(Author's note: I admit it, I get easily bored doing nothing, especially when sick. File this one under an unsophisticated attempt to distract myself.)
Fans get frustrated with Bill Self for playing more conservatively the second half, after he gets a lead the first half.
I have been among them at times.
Why not keep doing what got you the lead?
If you got it firing treys, why not keep firing treys?
If you got it in transition, why not keep transitioning?
Why slow it down, tighten it up, and go inside?
Why play in a way that seems invariably to shrink a lead?
Put another way, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
But when a guy wins 82 percent of his games, it seems prudent to try to understand what he tends to do.
Is it possible that he expects for the lead to shrink and doesn’t care?
Well, we know he doesn’t care to a point, but when he starts pounding the advertising sign boards its reasonable to infer there is such a think as too much shrinkage of a lead. :-)
Still, when someone continues to do something repeated and wins 82% of the time doing it, he must be up to something, even if it doesn’t always go well. For we know: NOTHING ALWAYS GOES WELL. Shizz happens.
While battling whatever dread crud I have, I found it diverting to do something highly simplified in order to try to lay what I had known since my playing days, but which I had never really taken the time to crucify on a spread sheet.
The essence of it can be seen by creating a spread sheet with five conceptually simple rows entitled Possessions, Lead, KU PPP, Opponent’s PPP, and Adjusted Lead.
Let possession start a 1 and count out to 30 for a second half. I know there could be more, but I am interested in keeping it as basic as possible.
PPP is points per possession.
Assign a conservative 1 PPP for KU. This conservative number is used to drive home the advantage of what Self does.
Assign an optimistic 1.5 PPP for the opponent; this optimism also drives home the advantage of what Self does.
Assume three lead scenarios to start the second half: KU up 20, KU up 15 and KU up 10. If the lead is less than that, assume KU would come out playing to build a lea, not defend one.
For each possession add 1 PPP for KU to KU’s lead and subtract 1.5 PPP for KU’s opponent scoring and eating into KU’s lead on its possession. Forget for now that Self coaches defense, rebounding and strips precisely to ensure that his team has more possessions with attempts than the opposition. For the same of simplicity lets assume the possessions and shot attempts are the same for KU and its opponent. What varies is how many points per possession each team scores each possession of this hypothetical second half.
Calculate the spread sheet over up to 30 possible possessions, i.e., 30 columns.
(Note: my apologies for not including my spread sheet for you but I could not figure out how to do it. The rows and columns out the first five possessions look like below. You could easily create the spread sheet out to 30 possessions yourself in a minute or two.)
TWENTY POINT LEAD SCENARIO
Possessions 1 2 3 4 5
Lead 20 19.5 19 18.5 18
KU Score 1 1 1 1 1
Opp. Score 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
Adj. Lead 19.5 19 18.5 18 17.5
FIFTEEN POINT LEAD SCENARIO
Possessions 1 2 3 4 5
Lead 15 14.5 14 13.5 13
KU Score 1 1 1 1 1
Opp. Score 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
Adj. Lead 14.5 14 13.5 13 12.5
TEN POINT LEAD SCENARIO
Possessions 1 2 3 4 5
Lead 10 9.5 9 8.5 8
KU Score 1 1 1 1 1
Opp. Score 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
Adj. Lead 9.5 9 8.5 8 7.5
Look at the 20 point lead scenario first.
In a 30 possession half KU leads by 5 at the end.
In a 25 possession half KU leads by 7.5 points at the end.
In a 20 possession half, KU leads by 10 at the end.
The point is: with a 20 point lead, and scoring only 1 PPP, while the opponent hypothetically gets hot with 1.5 PPP, the more KU reduces the possessions, the more certain KU is to win the game.
How do you reduce total possessions in a half? Slow it down. Run the stuff. Use plenty of shot clock. Work it inside for a high percentage shot and/or FTs? Walk away with a W, no matter if the other team gets hot, or you get cold. 1PPP is cold. 1.5 PPP is hot.
This is why Self builds a lead one way, or another, and then defends it always the same way. You don’t have to shoot the ball well inside, or outside, to win by defending the lead by reducing the number of possessions. And if you do get your PPP by shooting well, and lower their PPP by playing good defense, then they are blown out.
When you go to the 15 point scenario, you see that you are exactly tied in a 30 possession half, but if you cut it to a 25 possession half, you are up by 2.5. The trouble with 2.5 is that a lucky three at the end by an opponent off any mistake you make beats you.
So: what would Self do in these situations. Often he tries to turn it into a 25 possession half but at about 19–20 possessions in he opens things up into a 4 out and one game, and starts playing to drive the rim for baskets and FTs to build up the 5 point lead. When an opponent cracks KU with pressure and KU misses and the lead goes negative, then Self opens up play and Brannen shoots a trey.
The ten point half time lead scenario shows you are down 5 in a 30 possession half, down 2.5 in a 25 possession half, and even at a 20 possession half.
So Self obviously cannot view a 10 point lead as lead to defend an entire half. Does that mean he opens it up and plays outside in? Not likely. A ten point, while not big enough to justify inside out for an entire half, is a big enough lead to justify inside out for the first 5 or 10 possessions. Why? Because assuming KU only scores 1 PPP for 5 possessions, KU’s lead, with the other team tearing up the nets at 1.5 PPP is at bare minimum still 7.5 points. And 10 possessions in KU’s lead is still 5 points. In short, Self gets to use his lead playing inside out for up to ten possessions trying to get the other team fouled up and getting KU into the 1&1 well before opponent, AND fouling up one of their best big men inside. Fouling up their big men inside early means KU gets to open it up into a spread offense aimed at driving for shots at the rim and a FT, which pushe KU’s PPP upward and makes the opposing team need more possessions to catch up.
The key advantage to defending a lead, rather than building a lead, is that you do not have to shoot well to win, while the other team has to shoot the lights out even to catch up.
They key disadvantage to defending a lead is that it often takes your players out of attack mode, until your players can learn not to rely on andrenaline and momentum to score. Once Self gets a team comfortable playing in a defend a lead mode, and they learn to keep their PPP up between 1 and 1.25 PPP, they become damned near unbeatable.
Prior to the OU game this past Monday night in AFH, perhaps the most famous example of Self building a lead the first half and defending it the second half, was KU’s 2008 ring team’s semifinal round victory over UNC, where Self used a wrinkle of jumping into UNC’s passing lanes for most of the first half to build a double digit lead, and then coming out the second half defending the lead against a hard charging UNC team. UNC cut the lead to almost nothing before Self opened play up again. It was a harrowing ride for a fan, but it was a carefully modulated strategy by KU.
Fans generally hate seeing KU’s big leads shrink to a close game. They tend to view it as squandering a lead.
Self I believe views it quite differently.
I believe Self views it as buying a lead with good play and some clever wrinkles the first half, and then judiciously spending that lead, while holding down the possessions, to make it statistically improbable for the opponent to come back no matter how well they shoot it, and no matter how poorly KU shoots it. One point per possession is not very hard to achieve, even if you shooting goes ice cold.
And it is this opportunity to defend leads that Self wants this current, good shooting KU team to develop the ability to do.
Self rightly foresees the ability of this short, good shooting team of his to be able to build leads with outside shooting.
But he also rightly recognizes that high percentage shooting can leave you at any moment.
Thus, if he develops this teams ability to build a lead early, it is doubly potent if once it has built the lead it becomes skilled at defending it without relying on continuing the good shooting.
And if the team cannot build a lead early, well then being short, the fewer times it has to defend a massively taller and more effective short range scoring team, the better in the second half, until such time, as Self decides to unleash his teams strength—outside shooting, and make a run to win it at the end.
I am not saying there is no counter case to be made here for playing it another way. I am just trying to lay out the logic of doing it as Coach Self does it.
Coach Self might alternatively spend the whole half trying to build the lead, as a means of making it tougher to catch up, but that would require continued good shooting.
Coach Self might also try couple hybrids of what he does.
He might might do exactly as he does, but ALWAYS kick it out for a trey.
Or he might dispense with going inside out, and play outside in, but run the clock down outside before running some action for a trey.
Think of this post above and the little model of defending a lead as a benchmark for next exploring these alternative scenarios I have mentioned, and maybe others I have not thought of.
Rock Chalk! And cough, cough!
Copy.
Thx, will do.
A lot of people have forgotten Ivan Renko, one of the great Eurasian prospects that did not make it in college basketball or the pros.
In 1993, Ivan Renko was considered a serious prospect for both college and pro ball.
Bob Knight reputedly created Ivan Renko out of his imagination to expose recruiting experts for being something less than their informal titles suggest.
Knight's wiki page indicated Knight told the media about a new player he was recruiting named Ivan Renko.
Note: Ivan Renko was not supposed to be a relative of one time KU quarterback and basketball backup Steve Renko.
Ivan Renko wash reputely subsequently listed on several recruiting lists of several recruiting experts as a noteworthy prospect....despite not existing.
Ivan Renko did not go onto D1 success.
Renko was also never drafted.
Renko's potential went completely untapped.
Ivan Renko did not go back to European Ball.
He never married.
He never had children.
Renko never became a big man coach in Euro Ball.
He never returned to Europe at all.
He never returned anywhere.
Ivan Renko remains in the basketball ethers of what never was.
And the greatest irony of all is that we cannot even be absolutely sure that Bob Knight ever even actually made up the fiction about him, since wikipedia is hardly definitive, is it?
And THAT is NOT the rest...of...the story.
Thx. Cough, cough.
Wayne is caught up in something very like Brady Morningstar got caught up in--the mother of all slumps.
The difference, of course, is that Wayne has an NBA body, and Brady did not. And this difference means it is MUCH harder to take Wayne off the floor, and so much harder to ruthlessly motivate him with the toughening box and bench time and eventually scrub minutes.
Self has to find an interim, somewhat less draconian approach to bouncing Wayne out of his mother of all slumps. He has already told us what it is: getting Brannen and Svi to pressure him. The trouble has been that until the end of the second half of the OU game, Brannen has not gotten how hard he had to play to be a D1 player. In turn, Brannen could not pressure Wayne for minutes. In turn, Wayne could not be provoked out of his slump.
Slumps are wicked things. The longer they go on the harder they are to reverse. There is a point afterwhich that only the greatest of players can get themselves out of a slump without pressure from a back up.
The point here is not that a coach WANTS to use a back up cruelly on a struggling starter. The point is that at some point ONLY a backup's pressure can break the vice like jaws of the slump that the starter is in. WAYNE ACTUALLY NEEDS BRANNEN, OR SVI, TO BREAK HIM OUT OF HIS SLUMP BY PRESSURING HIM.
Good players are good competitors, and good competitors are not wounded by competition. They are strengthened by it. Poor competitors, in contrast are crushed by it.
Wayne Selden may be a lot of things, but playing a season on a bad knee for a team that won a conference title and would have gone deep in the Madness but for an injury to Joel Embiid, indicates that Selden IS a very competitive guy.
Brady Morningstar went from be a very capable D1 perimeter player to being utterly incompetant for an extended period. His slump was particularly damaging to his ability to stay on the floor, because his physical abilities were not as great as Wayne's and so when he slumped, he fell quickly off the razor's edge of performance he needed to maintain to play at a D1 level. Wayne's physical abilities are so substantial that he was better on a bad knee than the other options we had. Similarly, his physical abilities are so substantial that he is better in a slump than our other options.
But there are limits to everything. At some point, the slump is so debilitating to one's overall performance that trade-offs become more feasible among the slumping player and his backup who lacks the same broad spectrum of talents.
To wit, Brannen becomes an option at the end when an outside threat is expedient when down one. And when he produces in the clutch, tolerance of his shortcomings increases, and need for Wayne's remaining advantages shrinks a little.
Over 40 minutes, a slumping Wayne still holds service, but a trending up Brannen gets more minutes. As happened with Brady, this early rise in minutes by a back up can first worsen a players slump, but in time the player and the slump bottom out and deep knawing doubt that emerged unexpectedly to trap a player in a slump is replaced by something like, "What the hell! Things can't get any worse. I might as well just go play and forget about trying to end the slump, or not." It is around this point that a player rediscovers his usual game and begins playing his way back into whatever role his talents permit in conjunction with the progress made by the backup.
Brady never fully recovered full control of his position, because two OADs in succession were thrown up in front of him. But he was such an exceptional glue man that Self always found 25-35 minutes for him in a back up role backing up all three positions on the perimeter.
I don't foresee Wayne's situation ever leading to permanent 6th man, like Brady, but Wayne could get worse, before he gets better. Or he could snap out of it right now. The point is it truly is a slump that has come on the heels of lost pop after a nasty knee injury. All knee injuries are nasty. Most fans do not appreciate how hard it is to come back from injuries--not just physically but mentally. Only the most extremely confident and focused and self-possessed of players come back fully from injuries.
Wayne may be going through a process of questioning who he really is as a person and player, when he has had to play through so much adversity as a player these first two seasons, when he was thought to be an OAD.
If he will persevere, he will prevail.
But part of prevailing will be overcoming, probably for the first time in his life, the very real chance that he might not overcome. That probably brings with it a kind of fear he has probably never known, because of his great physcial ability.
But if he can get through it, he will be an order of magnitude stronger at his core and it could make him into a great player down the road.
It all depends on how much pop he has left, and we won't really have a clear indication of that, until after the slump ends.
Go, Wayne, go!!!!!!!!!
You are in slump.
This is a test of will, not of ability.
But the roles both players have played for their teams are quite similar, even though Wayne glues from the 2 and Brady glued mostly from the 3.
Yes, I recall things did not break well for him way back. Haven't heard about him lately. Every player needs good people on his side giving good advice, and good luck.
Great question. Very interesting. Ask JNew. He is the king of QA interactivity right now. I asked him previously. Maybe you ask him this time. He needs clicks on his sight to keep doing the good stuff that he is doing. Don't hesitiate to support him with clicks and questions.
Yep, still mighty congested. I only have the strength left to read about the role of agents, agent runners and summer leaguers in the greatest game ever invented. What have you got for me on them? Any thing that will draw what they are up to into the light of day?
:-)
Trust me, Self will kill off nothing. He is developing a fitting approach to use all his weapons.
He is a hunter collecting the various kinds of arrows he needs for various kinds of game he will run into over the course of a season.
About damned time they started picking up on what JNew has been doing in real time, not just his QA. It is the multi-modal interactivity that he is doing that is new that I have been harping for persons inside and outside the media to recognize.
We are in the interactive age whether others like it or not.
We are no longer in the Guttenberg one way printing press era anymore.
The key is NOT that we can all post our thoughts and broadcast them; that misses the point entirely.
The key is the interactivity of ALL our thoughts; this is what is new--the synergy a nonlinear increase in connected thinking.
Inside out has threes, too.
The threes come on kickouts.
But they only come AFTER the ball goes inside...after the high low set is established on the low blocks and back to the basket is tried.
The key was that Self was determined to play the inside out game the second half.
Making some of those treys early would have made the whole second half sooooooo much easier, but it would not have changed Self's will to see the team learn to play inside out.
One way or another he was going to will the team through its inferiority complex about playing inside out.
Copy and paste.
I got a bit sick. I am sick tonight too. I just got sick of being sick and came out and typed through for the game. :-)
Good to be back, and feeling your love. :-) Be warned though that I may fade for a few more days, before I am back for good.
Say, are you posting for just lumpy, or for lumpy and slayr, again tonight. ;-)
Rock Chalk!
No offense taken. And I could still be wrong.
And up until the moment that I began to notice what I did, I was more skeptical and cynical than everyone else about what was happening.
But its what I saw, so I had to say it.
Time will tell though.
There could be some backsliding, but I don't think so. I think when a team has been through the kind of hell this team has been through, then it isn't going to pay for the same real estate twice. It is going to make mistakes trying to learn the next things Self teaches it, but I gotta believe that Cliff and Kelly and Perry, and Brannen, learned tonight what playing hard is and how aggressive you have to be.
Greene still has the worst footwork I have seen on a wing defender in the entire Self era, but he began to play hard to compensate for it, instead of playing hard to get minutes. He improved from horrible to bad, simply by using effort to cover up horrible. But Greene is so good in other ways, so fiery, so without conscience, and a proud, feisty Georgia man. We haven't had many southerners lately. They are a proud lot and can become hard men, great fighters, if you cut through their proclivity to celebrate their swagger.
And Cliff just didn't know where the threshold of hard was. It has never been a character thing with him. It was honest ignorance. And that is always surmountable sooner or later. Honest ingnorance is what we all suffer from in one aspect or another.
Totally, as my kid used to say.
KU has to be just good enough at inside out to play it when teams start scheming to stop outside in.
KU has to be just good enough at inside out that an opponent cannot start either half 100 percent certain we will play outside in.
But to play inside out at all, and have it have any countervailing force at all, this team, which has been ass whipped every time it has tried doing it against a good team, has to get over the mental block of its own limitations of ability. It has to understand that there are certain things on a basketball court, like defense, and driving the ball against blue meanies, and playing back to the basket when you get a spot offered you, even by a footer, that you have to do. Its like you have to have a motor. You have to be able to tie your shoes. You have to be able to get your butt down and slide. You have to go out and put a body on someone sometimes. It doesn't matter how much bigger they are than you.
Self has not been asking this team to be a great inside out team. He has been saying you have to be able at least to play it decent enough that an opponent can't just forget about us inside entirely.
But this team got pistol whipped so badly by Kentucky, and then again by Temple, and its even been intimidated by a bunch of mid majors, that Self apparently decided that he was dealing with a mental block, as much as a lack of talent. They sure as heck don't have much natural talent for B2B, but sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Most of the time, most guys want to go slam, bam thank you mam in th ay, and that's okay on a one night stand you don't have to face the next day. But when you fall in love with some gal, and she's got a slow fuse, then sometimes, whether you're good at the long ride, or not, you gotta oblige her like Bruce Springsteen sang, and prove it all night.
Self hasn't been asking this team to become a bunch of all night riders, because he knows that's not what they're good at.
But he apparently was determined that they were going to recover their self respect about being able to play basic basketball in a pinch when they had to.
Sorry to ramble here, but it was an amazing feat of coaching that I really did not think could be achieved by this team.
But damned if they didn't achieve it for their coach.
That is exactly what I mean. This was an act of will. He could have won it by 20 easily playing outside in. This has been the war he has been waging with his own team since the Kentucky game. How does he keep winning, but also convince this team that they are not a bunch of weaklings that HAVE to play one way--outside in--because they are so small and weak that they cannot play inside out.
This team has not been playing opponents most of the season.
This team has been playing Bill Self.
I think him being willing to take a loss in Ames and being will to sit Cliff finally got their attentions.
But it wasn't until the start of the second half when they knew he was going to force them to play inside out with the entire conference streak riding on it that they realized just how hard a man Bill Self truly is.
Self comes out of the Henry Iba tree. Iba was another cut of wood. He was not the innovator that Phog Allen was. He was not the happy go luck, visionary genius that Allen was. Iba was a hard man. A perfectionist.
The fruit has not fallen far from the tree.
Haskins, Sutton, Hartman, and Hansen were all hard men.
Haskins produced Nolan Richardson, a hard man.
Hartman was a hard man. He produced Kruger.
Sutton and Hansen were hard men. They produced Self.
Here is a quote about Iba that everyone needs to remember when talking about any of the coaches in the Iba tree. It is a quote by Doug Collins, who was a prolific college scorer at Illinois State that was invited to try out for the 1972 Olympic team.
"I remember when I went to try out for the Olympic team in 1972, Coach Iba told me he didn't care how many points I could score because if I couldn't guard anybody, I wasn't going to make the team. I knew to make the team I had to become a better defender. If you can play offense, you can defend. It just comes down to competitive will."--Doug Collins
Competitive will.
This was what Iba had.
This was what Self has.
It cannot be put in words.
It can only be communicated by being around it every day.
Defense is not an option in the Iba school.
Defense is not something played half way, or part of the time.
Defense is the only way.
Iba was as hard as Vince Lombardi.
Iba was probably who gave Bob Knight the permission to be as hard as he became.
I am not saying being a hard man is the only way.
There are many ways to win.
But hard men can be very successful, when they have brains to go with their hardness.
Self's frat boy looks and boyish smile obscure a very hard man.
Maybe not the hardest.
But hard enough.
If accomplishing some objective is considered foundational to team success, Self will not stop at anything until he either gets it, or runs out of season.
This team of young hard heads, green wood, and naives, just had no clue to the lengths he was willing to go to.
Neither did we fans.
And what he did tonight is not the end of it.
What was accomplished tonight was the breaking of old ways of thinking, of deep self-doubts. Now, comes the mastery. Remember, this is only mid January. There are more mountains of getting better to climb. Cliff just discovered to night what playing hard is...not how hard he can play; that is yet to come.
But the thing is, now Perry Ellis has some players to play with, not just a bunch clueless talents. The getting better is really just starting.
Genius does the seemingly impossible.
It is one definition of genius.
Genius sees what can be, where others do not.
It is why genius can at times be mistaken for madness when things are not going well.
Tonight another amazing thing happened in Allen Field House.
Bill Self, desperately needing a win over OU to keep hope alive for an 11th conference title and the best seed possible for the Madness, sent his team out amped up and playing outside in with a straight emulation of Hoi ball in the half court, and coached KU to a blowout half time lead.
But then the man determined to be able to play it both outside in and inside out put his young team back into the hottest blast furnace a young team has ever been put in. He had given them a sure win outside in, and then took it all away from them and said, “Nope, boys, you are going to have to win this one inside out, or we are not going to win another conference title.” He put their backs to the wall by making them play back to the basket. He said, “Its now or never, guys. This is non-negotiable. You are not small. You are not weak. You are not small, weak, face the basket only players. You are men. You can play the game of basketball back to the basket driving it inside. You can and you WILL. Or you are going to be responsible for ending the greatest streak in the history of Kansas basketball. Others say you are to small. You are NOT small. You are short. Others say you are weak inside. You are NOT weak inside. You are STRONG. Others say you cannot beat a good team inside out. I say you MUST beat a good team inside out to recover your self respect and dignity that was taken from you by Kentucky that first game of the season. We are not a weak, small, team. We are short, strong team with the manhood to play the game like men no matter what size we are. Of course we can beat people playing outside in. We can beat almost all teams outside in. We are flipping great outside in and I know it. But there will come a time, sooner or later, when circumstances and match ups will require us to play inside out against someone in the Madness and we have to be able to do it. You think I was afraid to play outside in. I am not afraid of ANYTHING, or ANYONE. And neither will you be now. Because you know you can play it anyway they want, and anyway we want. You are now unbeatable men, regardless of how much standing height you lack. NOW, no team will ever be able to be sure which way we will come out either half. Now we can switch modes to counter whatever they do. NOW WE ARE MEN.”
And Bill Self transformed a bunch of short boys with bad body language into men walking around with broad shoulders and just a bit of swagger. They are a confident team now, because they mastered what they and the rest of us did not believe they could do. They beat a good team inside out. It was scary. It was horrendous for a long while. But finally it was unmistakeable. The steel tempered before our eyes the last four minutes and a team was born. It was the most awesome momentary transformation of a team I have ever witnessed in 55 years of watching and loving the game.
Self and his players did it.
I am confident they will win the conference now.
And there is a very good chance they will not lose another game in the conference. Maybe one in the conference tournament.
But the team is now forged and ready to begin mastering what they now know they can become. A great short team. They now know if they work hard and keep working hard that greatness is possible for them.
Just came down with some crud and haven't felt like keyboarding. That ISU game seemed to drag down my immune system. :-)
Great interactive journalism, JNew!!!! THX.
I am with Dylan on part of the dynamic being more catch and shoot.
But there maybe a dynamic biasing things some, too.
I have always noticed two kinds of outside shooters: those that like the corner shot and those that don't. There are a lot guys that coaches won't even allow to take the corner shot. And as I said there are a lot of guys that don't like it. They only want to shoot out front or on the wings.
Further, as the shot charts you provide make clear, a lot more shots are taken out front than in the corner. It would be interesting to know the standard deviation, or distributions at the various locations he quantified for you. Average and distribution.
So: we have total numbers of shots taken, averages and distributions around those averages to take into account.
And we have two shooter profiles to consider: the set of all outside shooters that must take the looks out front and on the side; and the subset of those guys that are good at the corner shot and so get green lighted and schemed to take it.
Very fascinating.
It appears graphically that Iowa State is more productive shooting outside, in part because of where they take their shots.
But I suspect it also has to do with how many open shots they are taking versus how many open shots KU is taking. But that is anecdotal, of course.
Rock Chalk!
@wrwlumpy and @drgnslayr
Or at @drgnlumpy
Or wrwslayr
Cue the Twilight Zone music.
I won't say anything if you don't. ;-)
I'm all in on this then. :-)
Let's hope we get off to a good start in Ames, so the crowd doesn't take us out of the game.
Ours is still a young team, when it comes to entering asylums like Hilton.
Kelly has never faced anything like this before.
Neither has Cliff.
Frank and Wayne and Perry and Jam Tray are the only guys that have really had to deal with this sort of thing before, so I expect them to ring up the most PT.
It is different sitting on the bench and watching it, like Greene and Lucas did last season, but I expect them to be called on.
Svi may be held out of this one.
It could really get hairy, if ISU's two trey ballers sink three or four early; that's when Self will have some tough decisions about whether to go outside to match trey for trey, or slow it down and create shots for Perry inside.
18-20 hours?
Man, I want to come back as a big cat in the next life...in a wild life refuge of course. :-)
Well, that sounds like Self told him to conserve himself on offense, because Self felt that Greene and Svi were too long and slow footed to stay with a tireless super gnat like Forte.
And while Self is playing Graham a lot, he probably figures that Graham could go out at any moment with a re-injured turf toe. So: Self probably ordered Selden to conserve on offense regardless, and figured Graham could goose it a little on offense when in.
So: we probably shouldn't judge to much about Wayne's offense based on the OSU game.
I would expect that Greene and Svi will probably play quite a bit against ISU's long perimeter trey ballers. Better match up as they say. And that will allow Self to tell Wayne to play hard on both ends because he can expect some substitutions.
One more thing. The reason I think Lucas is now back in the picture has to do with playing TO Perry more.
With Perry running more action he will be rebounding less. :-(
So, as you have pointed out, since Traylor lacks the rebounding gene, and Lucas has at least a modest one, Lucas becomes more necessary in the line up.
Interesting point about the fatigue.
I did not notice that, but I find I am missed quite a bit the last game.
Did he seem slow on both ends, or just on the offensive end.
It could be that he was conserving on offense to be sure he had energy credits to burn on defense.
Just a thought.
LOL!
I am not at liberty to divulge what level of clearance would be required.
But I am at authorized to neither confirm, nor deny, that @ralster is in any way affiliated with the BIA.
Further, I am authorized to say that @ralster is NOT Edward Snowden, Seth Meyers, Queen Latifah or John Calipari.
Beyond that, I cannot comment without having to terminate myself with XTReme Prejudice. :-)
A terrific post, even though I am holding out hope that when Self schemes for Perry we will see him break out scoring.
I think you nailed it with the Mickelson connection. The team had to face 2 basket buys and only one of them play and it was going to be Perry, which meant The Big Red Dog has to come through.
@HighEliteMajor said:
Really, it is a Cliff "break out" that my lead to an Ellis break out in the post.
That's it in a nut shell.
What I think is going on, however, is that Cliff cannot be counted on, and the thaw out of Landen Lucas signals another change of plan.
Self is now determined that he has to committee the 5; that Cliff is NOT going to become a 30 minute man this season.
Self is now saying that whenever Perry is in the game, the player at the 5 is going to playing very rough and picking up a lot of fouls, so that Self can scheme action for Perry's finesse game. We are now done seeing Perry trying to go it alone either B2B, for F2B. When Perry is in, its either Perry outside, or Perry finesse moves inside coming off action. The 5 is going to be muscling Perry's man, back picking him, and so on. This is what Landon Lucas can do. Traylor and Lucas have no offense on the low block. And Cliff has great offense that cannot be counted on because of his fouling. I really think the offense is going to tilt hard to Perry coming off action. No more playing THROUGH Perry; that has not worked, either outside, or inside. Now they are going to play TO Perry.
Playing THROUGH Perry is getting the ball to him at different spots and having him initiate.
Playing TO Perry is creating looks for him and getting him the ball to score.
All last season and early this we were playing TO Perry. He was getting shots blocked, but he was scoring at a pretty good clip nonetheless.
When neither Traylor, nor Lucas, could generate offense B2B, and Cliff could generate offense but only in short spurts, Self began to play THROUGH Perry in hopes that getting Cliff more PT with simpler duties, i.e., not being played THROUGH, then there was an uptick in Perry's scoring and then the double teams set in full time. Since then Perry has labored initiating.
I believe Self maybe shifting gears and playing THROUGH Frank and Oubre, and having them play TO Perry.
Frank and Perry have been doing the bulk of the scoring the last few games, with one other person chipping in with a decent night. But it has seemed to me that Self was trying to play THROUGH Frank, Kelly and Perry. And I think that Self saw that the team seemed to play a little more comfortably with big Landen in their being a big man presence, even if not a very impactful one.
So: I think in Ames we are going to see everything run THROUGH Frank and Kelly and we are going to see plays run FOR Perry for the first time in quite a few games.
But even though I think what I am saying is likely true, it does not diminish the validity of what you are saying.
The season's stats on Perry indicate that he is not a good guy to play THROUGH because of his inability to create against persons his size, or bigger.
But he is a scorer and who CAN score if shots are created FOR him. His spin move can be created for him. Outside trey looks can be created for him. Driving lanes can be cleared for him. And so on. He can even go low block and get on a spot and receive a feed, but he needs someone to come over and pick his man., for him to make a spin move.
And Perry is going to be double teamed unless he is on the move, so the logical thing to do whenever Perry is not taking open looks is to put him in motion back and forth across the lane, and up and down the lane with the 5 clearing away, and Wayne picking his man, or Kelly picking his man. Wing picks are the best way to shake Perry free--to create a mismatch for Perry. It does not good to pick him with a post man, because the post switch will leave a big man on him that Perry cannot create a shot against.
But again, none of this diminishes my thinking that outside in is the more logical way to play.
I am just trying to articulate the next way I think Self is going to try to try playing inside out.
This could change if Cliff suddenly discovers how to be the low block presence that Perry requires, but I just don't think Self is holding his breath any more for that this season.
There will be nights all season long where things
Ah, I am feeling a mighty fine game day brewing, how about you?
Be sure to brew up a batch of your best, healthiest juices so that you will be at full strength.
Say, I have noticed you have not come over to JNewell's live blog to talk up the game in real time.
I believe some of your knowledge would be of assistance during the games.
Might you consider virtual attendance for the ISU contest?
@drgnslayr said:
(exceptions being when someone has a gun!)
Julie-san, fighting not good, But if must fight...win (exception being gun toting psychopath, then run like hell at 45 degree angles!)
Note: that was an allusion to your 45 degree angle of escape comment awhile back, if the evil of football has not robbed that post from your memory banks.
:-)
Rock Chalk!
You know I didn't really take a good look at his dunk. I was focusing on some other players. I hope you are right, and trust your eye, but early in the season there was no mistaking he was having a lot of trouble. I have kept seeing him only being able to take off on the run and that is always a sign of lost pop. You know, they jump waaaaaay long on a lot of momentum but you never seem them exploding straight up. I never see him taking on much air on his J on an open look, unless he is coming off several steps of motion; that's another sign of lost pop. Finally, when he is going for a rebound, from a no-step jump he is never getting much lift. And that's another sign of lost pop.
But the thing is I am referring mostly to earlier in the season, when I was watching him closely and saw so little pop early that I quit watching for his further recovery. But I will keep an eye on his springs versus ISU and expect to see what you see. If I don't, I will let you know.
Yes, but they never say anything meaningful in those game day interviews. Its after the games and day after press conferences where they some times throw us some real bones.
And you have to understand. I am spoiled by the sassy, brassy virtual reality of you and others here, so mainstream media stuff is just not authentic enough for me anymore. :-)
But I don't want to be a curmudgeon.
Enjoy the heck out of that stuff if you do.
Basketball is all about having fun.
Rock Chalk!
Wayne is the big mystery to me. Not Perry. Perry's issue is pretty clear. He got thrown into the toughening box to try to break him out of his tendency to let blue meanies able to shut down his scoring in his usual ways send him into a conscience stricken funk, after which he does the disappear-o. Perry is likely to bounce out, unless he has cracked, or something, which hardly seems likely.
Wayne on the other hand is something of a black box.
I know he is being given some tough assignments on defense, but he has been an absolute nothing offensive player against very weak teams and middling teams that had no challenging defender for him to score on.
Wayne shows serious signs of loss of pop.
Loss of pop usually means a great athlete, like Wayne, can continue to defend well.
But loss of pop usually hugely limits his scoring, because he has to find a new way to score.
It appears to me that Self has thought that Wayne is having some trouble overcoming the psychological affects of his knee injury in terms of aerial ballet stuff.
But this has gone on so long that it seems more likely that he really has lost his pop and so is retooling his offense and it is slow going trying to do such a thing during a basketball season.
One more possibility is that Wayne was rounding into playing shape and playng psychology around the time he had his one really good offensive performance and then shortly after that he may have reinjured himself somehow. Last year he had a sharp drop off that lasted the whole season and after the season Self revealed he had played through on a knee injury. That is always possible again.
But to me Wayne is a black box, and the above are only wild speculations.
I just don't know what to think about him.
But if, as Self says, he can come around this season, KU is going to have a non linear synergetic effect from it, and get a whole lot better.
I wish I were. I thought Oubre would go off for 20-30 last game, but the basketball god decided to humble me on that one. But...
I do think when players of great physical ability that have in the past done exceptional things, as the second bananas, go into extended tail spins as first bananas, either injuries, or toughening box tenure, usually explains the struggles.
Self keeps signaling what he is trying to break free in Perry.
But you have to translate Self-ese to recognize it.
Here is the way I translate what Self wants in a basketball player.
He wants a cool cat ready to explode under control in any direction to accomplish any thing needed on a basketball floor at any time.
The methodical automaton, no matter how skilled he may be at his menu of moves, is not the player that plays Self Ball the best.
Self Ball is about a pride of 5 big cats moving in for kill on a herd of whatever happens to be handy to eat.
Have you ever watched a big cat in a zoo pace around his cage?
That is what Self wants in a basketball player.
Big cats have enormous presence as they seem to both look at you and beyond you in their utterly controlled, restlessness.
Big cats can tangle with bears, or hunt impala.
They look for the weakest link and try to eat him.
But they will eat whatever is before them, even if it isn't weak.
Big cats prowl.
They turn on the speed when its necessary, but only when its necessary.
They stalk.
They never stop stalking.
They are relentless.
They only rest after eating.
They are fierce, but their emotions never get in the way.
Notice that Self physically is a striking combination of thick brow, square jaw, and broad shoulders, juxtaposed with skinny hands and legs. He's got some lion in him.
He has a sweet smile, when he's relaxed, but he also shows his pronounced fangs when he is amped up either smiling or venting.
Self is a tension between his female side and his male side--that's very feline.
He is a tension between muscle and finesse.
Self is a feline male that growls and purrs with an Okie twang.
And he was never able to move like the cat he was inside.
That's why he recruits the kinds of players he does. He recruits big cats, long cats--what he felt like but never was.
What did he say about Kentucky after losing the first game of the season to that 2012 ring team? He was practically oozing enthusiasm and envy even though they had just beaten him badly. He smiled admiringly and said, "Those are some long cats."
He wished he could coach those guys.
But compare that with this years UK beat down of his team.
No envy. No enthusiasm. This year's UK players are not his kind of players. They are just four big, long plodders, and perimeter players that really aren't cats at. They are just long types with talent, but no real feline killer instinct in them at all.
Talented as UK is this year, there is no Anthony Davis, or Michael-Kidd Gilchrist among them. Those two guys were Self Ballers on the wrong team. The whole 2012 UK team were Self Ballers on the wrong team. They were space creators and then killers. They may not have had the experience and polish that Self adds to his cats, but they had all big cat thing down. They were born big, long cats. Cal got'em. It didn't matter, because Self admires long cats, no matter who they play for. He doesn't care if they are muscled thick like lions, or think like cheetahs. He loves long cats. On his own team, TRob was a lion. EJ was a cheetah. Tyshawn was super Cheetah. Create space, kill! Create space, kill!
Coaches like Izzo that are all junkyard dog with spiked collars have his number, when ever they don't give him and his cats room to work. They don't bother with his paradoxes. They don't care that he can scratch the hell out of them with his long cats. They just move in and latch onto him and his players, and don't let go. A cat can growl and scratch and fling this way and that, but he can't create space and kill, when a junkyard dog, or a bear, or whatever has him in his locked jaws and won't let go.
Its the law of the jungle that underpins all the fancy sets and actions, all the strategy and tactics, all the philosophy, all the x and y and z-axis stuff, all the micro-bursting treys, and back to basket talk.
Long big cat?
Or junkyard dog?
Lion?
Or Bear?
Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was a long big cat.
Joe Frazier was all junkyard dog.
Its not that one always has the upper hand on the other.
It depends on the day and the energy in the dog and the cat and the bio rhythms, and the injuries, and the age, and the experience, which one prevails.
Big cats don't like confinement. Even when they are close, they are looking for space through angles. They want room to work inside, or out. Everything about KU's schemes is about creating space to work.
There is a whole subculture of basketball that is cat culture. Pitino is cat culture. Calipari is cat culture. All the space creators, no matter how they say to do it, are big cats.
Big cats want create space because they are so quick in space. Its to their advantage.
Junkyard dogs want to cut off space, eliminate space. They want it to be about nothing but their teeth holding onto your throat, or hamstring. They want to hang on and use their weight against your struggle to tear you apart.
The only time big cats get in trouble is when they think they can be junkyard dogs.
The only time junkyard dogs get in trouble is when they think they can kill in open space.
All games like boxing, basketball and football are ultimately about these two primitive ways of competing and cooperating in environments of scarcity.
Why is boxing more primal than either basketball, or football?
Its not at all based on the hitting. Football is full of much more vicious impacts to the body. Boxing is only more severe to the brain, and as time passes, and science researches, we are learning more and more that football is very bad for your brain. You never see a boxer with a broken neck, or broken spine, or busted spleen, or a bone sticking out of his dermis. While not frequent in football, these sorts of injuries are not rare in football either.
What separates football and basketball from boxing in terms of primal intensity is the scarcity of one ball in the ball games, vs. NO ball in boxing. Its the same with bullfighting. There is nothing to fight over in a boxing ring, or a bull ring. There is just the kill, or be killed. The ball in ball games creates one degree of freedom between kill or be killed, and we the spectators and they they players create psychic space to ease our tensions. The ball, though instituted to the scarcity of one among ten players in basketball, and one among 22 in football, is at least something to focus on OTHER than kill, or be killed.
The ball in ball games gives us a crutch, something to focus directly on, whilst we take in the savagery at an angle, indirectly, if you will.
But I digress (for @wrwlumpy, of course.)
And the point of the digression was to lay in the nature of what Self is seeking to free in Perry Ellis.
Self keeps saying things like Perry is exactly what you would want in a son, he is hard working, conscientious, methodical, a perfectionist. And Self says that's all good off the court, but on the court it is not necessarily the best way to be.
Recall what Self said about Brannen Greene, who obviously drives Self to near distraction because of his wild hairs, which big cats seem not to possess either. Self frankly paid Greene one of his ultimate big cat compliments. He said Greene had no conscience. It was a startling declarative statement in its literalness. Self was characterizing what it actually takes to be a great shooter. You can't have a conscience to be a great shooter, because great shooters miss 60% of the time. If they stop to think about their misses, they could never be great shooters. Great shooters are like big cats. Have you ever looked in their eyes? Do they look like they are anguishing over what might happen if pounced on you and missed?
We are not talking here about human confidence, when we talk about great shooters. We are talking about the confidence of big cats. We are talking about the absence of confidence. We are talking about no conscience at all. We are talking about just the ability and instinct to pull the trigger. There is no end to it. This is why there is such a love hate relationship between great shooters and coaches. I believe it is why many coaches find excuses not to play great shooters, or at least not to start them. Coaches are control freaks. They don't like depending on players that truly have no conscience. I could hear in Self's words when he said Greene had no conscience about shooting. He was both in awe of Greene and in horror of him. He knows Greene is exactly what he needs, and at the same time that Greene is exactly what he does not want. Greene is a highly specialized kind of long cat. He is a shooting cat. Shooting cats are the fundamentally undomesticated wild animals of basketball. The truly great shooter can never be domesticated, not really. They can learn a few domestic tricks, like guarding their man, or running some stuff, and they can fool you occasionally into thinking maybe they are domesticated, but deep down, they are no more domesticated than a mountain lion.
Why do I go on so about Brannen Greene, when the issue is Perry Ellis?
Because what Self is trying to release in Perry Ellis is what Self is trying reign in Brannen Greene.
Perry is a paradoxical scorer. He is a scorer with a conscience. A scorer with a conscience, no matter how good of a scorer he may be, and Perry is a very, very, VERY good one, is no good to a coach bent on building a team of long, big cats.
Why?
Because as I said, scorers, like shooters, miss fully 50% of the time. (Note: Shooters like Greene miss 60% of the time because their shots all come from trey. Scorers like Perry shoot inside and outside.) And a scorer with a conscience, especially with one as severe as Perry's apparently is, is going to disappear about half the time in games after those misses, be they from just missing, or from having the ball crammed down his throat from someone bigger and stronger than him.
I am convinced that Self did not WANT to send Perry to the toughening box this season. Perry is probably never going to be a lion type, or even a tiger type, that tears even the most ferocious bear limb from limb; that's not who he is. But he can sure as heck be one helluva leopard.
But Self tried short toughening stints his first two seasons. He got him a lot of exposure, yet he protected him and let him develop naturally too. But nothing seemed to extinguish his conscience about shooting and missing. No amount of experience and hounding and button pushing seemed to release the leopard in Perry.
So: it is my layman's guess that Self finally just said to Norm, "Erect the toughening box out on the court, put some wheels on it, and hide the key from me and don't give it to me, no matter what he does, or what I say. Norm. Hide it." And Self decided to leave Perry at the mercy of unschemed for competition in a D1 jungle of big men as big and usually bigger than Perry, for as long as seemed within the bounds of humane treatment of another humane being that you love and care about and want to help take it to the next level.
Self apparently believes there is a leopard locked inside of Perry. And the lock and chain are his conscience, which is probably his greatest virtue and strength off the court, but may be holding him back on the sacred wood.
That's my take anyway.
Repeat after me: I am woman hear me roar!
Unless of course Drake switches sides.
Oh, god, dear, don't watch those. Your brain will atrophy. :-)
8pm CST
Been there. Done that! :-)