Some where someone was saying they expected the winner to have four losses. But I really haven't tried to think it through, because KU is such a wild card in all of this. Hard to tell from game to game whether to take us as a threat, or not.
I know Texas getting that talented point guard back is not a positive for anyone that is already going to have trouble contending with their size.
If I recall correctly, one of our august members indicated that the NBA apparel is contracted with adidas, but players are free to contract on shoes as they prefer. Right?
We have lost the way it WAS; that happens every 10-15 years.
The way it was was 3-4 year players being recruited by a hot young coach with a Nike lean at a Nike school that had serious recruiting charisma and signed players to be coached up by a great staff, and game coached by a guy who had still not seen everything but was a quick study with a new "play it any way they want" philosophy that knocked'em dead. And his dharma then coincided with the summer game and the summer game accepted him.
Now it is some OADs/TADs in transition to all OAD/TADs valved by adidas, which apparently can't valve as many as Nike can, but what can be valved is being coached up for shorter times by an equally good staff, and game coached by a guy who is missing his QA guy for tendencies, but who is now super experienced and among the three wiliest coaches in the game. Alas, now it appears his dharma conflicts with some of the summer game, especially since his friend/colleague Norm Roberts reputedly got run by summer gamers in the grande apple, and he (Self) likely lost respect for some of them and some reputedly don't valve him all the local players they might.
In short, life without Nike appears very, very, very complicated on many, many, many levels of a coach's activities. Not impossible. But more difficult, despite all the extra Franklins from adidas.
The program continually has to be rewritten and debugged until the whole Big Shoe dynamic can be reconciled, so that absurd talent asymmetries with Nike-Duke, Nike-UK, and Nike-UA are resolved.
When Self came to KU, what was hoped was that he could smooth out the every other year recruiting pattern that emerged under Nike Roy; that he would recruit the whole country and get just a few more guys than Roy got, and coach them to play tougher.
He has mostly done that.
Now the expectations are very different. Now they are concrete and specific. A KU coach now has to have as many OAD/TADs as UK, Duke and UA, in order to compete on the same level. Nothing else much matters. Notice how everyone has quit talking about KU graduating guys? No point in selling that angle any more, since a migration is under way toward more and more OAD/TADs that by definition don't graduate.
Nevertheless, we have not lost what has made us successful.
What makes us successful is The Legacy and continually working the problems and finding the next successful formula, business model, what have you. Self in mid life is retrofitting the whole program from recruiting model, to way of relating to players and media, to signing Fratello-Hill Eurasian players, to exactly what contributes to winning, and throwing a lot of old junk over board, as he goes. And he is still winning in the high 20s with conference titles, as he retrofits and waits for the critical new housing to enable adidas lean recruiting and it at least appears waiting for adidas either to valve more OADs to that housing, or go Nike as the adidas five year deal winds down.
Notice that Self is giving no speeches this season about being a good team player for adidas. No more uniform talk either.
Now, we are hearing the sounds of silence from a coach that has only 3 OAD/TADs and the TAD appears increasingly a 3AD, while John Calipari has 10, Coach K has 9, and comical little Stumpy Miller has almost that many.
You can almost hear Self and adidas-Rick Pitino, who has spoken out on the shoeco recruiting asymmetries, thinking: "Show me the OADs," the way Jerry Maguire's client once shouted "show me the money."
Show me the OADs!
Self is actually doing another great job this year, despite all our ideas about what he ought to be doing differently.
Bottom line: he is 10-2 after a rough pre conference RPI, and could be 11-2 going into the conference with a team that Roy Williams, or Billy Donovan would be .500 with. Stumpy Miller might have only two wins.
Self is working the problems.
And he's got a lot of them to work.
But that has always kept us successful before.
And I expect it will again.
Rock Chalk!
(Note: all opining and speculation.)
@JayhawkRock78 and @approxinfinity
You are killing me with kindness here, and since I'm old and gotta go some how, so be it. Thx.
But I am telling you the truth.
Just glue.
And eliminating bricks trying.
Not effortless like it used to be.
Aw, but you don't need to hear me whine.
Rock Chalk!
I think cold is a good hint. :-)
One cannot win shooting 30% inside the trey stripe taking 75% of the team's shots there unless the opponent is similarly inept. :-)
Let me disaggregate what I am saying about high volume trey shooting.
The mathematics tell me it make sense to shoot 71 treys per game at .a 35 make rate, rather than shoot 25% treys at 38% and 75% 2s if you make less than 45% of your 2s. And the better your defense, in terms of its ability to limit the opponent to 5-10 fewer shooting attempts, the more mathematical sense it makes to shoot 71 treys. But this is the part of high volume trey shooting hypothesis that is aimed at a broad discussion of where basketball is headed. This is not talking about "raining" 25 treys. This is talking about a microburst of 71.
More specifically, regarding this KU team, until Cliff and Perry and Jamari can shoot 75% of the field goal attempts and make 50% or more against Top Ten competition, KU's future excludes inside out, and lies instead in micro bursting, or at least very heavy raining treys and running the secondary break occasionally.
Self can waste FGAs playing inside out, but it IS a waste. Working it inside and missing a bunch before kicking it out and taking treys will slightly increase the shooting percentage of the 25% of total FGAs taken outside, but NOT as much as simply shooting waaaaaaay more treys would increase the effective percentage and the points scored.
Shooting any 2s, when you have trey shooters that will get you a higher effective shooting percentage, is like relying on B-17s for bombing targets, when you have B-29s. The B-29s carry a lot more bombs with a lot more opportunities to hit the target and do damage than the B-17s that carry fewer bombs, fly lower, and get shot down more often.
I am the Earl Weaver of basketball, coach.
I play the percentages, not the conventional wisdom.
If Wooden had played the conventional wisdom, he would never have adopted the three quarter court 2-2-1.
If Wooden had played the conventional wisdom, he would never have integrated basketball.
If Wooden had played the conventional wisdom, he would not have stuck with the three quarter court 2-2-1 with Jabbar, and with Walton.
But the logic outside the box was there.
Anchor a 2-2-1 with a 7 foot player and it is even better than anchoring it with 6-5 Freddie Slaughter.
If Wooden had played the conventional wisdom, he would never have had 6-9 250 pound Steve Patterson playing in a single high post offense and shooting 22 footers from the high post with Wicks and Rowe as low wings and two guards out front as high wings.
If Wooden had coached in the era of the three point basket, he wouldn't have hesitated an Indiana second with the trey ballers we've got to rain as many treys as they could get off.
The Rubber Man is speaking through me, Coach. I can hear him.
In the three point era: outside in.
With lots of good three ballers, lots of threes.
If Self would think this is fool's gold, then he is not the genius I have always thought he was.
I never suggested something like this when he had the horses inside and was beating the good teams. Necessity, not ideals, is the mother of invention. If it ain't broke don't fix it, unless its just about to break.
No one will beat UK inside out this season.
Not even UA, or Duke.
Nimitz defeated the greatest Naval attack force in the history of the world at Midway, because he knew it had one weakness: carriers that burned easily, because of wood flight decks and no firewalls in the structure of the carriers. Wood decks plus no firewalls equaled fire traps; the Japanese carriers were fast, but vulnerable to bomb and torpedo hits.
Nimitz had air craft carriers that could exploit that exact weakness, plus a code he could break, If he could hit them first, take some hits, and hit them again, they would catch fire and the greatest Naval attack fleet in the history of the world would have no air cover. And to come in for the kill meant with that greatest fleet ever without air cover met exposing the Japanese fleet to further US carrier strikes and possible land based aircraft attack.
"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless." --Chester W. Nimitz
The key here is right.
Courage does no good if you are wrong.
Self saw what happened with inside out against UK the first time.
If there is a second time, he owes it to his team to be right.
And they ought to adapt the 2-2-1. :-)
Try to remember that players that aren't able to play to begin with when they arrive at KU always have a development arc that they progress through. For some it is shorter, and for some it is longer, but all of them go through it. It took Travis Releford fully three years, one being a red shirt season, before he had mastered all the skills and had matured mentally to the point where he could do all the basic things reliably and be a steady starter, or rotation player.
There is a period where they only get brief shots against guys that should be easy for them to play against. If they pass that test, then there is a period where they are given brief shots against guys that should be tougher for them to play against. If they pass that test, then they are given shots against really good players. If they pass that test, then the next season, a role on the team, either a back up rotation player, or a starter, is crafted that they are intended to fulfill, either sooner or later over the course of the season. They are given a few tries and if they don't do well, then they usually have a competitor that is is given a try. Their next try depends on whether that competitor does well or poor. That competitor might do a lot of things well and keep playing regardless of how well the first player is improving. Then some times Self decides the team needs more of something and the competitor cannot give it, so then Self moves back to the first player. He gets another chance to do his duty plus show he can give the team that something different. And so it goes. The next season, if the player is broadening out so that he really is sound at all the basics the team needs a position, then the team is schemed for a role with him as a cornerstone starter, a parameter if you will. Wayne Selden is a parameter player this year that is not quite as productive as Self would like. So at that point, he doesn't bench a parameter player, but he starts shrinking his minutes with a player that can force Wayne to get a little more productive. If Wayne gets more productive, then his minutes go back up. But if not, or of if the other player gets hot, then Self gives the backup maybe 15-20 instead of 10 minutes of Wayne's game until Wayne can find a way to get more productive.
This development arc occurs with guys good enough to start playing early. Even Wiggins had a development arc.
And it happens with guys that are starting from hardly playing at all. A guy like Greene, who has a wild hair, and has limited defensive ability, gets it for awhile, then loses it, then gets it back for longer, then loses it for awhile, and so on. It does not mean that Brannen is hopeless. It just means that his development arc is longer and more fitful. Brannen Greene has enormous talent even though he doesn't get to play big minutes. His game has holes in it that prevent him from consolidating his game into a role that Self can say, "Okay, he is now reliable in the role and I can go work on Perry some more to try to squeeze more productivity out of him at the 4."
The only thing that interrupts the long development arc of a talented player like Brannen, or Travis Releford, is an OAD. If Self has signed an OAD ahead of Travis, Travis steady development would have stopped that season. Like Brady got stopped by Xavier. And then again by Josh, until Josh got injured. You can't keep developing more rotation time unless you keep getting opportunities to perform.
Brannen has TAD Selden, and OAD Oubre ahead of him at the two positions he might play. And he has a 17 year old boy wonder in Svi beside him that will sometime soon come on very strong himself. That is a lot of talent to try to compete with. And contrary to what people say, it isn't fun hanging on for dear life competing against great players. It is hard work. It takes great courage not to lose one's confidence.
Brannen is fighting a terrific battle; the kind that either breaks players, or makes them incredibly tough. There is no sure thing in sports. Sooner or later you are in jeopardy. Some times he goes out on the floor and feels like a million bucks. Other times he goes out there and wonders how he can possibly hang on another day. It is really harsh the pressure these young men are put under. And remember that some of them view this as their only ticket out of poverty. I don't know if that applies to Brannen, or not, but it is a huge deal to a player to have to fight for his life to hang on to just a slim spot in the rotation and know that next year, 3 more OADs might show up.
I have no doubt that Brannen is coming along and would eventually develop into a starting D1 wing by next season.
But if 2-3 OADs come in on the wings and one or two of his competitors this season stick around, then he is behind an eight ball.
This is what people did not appreciate about Conner Frankamp. Conner was plenty good to play his role this season, but it was the OAD tide next season that made it seem pointless to stay. CF might not be a starter at WSU either, but he is not going to have to beat out 2-3 OADs coming into WSU. Brannen is in this position that CF walked away from. And it is brutal. Brannen is good enough to keep playing some this season and be ready to give a good account of himself next season. But if Self signs 2-3 OADs he is going to be back scrambling for a slim spot on the rotation, even though next season it appears his development arc will probably permit him to be a major player on the team, if there were not a bunch of OAD/TADs ahead of him.
Such is life in D1.
No, but its cold where I am, too.
No, but that is just the outside in effect. It works the same as the inside out effect. Even if you don't score much inside, when you pound it inside, it will loosen the defense up and get you some open looks outside, when you finally go outside. But it is not efficient to waste your first phase of your game, whether you are playing inside out, or outside in. Efficiency depends on scoring both phases of your game.
This is why I prefer going outside and staying out there where every shot counts three. And when you shoot enough shots you shoot to your average and a 35% trey average is hard to beat if you guard and strip allow them 5-10 fewer shooting attempts.
Selden plays because of defense; that is the only reason. He is sound defensively. He only gets blown by when his concentration wavers. Self decided that he had to have Selden's defense at any cost, until he could get something worked out for the long haul at the 3. Now that Oubre seems (and I emphasize seems) to have nailed the 3 down, Self is publicly going to work on Wayne. Self said he hoped Svi and Greene would now pressure Wayne into becoming more productive the same way he implied they had pressured Oubre into getting with the program.
Selden's minutes will almost surely fall by 5-10 vs.UNLV, unless he is having a strong game, or the score is tight all the way.
Self WILL move Svi and Greene into Selden's 2 time to "push" him into more production.
Which of Svi and Greene get the first crack at "pushing" Selden depends on which one guards the best.
I believe Svi will get the first crack, because Self envisions Svi at the 2 next season, and because Greene stank up the floor in 7 minutes vs. Kent State.
Notice, that because Selden hasn't been scoring diddly, Self can afford Svi to play the spot without his trey gun working. All Svi has to do is guard and not turn it over and score a little to make it a wash. At a wash Self can then give Svi a few more minutes. And if Svi happens to get a few steals then Self can give him a few more of Wayne's minutes, because Wayne isn't stripping much. And if Svi then lights it up from trey, then Self gives 10-20 of Wayne's minutes to Svi and Wayne is suddenly sweating bullets about next season. Wayne is off the draft boards and Svi can gun the trey and Wayne cannot. Talk about surgically maneuvering Wayne into playing harder and focusing more!!!!!
And if Svi never really gets out of the blocks, then you green light Greene to shoot the trey if he guards and very shortly Wayne's back is up against the wall, also, because Wayne doesn't shoot the trey well.
I really believe Self thinks the Selden we saw versus Florida is the real Selden, but that the knee injury and the lack of a credible threat by a back up to his defensive contribution, has lead Wayne into coasting without quite realizing he is doing.
Remember, Selden played through with a knee injury last season and to Self that is the gold standard of a swinging pair you can count on.
I figure Self has been letting Selden get high minutes to help him work through the physical part of the knee injury. He has to play a lot to get his pop back. Pop may not come back, but the only way for it to come back is through lots of work. Selden has now had the lots of work part. Self probably figures now the rest of the problem is between the ears. So: now the head pressuring starts.
Gosh, I hope Wayne can just come out and play strong the entire UNLV game, so Self does not start turning the screws. It is never pretty to watch IMHO. And Self with Oubre solved at the 3 is ready with the screw driver.
The thing about thinking outside the box is that the logic is either valid, or it is not. If the logic is valid, then it pays to go outside the box. Not if not. The logic on this seems valid. So: its time to go outside the box, not just think outside it.
All great shooters have to shoot their way out of slumps. They cannot "not shoot" their ways out of slumps. Shooting is a mechanical process locked up in a stochastic process. There is no escaping it. Shooters can develop mechanical problems that they have to fix to start making them again. But here is the key thing: the stochastic process, or envelope in which shooting occurs, would dictate slumps even if there nothing wrong mechanically. But mechanical problems often do contribute to the slumps. So do psychological issues growing out of either the random slump, or the mechanically driven slump. But sooner or later, the mechanical flaw gets corrected and the shooter still has to shoot his way out of a slump. The most frustrating slump of all is one where a mechancial flaw slump is embedded in a longer stochastic run slump, because the player has to take time to fix the mechanical flaw, and then gets no positive feedback for the fix, because he is still missing shots do to random error, too. It is a bitch and can wreck guys for big chunks of seasons, instead of just a week or so. I always thought Brady Morningstar's mother of all slumps his last season was a mechanical slump embedded in a longer stochastic slump that then turned into a psychological crisis that finally still had to be shot out of.
See, there is no way to fix a stochastic run slump. It is what it is. Same for an individual, or for a team. The only way out is forward and shooting and missing as you go until the random error in your shooting has been expended.
If you are a coach and see a guy shooting the ball incorrectly, then you've got a mechanical slump. You pull him, correct him, and if he can't correct it ASAP in the game then you pull him till he can work it out in practice.
But if you see a guy mechanically sound that is missing shots, you've got a guy in a stochastic runs slump and the best thing to do is keep feeding him the ball as long as the spread in the score permits. Keep feeding the guy and keep him shooting no matter how awful it looks, because getting him enough misses is the only way to get him out of it.
With an entire team schemed to shoot mostly 3s, you would have the same risk of mechanical and stochastic runs slumps, as you would if you schemed it to shoot mostly 2s.
The key to shooting slumps is to teach your players to expect them, the same way Self teaches players to play like shizz 1/3 of the time, average 1/3 of the time, and great 1/3 of the time.
Just as they have to learn to win ugly, they have to learn how shoot ugly.
They have to understand that they ARE going to go 1-17 sometimes, not often, and then go 9 for the next 17. It is how it is.
If ISU were to build a team around three point shooting, instead of just building a team that shoots a lot more treys than the competition, 1-17 would almost never happen for two reasons.
First, by shooting 71 treys per game, you would almost always offset any slump that occurred during a game. The worst thing coaches do is to give up shooting treys when the team is missing them. If you have dominant bigs inside, it is a workable tactic to stop shooting treys in a slump and go inside. But if you have these dominant bigs, you didn't really need to shoot treys in the first place. But if you don't have dominant bigs, and you stop shooting treys, then you really have the worst of all possible worlds. Shooting 71 treys per game would result in the same smoothing out of shooting percentage over the course of a single game that shooting 50-70 2pt FGAs does. THIS IS THE KEY: YOU CAN HAVE A SLUMP SHOOTING EITHER 2PTAS OR 3PTAS. IN EITHER CASE, THE GREATER THE N THE GREATER THE GREATER THE PROBABILITY THAT YOU WILL SHOOT NEARER TO YOUR AVERAGE. As N rises the effect of anomalous runs is reduced.
ISU shot a very scary 1-17. But do you understand how much more improbable it is for a team that averages 35% from trey to shoot the equivalent of 1-17 on 71 shots? On 71 shots it would be highly improbable that they would go 5-71.
There is no escaping the remote possibility of going 5-71 from trey, just as there is no escaping the remote possibilty of going 5-71 from 2pt land.
But statistically what happens is this;
2 pt shooting teams shoot to their averages, as n rises.
3pt shooting teams shoot to their averages as n rises.
I would rather scheme an offense to get open look 3s with weak big men than scheme an offense to get open look 2s with small big men that can't shoot a high percentage.
And I would especially prefer this if I were playing an opponent that:
a.) shoots the usual mix of 75% 2ptas, and 25% 3ptas; and
b.) I can strip and turnover so that he has 5-10 few shooting attempts than my all 3pt shooting team.
Again, the percentages favor me, unless an opponent can really shut down my trey shooting, in which case I'm beat regardless, because my bigs can't score on their bigs.
Please recognize I am thinking outside the box here.
Self is a great coach and his way works 82-84% of the time the last ten years. I love him. I am not criticizing him in particular here.
All coaches should look into what I am talking about.
If I recall correctly, when the three point shot was first created there were several teams early, especially mid majors that experimented with shooting a large percentage of treys. The problem they ran into was that the mid majors then did not have good enough athletes shooting the treys to keep from being shut down on the outside by elite and major program players.
What I am arguing now is that if one is an elite major program, like KU, or even just a rising major, like ISU, one's perimeter athletes are so good that they will be able to get their three point shots off with considerable accuracy even against the best defensive teams from the best programs. KU has incredible length outside on the wings. If an offense were schemed to create open treys, our guys would get 71 open looks by running the stuff for up to 30 seconds and pulling the trigger when finally open. 71 treys at 34-35% would probably feasible. And the fouls of shooters would be three FTAs, not 2.
I am pretty convinced the reason coaches do not try this is because they know it would marginalize the big man scoring and that would mean that big men would not be willing to come to their program. And the big men are the bread and butter of the NBA and of the OAD program.
So: even though what I am advocating should work mathematically, established coaches that are winning big with OAD bigs just are not going to try it. They have worked too hard to get to where they are being funneled OAD bigs by Big Shoe.
But when you cannot get three good bigs that are cornerstones of challenging for a ring, along with a good PG and one every game MUA on the wing, then you might as well try what I am saying that season until you can get your next OAD/TAD big rotation valved to you by Big Shoe.
At least that is my hypothesis. :-)
Here it is, Why do you ask?
2014-15 10 games 347-703 FGAs .494 97-281 3PTAs .345
2013-14 36 games 1062-2239 FGAs .474 301-840 3PTAs .358
2012-13 35 games 962-2111 FGAs .456 346-924 3PTAs .374
2011-12 34 games 864-1977 FGAs .437 193-630 3PTAs .306
Inference: ISU is also taking waaaaaay too few treys.
They would probably be unbeatable if they just took all treys.
Would have replied sooner, but had to be taken to hospital for stitches after having split a gut howling!
PHOF!
Also I will never approach slayr or HEM, or anyone else here. I am just glue here; that is my self-assigned role. I am too effing old to do more. I am huffing and puffing to push out what I do now and these guys aren't even sweating. I'm just testing out my statins and BP MEDS now. 😄
I see. Well I long ago embraced error as routine, so it works for me, but I understand your reaction. 😄
Howling!
Howling again!
I think you're projecting. 😄
Question: is Self doing this just to ice as many wins ASAP, because he expects Graham back, or because he figures Graham won't make it back, or both? My instinct would be to pace Frank for the long haul, but Self seems to be thinking KU has to win as much as it can as soon as it can to ensure an at large birth, because we probably don't have the horses for the 18 game grind up coming. What does a real coach think?
The B12 ought to be called the Big Shoulder Conference. Not a top 5 team in the bunch, but a gaggle of muscular top 6-15 teams! It's like the Big Ten used to be. Bruising to win it. The champ will be one tough hombre!
Coach K will be the Strom Thurmond of basketball coaches. They will wheel him in and out on oxygen even while in a vegetative state. 😄
Deaf Dome = classic!
A 50/50 ball should be all yours.
An ugly win should be followed by plastic surgery with anesthetic. An ugly loss should be followed with plastic surgery with stimulant.
Putting plastique in your shoes is an easy way to explode out of your position...once.
A rebound starts with a bound, but a turnover starts with neither a turn, nor an over, just a half baked pop tart.
To come up big, is not the same as playing with an erection under your silks after seeing Erin Andrews handle a microphone.
A charge is a credit against one's future movement.
Keeping the ball moving is not the same as passing the ball to adjust the family jewels.
Stripping an opponent is de-balling him without castrating him.
A tie is better than kissing your sister, but not as good as kissing someone else's sister, and about the same as kissing a bi-sexual woman that may or may not be using you for a free dinner.
Coming from behind in basketball is not to be confused with climbing the back of Everest, or barking like a weimerranner.
A good rim protector in basketball is similar to a chastity belt that prevents 65% of the attempts on the queen--useful but not sufficient.
Thinking too much while playing leads to not playing well, but thinking too little leads to not playing at all.
(Note: all jest. No malice.)
Ok. 🙊🙉🙈
Ok, I promise. No more lifting the curtain on the Wizards. Just rah-rah. 😇
There are a few mega donors that wag the dog for sure. And there is concern about what kind of wider influence through out the $1Billion annual university budget and state legislature such mega donors seek to acquire through the back door of the athletic department.
But there is another big dog on the block now to stay: Big Shoe.
adidas cut a $45 million deal with UL.
Nike and adidas are reputedly waaaaaaaay into schools through contracts with the school and the coach. And the UL deal looks like the elevator is going up.
Big TV + Big Shoe + Big Donor = College Sports, Inc.
Throw in the 800 lb gorilla of Big Gaming operating in the back ground reputedly laundering money for Big Intell and Big Narco and you've got a really hunky dory basketball culture. :-)
The sky ain't fallin'.
The money is risin'!
Dale Brown disciple Johnny Jones just got Nike-LSU off the steady build to a screaming jump start.
After signing 6-9 225 Aussie Ben Simmons out from under adidas Bill Self and adidas-KU, Nike-Johnny Jones of Nike-LSU just picked up adidas-UL decommit 6-4 shooting guard Antonio Blakeney.
Nike-LSU is turning into an wrecking crew of adidas programs.
Keep an eye on Nike-Johnny and Nike LSU.
They are on the rise.
For a year, at least.
Thank heavens.
I didn't want to have to face them without them being at full strength. :-)
No,
Self just appears tired of the unlevel recruiting field that Rick Pitino talked about in context of Big Shoe.
How would you like to be out recruited by Stumpy Miller? If you were Pitino? If you were Self?
Frustrated?
Absolutely.
Burn out?
Fuggeddaboutit!
BRING BACK THE CRIMSON THEME! IT WAS SO MUCH EASIER TO READ ON MY PHONE.
HA! I gave you a down vote before it was removed!
I always like to take what I am given, so let's work with special and cool.
Defining special is ideal market research task. Market research is great at defining what is perceived as special about any brand, or activity.
Defining cool is where it gets sticky. The kids decide what is cool. They know what is cool and what is cool is what is unique and different about their current generation, or two, from the previous ones. Each generation defines itself negatively as NOT what its parent's generation was about, but that is never something to build on. It is when they define themselves positively about what they embrace and the way they embrace it. College basketball is in real trouble on this count, because it has turned its back on the kids for the money of the adults. Fewer seats for kids in worse locations. Frankly, its turned its back on media, too. It feeds the media talking points and all it wants is to control the message that gets out. That reduction of media to a house organ is a big chunk of why coverage of college basketball has turned geriatric and stale. We could put all ESPN broadcasters in the same cryogenic tank Self keeps Hunter Mickelson and the only one anyone would even notice was missing was Jay Bilas, because Bilas is the only one actually thinking and talking about stuff other than the talking points.
The arena experience is hugely tilted to the adults now too. Adults are a dead end in defining what is cool. If I am a recruit walking into AFH, it and the people look increasingly like a fundamentalist church on steroids and an energy drink. There are also always the cliche six guys with the letters of Kansas on their bare chests with their faces painted blue. The last original, slightly visually edgy thing I saw in the field house was the kids holding up the Curry mural of John Brown. It spoke on several levels in the way only a new generation can think differently enough to do authentically.
In order to save KU basketball as a living myth, they are going to have to move the kids back into the center and let them off the leash again, otherwise we are talking pro crowds with the sound system amped up a little higher.
I like your take on Late Night.
The trouble is this: is there anyone around the program cool enough to take the next step.
The students have been cut out of the loop.
The life blood of the myth of college basketball is the students enthusiams for it, and the adults feeding off that enthusiasm to support its management and underwriting, and toleration and trust of taking the next step. Cut the students off as well springs of the next step, or eliminate the adults confidence in it being taken, and you will just get MORE deadening commercial updating by PR planners, vetted through university counsel.
As I can recall the birth of Late Night, and its evolution, I agree the teeth of timeliness and relevance have gone out of it.
Regarding Oubre, I no longer think Self was bringing him along slow at all. I believe he had a simple knee injury and he couldn't play worth a hoot on it. And so Self and Oubre and his advisors, who have to think about making hay at the end of the season, probably had to deliberate and come up with an approach to the injury that did the least harm to his earning potential at the end of the season. Maybe I am wrong, but guys with his incredible talent don't go from looking like he did to how he has because they get comfortable. That's just implausible, if you've played the game. Wilt Chamberlain could play the game the minute he arrived. Andrew Wiggins could play the game the minute he arrived. These mega talents can play the game from the git go; that's the whole point of the OAD thing. Oubre could easily be playing in the NBA right now without an injury. He is making a pit stop at D1 to help D1, and to give him a little transition into adulthood.
In all probability the reason Alexander's progress has been been start and stop is lesser injuries, too. He's too good not to come in an beat out Landen Lucas for Chrissakes. This is never about Self holding guys back. He didn't hold Xavier back, or Josh, back even a little.
Regarding Self and his approach, IMHO, there is nothing wrong with it that a contract with Nike would not cure. He would be wiping up with the same shoe contract as Cal. Period. What Pitino, Self and adidas have to figure out is how to more effectively distribute the talent that leans to adidas already. It is being spread too thinly between too many adidas programs. They either have to get more talent in the adidas lean category, or they have to reduce the number of schools that get the adidas leans.
And it won't work to go out and bid talent away from Nike IMHO.
Someone has to start a new summer league, which someone is probably already starting to do.
One suggestion I have is to internalize basketball academies from an off campus phenomenon into an on campus one--to embed high school basketball academy programs into the elite university programs themselves, the way high school programs are already being embedded into junior colleges for special students with special needs.
KU and adidas, or whomever KU decided to ally with, need to beat the existing system to the punch and grab the talent before it gets to public high school. Get them into the college campus in 9th grade, shape high school curriculum on campus to accelerate the grooming of these guys socially, academically and athletically in the embedded programs for an eventual seamless transition to a year, or two, or three, or four of college ball. Play year round ball. Take over the summer game and academies. Put it back in an academic setting on the university where the guys will matriculate and play. It will cost some money, but money seems never be an impediment to this stuff.
(Note: all opining and speculating. No insider knowledge of how things actually work.)
Your take is one of the most insightful yet on the problems of this conversion. It will take a couple more years to work through.
But we board rats need to remember two advantages Self's system still offers, even though Big Shoe seems to drive the OAD bus.
Self's sets and actions off them are reportedly closer to what the NBA runs than the dribble drive. And the high-low was created to be learned quickly for the 1964 Olympics. Contrary to popular opinion it scales to simplicity quite easily.
The pros like guys that already know how to guard. So KU guys are marketable if they are even bubble talents like Cole Aldrich.
This apparently gets us an Oubre with a Dad who doesn't want his son babied, who is willing to make the choice on more than Big Shoe.
But bottom line Big Shoe appears to
drive the OAD bus, or perhaps some Big Agency -Big Shoe complex that is still under the public discourse radar.
(Note: I believe nothing illegal is going on. I view this rather as some kind of duopoly strategy and tactics playing out.)
And Rick Pitino contracted with adidas has spoken publicly about Recruiting asymmetries related to Big Shoe.
And Knight has reputedly indicated Cal is not doing it the right way.
And Self is the winningest coach the last 5 years and has a ring and short time Sean Miller at UA gets more OADS than Self and Pitino? Hmmmm.
And one poster indicated some of the summer game folks in the state of kansas reputedly don't like Self; that I found intriguing (Note: any better than the summer game guys in the Big Apple reputedly liked Roberts? Hmmmmm.)
Self did not ask for this apparently unlevel playing field. But he did sign with adidas. And so did KU. The moment they did they probably should have expected unforeseen consequences in an apparently conflicted duopoly. KU and Self and UL and Pitino took the money and allied with the duopolist with the smaller market share. Now they are trying to make the best of it.
The unforeseen consequences seem to track into the issues you raise.
OAD/TAD increasingly seems its own market segmentation triggered by an institution. Each market segmentation is driven by its own dynamics and interests and practices cost shifting on lesser market segments.
In some ways this is not fundamentally different than the segmentation between scholarship players and walkon's. But it benefits so few and cost shifts onto so many!!
The situation is, as the saying goes, fluid.
Guess I missed your Q. Come again.
Haven't seen research on early versus late brain injury. But brain injury is the gift that keeps on giving. Get it. You've got it for life.
Self said it: his purpose, along with Brannen, from here on out is to push Selden.
Assuming he can ever establish his trey ball, I would most like to see him at 2.
But since it looks like Selden will be a 3-4AD, I'm not sure what will become of Svi.
A lot depends on why Svi can't defend ball screens.
I am hoping he has been injured.
If he has been healthy, then his future at KU is probably as a pusher.
I cannot believe I am saying that, because I was enormously high on him early.
But I so far have not seen him play as if he were able to do much more than push and OAD.
Don't need that.
The problem is it counts up and down to give a net result. Maybe it needs to be in absolute value. :-)
I'm slipping. Travel drawers still rock. Another thing that rocks is a really cheap Aeron imitation being sold at Costco for a couple hundred bucks. I have tried everything in chairs over the years, from the ridiculously expensive to the cheapies and frankly have never really been happy. I came close for awhile with an old Grahl split back back in the late 1980s but it got too spendy for what it gave to replace it. Aaron's started out too spendy, and they were better in conception than in actual use. But like I say, this cheap from Costco that my wife got me is really good. She bought me a spendie one before XMAS and I sent that one straight back.
One more thing I got this year that I love is a forge de Lagiole folding pocket knife. I have always been a devoted Buck 110 guy (just love the American scale, feel and function and would pay five times what they ask), but I finally decided I wanted a really slim folder for traveling. Benchmade makes great knives I have tried, but these survivalist folding knives with blades so sharp they cut diamonds have never been for me. This Lagiole is sharp and a bit hard to get used to the first few times you use it, because the handle is so thin. And it looks like something you might find on Pierre in a French whore house. But the thing really carries easy and comes out of the pocket smooth, and happily rides in lightweight travel pants without making a bulge in your pants like you're too glad to see someone. Nice knife.
If you are 23, or less, you are not thinking with a fully developed brain. There are gaps that no amount of reps will burn in. A partially developed brain may be able to do some things and not others. It varies person to person in terms of limitations. The implications of this are huge through out society, not just basketball in the OAD era. It will take our culture 50 years to even begin to deal with it meaningfully. Probably some Eurasian country will do so first. But the neuroscience is in on brain development. It is empirically verified. You may be a year ahead, or a year behind, but 23 is it.
Next, there are five classes of players in D1 now:
a.) OAD/TADs;
b.) pushers that will leave;
c.) pushers that will stay;
d.) OAFs; and
f.) walk-ons
Travis Releford was lucky he came before Self's decision to cornerstone on OAD/TADs. It is probable that he would not have ever become more than a pusher. Self would have been through 4-5 OAD/TADs on the wings by his fourth season, when he was finally ready to play. And he would have faced an OAD/TAD his fourth and fifth seasons he would have had to be a pusher for. He would never have gotten the corner stone role his fourth, or fifth seasons to become the player he became under the old system. He would have been too busy pushing, at whatever positions on the perimeter that Self had an OAD that needed pushing.
Self had room for two pushers to committee at PG, because Self has not been able to land any OAD/TAD point guards, and his last pusher cum interim starter, Naadir Tharpe selfie-destructed. Frank and Devonte got those roles, until Self can get into the gravy train on OAD/TADs at point. That meant Conner, whom you are forgetting Self said would be starting some this season and play 20 mpg, apparently as a pusher at the 2, became the designated pusher at 2, and didn't want to be that. It was good for Brannen and Svi that CF left, or they would have only seen duty pushing Oubre at 3. Right now, we would be hearing Self say Conner needed to push Wayne, because Wayne was not quite as productive as he needed to be.
What I am talking about is very unpleasant and yet it appears to be how it is.
Good young players that used to develop into some of our favorite full time Jayhawks have no place in the new system. They would just be pushers, never cornerstone starters.
Yes, there will be exceptions, like Mason right now, when Self has OAD recruiting blackouts at certain positions, as exists at PG this season, but very shortly most of the recruiting blackouts will be a thing of the past.
Self will get KU up to the 5 OAD/TAD standard very soon, or Self will move on for someone who can. Self does not have to swim against the current forever. He has the FU money. He has professional options. If Self and the powers that be in Big Shoes cannot come to a similar meeting of minds that Cal, K, Miller, and Donovan have, i.e., on Self getting his fair share of PetroShoeCo OAD/TAD, I believe that will be the end of Self at KU. That may even be what Big Shoe wants. Same with Rick Pitino, though Rick is probably near enough the end of the line he might ride it out.
We live in the age of the OAD/TAD pusher. And they've got to be able to push from year two on, or they are destined to transfer to places like WSU.
But almost no one ever shoots better than 40-45% FGs against a really tough defensive team. And this is why shooting 71 treys a game would guaranty a good defensive team of being in almost every game, and of winning most of those.
Now if a team can score 60% inside, then you cannot beat them regardless.
But that's the same as saying if a team shoots 45% from trey you cannot beat them either.
Brannen seems to some extent a casualty of the OAD approach to team building.
Brannen seems likely to be like EJ and Travis. His neural nets are probably a little slow reaching full maturity. This is a crucial dynamic affecting the rate at which all players in this age range arrive as players. No amount of PT, or "development work," can compensate for neural nets not being fully grown in. If the net is not their, no matter how many reps one gets, there is nothing to burn in. Brannen seems to be doing lots of good things. But he also seems to be doing some bone head things. That is an indicator of incompletely developed neural nets.
Under the pre OAD approach, guys like Brannen could sit a couple seasons, sometimes even three with a redshirt, as Travis Releford did, and then we would watch them metamorphose suddenly between their third season and their fourth and fifth seasons. By the fourth season, with the neural nets fully grown in, all the wildness and unpredictability is gone. By the fifth season, they have polished all of the skills that take a year to work on, once you have the neural nets sufficient to burn in with a year of reps. It lead to incredibly competent players that you could count on game after game for a season or two.
But now, especially at the wing position that Brannen plays, Self drags in 1-2 OAD wings each season. And they have to play. And so whether Brannen ever gets a shot or not, will depend entirely on whether Self cannot sign 1-2 OADs each season.
Even if Brannen were to stay for a 4th season, or redshirt, for a fifth season, it would be very easy for Self to bring in an OAD and have to play him, regardless of how polished Brannen eventually became.
OADs HAVE TO PLAY, WHETHER THEY ARE READY OR NOT, OR THE OAD SPIGOT GETS VALVED TO OTHER PROGRAMS THAT WILL PLAY THEM READY OR NOT.
This apparent truth probably underlies why Self no longer throws rouge smoking jackets to guys at high traffic positions, like 2, 3, and 4.
By high traffic, I mean positions where he can realistically expect to drag in 1-2 OADs each season.
Why give a guy a red shirt and develop him, if you are going to have to play OADs ready or not?
As a result of having to play OADs, you really can't afford to carry Red Shirts. You need all of your scholarship players contributing during the steep learning curve of the OADs you have to play. You have to have guys playing the 3 while Oubre is getting ready to, and then you have to sit them the rest of the season, for Oubre to play. You cannot afford guys on red shirt getting better. You need what little experience they have at the beginning of every season and then you have to shaft them with benching, because then you have to play the OAD/TAD.
Tie goes to the OAD.
Self made clear Brannen's next best shot. Its is to come in and push TAD Wayne Selden for minutes. But notice that Self said we've got to get Wayne a little more productive by Svi and Brannen pushing him. Oubre is now our 3, unless he blows it.
Brannen is not competing for a starting 2 role. Brannen is being offered the chance to push Wayne to the point that Wayne plays well enough to keep Brannen off the floor permanently, too.
Brannen appears to be a smart young man. He appears to understand what is being done to him. Conner Frankamp understood the same thing. Conner and his dad just decided that that was not the best thing for Conner's mental health and for his basketball playing future to fulfill that role for Self--to be a "pusher" of OAD/TADs with no chance to ever start consistently. That, I believe, was what Conner meant when he said he loved it at KU, but they just have so many guys here. That was code for Self has committed to basing the program on OADs and if one is not an OAD, then there is no other role on the team, if one is behind an OAD, and Self made clear that Conner was NOT a point guard, but a 2 guard, and so Conner would always have been a "pusher" for some OAD/TAD at the 2.
Brannen is in the position of being a "pusher" now. It is a thankless role for a scholarship player once highly recruited. Self is basically indicating he can be a "pusher" at the 3, or 2, as long as he stays at KU.
Brannen will play some.
But it will tend to be when he can "push" an OAD/TAD.
Frankly, if I had been Brannen's advisor, I would have told him to transfer to WSU along with Conner. At WSU Brannen would get to compete straight up for a real starting position, same as Conner. He might not beat out his competition, but he might.
The fact is at KU, Brannen will never beat out an OAD/TAD for any position ever...even when the neural nets are grown in.
His only chance, Conner's only chance at KU, too in the OAD era, would be for Self to fail to sign an OAD/TAD for him to "push."
The collateral damage, as the Pentagon likes to call it, of the OAD/TAD phenomenon is brutal to other players.
Good as Frank Mason is, if Self brought in an OAD point guard, Frank would have to "push" next season, as surely as Brannen has to "push" this season.
And if Self brought in two OAD point guards next season, Frank Mason, good as he is, would be reduced to "pushing" two.
In either case, it would look like Frank were playing early, but what he would really be doing was buying time for the OADs to be ready.
Sad.
When talking about Zenger, it is always important to remember that he hired Charlie Weis, knowing Weis had been .500 at Notre Dame.