And be predictable while you do. :-)
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
And here.
Back fill here too.
And here.
And here.
And here.
Back fill here.
Engineering explains a WHOLE lot. :-)
Or does it? :-)
Nudity is never advisable in Antarctica.
Trying to make love to a detonating thermonuclear device always leads to premature annihilation.
Truth and falsity are illusions that are hard to disprove.
If Ebola isn't a reason to end biological warfare testing, then the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was.
-jaybate 1.0
Whatever they expect you to do, do something else.
And once they expect you not to do something, do that.
--Lao Tse jaybate 1.0, from "The Tao of Iron Rings and Wood"
No, no, bigger! The eighth essence, dude/dudette (note: I raise the gender thing, because someone else did and I did not want to be disrespectful), this is the age of hype. This is the labyrinth without the meaning of not a labyrinth. This is Borges without the meaning of Jorge Luis. We are entering the sign market become THE VOID as per little Baudrillard's gnomish schtick. Operation Inherent Resolve is not, I repeat, not happening, as surely as Desert Storm did not happen and Baudrillard did not happen. Quintessence is so last century, so pre-poststructural. Octessence is the new quintessence. Just like googleplex blew up to Graham Number.
Inflate with the times, without recalling the base year index, or die.
:-) :-(
Dramedy.
Tragicomic.
Realm-free.
Lady GaGa isn't Dada.
But Dada is Lady Gaga.
T.S. Eliot Click.
Pinaud is the last constant.
Since 1816.
Can you dig it, baby?
Engineering toward Bethlehem, not slouching, or praying.
Log of e, Log of e,
Let it be, let it be,
Engineering words of wisdom
Let it be, Log of e...
And Nautilus was the first submarine to cross under the North Polar ice cap.
But its the arcs of the Sunflower that determine everything.
"I can dig it
You can dig it
He can dig it
She can dig it...
Can you dig it, baby?"
"No that is not it, at all
That is not what I meant, at all"
"We are all born mad.
Some remain that way."
But after Pinaud, then
It is basketball alone that counts
For each bounce by a boy
Or a girl
In an iced driveway
Or within a chainlink schoolyard
Is a tiny, subversive denial of
THE VOID
Howling!
Let's do it the way the commercial sites do. Let's put our total number of members including all the spammers. :-)
Remember that great Bonnie Raitt song where she sang, "Let's give them something to talk about..."!KUBCON.jpg ↗
More Possible KUBuckets Memorabilia
KUBuckets All Natural Lake Henry Sun Screen
dragonslayr autographed crimson and blue gardening gloves made of old practice jersey remnants.
Sexy basketball net lingerie made from actual Allen Field House basketball nets modeled by Olivia Wilde.
A Blue Ray Disk of all the signings of Nike leans and adidas leans signing with Nike schools and adidas schools that support jaybate 1.0's conspiracy hypothesis.
Crimson and Blue #14 Welder's Masks for watching the coming total eclipse of the sun.
Hype means never having to say your forget. :-)
God, I guess I am never going to get that stupid movie out of my memory banks.
Long time, no read. Good to see you are back at the keyboard. Your notion that Greene and/or Frankamp might redshirt in later years is very interesting. I have always thought early red shirting was kind of arbitrary. Thanks for kicking out a side of the box for me, Coach.
Some more suggested KUBuckets:
Danny Manning Head Sun Screen
Bill Self Hair Plugger
Jam Tray Crimson and Blueberry Jam
Snacks' Hi-Fat SNACKS.
Kurtis Townsend Ebony and Ivory Cuff Links
JayhawkFanToo GOBLUE! Keyboard with Dedicated Back Fill Key
AUTO-HOWLING!!!!!!!!!!
I will send in $8 but I want mine given to a poor person in Lawrence.
You are suggesting Self get into tempo setting.
But how does a guy who tries not to set tempo in order to beat you any way you want to play by coming up with the counter to your tempo setting square doing this within his apparent personal philosophy and apparent operational creed of embracing "BOTH-ness"?
Simple.
He just embraces setting tempo some times and not others.
In fact, he needs to do this for the same reason that he needs to intersperse some pressing with his half court game.
In order to be neutral one must sometimes be positive and negative also.
In order to play half court well one must play full court well.
In order to squirt, one must also ooze.
In order to play hi-lo well, one must also play some single post, or better yet no post, well.
In order to slow down, you must speed up first.
In order to speed up, you must first slow down.
In order to attack, you must first retreat.
In order to retreat, you must first attack.
In order to flank, well, you must first attack the center.
In order to attack the center, you must first attack the flank.
In order to cut off the head, you must first fatigue the body.
In order to man-up well, one must also woman-up well.
In order to woman-up well, you must man-up well.
In order to X-Axis well, one must also Y-axis some.
"The deeper you go, the higher you fly.
The higher you fly, the deeper you go."
--Lennon-McCartney
BACK FILL HERE. :-)
I am not confident either way at this time, until I see how explosive Selden is post knee injury.
Leg and back injuries change everything.
No one is ever as good afterwards.
Some get back 95 of their explosiveness and are so good to begin with that their careers go on at still very high levels. Brandon Rush could play at a very high level after his very severe knee injury at KU. Tyshawn could bounce back and play at a very high level after his reputedly much less severe injury. But someone like Sherron saw his explosiveness steadily erode from injuries. Sam with EJ and Travis and Cole. The wear and tear and injuries eroded their explosiveness.
We will have to wait and see how much explosiveness Selden has left, before we know whether he will go pro after this season, or wait. Without explosiveness, great players become good players, and good players become average players, and so on.
With explosiveness Selden will probably be able to shoot 38-40% from trey AND get to the rim almost at will. Without explosiveness, Selden will struggle in all facets of the game as opponents increasingly understand what he can no longer do. With some or most of his explosiveness back, his great size for a 2 will make him very tempting to be taken this season in hopes more work can restore more explosiveness and more work can push the trey balling a little higher.
Selden showed signs of great explosiveness and athleticism early last season, despite the usual struggles with adjusting to D1 speeds early.
It is a testament to what a tremendous talent he was that he could beat out all teammates in his coach's opinion on only one good knee.
But now Selden has to be THE MAN on this team, not the third option. When Ellis has a defender on him that he can score on, Selden will probably be second option. But when Ellis can't get untracked against a blue meanie, then Selden is THE GUY.
And because the team's bigs are reputedly trending toward shorter guys playing, and the shorter perimeter guys look like they could run into match up problems, Selden has to be a jack of all trades on this team, rather than focus in on doing one position well.
Add less than full restoration of explosiveness with being asked to swing 1-4 as needed, and that's a recipe for declining, not rising three point shooting percentage, even if his ppg is first or second highest on the team.
So: I just have to wait and see.
Playing tougher is good in concept.
Playing with steel reinforced noses is good in concept.
Guarding hard everywhere and exploding out of position all the time is good in concept.
Getting up and under your assigned footer is good in concept.
Getting up and under your assigned perimeter defensive assignment that has 4 inches and 20 pounds on you is good in concept.
Knocking guys off their spots and off their lines is good in concept.
But if the game is officiated at all as it was last season, especially the first half the season, then many of the players playing in the aforementioned fashions will, not surprisingly, be fouled up a the 5 minute mark of the first half.
This will likely not adversely affect the five minute mark substitutions. They were set to come in and give the starters a blow and to bring new energy, new explosiveness.
But what happens when the second wave of subs, regardless of their lengths, come in and play fanatically and explosively, i.e., with steel reinforced noses and lots of manning up, and become fouled up in the ensuing five minutes?
What does Self do then?
He would appear to have two options.
1.) Pull the plug on the fanatic and explosive fashion play util the final five minutes of the second half.
Or...
2.) Play a ten man rotation and tell them to keep playing fanatically and explosively till the final buzzer, i.e., attack until victorious, or let no man come back alive with less than 5 fouls.
Option 1 lets him keep his most talented players on the floor playing at 3/4s fanaticism and explosiveness.
Option 2 lets team defense stay stifling for 40 minutes, but risks serious adverse mismatches as the starters grow depleted from fouling out.
Option 1 substitutes hard noses for gutty-ness of the kind showed by the 2012 Runner-Up team that played six, or seven guys, and sand bagged for long stretches of the game to throw everything into the last ten minutes. It is called shortening a game. It involves a lot of walking the ball up court, passing till near the end of the shot clock and then always trying for a high percentage close in bucket and an FTA.
Option 2 is letting the dogs off the leash and finding a way to "getter done" no matter what kind of personnel you are left with at closing time. In Option 2, we might even occasionally see Evan Manning and Tyler Self forced into perilous duty.
Option 1 is the traditional Self approach of bend, grind, labor, but never break.
Option 2 (?) is what a newer, harder nosed, Marine Raider indoctrinated Bill Self might go with.
The Marines always come in waves. They always hold a reserve just off shore. They start with a strategy of what needs taking, and a set of tactical plans for doing it. Once the combat starts, they immediately junk all the tactical plans, and improvise in the moment to optimally concentrate whatever forces might remain at whatever objectives seem most feasible in order to "getter done."
Marines don't take casualties for the sake of sustaining the initial tactical operations planned.
They take casualties to take specific real estate that seems most crucial to take in front of them at the moment to keep the operation going. There are flaws to this approach. It can lead to fantastic losses at point of attack, when a leader gets too close to the action and loses perspective, i.e. Chesty Puller on Tarawa.
But it makes the Marines very tough to actually stop. They never stop looking for and taking losses to find a point of attack they might be able to crack open. Doing this means that though you may slaughter many of them repeatedly, if you eventually guess wrong in the chaos their attempts are creating, sooner or later they break through and destroy you, and your next line of defenses, that you did not anticipate correctly being destroyed. This takes all the advantage of defense away from you. You suddenly do not know whether your interior line of communications are reliable. You suddenly can't decide where they will attack next. You suddenly are in world of shit battling a bunch of razor edged fanatics that generally are not instructed to take prisoners. You only know they are coming and that even if you guess right one more time about their next point of attack, they are going to take casualties until they find your next weakness. They are a demoralizing bunch to fight, when they have smart, out front generals leading them, which they often have.
Self has been playing Eisenhower for quite a few years now. It fit because Eisenhower always had the superior force structure.
But now Self is really just in command of a short Marine Raider outfit. A bunch of highly trained, razor edged fanatics, enough depth to come in waves and still hold some in reserve, but not overwhelming force structure for an Army style invasion and occupation.
Self brought in the real Marines this pre season.
I suspect he gets his situation.
I suspect body guards, lawyers, PR teams, and private detectives largely transcend that problem, same as they do for entertainers in film and TV, and famous politicians and CEOs.
It is so easy to set the assumptions so it was not so tough..
Started at 13.
Liked multiples and orgies.
Only penetrated 2 out of 4, the rest being quickies done to him.
And so on.
The keys to the 20k were:
Lots of stress to displace.
Rich.
Celebrity.
Dominant.
Intelligent.
Huge.
Worked half a year living in hotels.
Half the year off in SF, Bel Air most of his adult life.
Resources to travel the world
Single.
Record oriented.
Insomnia .
Liked women.
Sexual addiction?
Era of sexual liberation in the West.
Great motor.
Really, nothing unfeasible about the number, given anomalous circumstances and abilities and time and resources and preference for trying to stretch the envelope of what other persons think possible and acceptable. Life in withering impersonal spotlight of celebrity and usual need to seek relief from it. Need to disprove freakishness of height and abilities by seeking acceptance.
Just not many guys in those circumstances and willing to say it in a book.
Magic was reputedly paddling similar Rapids for a time.
None of us really understands what these right tail extraordinary human beings go through at the heigt of their fame and abilities in the mass media age. All we really know is they can do extraordinary things in their public lives and so there is no reason to expect they do not sometimes do extraordinary things in their private lives. Sometimes they do private good on extraordinary levels. Sometimes they do private bad on extraordinary levels. And sometimes they do private neutralities on extraordinary levels. It is to some greater, or lesser degree, a phenomenon associated with large personalities and enormously gifted persons. And those among the rest of us that rely on norms and probabilities to either forecast, or backcast, the actions of such extraordinary individuals are often risking great error in explanation.
Wilt was an an extreme outlier emerging from the Hitchcockian "North by Northwest" mass culture 1950s. He was in the advanced charge on the ramparts of the fungible corporate man and the grateful Negroe supposed to wait his turn for real freedom.
But for those that want a world where it didn't happen, halve it and say he was hyping a book. 10k is still a lot of pairing.
And try not to think about the idle rich and the whole ritualized orgy and kinky underworld. Schnitzler and Kubrick were not known for complete disconnects from reality, just for fictionalizing how they portrayed what went on in their times.
Next season, the Tub maybe should try one of those CAN-AM three wheelers.
I flipping love this quote from the story on Traylor leading the team in energy points and on Self trying turn this tea into a bunch of energy fanatics.
"Added Selden: “I’m up there. I’m not quite to where (Traylor and Oubre) are with it, because they’re all over the place.”
This is the best player on the team we are talking about here.
This is a guy who started as a freshman despite one bad knee.
This is the leader of the team.
This is a guy draft boarded to go HIGH!
This is a helluva an athlete and an active player.
AND HE IS SAYING TRAYLOR AND OUBRE ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!
Self is building himself a team full of highly explosive, razor edged fanatics.
Robust take.
And I think you have hit on something important and rather inexcusably lacking in my analyses to date: REBOUNDING.
The litmus test for perimeter play should include an advanced degree in carom-ology given short bigs, just as you say.
Especially during stretches where our perimeter has mostly guys that are not 40% trey ballers, I would say your point takes on added gravity.
Back fill.
What?
You have raised Self's conservatism persuasively on a number of occasions. Even got me thinking seriously about it.
Now, after having studied the roster of his 32-5 Elite Eight Tulsa team in 1999-2000, wherein he played very, very small ball AND had 5 of his 6 man rotation hoisting treys, even when they weren't great trey shooters, I want to get you to think about and try to explain what the difference is between the Self of 1999-2000 and the Self of 2014-2015. Is there a difference? Is he inflexible, brilliantly flexible, or moderately flexible?
Clearly, Self was willing once to play small ball when forced to by his talent. But he did more than play small ball with that Tulsa team. He turned it into a trey balling flying circus with an absolutely miniscule rotation. That was way outside the envelope of that time in college basketball. That was the time of XTReme Thug Ball Version 1.o. That was the time of the Wisconsin-Michigan State national championship slugfest in which both offense and defense were reduced to forearm shivers, plus blocking and tackling. Mateen "the meat cleaver" Cleeves was the poster boy PG of the era. And yet Self went 180 opposite the trend that season. He went with five trey ball triggering short and athletics that guarded their hearts out and became superb at 70 point take what they give us played up and under.
Then he went to Illinois and played a bunch of Lon Kruger's residual muscle men, and tasted Ratso Izzo's brass knuckle sandwiches and other forms of Big Ten maul ball, and really got queer for adapting the Iba hi-lo aka Dean's and Larry's Xcellent Adventure in the Carolina Passing Offense aka Eddie Ball into an XTReme Muscle hybrid. If you let us run a way from you we will. If you force us to muscle with you, we will. And so on.
Then he gets to KU and rides a short wide body post, a 4 on steroids, in Simien to the Elite Eight.
Then he gets serious about signing length, and gets catholic about the hi-lo basics: stretch the D with open look 40% trey shooters combined with a wide variety of long bigs.
The long bigs are where Self has been the most brazen in trying the outrageous IMHO. They range from two stretch 4s playing 4 and 5 in the Morri, to pairing an undersized rim protector in Mad Stork Cole and stretch 4 Marcus, to pairing a no offense footer rim protector Withey with an inverted pyramid fore arm smashing dunk machine in TRob, to pairing rim protector Withey with perhaps the greatest anomaly in the history of college basketball--6-7 180 power forward KY. And don't forget that the ring team played a 6-8 power forward at center, a 6-9 shooting forward at power forward, and a 6-10 260 Ruskie back up center without knees that could neither rebound, nor score.
This constitutes perhaps the most extraordinary clinic in exploring the varied approaches to playing an offense I can recall. Maybe Wooden tried more variations on his high post, but even Wooden jump shifted when he had Jabbar and Walton to the low post offense.
Compare the variety of Self's approaches within his hi-lo to the rote sameness of Cal's teams within the dribble drive offense at Memphis and UK. Cal seems never to change a thing about how they play the dribble drive offense and the defenses never change either.
Compared to Cal, Self is like Picasso morphing into yet another virtuoso form of hi-lo every couple years. Talent seems to hugely dictate how Self plays his hi-lo, where as Cal lets the dribble drive dictate what his conveyor belt of Mickey Ds do. Ball screen, dribble drive, create. Ball screen, dribble drive, create. Throw it inside. Repeat.
Cal just keeps letting Nike feed him Mickey Ds and lining them up exactly the same way and, regardless of the heights of the players at the positions year to year, they run the same ball screen and dribble drive isolations without change year after year.
Self's offenses have varied from into low block Simien turn and shoot, to mostly pick and role during Cole's years. to stretch 4 and stretch 5 with trey ball wings out of the cradle endlessly stretching, to playing three short perimeter guys, to playing three long perimeter guys, to...well, you get the idea.
We've seen him run the stay-on-the-spots hi-lo and the slide-off-the-spots hi-lo. Now he is talking about staying on the lines high lo, which inplies the possibility of a veering off the lines hi-lo, too.
The only thing Self hasn't varied much is relying on a half court defense, but even the way they have played half court defense has varied widely from XTReme Disruption in '08 to no disruption and just guarding the trey stripe and rim protection last season in order to win the FTA battle.
How do we square our sense of his conservatism, which, as I have said, you sometimes make persuasively, with all of this extraordinary variation within limits in his career?
Since adopting the dribble drive offense, Cal doesn't vary at all. He's like Old Faithful. Watch Derek Rose, then watch Marcus whatever his name was on the Davis ring team. The almost the identical dribble drive actions. From CDR to Kidd-Gilchrist. Not a speck of difference in the dribble drive offensive sets and actions they are running.
What exactly does Self's conservatism mean, when he so dramatically morphs the hi-lo every season or two?
I keep coming back to extraordinary variation with limits to describe Self.
So: its apparently the limits that make you find him conservative.
Not sure if you find Cal as conservative as I do. Cal is progressive in recruiting alright, progressive perhaps to the point of never knowing what is being done wrong by alums in his behalf. But in terms scheming? That would be no. He adopted a new offense from a high school coach; that was fresh. But since then, the names change but what is done with the offense seems to stay the same.
And Self is very quick to steal from what works for others, at least from that which can be integrated into his hi-lo system in pieces.
And he also pioneers things, like let the other team set the tempo, that guys like Calhoun, with Ollie at his side assisting, essentially copy completely.
What UConn did the last few years under Calhoun and then Ollie last season really comes out of Self Ball. It appeared to me that LB had been coming to Self's practices the last few years and then tutoring Ollie on what Self was doing a couple years back and passing it to Calhoun, as UNC assistant Larry Brown once learned the hi lo from Iba and passed it to Dean.
May be it is the limits of NOT going to full time, full court zone pressing that makes him seem conservative to us at times.
But there just was nothing conservative about the 2012 runner up team. It was sand bagging entire games for wins. What Tyshawn did was practically the prototype for what Shabazz and UConn did last season.
Part of me worries that Self is not passing an eye test for maverick thinkers in today's media culture.
He is once conventionally WASP leading man handsome--classic square face structure, straight hair (plugged or not) and that mixture of handsome and a little goofy.
He speaks with an Okie accent.
He seems corporate jock/fraternity brother smooth.
No Meadow Lands mousse like Cal, or whatever he is wearing these days.
No 'hood slangin' like Ollie.
No slick omerta schtick like Ratso and Slick Rick.
No toos and pierced earrings.
No Tom Ford skinny suits.
No John Thompson 1.0 glasses, black suit, white shirt, black tie accidental allusions to the Nation of Islam and the honorable Elijah Muhammad.
No red neck Bob Knight golf sweaters with a fishing pole in the back of the pickup stuff.
No "I made it mamma" son of Polish immigrant and Army chic like K.
(Note: I admire all of these styles of all these coaches past and present for their stylish idiosyncracies.)
Do we have a basketball maverick and genius here in Self being obscured by the aging mayonaisse and wonder bread frat house look in the age of "whitey-gonna-be-a-minority-in-20-year" speak?
Or do we have a bonafide basketball conservative and sports fundamentalist inflexible?
Lay your thoughts down when you get a chance.
Slug it: getting to know our coach and our eye prescriptions.
We are sailing into harms way with a short fleet.
We need to know our admiral.
And, well, you know the drill. :-)
And here, please.
Back fill here, please.
From you weird is the octessence of compliment. :-)
Right wing politics are not politics at all but rather Topo Gigio blue fedoras made from George Balanchine's prima ballerina tutu remnants. ;-)
Correct?
Who is the man that would risk his neck for brother man?
SHAFT...
Can you dig it?
Man love is a 21st Century thing.
Bill is a creature of the red clay 20th Century.
Love means never having to say you are sorry to a romantic interest in Stillwater and Edmond.
In basketball, nose hardness seems back in session this season in Lawrence on the Kaw.
:-)
RE: Jamari Traylor
Big faux paux oversight on my part regarding Jam Tray. He has to be part of the rotation. He has explosive athleticism and toughness, plus late last season he was starting to show some offensive moves. If Self wants to be a great defensive team this season without a rim protector, then Jamari has to be part of the act, because great defensive teams require guys that can explode out of position to make defensive plays.
But the guy is only 6-6. As a frosh he backed up at the 5 rather unpersuasively. As a soph he backed up at the 4 and grew into the role in a solid way. As a junior, who knows where he shows up, except that he and Self are like adopted son and father on a psychic level. What does that mean? It means that coaches will ask their sons do do things they wouldn't ask other players to do, to fill gaps and play out of comfort zones they just would not ask other players to fill and play. At the same time, coaches DO find roles for their sons, adopted or otherwise. Tyler may not play in games, but he's got a role on this team. Jamari is athletic enough to play and so he has a playing role. What it will be though is not yet clear. He is good enough at this stage to start, but because of this relationship business, Self could easily ask him to provide energy off the bench and wait till next season.
But, just between us, I have to confess that I am feeling a little bit of that "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."
More than once during this off season I have harkened back to Self's great Elite Eight Tulsa team and Wooden's small ball, er, low ball ring team. Self's Tulsa team bore an eery resemblance to the Wooden's first ring team in the way it moved, passed, offended and defended. Wooden's first ring team was famously all 6-5 or under. I believe Self's Tulsa team had some 6-6 to 6-8 guys at the posts. But I recall some pressing by Tulsa and I recall an X-Axis emphasis of muscular sliding with hands wide on defense and 45 degree angle cuts and lots of efficiency of motion.
I am beating around the bush here.
6-6 Jam Tray = 6-5 Fred Slaughter.
Explosive athleticism in the 5 = explosive athleticism in the 5.
Yes, I know Cliff is going to start at the 5, but he is probably going to foul a lot until February.
I know Hunter, or Landen, are going to see action at the 5, but if someone is going to talk about small ball as much as Self has talked about it, and if Self wants to craft a team starting now for March, and if OAD Cliff's muscular athleticism has to start as part of keeping the OAD valve open, then who is most like muscular cliff to come in when he gets fouled up? Some committee of Landen and Hunter, or Bam Bam in Slayr-ese.
How tough does Self want to be. If he wants to be as tough as this team can possibly be, then Bam Bam has to come at the 5, when Cliff gets fouled up. And Bam Bam has to come at the 4 when Ellis gets blue meanie syndrome. And when Self needs more scoring out of the 4, than Bam Bam can give them, or more trifectation out of the 3, or 2, than Selden/Oubre can give them, then Bam Bam has to slide to the 5 and either Oubre, or Selden has to slide to the 4, and one or two of Greene/Conner/Svi has to come in.
What I'm saying here is that depending on Cliff's foul prone-ness, and how TOUGH Self wants this team to be, this team really could turn into Marine Raider Team Jayhawk with a bunch of 6-4 to 6-6 take no prisoners types scoring and defending "anyway it takes" Marine Raider style.
And this could look very much like UCLA in 1963-1964, and Tulsa in 1999-2000.
In fact, let me cut to the chase.
Here is the blue print for the 2014-2015 Jayhawks: the 1999-2000 Tulsa Hurricanes.
6 guys played 30mpg.
5 were from 6-0 to 6-7.
One 6-10 guy rotated in.
All but one starter shot 50+ treys for the season.
Back to the Future.
He might play 9 for awhile.
But he'll probably cut it to 8 of the hardest noses that survive.
I don't know. But Self won't hesitate to go small and stay small if those noses are the hardest. And he probably won't hesitate to let the trey ball fly even among the sub 40%ers.
@HighEliteMajor, you want a Self team?
I think you've got a bun in the oven here.
http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/tulsa/2000.html ↗
P.S.: If Brannen buys in on the defensive end, Conner is a serious red shirt candidate. Self already says Conner can guard adequately now. If Conner were to spend the next year muscling up and adding 10 pounds, he would be very much worth having around 5 years.
Thus Sprak Selfathustra...
Conner, Brannen and Svi are the team's kings of trinities.
Brannen has shot it the best.
Conner has learned to guard.
Self will not play 7 perimeter guys in the rotation.
And this time he does not mention, um, RED SHIRTING.
Inference?
Devonte, Mason, Oubre and Selden are four perimeter players already in the rotation.
Ellis, Alexander and Mickelson are three bigs in the rotation inside.
That's a seven man rotation.
Brannen, Conner and Svi are fighting for one spot.
Last season Self tried the committee approach of pulling guys after missed shots and no one ever got in a shooting groove.
This season he is appears to be picking one eighth man.
Let's see.
Conner can shoot it.
Conner can play some 1.
Conner can play some 2.
Conner can guard some.
Conner is in the lead to be given the 8th spot.
Conner should get about 3 games to show he can do the job.
If he fails, Brannen gets the next three games.
If he fails, Svi gets the next three games.
Winner take all this year.
The only question remaining is does someone take a rouge smoking jacket?
Self said no one gets thrown one, but that could have been just for the period of holding feet to the fire.
But the real fly in the ointment is this: most of the best teams last season had 3 top guns from trey starting, or 2 starting and one coming off the bench.
No doubt Self has to play the OADs and TADs to keep the OAD spigot open.
But very soon after early signing period, when the defenses start not even guarding the trey stripe at all, because no one takes Frank, Devonte, Oubre and Selden seriously from treyville, one has an inkling that two of Brannen, Conner and Svi joint the rotation.
And if either Devonte, or Frank, struggle with defense, protection, or making the easy play, all three of the trey guns could well join the rotation for good.
In today's game, treys don't talk, they shout!
Sleep well then. Two more next week and you will approach the modern equivalent of sainthood.
That is really quite enough. Share twice and you will so stand out in heaven that you will be amazed, or so my dead father tells me from time to time.
You tended a garden. If you shared your produce wth even one person you were not related to, then you are a good person deserving of going to heaven in my eyes.
Vaya con dios.
@ et al
Alright, alright, I am just not as young as I used to be.
I have been trying to play n-dimensional ping pong posting this morning and, as I used to do so effortlessly before the old age crap caught up with me, and I am already tired. What a weeny I have become.
Nevertheless, I believe this old coot has done his duty to get community blood pumping as the great evil of college basketball--UK--sails towards us like a bunch of Yamatos and Akagis, while Chester Self and Ray Roberts and Bull Howard and Frank Townsend make a target of part of their fleet and move their OAD and TAD carriers off to an unexpected angle and lay down smoke and misleading SigInt to prepare for sailing into harm's way.
Over and out for now.
HOWLING!
Here again, I argue that what you note is not so much an indication of his structural inabilities to learn the point guard role, as early struggles with D1 speeds, and very shortly knee injury limiting his capabilities to adapt, perform well, and to get better.
I have said since Oubre was signed that so much depends on his three point shooting.
Wiggins proved last season that if an NBA number one draft choice and next Lebron grade OAD cannot reliably make his treys at 40%, the opponents are just going to sag way off from him and punch him in the face intermittently and turn a potentially great player into a good one that really has no huge games except against lesser opponents in games that don't matter.
(Note: It is increasingly a given that a savvy OAD cannot engage in either risking his body at the edge of the performance envelope (i.e., he has to protect the merchandize), nor can he engage in getting physical with tramp enforcer type players that punch him in the face. He gets too much value from avoiding injury and avoiding bad PR from fighting to engage in either risk. So: this places even greater emphasis on players like Oubre and Wiggins needing to be able to pot the triceratop. Without it, they can't get enough space to get by the blue meanies regularly.)
If Oubre can hit his treys, then he could tear up most 4s and even most stretch 4s. If they have to guard him tight at 25 feet, then he has the athleticism to go all the way to iron on a regular basis. But we really have even less reason with Oubre than with Wiggins to believe he is going to be such a trey shooter. So: the likelihood is that Oubre at the 4 is just going to be playing a smaller, more active 4 that they just sag way off from. Oubre will do okay at the 4, even if he can't hit the trey, just like Wiggins did okay at the 4. But as with Wiggins, it will turn out to make more sense to play him at the 3 in terms of getting him more looks and touches. Wigs could have been a helluva 4, but last year's team needed a 3. :-)
I reckon the driver of playing Oubre, or Selden at 4, comes down to Self's expectation that when opponents get long and strong at the 4, Ellis is not going to be able to score from there. So: Self will move Oubre, or Selden there, and hope that their high mobility slashing games will allow them to actually score some points out of the 4, where as Perry may just disappear offensively against, say, UK's footers. It is not a good thing. It is a desperation thing. It is masking a weakness, not cornerstoning on a strength.
I suspect Self is thinking that if he goes to Oubre/Selden at the 4, it leaves him two options at the 3.
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He can move Perry to the 3 and then let Perry take his size advantage inside on a 3.
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Sit Perry and come with trey shooters at the 3 spot. I have bee arguing all along that neither Selden, nor Oubre, are the requisite 40% trey shooter when at the 3. The only real candidates we have for that role are Conner and Brannen.
So: looking at all the variables, starting with Self having to play OADs and TADs 25-30mpg to keep signing OADs, the way to do that is to play Oubre/Selden at the 4 quite a bit, and that lets you get your "scorer" Perry into an MUA at the 3, or alternatively gets you the three point shooting you need at the 3, or 2, or both.
If I must be taken to task, let it be by you. :-)
But...
Your first, second, third and fourth clauses depend on an assumption I shall forthwith knocketh out from under thee.
Wayne Selden played most of his freshman season on a knee injury.
Let me see here...hmmm...how shall I put it?
It is very difficult for most freshman, even OADs, to adjust to the speed and physicality of the D1 game, even, when they are, like, say, Andrew Wiggins, playing without injury.
Next, healthy players that you suggest should be able to start and or compete for starting at PG for KU, like, say, Frank Mason, could not stay on the floor at PG last season, against an often bumbling incompetent like Naa Tharpe, or at the 2 last season, when Selden needed a blow, as many total minutes as Wayne Selden stayed on the floor with one good knee.
And you have no problems with arguing that Devonte might well be able to play a lot of minutes at PG as a freshman, when everyone would agree that he is not nearly the athlete that Wayne Selden is, when Wayne is healthy. I don't follow this logical at all. Devonte will have to go through adjusting to D1 speeds and violence at 6-2 and a haricot vert svelte 175, and somehow he will magically be able to necessarily be better than Wayne Selden?
Finally, and this is where the knocking out of the assumption that Selden cannot play PG commences in earnest swiftness, Wayne Selden is reputedly entirely healthy and recovered this season. Despite my personal concerns that his explosiveness may not have been restored. Coach Self thinks his explosiveness has returned. Coach Self thinks Wayne is such a superb basketball player that he plans to play Wayne at the 1, 2, 3 and 4 positions. Now notice that Self uses the numeral 1. :-) 1 typically refers to the point guard, does it not? Thus we can begin by concluding that Coach Self categorically disagrees with your assumption that Wayne Selden could not possibly play point guard for the four clauses you posited above.
But more important than Self thinking Wayne can play some PG, is the fact that he apparently thinks this because Wayne is now healthy.
I have had both ankle and knee injuries during my too short playing days in basketball. And I recall through this addled old brain of mine that particularly a knee injury makes it tough to dribble and cut, and dribble and pass, and dribble and get by opponents. And being unable to move quickly and surely on a bum wheel often restricts the kinds of passes one can make in any given situation, because one cannot get into a proper place on the court to make the proper pass.
Another thing about knee and ankle issues is that they tend to reduce one to just trying to survive during the season rather than spend a lot of time focused on being able to put in the kind of work necessary to really get better at things like dribbling, passing, guarding and jump shooting. My guess, and it is ONLY a reasonable guess, is that the Wayne Selden you saw that lead you to the strikingly pessimistic conclusion about Wayne's ability to handle the ball was biased to far to the negative early by Wayne's freshman struggle to adapt to D1 speeds, followed by Wayne's knee injury that spanned most of the season. As a result, I have a wild and crazy hunch that Wayne is now sharply better at everything you doubt about him, and that he will continue to rapidly improve in these regards and others if Self tasks him with doing so.
But, of course, I could be entirely wrong about all of this.
Wayne Selden could be an athlete that is unaffected by knee injury and lacks entirely the getting better gene when it comes to dribbling and passing.
But then you could be wrong, too.
Thank heavens we have the reality of seasons to lift us up out of these mysteries. :-)
(P.S.: Seriously, you know I respect your judgement and because it is you disagreeing with me I will doubt myself even more than usual.)
My hunch is that Wayne's good health is going to allow him to resolve all four issues you raise
No, I never make fun left handed.
It can get you killed in the Syria even if the bombs miss you.