pushing through breaking. Going further than they or anyone else thinks they can go. They don't have more talent than other teams. Sooner or later they were going to have break and go beyond breaking, if they are to be something special. Bad as this feels, as demoralized as they became, this night in mountains of Morgantown, is just another mountain range to cross on the way to yet another battle, on the way to a Myitkyina no one thinks they can reach, a place they no longer no how they can reach. Now they are beyond the known. It came sooner than anyone hoped. But everyone knew in the backs of their minds this moment was coming for the team with no back to the basket game, with no no enforcers, with no ability to score inside, with nothing but courage, will and a devotion to each other to survive and keep on going to their own kind of Myitkyina--a place they have never been to, never seen, never made the trek to before, a place they only have a map to and a leader telling them the way to, and driving them all harder than they have ever been driven before.
Eggs are going to get broken on this trek.
They got broken tonight.
The Jarhead Jayhawks broke, as an effective fighting force for a time, and yet they never quit. To the last second Perry was breaking a way and trying with whatever remained in him to steal a win in Morgantown.
Frankly, maybe this team needed to know what it feels like to break.
Maybe that was the only way for them to take the next step.
It was brutal to watch. Almost too painful.
It is never pretty watching units break.
But now that they HAVE broken, they now know what to expect the next time they get near that point.
And so the long march goes on.
Saturday, TCU. Monday, Bramlage.
Then Texas, West Virginia again, and Oklahoma.
The mission is Myitkyina.
If you want to go there, there is no short cut.
Its not whether the unit breaks.
Its whether you put it back together and keep going.
Anyone can win a title with rim protectors and rebounders and back to the basket game.
Our mission is to get to Myitkyina without those things.
Those other titles were child's play.
This is the greatest challenge a Bill Self team has ever faced.
Period.
Win a title without the pieces you need.
Win a title turning tactics into strategy again and again as you go.
This team is special for coming as far as it has.
It doesn't have the pieces.
All it has is the mission.
And young men willing to sacrifice to go there.
And someone to lead them.
And many to cheer them on.
Put the helmets back on.
We're going to Myitkyina.
And we haven't seen the most harrowing parts yet.
I kind of like it better.
Corrected example: Hey, Let's Seton the dude.
Nice detective work.
That is a great list that drives my point home: how the devil did we only lose by 1. How were we even in this game at all?
"There's somethin' happenin' here
And what it is ain't exactly clear..."
Wise words and I am with you.
At the same time, like Spock, I cannot help but be astonished at these human being and wonder why they are so illogical. :-)
You are right, he has not played like any OAD I have ever heard of.
Something is up.
But I haven't a clue what.
PHOF!
You got me.
Love your take, coach.
I have written more on other threads already, so I will let you have at me over on the other threads too.
Damnedest thing I ever saw.
I'm not sure how to answer that.
Neither coach was acting particularly rationally.
Huggie didn't use his press much of the second half that would have made beating them very tough.
Self didn't use his OAD center the entire second half, which made it kind of tough to win.
One way to look at is that Self coached a pretty good game because without his OAD center playing and effectively no rebounding he only lost at the buzzer.
Another way to look at it is if Self had only had them shoot 20 treys instead of 11, they would certainly have won.
Huge Bear seemed intentionally to refuse to let the refs win the game for him.
At the same time, when Self tried to ride the refs to try to win the game, Huggie road the refs to keep it exactly even on the fouls.
It was like Huggie was determined to beat Self mano a mano.
Huge called off the press, when Self benched Cliff, as if to say, well, I refuse to beat you because you sit your big man. I will handicap my own team so that we are even again.
Then both coaches coached this hog wallow second half of basketball, the likes of which I have never witnessed before, and then at the very end tried to beat each other.
But didn't.
Finally it came down to Staten making a play ground play and KU making a play ground cherry pick and Perry missing a bunny.
I think Huggie out-coached Self, because Huggie won without OAD/TADs.
But Self didn't play one of his OADs, and he didn't let his own team shoot threes that would have won it--apparently some kind of outrage at improperly his players were playing.
At the same time, if your team can't rebound and it can't score inside, why NOT shoot treys?
Frankly, this game eludes me explaining it conclusively.
All I know for probably sure is that Self appeared almost from the first minute of the game furious with his players performances and really spent more time fuming about it than coaching, and appeared to do so quite consciously.
And then he had Huggins, who is one of the few coaches that may be as smart, or smarter than Self, toying with him all game, while Self intermittently stopped fuming and made counter moves with Huggie, just to show him he could.
It wasn't really like Self got out-coached. It was more like he was so mad he decided not to coach some of the time and contemplate whether he wanted to be a coach at all with this team.
Damnedest thing I ever saw.
Remember, we came within 1 with our OAD center not even unzipping his warm up the second half.
Its not much to hold onto, but its all I have to offer tonight.
That and we easily could have shot 20 treys and won the game. :-)
PHOF
It was one of the weirdest basketball games I have ever watched.
Two coaches, each with teams with holes in their games the size of Saskatchewan, WVU can't shoot, KU can't rebound, were just warping the limits of the game and beating the piss out of the refs, and turning it into a hog wallow game, until one team made a play ground move that went in the last possession and the other team missed a play ground cherry pick on its last possession and one group playing grab ass beat another group playing grab ass +1.
KU looked absolutely like it was being bombarded with microwave crowd control energy that made the entire team unable to think about rebounding, or even watching the ball come off the rim.
WVU had a press that seemed able to destroy us and a coach that refused to use it for much of the game after proving it could destroy us.
KU had all of these great trey shooters and proved they could shoot 50% even in this hog wallow, and a coach that refused to let them shoot more than 11 treys.
It was like both coaches were in a struggle to see who could win the ugliest game ever played, and neither was willing to pull out the weapon he had that might have won the game for his guys.
Both coaches wanted to see their guys get down on their bellies and crawl like hogs through the slop.
Damnedest thing I ever sat through.
Who ever heard of giving up that many offensive rebounds?
Who ever heard of sitting on a press that could win the game at the drop of a hat?
Insane.
Huggins and Self both need to go see a shrink about this.