To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.
Mike Krzyzewski
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
I am grateful for this brief exchange of ours.
Attack the opinion.
Call the writing lousy.
But do not deny a human being his own words to think what he has to think and say what he has to say.
It is like denying a person water while telling them they have the right to drink.
One more thing: the speech of the pedant telling others how to speak must be protected as free speech. But it also ought to be seen and remarked for what it is.
The beauty of free speech when broadly protected is it self corrects.
First free speech is meaningless if you can't say what you want the way you want. And to do that you need your own words, not a pedant telling you which one you can and cannot use. Words are indispensable not just to saying what we mean, but they help us arrive at our thought before we speak them.
It's always okay to disagree, but to deny others their freedom to choose the words they wish to think and speak with is an insidious form of censorship.
Second free speech protects board rats being pedants and telling others how to say what they say, i.e., censoring them.
Third free speech protects me telling someone that they are wasting everyone's time and patience telling others how to say things., i.e, me in effect telling someone to stop censoring someone else.
The above said, it's bad manners telling others how to say what they say. My mother taught me that early on. It implies unwarranted superiority. If you can't understand them ask for clarification. If you disagree dispute the substance. If you think they are being disingenuous and deceptive doubt their intentions and honesty. But give others the curtesy of letting them express themselves in their own words, so they can say what they mean, not what you want them to.
Also, free speech under the first amendment, especially before it was gutted by the Patriot Acts, is the best and cheapest national security we can get to prevent the decline and fall of the republic from within. Tyrannists and pedants hate free speech. And the latter are putty in the hands of the former. Thus free speech relieves us of their combined threat to the republic IMHO.
Free speech is also a muscle. Use it or lose it.
Rock chalk!
Wish I could lump, but I have a rule with my art here. Once. And to be clear to posterity, you are referring to my mashup improvisational homage to the greatest American painting of the 20th Century: Nighthawks by the incomparable Edward Hopper.
KU has played one of the toughest schedules.
KU is 8-1.
KU is 10th ranked.
Apparently strength of schedule doesn't mean much any more.
Should KU have played cupcakes with one decent team, like the other top teams this season?
If KU had played cupcakes plus one, like the other top teams, KU would be 9-0 and have won by 15-20 points per game, despite being very young.
Their KenPom luck rating would have been the same as the other stacked teams, er, I mean the top teams.
KU would not be missing Devonte Graham, because that vast, 6-10 inch, 350 pound vat of cooking lard called Josh Smith would not have torqued Graham's toe like a tank car being lowered onto Graham's heel.
Bill Self would not have nearly infarcted several games.
Cindy Self would have had better dinner conversations.
Shay Zeng would have had undefeated basketball talk to paper over the Beaty hire.
Everyone would be talking about Self's feisty Jayhawks not having played anyone, but being an underdog, and everyone loves an underdog.
KU would not have been stigmatized by being beaten down by the biggest apparent Nike stack so far in the apparent Big PetroShoeCo Era of college basketball--the reputed 10 Mickey D Nike-UK team.
Notice how the Nike-UK NBA holding tank players, er, roster players are never referred to by Big Media as "the 10 OAD/TAD Nike Leans?"
Its just not done in Big Media, like ranking teams based on their strength of schedule is apparently not done either.
It at least appears that the talking points are to call them Mickey Ds, perhaps to create some separation between Nike and UK, or for some other reason I cannot yet fathom, perhaps so noone one in the stands starts holding up signs asking why Nike-UK has so many more reputed, apparent OAD/TADs Nike leans than other schools, even Nike schools?
That would be most indiscreet, wouldn't it?
Very bad TV.
You know what?
I say nuts to the lot of them.
Kansas is going to keep playing the game of college basketball the right way--the way it was meant to be played.
As KU fans we're going to keep arguing over how to bite and scratch out another W often with less talent than the other guys.
We are going to talk about to trey, or not to trey.
We are going to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
I am not going to worry about an apparent attempt at regime change in Chapel Hill hiding behind some reputedly 4 year old easy classes.
I am not going to worry about the longevity, or lack there of, of the right way.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but no lie can live forever."--M.L. King
"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."--Mohandas K. Gandhi
I have been to the top of the field house and I have seen the promised arena looking out the south windows.
I may not get there with you, people, but we as a basketball program surely will.
Until the powers that be outlaw playing it the right way, let's play it the right way and beat whomever we can at the greatest game ever invented to help young men (and women) stay out of trouble and busy in the winter months by the father of our program--the inventor of the game--James Naismith.
We're going to schedule real teams and the stacked ones, too.
We're going to take on all comers, like college teams are supposed to do.
We're going to beat them with real college players, when we can and take our beatings when the apparent talent stacking is just too XTReme to overcome with team work and toughness.
And when we play the likes of Nike-UK, which appears an XTReme Insult to the notion of a level playing field in college basketball, we're just going to treat it as an exhibition game against an endorsement holding tank team, which it appears to be. We're going to do our best and not worry if it isn't good enough.
I like being 8-1.
I like it a lot.
And I like the right way.
Next.
And I stand corrected on 'fayette and the Owls. My mistake. They are both respectable. I must have hallucinated the cupcakes. I thought we had two easy ones. NOT.
Great info on the our schedule versus all the pretenders. :-)
thx back at ya.
The natives--this time the Kansas basketball board rats--are restless.
Why don't you scheme to your perimeter strength now, Bill?
What are you waiting for, Bill?
I was even out dancing around the camp fire myself for awhile.
And the boom! Just like that he whips out a whole six course first half of long prepared perimeter action meal as good as anything we've seen prepared by any of the dribble drive chefs, or any of the more traditional Monsieur d'Treville Tre Mousketteer era chefs to the court of the French king and gunning the long ball a bunch.
Lights. Camera. Perimeter action.
KU running it as if they had been practicing it daily since, oh, I don't know, maybe the first practice. :-)
Yeeeeeee haawwwwwwww!
Bill has just been working on the inside game, because he knew the outside game was something they could produce anytime.
But boom chack alacka lack. Boom chack alacka lacka.
And cue Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan call and demand to know why Hollywood has not yet cued up a first rate Tarzan with an African American in the lead, or have I missed it. Its outrageous if it hasn't been done! We need a modern African American Tarzan now as much as KU needs its first African American head coach! When Bill stops dazzling and finessing everyone out of their designer jocks; that is.
Be all that as it may, I do love for once getting to be the great simplifier to relieve everyone's stress.
And you all know how I resist simplifying that doesn't fit the facts as much as anyone and only accept the simple when Okham's razor leaves no non-fitting, anomalous stubble behind, at all.
But in this case, get out the old Winchester strop and give the straight edge of old Bill of Okham a good edge, cause there's no stubble here it can't whack.
The bottom line here is that Self--the rhetorically elliptical genius--is just tweaking here and snugging there and wrenching here and hemming up there, and working on his dwarf cybernetic team in silks in real time openly and comically directly under the native's restless noses.
Face it guys, he's got the FU money and he is having fun with everyone.
Self coaching against Krystowiak was like Einstein talkin' relativity with Neanderthal.
Self saved the perimeter offensive action for as long as he could--keeping it away from opposing coaches eyes for as long as he could, squeezing out as many Ws as he could without "the perimeter stuff," because the other coaches scheme and copy absolutely everything he does the minute he does it.
And while he has been having Team Munchkin keep this year's perimeter game polished up in practice, in games he's been very methodically trying to figure out what kind of stuff his dwarf bigs could run, and what his inhibited, battle scarred perimeter guys could run to penetrate. He probably knew from the beginning what would work, but he couldn't predict reliably when The Big Red Dog and Oubre would evolve enough to know what he might have to work with come March. And they've been more than a little bumfuzzled, so Self kind of had to delay the decision of exactly what inside stuff would work, until he knew what they could feasibly be expected to do.
But look at that first half against Utah!!
Utah first half = the best schemed perimeter action and shooting we've seen since BenMac. And certainly Self's perimeter pick'n rolls, ball screens, and fade curls coming of screens devised were so effective that Utah, a team with a PG draft choice on the perimeter, plus a team some predicted to beat KU, not only had no answer for it , but by the end of the first half did not know whether to excrete or erect themselves.
(Note: I know am repeating myself a bit here from recent posts, but I've learned over the years that when the natives get restless, sometimes you've got to swing on the same vine a few times to break the fevered drumming. Damn! Where is young Denzel when I need him and his handsome, charismatic star power in a black Speedo swinging through the post modern trees of Hollywood and inverting the old racist imagery on itself and making the myth new in a great new positive way? swinging to save us all from a whole jungle full of G7 folks of every color. )
Self's brand spankin' new perimeter action completely blew das Utes out by 20 the first half that KU "ran the perimeter stuff."
And didn't you board rats here Self?
We just have to find something that the kids believe works inside, or something to that effect, it won't take much, he said.
Cue the Tarzan call.
What the hell, Bill, put on a loin cloth for fun yourself until I can find Denzel, or Will, or my favorite of all right now Dwayne Johnson. Now I know Dwayne was a Hurricane footballer, but could KU use him in the paint this season or what. And Dwayne is way shorter than he photographs, so he would fit right in with our dwarf bigs.
I have seen the Bill Self with the mischievous twinkle in his eye and that is what I have been waiting for to assuage my fear that he was finally in too deep of quick sand with too short of players.
Up until now I have feared that he really didn't have a fix, but now its clear that he has been sand bagging inside too.
SELF ALREADY KNOWS WHAT STUFF THIS TEAM CAN RUN INSIDE, BUT HE HAS JUST BEEN HOLDING OFF ON IT TOO!
Trust me. Bill's got this inside action knocked as surely as Jane loved Tarzan and Tarzan loved Jane, and Cheetah was a comic foil.
He just hasn't wanted to take the cover off of it until he absolutely had to.
As usual, Bill wants to leave as many wrinkles under the cover, until the conference season starts.
And guess what!!!!!
He's made it to 8-1 or something like it, without conference coaches having any feeds to scheme from showing them anything but some perimeter action.
And now he's got two straight cupcakes and then the week of getting better.
I highly doubt we are going to see this KU team run the actual inside stuff until the first conference game.
If he refused to run it against Utah in that second half of induced labor in the paint, I am highly doubting he is going to give conference coaches anything to study in the cupcake games.
He told anyone who was listening among the natives.
"We'll come up with something. It won't take much," or something like that.
Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.
Never count this guy out.
Never.
I've seen him beat teams with bailing wire.
I've seen him beat teams with smoke and mirrors.
Now he is beating teams with dwarves WITHOUT SHOWING HIS ACTUAL OFFENSE TILL JANUARY.
HE'S A FLIPPING GENIUS, I TELL YA.
NO ONE HAS EVER DONE THIS BEFORE.
NO ONE.
Go, Bill, go!
I don't know, but they must be tall! :-)
PHOF
Howling!
Basketball not only obsoletes most planning five minutes after the action starts, it briefly stops men from thinking about sex.
Confession of a former D1 ref: I refereed a game without fitting it in the broadcast windowâŚonce.
It appears within stochastic possibility that Kentucky may have won more games the wrong way than some teams have won in all the years they have played basketball.
If PetroShoeCos stack a team in the forest and no one is there to hearâŚis it unfair?
Pot, children out of wedlock, paper classes, one year scholarships, coaches jumping and getting to coach, players transferring and having to sit, one and flush, OAD/TAD stackingâis this really the best set of trade-offs the media-gaming-shoeco-summer game-agency-university-athletic department
complex can come up with?
Defense starts offense, even after a made basket.
Manning up? Danny cannot help but do that.
I dunked on someoneâs grille in a parking lot. He floored it and ran over me.
Once you play outside in, you have to play inside out. And once you play inside out, you have to play outside in. Its hard to know where to start.
Too many exercise their freedom of speech by telling others how to post.
Without summer game trolls, would there be any disingenuous content on a basketball web site, at all?
I try to think in the present, but when I do it is always past.
While others debate tempo, I debate the probability of post game coitus.
When basketball players disappear, where do they go?
When Bill Raftery dies, will there be an oversupply of Bushmills?
In Basketball Ecclesiastes, it says to over hyped OADs, âAfter every season return, return, return."
There is no secret to restoring the mid range game: just add a 5-point stripe between the low blocks and the three point stripe.
I am never bored watching a basketball game. When the action slows I imagine giant space ships from War of the Worlds crashing into the roof of Allen Field House and alien cameras with tripartite lenses snaking down to look at cheerleaders dĂŠcolletage.
Does Chris Piperâs glass company offer a stein with male pattern baldness?
Are Jay Bilas and Chris Piper the love children of DickVitale?
Some say basketball is a microcosm of life. I say it is a microcosm of life and death.
If you think too hard about basketball, you will get a head ache that no amount of accurate prediction can relieve.
Which is best: fewer chances to score each contributing a greater percentage to the final score, or more chances to score each contributing a smaller percentage to the final score, or being stacked ten deep in Mickey Ds by a PetroShoeCo paying you beau coup bands to brand them 20 minutes per game till they jump?
Good dorms, small play books, good health, and PetroShoeCo talent stackingâthese appear the current ingredients for success in college basketball.
Is Self no longer playing Svi because Putin scrapped his South Stream Gas Pipeline under the Black Sea and made the Ukraine safe for professional basketball again?
No matter how minds try to simplify the game, basketball remains emergent complexity on 4,700 square feet of wood with two goals to give one purpose in offending and defending.
(Note: All fiction and/or satire. No malice.)
Thx so much for the fill-in!!
Anomalies like WCS always make more sense when the on the ground stuff gets filled in.
The more I learn about all this stuff the more I worry this may all one day lead basketball into the Rico Act. So far I suspect that all the parties can play this charade in ways that are within the rules, or in realms that have no rules to violate, but over time competition and cunning and avarice seem to push shrewd actors beyond the limits. I so hope this does not lead basketball into boxing with a ball.
Very sad to contemplate.
@DanR
Outrageously great tale!
Rock Chalk!
@Lulufulu and @RedRooster
I wish to mediate between you both and say: you both have marvelous avatars and neither is the quilty doily pattern? :-)
This is one of the reasons I love this site. Thx for posting not only the fact of the transfer, but the insight and speculation added by you.
What is Self's problem with in-state AAU teams? This is new to me, though that is not saying much as I know next to nothing of Kansas summer league ball. Fill me in if you can.
And while we're at it, would there be any reason to suspect that summer league trolls operate on this and/or other KU basketball related sites grinding the agenda of these folks?
Yes, but the positive embedded message in what I am talking about here is that in the metaphor, the Tin Man does find a heart, and the Cowardly Lion does find courage, and Scarecrow does find a brain and Dorothy does find her way home, and they all do overcome the Wicked Witch of the West, and her flying monkeys with the help of the little people (our perimeter players), the man behind the wizard (Self), and the Good Witch (some mythological combination of Cin and Andrea Hudy).
This can be done. Each of our bigs has to realize finally that what they all need to act with brains, courage and heart against the L&S bigs is already inside them to begin with.
They just have to believe and pull together.
They have to click their heels together and jump up and finish no matter how fearsome and hopeless the task seems.
It is the same lesson played out every season.
In different ways.
Rock Chalk!
Self IS changing. You document that KU has been shooting fewer and few treys. He is just changing in a direction you disagree with. :-)
Seriously, I offered this another thread, but it bears repeating here.
The team currently can play neither inside out, nor outside in, because it cannot score inside at all. Period.
This inability has many drivers. Our good scoring bigs are short. Our good scoring bigs have not figured out how to score against guys bigger than them. Our other bigs long and short are not good scorers. All of our bigs got the piss beaten out of them by UK. They have never recovered their confidence and they have never learned how to score against L&S bigs.
So; Self knows he cannot play effectively inside out, or outside in, unless his bigs figure out how to play against L&S bigs.
And it is going to take a lot of reps in games.
And it doesn't do any good to let them get the piss beaten out of them again, so he is only playing inside against L&S teams when some separation occurs and permits it. The lead of course always shrinks, because they are slow, scarred learners.
But the fact remains that Self has to play through his bigs as often as the score permits to try to develop this virtually nonexistent part of this team's game.
There is no longer any doubt IMHO that Self is preparing an outside in team for March.
All that is happening right now is that he is trying to teach an unusually short and modestly talented group of KU bigs to at least be able to score inside when we do try to play outside in.
The first half of the Utah game was Self trying to prove to his team that he could give them a perimeter action scheme of pick'n rolls, ball screens and fade curl actions that could get them all the open look treys they would need to play against any L&S major they would face the rest of the year.
The second half was Self saying, "Now, I've bought you a 20 point lead, and shown you don't have to live in fear any more. Now, we're going to go back to work on the inside game the second half, because sooner or later, even in outside in you have to be able to score inside."
And that is exactly what Self and his team did. No more action in the second half. Don't think for pico second that Utah kept KU from running action the second half. And don't think for a second that Self wanted his team to suck at playing inside as badly as they did.
Bet every last dollar you have that Self ordered them to stop running the perimeter action the second half and told them to go find a way to win the game inside the three point stripe. Period. Finito. I can just hear him thinking: "That's what we're going to work on boys. We know we can be awesome at the perimeter action game. We've known that all along. Our problem is getting over the scarring and self doubt and physical limitations we have against L&S bigs and proving to ourselves that yes, at least when we stretch them out by playing outside in, then we have a couple of guys that can finish one on one against some L&S bigs who get no help from sagging perimeter defenders."
Remember, @HighEliteMajor , if you just look at this without any frustration, which my transcendental basketball meditation lets me do, if you just see what there is to see, this team cannot score a lick inside against an L&S team, even when it is shooting the lights out from outside and stretching the defense to the breaking point.
So: since this team cannot shoot the lights out from outside every game, it has to develop some ability to score inside. And even on the nights it is shooting well from outside, it has to make'em pay inside for stretching out to force our perimeter shooting to 27 feet, or more.
This is what outside in is all about. Make'm pay inside once they try to stop our out outside action and shooting.
Even in your skeptical pessimistic swelter, you have to admit that outside in requires that a team actually be able to play inside after playing outside. :-)
Inhale....exhale.
Ohmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Self is just working on the inside game, so that the team can be ready to play outside in starting conference, or as soon as possible.
But with these inside guys, and with Mason not a whizz at finishing, and with Selden having lost his pop, it is a long, slow and laborious process to even get these guys up to being able to score AFTER trey shooting has stretched the defense.
For what its worth, transcendental basketball meditation is done twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, for about 20 minutes each time. You can use any mantra you like. I use @JayHawkFanToo as my mantra to try to help him/her feel self actualized about getting in my head. For some reason, he/she feels some need to, so, well, you know me, I try to comply by working with what I am given. :-)
I was a wait and see about Devonte, but he brought something to the perimeter that blended exceptionally well with Frank and Selden. Devonte filled gaps that each player had, and his weaknesses were weaknesses that could be covered up with help. I believe this was why Self said memorably that "we just got a lot better when we signed Devonte," or something like that. Devonte was a perfect puzzle piece for what Self already had, and this was especially the case when Conner was still on the team, for Devonte would have complemented Conner equally well. But when Conner bailed, we didn't get to see that complementarity, only how well he fit with Frank and Selden, and Svi. Frankly, Devonte is one of those rare players that, while he may not be a stunningly good impact player out of the box, he is a stunningly good glue player out of the box. He covered weaknesses of others and had weaknesses that others could cover, and he could make an open look. He was Brady Morningstar down to the slightness of size, but sharply better on the dribble. Like Brady he could play the 1, 2, or 3 and complement anyone else well doing it. But he was much better than Brady at the point. As when Brady had to sit a semester for his reputed DUI, or something approximating one, the team was not nearly as good without him even though Self could just give all of his first semester minutes to Xavier. Guys like Brady and Devonte are worth their weight in gold glue. They are reliable as the day is long. They are calm and calm their teammates in turbulent times. They build bridges among factions on a team. They move smoothly among the factions. This is invaluable. And for a guy like Devonte to be able to do that and at any moment step into the point guard role and create zero fall off in performance made him an extraordinary find. Self will scheme around his absence as he schemed around Brady's absence, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Self is hoping and praying that Devonte comes back this season in 4-5 weeks. And just as surely as Self knew Brady was worth throwing a rouge smoking jacket to, because of how much Self values that complementing ability, Devonte will get the medical red shirt if there is even a slight hint that he is not ready to play this season. Self will not jeopardize what Devonte has. Self has learned the hard way after Brady left that guys like Brady are even harder to come by than OADs. Self has had an OAD, or a TAD, or a 3AD, or two, or three every season since Brady graduated, but he has never found another guy as complementary as Brady with a 40 percent trey. And Devonte could easily be that complementary guy for three more seasons AND drain the 40% trey AND when ever needed be THE point guard.
Hell yes he will be missed.
And take a guess what Svi is working on day and night right now and will be for the rest of the season.
How to handle a ball screen and a back pick by guys bigger and stronger than he his; that's what.
If Svi can get it, then Self can bandaid and weather the loss of Devonte until he gets back.
But Devonte's versatility and trey and ball handling are crucial to this team being able to find a way to win against teams with more inside talent. You've got to have a guy like Devonte that can keep a team together when all hell is breaking loose because the other team is actually better than you are; that much he has already shown he could do.
While it is an interesting question, my read is Self is both trying to finesse as many wins as early as he can, and whenever leads permit, force the team to work on learning to score inside. He is doing the former, because he knows the longer the season goes on the more weaknesses opposing coaches will discover (e.g., Svi's susceptibility to ball screening and back picking) in his green team, and the more injury will reduce his already limited palette for painting what kind of team this team can be. He is doing the latter, because he knows if he sends this doughnut with a hole in the middle team of his out against very many more long and strong teams they are going to just guard the trey stripe exclusively and funnel KU inside and on any bad night of trey balling, KU is going to lose. Leaving UK aside, which is such a lopsided mismatch of talent that it hardly matters, Self has to have noticed that against Florida, Georgetown and Utah, KU would have been annihilated had KU not shot the trey sharply better than these three L&S teams. Self has to find a way to win a game against an L&S team inside, or this team has slim chance to win the conference and virtually no chance to go deep in the Madness.
Though @HighEliteMajor and I agree this team needs to play Outside-in to be its best, we do not agree on what Self is trying to do when he spends an entire half in my opinion willing to squander a 20 point lead trying to run only scoring plays inside the three point stripe versus Utah.
@HighEliteMajor thinks Self is trying to build an inside out team out of philosophy of playing inside out in the high-low.
I, on the other hand, believe Self tipped his hand by scheming perimeter action the first half against Utah, that Self has thrown in the sponge on inside out, and is ready to play outside in. But he faces an acute problem that he was letting the team labor to try and fix. This team currently cannot even play outside in. It can only play outside against L&S teams. Even if it shoots 30 treys per game, it still lacks the skill (and Self would probably say self-confidence) to score inside against L&S teams, even when the trey shooting forces their perimeter players to stop helping inside. Self surely must realize that this team's bigs, and its penetrating perimeter players, cannot yet go get a basket on L&S bigs yet.
So: what I am saying in contradistinction to @HighEliteMajor is that even though Self has conceded that this is an outside in team (and probably always suspected as much), he probably never dreamed that these guys 8 games into the season still could not figure how to score inside against and L&S interior of an opponent even with hot trey shooting by KU!
So: Self took the only opportunity he may have before conference starts--a 20 point lead against and L&S major--and obviously ordered his team to find a way to win at least a half with a big lead while playing inside the stripe. They can't just practice this all season long and hope to miraculously be able to do it in a big game against Texas, or the L&S teams they will meet early in the Madness. Self is fighting a serious mental block here. This young team, but especially its ranking member, Perry Ellis, were badly scarred by the UK game. And it has showed every time they have since challenged an L&S interior. They disappear inside and hope to be saved by trey balling.
Self had to get them some game experience that proved to them that they could successfully attack and defend an L&S major.
They failed almost entirely in attacking the interior the second half.
But they did labor and scramble and defend just enough to squeak by.
And you have to start somewhere.
He will keep repeating this every chance he gets until they learn how to play against bigger guys.
I am quite sure Self would have loved for the guys to have attacked the Utah interior and to have beaten Utah by the 20 or so point margin they started with. Self would love to have walked around the locker room after the game and said, "See, you no longer have to fear Kentucky, or any other bunch of big goons inside." But eeking out a nail biter after squandering a huge lead was the best this young team could do at this juncture. So: getting a win was at least something of a confidence builder. It was a place to start--to keep trying to learn how to play bigger guys.
(Note: and little guys CAN learn how to beat bigger guys. It has been learned by a number of smaller teams. But it takes a lot of reps to learn to do something against top competition that you have bitter experience telling you you cannot do. A lot of reps and lot of courage.)
I don't think most fans realize how demoralized and intimidated this team still is, when it comes to trying score against L&S interior opponents.
The truth is our bigs are like the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. Self is trying to lead them through Oz to meet a man called the Wizard, who can give them the brains, heart and courage they need to take on something that seems hopelessly bigger than themselves--L&S bigs.
Not one of KU's bigs has really been able to operate efficiently inside for two halves against an L&S team.
And yet they eventually have to be able to, whether KU is playing inside out, or outside in.
It does no good to pull a team like Utah out with trey shooting if you cannot then make it pay for stretching out by attacking its bigs efficiently inside.
And on the nights kU cannot make the trey, it will have no choice but to go inside sooner or later.
So: no, I don't think Self thinks this team is over confident yet.
I think he knows he has a bunch of fraidy cats when it comes to going up and finishing against the big trees.
And so Self has no choice but to throw them to the dogs inside whenever they open up a sufficient lead outside to let him.
The guys have to keep practicing attacking inside, just so they CAN play outside in.
Please continue to call them exactly as you wish, and see them.
It appears quite stressful for @JayHawkFanToo for aliases other than his/hers to articulate firm, clear assessments, but I believe that with time @JayHawkFanToo will get stronger and more self-confident and less and less stressed by the free speech and views of others.
And this is not meant to be a personal attack on anyone and there is no malice aforethought intended. I believe I am not the only one that feels this way either. A little, or a lot, of candor towards our coach does go a long way in helping us all appreciate and understand what he does and says, whether we agree with you, or not.
Rock Chalk!
Last summer's work out feeds suggested to me that he had lost some pop.
Now, the verdict now seems in. Selden lost some pop.
He might get it back next season, but for now he is less explosive.
But so did Travis.
So Selden can still be a tremendous player.
He just has to play more of an X-axis game.
Because he is a great athlete, he can do this, where it might end other careers.
He is the cornerstone of this team. The entire team revolves around him even when he is not scoring. It is a weird situation. He is so quiet. And so is Perry. Even Frank has become a quiet guy. Thus the team takes on this quietude as it goes about its business. But the intensity in all three surfaces frequently. They are all tremendously determined persons and so the team takes on that character more than anything else. Perry is learning toughness. Selden is learning to play without explosiveness. Frank is learning to play under control. The more they experience they get the better they will become at being a group of businesslike Marines out to take what needs to be taken without a lot of pomp and circumstances. Defense is everything with this bunch. They still are not sure of how good they can be on defense. Once they discover that, they will become an order of magnitude better team. Their offense will follow along.
As usual, they are one of Self's unique concoctions of unique individuals being melded into a fighting unit quite unlike those that have come before.
I always thought Traylor could be a big 3, but...
In a season in which necessity is not only the mother of invention, but the father and grand parents of it, too, KU's Bill Self is taking player roles to a new level.
Self has played a shooting guard at point, a 3 at 2, not one but two PGs at 3, three 3s at 4, a 4 at 5, and now in something of a flourish, may play a small 4, Jamari Traylor, who has already been playing 5, to--get this--not just a 3--but a ball handling 3.
Oh, and along the way his best rebounder has become his 5-10 shooting guard, Frank Mason, starting at point guard.
Say what?!!!!!!!
Self started the season saying Selden would probably play everywhere but 5.
Didn't happen....yet.
Instead Self gave that Selden idea an Einsteinian flip.
Recall Einstein? He was a scientist who was really an inventor of theories, see? Before Einstein, light was a variable and a lot of other things were constants. Sitting in a patent office, because he was too weird to get a professing gig, yet, Al decided light was a constant and all the other stuff was variable. And that made all the difference.
Similarly, Self decided to hold Selden constant and turn most every one else into a flipping variable!
Bill is inventing this shizzle as he goes along...like all geniuses do.
Selden is the nucleus of team amoeba!
Protean!
They don't know what we are going to do because we don't know what we are going to do; that came from the nucleus--Wayne Selden--the constant.
James Naismith would have recognized what Self is up to instantly.
Jimmy would say: "Forest, our boy is doing a pretty good impression of Thomas Edison, isn't he?"
First half perimeter action. Pick and roll. Ball screens.
Second half no perimeter action.
Krystowiak adjustments can't make our guys stop trying to run the outside action entirely.
Watch it, Coach. You will love it.
Self took Utah and Krystowiak seriously enough to scheme a proper offense for his dwarf KU team to beat a solid Utah team that was strong in all the places that could trouble KU.
And KU responded by beating the tar out of Utah the first half, thus giving Self the opportunity he needed to partake in a war of wills with his bunch of basketball Billbo Baggins.
Team: Coach, we really like shooting the trey off action.
Coach: That's good to hear, but we're not going to do any of that the second half.
Team (hand wringing): But, Coach, we're too short to win inside.
Coach: Yes, you can, and you are going to. And you are going to today. I'm spotting you a 20 point lead. You've got to learn how to play against big men inside sooner or later.
Team: No, Coach, please don't make us try. PLEASE!
Coach: You're going to beat these guys inside, or you're going to lose to these guys inside. Its up to you.
Team: No, Coach, no!!!
Coach: The coach giveth outside action, and the coach taketh it away. Now get out there and win one inside. I'm only asking you to win one half inside. And starting with a 20 point lead. Come on you big bunch of babies. Anyone can win outside with action and the trey. That's not basketball. That's sissy stuff. It takes real men to win inside against footers with dwarves at the post--with 6-7 and 6-6 at the post.
Team: Please, please, please, Coach, don't make us going out there without any action!! No action? No ball screens? No treys?!!!!!!!!!
Coach: Win it inside. You guys have to learn how to win inside before we get to Texas.
Team: Texas? No, coach, no, you wouldn't!
Coach: Quit gripping your units and get out there. I refuse to be the coach of a team that can't score inside against anyone. Scoring inside is part of who we are!
Team: Please, pretty please, we will play defense as hard as you want us to. Harder. Well, help EVERYWHERE! But please don't send us out their without any perimeter action. Don't make us try to win inside. Please!
Coach: My mind is made up. Now get out there.
Self has titanium ingots in his scrotum.
Self challenged his team to beat a footer with a good point guard inside...without any treys...without any action...just on sheer determination and going inside the trey stripe again and again.
It was pathetic to watch, too.
First they tried half heartedly. Then when the coach just sat there letting the lead evaporate, they started disappearing. You could see their nut sacks shrink almost in unison.
"We can't," the team seemed to be saying.
"You can, " said the willful coach.
"We can't."
'You can and you will."
This game has to go in the "Best of Bill Self Letting'em Labor" gift set.
KU could have beaten Utah by 30 points, if they had kept running the scheme from the first half.
If anyone wonders how KU will beat some of the top teams in the country in March, the first half was a blue print.
But Self didn't care about that.
He wanted to and did use the lead as an insurance policy from State Farm to make them reach down inside themselves and find the courage to beat long guys inside that they had developed a mental block about being able to beat.
They just about didn't.
But in the end, the KU guys started playing defense with every fiber of their beings and kept getting stop after stop in the last minute and kept jamming it inside, when they feared they couldn't and made a few free throws walked out with a W by the thickness of a triplicate copy of their state farm insurance policy from the first half.
I have not seen Self this happy after a pre conference win since maybe his second or third season. Self was like a young coach again. He almost infarcted the last five minutes, but when the buzzer sounded and KU was ahead, he strutted around a like proud father that had just shown his son that he could do something he didn't think he could do.
I think part of the time Krystowiak had a hard time concentrating on his own team. I think Krystowiak was watching the coaching clinic by Self. I believe Krystowiak was flabbergasted that Self would even try such a thing, much less stick with it all the way to the buzzer.
I know I was.
Self let it all ride on red at the roulette wheel the second half.
And the boys, as badly as they looked, and as obviously wracked with self doubt about what he was making them do, some how reached down way, way, way deep and found away not just to win ugly, but win inspite of being scared to death.
Self is a genius.
Next.
Without the essay, Holly, extra pounds and all, has one thing going for her that the other sideline cheese cakes lack: she's an original with personality. This is something that is no longer in demand in mass media, of course, but I still really enjoy it. In today's mainstream sports media, copies, clones and simulations are the norm. Its where the media thing has gone.
I like Holly even though I admit she was an acquired taste. At first I thought she was just another side line clone that happened to some "full figured" daughter of a network exec. But she actually does her job well and occasionally does memorable things, like the gesture with all the rings on her fingers. She really breaks down the contrivance of coaches being interviewed by bimbos. By not being a conventional thin bimbo, I think she actually disarms coaches into being a bit more candid.
And in case anyone hasn't noticed, the American public, especially the TV viewing public, and gained a lot of weight the last 2-3 decades and the taste and trend makers have finally conceded that mass imagery has to be re-tailored to reflect that. Chubby models are all the rage now. Holly was just ahead of her time.
And she does what all really great TV personalities do: she makes you feel a little better after watching her do her thing.
By the way, I think this IMAGE composition above is BRILLIANT.
I am tempted to write an extended essay on it, but I lack the time today. It is beautiful, spooky, sweet, and ugly. Quite an array to hang together so well. And with a subtext of Mormonism to boot.
Stradivarius with pic files emerging.
Beginning with the great Jack Gardener's move from KSU to Utah, so he could do more hunting and fishing (note: his assistant, Tex Winter, replaced him at KSU), Utah has been serious about its basketball. Bill Foster, Jerry Pimm and Rick Majerus that followed were each estimable coaches, though there were some turkeys before and after Majerus.
Larry Krystkowiak is from mountain west hard scrabble roots, but once he got to the L he eventually fell in with Avery Johnson and hence with the Larry Brown/Popovich Mafia.
Heck yes they will be good. A lot more sound fundamentally than Georgetown. They are on the upswing. Very tough. A legitimate Pac 12 grade team.
Self has scheduled them to be a good member of the LB/Popavich mafia and because they are hard nosed, and because they will add to the RPI because of their membership in the Pac 12.
I am eager to see what variations Krystkowiak will make on Brown/Popopavich ball.
In another thread you and another poster commented that the B1G was struggling this year in pre-conference; this prompted me wonder why?
Hypothesis time.
The problem faced by the Big Ten/B1G/etc. Conference appears to be three fold.
But before I specify those, let me delineate three apparent classes of talent and four classes of talent stacking in D-I hoops.
1.) 3-4Y--Players recruited and expected to be on the roster 3-4 years. Call them 3-4Y.
2.) 1-2AF--So-so players recruited to be used for a year or two and flushed when better talent can be signed. Call them 1-2AF.
3.) OAD/TAD--Players recruited to be played from the start that are intended to go pro after one year, or two years on the team.
Also let me delineate three apparent classes of stacking.
A.) Non-stacked--No OAD/TADs, and no 1-2AFs, just 3-4Y players.
B.) Stacked--refers to 1-3 OAD/TADs, as appears to be observable at certain adidas programs, like KU.
C.) Deep Stacked--refers to 4-5 OAD/TADs, as appears to be observed at Nike-UA, and Nike-Duke this season.
D.) Black Stacked--inexplicably, and counter intuitively deeply stacked talent, like what one appears to see at Nike-UK--10 deep in Mickey Ds.
NOTE: It is assumed that everything that enables the apparent stacking strata of talent and the classes of talent being stratified are triggered by legal phenomena.
With these terms defined, then, it is hypothesized that the B1G problems arise from three possible factors.
I.) The powers that be in OAD/TAD talent distribution bidness (i.e., not the traditional college recruiting bidness, but the apparently quite separate and emerging OAD/TAD talent distribution bidness) appear unwilling to stack one of their teams, as Nike-UK, Nike-UA, and Nike-Duke appear to be stacked, for reasons that would be very interesting to understand (and which I don't yet grasp). And the powers that be in the same apparently emerging OAD/TAD talent distribution bidness appear to be treating Tom Crean and Indiana like other elite adidas schools appear to get treated, i.e., he gets no more than 2-3 OAD/TAD types per season. As a result, none of the B1G teams are talented enough to compete well with the apparently stacked teams.
II.) The reputed African American migration from the inner cities and playground culture to the suburbs without an equivalently strong playground culture, combined with summer league early syphoning off of players from what remains of the inner city play ground culture, has shrunk the once vast supply of basketball talent coming out of inner cities of the Great Lakes States that was once strongly biased toward attending certain dominant universities in those states. As a result, th B1G coaches apparently can't get the players any more in the numbers they once did, that gave them great advantage over the cupcake teams, mid majors and majors on their pre-conference schedules.
III.) The B1G used to officiate and play a significantly rougher game of basketball, than was found in many other major and minor conferences around the country. Now, most other conferences officiating and play has grown nearly as rough as the B1G. And what little edge in experience the B1G still held in rough play, has been further diminished by recent changes in officiating imposed on all conferences that have made some parts of the game be called tighter and some looser.
So: the combined effect of I, II, III have brought the once dominant B1G to a temporary mediocrity. Such fluctuations up and down of course have always also been driven to some extent by random fluctuations in recruiting, and in coincidental clustering of arrivals and departures. But since these factors have always contributed in all the conferences, and likely always will, it is assumed unnecessary to explicitly disaggregate them for analysis. Since, the effects they have contributed in the past have rarely if ever diminished the B1G to this years level of mediocrity, the hypothesized factors I, II, and III, which have grown increasingly significant only in recent years, are considered significant drivers of the phenomenon.
:-)
Most indirect, arcane sports allusion to a Jayhawk basketball opponent with nearly n degrees of freedom ever attempted, much less successfully executed.
I salute you. :-)
âBig 13,
Big 14,
Big 15,
Big 16,
Big 17,
Big 18,
Big 19......Big n
(Note: this name will give an impression of an infinitely large conference.)
Another suggestion is: Big 3.14285714...
(Note: aka The Big Pi Conference--this builds on and emphasizes some of the irrationality of having a different number of members than the conference name indicates.)
These of course have both already been registered ÂŽ, copyrightedŠ, and trademarkedâ˘.
The Big 16 Incarnate Conference
University of Incarnate Phoneme
University of Incarnate Participial Phrase
University of Incarnate Sentence Fragment
University of Incarnate Predicate Adjective
University of Incarnate Adjectival Clause
University of Incarnate Diphthong
University of Incarnate Onomatopoeia
University of Incarnate Exclamatory Sentence
University of Incarnate Vowel (replaced U of Incarnate Mispronunciation which jumped to the SEC)
University of Incarnate Cognate
Note; Ten teams. Round robbin. No play-off. Winner always left out of tournaments and play-offs.
Howling!
The National Invitational Tournament of Unknowns.
New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of Incarnate Word, EMU, Wichita State
Sponsored by Under Armour and Somerset Shaving Oil
Simulcast by PBS and NPR.
Held at Area 51.
Date never announced in advance.
We are soon going to have to start "The Dictionary of Intentionally Incorrectly Spelled Werds! :-)
Always say: never say never tuh rulz uh gramma.,;
Eye dowt that>Bt who em I 2 seigh||||\
?
I affect being effected by it, but I am really not.
Sitting out a year at Nebraska in basketball would be like waiting in line for tanning advice from Tom Osborne.
What a relief. Thx. Want to see that guy succeed somewhere.
Trivia: name the UIW mascot and whether or not it is incarnate, or not.
Nebraska just found out just how tough the Incarnate Word was!
UIW 74
NU 73
AWIII is not even on roster in box score. Also not a DNP. Did he quit, or go down to injury?Have you already remarked on this and I missed it? http://www.uiwcardinals.com/index.aspx?path=mbball â
Howling! PHOF!
That would be the ultimate!
LOL!
Also, I want to complement you in sharing your insight about the distinction between complement and compliment, and I want to compliment you for sharing it. :-)
West bound. ;-)
No fair. :-)