Well, meaning to or not, you practically made my case with McDermott and his dad. Thx.
KU vs. WVU was a disposable game. We are talking about millions of dollars if you don't ensure Wigs gets a showcase game down the stretch before the Madness, when you have to play to win, because it is win, or out. He had reputedly fallen several choices. It seems improbable to think of what happened otherwise.
I am totally on board with 99% of what you posted. Most big scorers don't have assists. Further, most big scorers don't make their mates better. Finally, the problem was not Andrew. The problems were:
The team had MINIMAL PG PRODUCTION and LEADERSHIP.
The team had no effective center much of the game.
The team got out-rebounded.
The defense could not deny WVU HIGH PERCENTAGE SHOTS.
Selden was eaten alive by his man.
No one could guard Devin Williams.
Our bigs were 9-19 at one point and so were not getting easy shots.
We committed about twice the TOs.
But the bottom line was that green lighting Wigs the scorer was not a solution.
The ONLY thing we disagree on is this: whether Wigs could have done this before.
I am confident Wigs could have had this kind of game several times from the beginning had he been allowed to, if he had similar circumstances.
His HS coach and father have hinted at this. All the recruiting services and pundits have. Even Self has implied that if he didn't have to plug in to an offense he could have much, much better numbers.
But despite this one difference, the biggest point of agreement is that good team defense seems to reduce to Joel and Andrew, as you noted, and that is NOT GOOD!!
What we have to hope is that this really was a meaningless game and Self really was,after yanking Tharpe, just creAting a situation where Wigs could have a PR game, and that none of it meant anything else.
And I think that was exactly the case.
Coach, his high school coach, father, Self, and all the recruiting services and pundits have said Wigs could do what he did yesterday from the beginning anytime he were green lighted to play outside the offense for a game. This line was not improvement. This was what most knowledgeable people close to him said he could do if permitted to.
Had Self grew lighted him the entire game, he would easily have had 50; that is what a great scorer can do on a hot night , when told to play outside the offense for 40 minutes. Bud Stallworth did the same thing one game from outside without the three point shot. Heck, EJ went off for 39 last year in a meaningful game on bad knees; that was a much more Herculean performance.
But the difference between Stallworth and EJ dropping big numbers and Wigs doing it is that Wigs is a monster talent and could, according to those closest to him, do this any night he were permitted to.
I believe them.
But I suspect the results might be similar most games.
I am not being harsh at all. It was a great performance by a guy that could have done it many times this season, if allowed.
But while there was a title to be won and Embiid to play through, it never made sense.
So after your explanation my posts about Andrew still don't seem like bs. Wigs got enough minutes vs, TTECH to do more than 9/4 even on the day of the Second Coming. For what it's worth, I started posting a few games back that Wigs was on the verge of a breakout game soon. So let's savor that Wigs has shown opponents he can become a force on the floor and hope this tilts opponents to him enough that when we get our starting guard clicking and Joel back that Andrew's gravity will open it up when we run the stuff, if we do. It has also occurred to me that Wigs was green lighted, because Joel maybe wasn't coming back at all, but that seems slightly less probable at this point. Either way, Rock Chalk!
Don't be afraid.
You called Andrew lazy, not me.
I have no idea what made him go 9/4 vs. TTECH, then only dish 2 assists on all the touches he had in a 41 PT point padding game.
Bottom line: 22-8
And the team can't beat a 65 on a 41 point, 2 assist performance.
Explain yourself.
Are you blaming Tar for Wiggins not being able to carry the team on his back?
Not many players can do it as freshmen. It's no knock on Wigs that he can't. He's a great scorer at this point. Not many can even say that.
I think Wigs is a great talent that still doesn't know how to put a team on his back and win.
I think Embiid is the only guy on the team that is ready for back packing.
I don't see why you would be offended by Self letting Wigs pad his numbers in a meaningless game? It could mean millions for Wigs. After Wigs subordinated to team all season, doesn't Wigs deserve a number padding game the same as Perry Ellis got?
Maybe you are just a little sensi, eh?
~The WVU game was such a bitter pill on so many levels. Let me count the ways.
~The WVU game made starkly clear that even a Herculean, come-from-behind, scoring performance of 41 points by Andrew Wiggins cannot carry this team to a victory over a 65th ranked KENPOM team. How can this be? How can such an obviously exceptional talent putting on such an awesome individual performance (he scored efficiently, rebounded his own misses well, made steals, and blocked shots) not succeed? How could Andrew putting his team on his back not yield a W against a good, but not exceptional team?
What gives?
Answer: 2 assists.
Amplification: The only perimeter players that can carry teams on their back are guys that not only score their own points, but also make their teammates score points, too. Otherwise, giving Andrew all the touches he was given becomes a zero sum game, even when he shoots 12-18 FG and 15-19 FT. Hell yes, he shot a much higher percentage than any of his teammates could have done, unless they were receiving unguarded dishes near the basket. And, of course, there in lies the persistent issue. Wigs does not yet know how to both play at a high level and make his teammates better. He remains, in March, an either/or proposition. Either you get his solo game at a high level, or you get his team game at a modest level, and regardless of which level you get, he is not making his teammates much better with assists, and he is making TOs. The greatness of his performance, and it was one of KU's great one-man-independent-of-a-team performances, did not make his teammates better.
Of course, we can say, to make excuses for him, that his teammates sucked; that Tarik Black felt to earth like Icarus; that Selden played poorly, that Tharpe played so poorly he was benched and left benched for an 0-6 Conner Frankamp, who stayed on the floor 15 minutes simply by playing decent defense, and for Frank Mason, who stayed on the floor 18 minutes by scoring 9 points and looking like a competitor.
But here's what sticks out like a sore thumb. Perry Ellis, Tarik Black, Landen Lucas, and Justin Wesley combined for 9-19, which means that they were not shooting any uncontested dishes at the basket created by the attempts of WVU to help defend on Andrew at the iron.
This game was about Andrew shooting and Andrew grabbing 4 offensive rebounds, presumably some of his own shots, and putting them back.
Question: How does a player get 18 FGAs, many driving, and many more looks and wind up with 2 assists?
What is wrong with this picture?
The take away on Andrew is that when he plugs into the offense his performances are modest and he is only making people better as a decoy, and not based on getting assists.
~Tarik Black is another huge story. It was apparent before the game from Self's "Wigs is POY" float with Gary Bedore that two things were hopefully supposed to happen against WVU that had not yet happened, while KU was actually trying to win a conference title. First, Wigs had to get a pile of points to justify Self's claim he should be POY. Second, Wigs had to get a pile of points and the POY to get him back in the Number 1 draft choice sweepstakes. This had to happen to keep Self from appearing the kind of a coach that could kill an OAD's chances at being first or second in the draft. These two agenda items, of course, meant that Tarik was NOT going to be played through today, despite his good showing against TTech, and so was NOT schemed for another big day. On the other hand, Tar was not supposed to go directly to the planet Foulathon either.
So: on the one hand, leave us not be too hard on Tarik just yet, but on the other hand, let us not be too easy on Tarik either. The TTech game was to get Tar comfortable and untracked. The WVU game was to put Wigs BACK on the hyper-hype radar. The latter worked. Cheyenne Mountain is back on Andrew.
Still, Tarik only got 2 points and 4 rebounds in 22 foul encumbered minutes. Which is the real Tarik? The answer is that Tar at TTech is the real Tarik, when KU runs the conventional hi-lo offense against a cellar dweller and that the WVU Tarik is the real Tarik, when you run the offense through Wiggins against a 65th ranked KENPOM team.
Tarik's only capable of being a solid contributor and a guy capable of making others better, when he is in the role of conventional big man; that is, in a game in which the hi-lo action revolves around him. Teammates have to be running the stuff and the ball has to be going into him and back out, and he has to be moving low and high. And even then he is at risk of disappearing, either because of fouls, or because of MUAs, as has been his tendency throughout his career at KU and Memphis. But at the very least, vs. TTech, we learned that the offense can run and other players "can be" made better, when it is a Tarik-centric universe.
The take away on Tar is that Tar is unpredictable, but when he is on he makes everyone better.
~Self, having taken care of his apparent obligations to Wiggins' draft rank, next during the B12 tourney, can begin to try to blend Tar (or Joel) and Wiggins back into a hi-lo offense that runs the stuff, makes everyone better, and is at any moment ready to clear it out and tell Andrew to go get baskets with a rust removed vengeance. That at least seems to be the plan from this remote corner of phase space, after watching the Morgantown Mess Up. Opposing coaches beware, Self seems to be saying, if you put too much contact defense on us for too long, strategic air command will scramble Andrew Wiggins and turn it into a one man game.
~The next big story is Joel Embiid reputedly not making the trip to Morgantown. On one level, it makes sense. Keeping back-injured Joel cooped up in a jet for serveral hours each way, when he could be home receiving treatments non stop seems the only sensible to play, even if the plan were to bring him back for the 3 in 3 B12 tourney, which makes no sense to me.
At the same time, this read of the situation implies that Joel's back is still not good enough, after several days of treatments, to be cooped up in an airplane; this is kind of a black cloud, is it not?
Take away on Joel: his back and return status remain uncertain and that is really bad news.
~A little good news: Perry continued his inchoate crawl out of his offensive slump and ensuing demoralization with a 14/5 game against a solid, four big WVU rotation. But his defense was not what was needed. Take away: Perry looks increasingly thin as the season wears on. Something has to give this summer. Either he has to add 15-20, or he's got to move to the 3; this is a waste of a good basketball player.
~A little more good news: Jam Tray went 6/7 with a block, a steal and an assist in 24 minutes, which normalizes to maybe 10/10 and so a Kevin Young kind of performance potential if Self ever finally throws up his hands at playing Perry this season the way he did with Naa today. Take away: Jam Tray is progressing with maddening deliberateness, but he is progressing.
Miscellaneous Glass half full: Frankamp and Mason and Greene didn't do much good, but did little harm. Frankamp, however, was 0-4 from trey, and 0-2 inside the stripe. While he defended credibly, his line score was goose eggs. 15 minutes of goose eggs for a coach that likes his reserves to explode out of position for something or other may not cause CF to hold on to so many minutes, even if Self were to banish Tharpe into a black hole.
Take Away: the green perimeter reserves are not much better in March than in February, and January. These young men have not responded well to being put in competition with each other and being pulled for each mistake. I expected otherwise. Self is going to have to look into this in the off season. This approach has not worked.
~And then there was Naa. I left him for last, because, frankly, there was nothing surprising at all about his game today. He sucked after playing well previously. Self rested him for the B12 tourney. I have a hunch Naa is "beat up," or "nicked up." Either way, it was pointless to burn his wick, no matter how bad, or good he was, in a meaningless game. The only purpose of this game, as I said above, being to fatten up Wiggins numbers and juice his draft stock. No point in knocking Naa for his usual one up, and one down routine. The fact is Naa has come to play for a lot of big games this season, and sucked today. We just have to hope he isn't TOO "knicked up." Take away: forget this game by Naa. It means nothing.
~Overall take away: as awful as it was in real time, and it was an absolute stinking rotten egg of a game, even with Wiggins number fattening routine. In fact it is remotely possible that the game was so bad, because everyone on the team possibly understood that this one was for draft day. So: fuggeddaboutit.
Next.
@wissoxfan83 Don't be too hard on Frank Mason. A reserve does not repeatedly do such things and continue to play unless his coach is ordering it.
Nor does a starter like Wigs.
Self wants this kind of play, or it wouldn't be happening.
WVU needs an eastern division, so it doesn't have to keep playing schools out west in the Big 12 Natural Resource Conference. Here are some suggested adds for a Near East Division for WVU.
Crimean A&M--Russian carriers not only secure the area at Svastopol, but games could be played on them thus allowing easy pre game air connections right to the flight decks.
Afghanistan Tech--Afghanistan Tech's mascot, which used to be The Fighting Al Qaeda, but is now the Fighting Karzai, would make a very telegenic mascot ideal for mock shoot outs at center court during half times.
Ukraine State--Since the Fighting Ukes are funded by a currently insolvent government, like our leaders tell us the USA is insolvent every time they want to push something through somewhere, Ukraine State is a natural add to a Big 12 Near Eastern Division.
College of the Bosporus-Istanbul Campus--The Battling Constantines play hard nosed defense that can metaphorically lock down the Bosporus and the Dardenelles. This would fast turn into a rivalry between Huggie Bear's Mountaineers and CoB.
The University of the South Stream--this is a remarkable new school that wants to get into D1 basketball big time, despite its rather unconventional new campus located on the floor of the Black Sea along the South Stream Pipeline that Russia is building from the Caspian Basin to deliver natural gas to the Balkans in competition with the western pipeline doing the same across Turkey.
Istanbul A&I-Instanbul Campus--Istanbul is a crucial TV market to tie up in the region and so it only makes sense to admit both College of the Bosporus--Istanbul Campus and University of Istanbul. It will trigger a super inner city rivalry game, and ESPN's Game of the Week talking heads can broadcast live from the Hagia Sophia to really hold the eye balls.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
Bill Self threw Gary Bedore an interestingly timed bone today.
Seemingly out of nowhere, to this reader, since Gary Bedore did not provide the circumstance in which the question was asked, Gary asked Bill who Bill thought should be B12 POY.
The story portrays Self as diplomatic and respectful of the competition; saying there was no clear cut favorite and, given that circumstance, Bill thought the best player on the best team ought to be the POY. Self said KU won the B12 decisively and so Bill thought Andrew Wiggins, despite not having numbers that Bill thought would blow anyone away, still was the logical choice.
It doesn't really matter why Gary asked the question now. What matters is: why did choose to Bill answer the question now?
Let's see, eh, Joel Embiid, the footer and rim protector par excellence, is presently modeling XXXL suits behind the KU bench during games.
This same Joel Embiid appeared to be a reason why, after early on routing the offense through Andrew Wiggins, Self double clutched and down-shifted the team rig into big man gear; that was sometime ago now.
And from the time that the down-shift was made, Self, while mostly staying upbeat and protective about Andrew Wiggins, and the too great expectations forced on him, has also tended to say that while the staff is happy about Andrew's productivity, they feel that he could do better.
Self has flashed a little wrath on Wiggins, but all in all quite a bit less than most players, even most star players in the past. Andrew has not been ridden to the point of appearing to want to fight with Self in a huddle, as appeared to occur with Mario Chalmers, another draft choice. Self has never unloaded on Andrew in print as Self did a time or two on the Twins and EJ. And when Andrew appeared to be in a slump, he was never subjected to the kind of XTReme Demotion that Brady received (i.e., at one point being told to play mop up minutes). And so on.
And yet Bill has also not lavished Wigs with praise either. Essentially, Self has chosen to reroute the offense through the bigs, let Wigs do the kind of drives he has been capable of doing, since shortly after exiting the birth canal, and, despite often not finishing, or dishing, get his points on the FT line.
In essence, Self has steered the scorching media spotlight off Andrew Wiggins as much as possible and kind of let him find his own way through D1, since rerouting the offense through the bigs.
Why Bill even routed the offense through Tarik Black against Texas Tech, apparently to help Tarik off on the right foot on the first of apparently two starts, maybe three more in the conference tourney, and maybe as many as six more in the Madness, if Joel Embiid's back problem proves persistent.
But now that Tar got off to a good start against not very good TTech, suddenly Bill is talking up Andrew Wiggins for POY.
Eh, does anyone else here sense that there might be just a leeeeeeetle more to this than Bill's probably honest thinking on the matter? Does anyone think that maybe Bill is taking the saddle weights off the race horse and putting on the ultra light saddle and saying, the gates about open, run you sunnuva gun, run!!!!? It crosses my mind. :-)
It is useful at this point to recall who KU is about to play next without Embiid. They were about to play one of the meanest, baddest, man bra wearing hombres in the old northwest territory. KU is about to play Bob Huggins and his Mountaineer team full of stud guards and a four man rotation of green bigs that gave us some muscle sandwiches with Embiid, and should now be even better and stronger.
Hmmm, is it jest a little bit possible that Self thinks, well, my thoroughbred that I have been working out of the lime light for the last month or so, may be needed to get out and run for some stakes, to get him ready for post conference season play?
And is it jest a leeeeeeetle bit possible that Self feels this way, because he knows that WVU is likely to be able to bang enough to disrupt Tarik and turn The Designer into a discount label for this game, since The Designer often does not like these sorts of teams?
(Note: I am predicting The Designer to continue to come out of his slump, even against the Blue Meanies of Bob Huggins' Mountaineers. I believe The Designer is ready to drop some Haut Couturier spin moves on these lugs. But that is a prediction and Bill Self has to operate in the real world of what if he doesn't?)
If you are Bill Self and you are confronted with a Huggo Muggo muddy it up game, don't you want your sky walker ready to go in over the top of them and beat them at the line, where they can't muscle you?
Slayr put this next thought in my mind.
A few weeks back it seemed like Embiid and Wigs ought to start playing a lot of two man action, but Embiid never showed that much aptitude for the two man action and he got hurt.
But here we have Tarik Black emerging from some kind of sci-fi chrysalis and showing the whole team how to play off a big man. We have the Black Knight, as someone memorably nicknamed him, we have the man mountain now available to set picks that stay made! And able to roll to the basket and finish off a dish.
What if Bill has had Andrew Wiggins, the man with the assist hole in his game, working every day this week on sky walking AND dishing?
What if the Black Star is being used to set up a gravitational field for Andrew Wiggins to slingshot around?
I know I am throwing one heckuva lot of metaphors against the locker door here.
But what if?
We're coming for ya Huggie.
We're going to exploit your green wood, Huggie.
West Virginia, mountain momma/
take us home,/
Wigs and Tar/
Sing it Henry John Deutchendorf Jr., where ever you are up there.
One picture worth one thousand...
Good devil's advocacy. :-)
Clarification: if the need were to a starter immediately, you add the guy with a high enough foundation to start. Between Wigs and Greene, you've got to sign Wigs.
If you've got to find a guy to be a backup in the rotation, then Wigs would not have considered doing that role, so it would not be an option that had to be considered. Greene would be the only choice.
And if you have to sign a guy to carry a team on his back to the ring, because you have the kind of supporting cast that you think could make it with a great player carrying them on his back, you have to sign an OAD, not with a high ceiling, but with a fantastically high foundation. Self let Wigs try to be that guy, but Wigs so far has had too many holes in his game to have had a high enough foundation for that job, and so Self shifted gears to Embiid, who we have just learned after watching Tar play post the "right way" vs. a weak team still has a few holes in his Cameroonian game. :-)
The thing that is so tough is that great coaches think they can coach anyone up sharply in even a season. But for whatever reason the evolving record of presupposed OADs at KU and across the country is that they don't improve sharply in a single season. Rather, they come in and do what they do, and try to work on the little things. As you say, it is very, very difficult to lift your game sharply DURING a season.
Lastly, if you have to sign a guy to play a role to complete a stacked team with a returning guy that will carry the team on his back, then you can sign a Michael Jordan/Andrew Wiggins and subordinate him to a the returning guy, or you can sign a lesser guy. But which ever way you go, the height of the foundation, and not the height of the ceiling, is what is crucial.
This is a great advancing of the discussion. Thanks.
But may I reiterate...
If you are signing one of the guys to carry the team immediately, only take the talent with a high foundation. Forget the high ceiling.
And if you are signing a guy to fill a role, make sure his foundation is higher than a sure 2-4 year guy. Forget about the ceiling.
@jaybate 1.0
What a great add about the Russians, slayr. I never knew that they did that research and had that finding. That is really interesting.
Also, to all board members, I FORGOT TO FOOTNOTE SLAYR FOR THE MISSING LINK CONCEPT. HE SAID IT FIRST in an exchange we had yesterday.
Actually, I think he did go that far in principle. But if he didn't, in principle I will again for emphasis. High ceilinged, low foundationed OADs are a net cost to a program, unless they are good enough to put a team on their back and carry it to a ring Carmelo style. Few OADs are, otherwise Cal would be winning rings every season. Further, Self's own track record up through his first ring team proved one could build 80% winning success with a ring once in 7-8 years and that a proto OAD (Rush) could not win a ring without hanging around a couple more years for development. To me the proof is all in the pudding already.
Very, very, very few OADs can carry a team to a ring as freshmen and when they do, as AD did, they need a monster supporting cast, as AD had.
Further, continually opting to recruit the highest foundationed 15 to 40 guys with a minority mix of high ceiling, low foundationed 15-40 guys minimizes the need to ever bend over for an OAD, unless he is the real deal.
And on top of that, KU would always get the absolute best of these 15-40 types and in as great of numbers as they want, because the other top teams are loading up on the marquis OADs. But here I am arguing principle rather than what I would actually do.
You say HEM would supplement with some OADs to fill holes and I agree with that; it's just common sense, isn't it? It is like saying I HAVE to fill a hole if I can do so, and if an OAD is willing to come to KU and fill a role rather than be the man to carry the team, then I sign him, just as I would sign Towson bound Frank Mason to fill a hole at backup PG.
So: I would always take the best guy available, but it would be based on the player with the highest foundation, not the highest ceiling, that would fill that hole.
Distilled to programmed boolean heuristics:
If high foundationed OAD capable of carrying team on back to a ring, then sign unconditionally, else
If high foundationed OAD capable of filling a hole better than a 15-40 player, then sign unconditionally else
If high ceilinged, low foundationed OAD, then pass unless there is no equivalent 15-40 (note: there almost always would be), else
If high foundationed 15-40 sign.
So in praxis, OADs are part of my mix, but only in the sense that I am trying to minimize the situations where I would have a role the fit the constraint set I have defined.
There are almost NO high foundationed, high ceilinged OADs capable of carrying a team to a ring, and even then they need a strong supporting cast to do so. Period.
High ceilinged, low foundationed OADs in the age of hyper-hype are net cost in Division 1, unless you have a phenomenal supporting cast to plug them into. KU did not have that this year.
Sign the very best of the 15-40s (those with high foundations) and some high ceilinged 15-40s (projects) and when "usual" OAD comes along that fits your constraint set and wants to come, sign him, but make him a role player, as Self effectively has done since Embiid became the guy most capable of putting the team on his back.
Black gave a clinic in the process of post play against a weak team. If he can do it again against the muscle of WVU, then we mAy have the missing piece to take the team beyond talent to a well-oiled machine. Either way, Joel needs to watch the tape to add the craft of post play to his growing knowledge of the techniques of post play. As Sade once sang, Tarik was a "smooth operator."
"Coaching is about preparing kids not to be able to play, when they are as old as you."
jaybate
PHOF
"Tarik needs to know that he is a MAJOR PLAYER with this team, and no longer a role player! If that clicks in his head, you can start building the next trophy case for the new hardware that will be here in April!"
slayr, this is the essence of what I could not quite get to. He is the missing piece, if he can get his head around what he just did.
The thing is Greene, as limited as he was in capacity to perform this year (i.e., as low as his foundation was coming in), he still gave us quite a bit of rotation time and flexibility and injury insurance, while he was learning to play the game.
The trouble with going with OADs instead of grooming players like Greene is that even Cal cannot really get 7-8 deep rotation in OADs that are going to going to be able to play well at D1 speeds out of the box. His great ring team only had 5, if I recall correctly, and it was considered about the greatest assemblage of talent ever. The team was a six man rotation team and Terrence Jones was a TAD.
The best event he best wired and most highly successful coach can consistently hope fore is 3-5 OADs that will actually be gone in a year to the L, and he has to hope and pray that one of them is a guy that can carry a team out of the chute.
Self is gambling that the most he can sign any one year is 2. And occasionally one additional one will fall in his lap. I think that is the sanest route to go with OADs, but the real question is whether HEM is right in arguing that you don't really need any at all. And I think that a case can increasingly be made that one can.
Of course, if Andrew were to transmogrify and pick the team and carry it on his back for six games in March, well, then sign me up for AT LEAST THREE OADs per year. :-)
"The tough thing is that Wiggins is the type of talent that can put you over the top."
You were saying this in conjunction with saying that Greene was not.
I agree that Greene was a guy with so low a foundation that he was not a guy that could play a whole lot.
What I think the evidence of the season makes clear is that Wiggins is only the type of talent that could put you over if you already had a great player that could carry you to a ring...like Joel Embiid.
Wiggins has not showed much sign of being able to carry this team to a winning streak, a good month, or a conference title, much less a national championship.
Wiggins can add much the same thing that Michael Jordan added to UNC. If you have James Worth and Sam Perkins and a helluva good point guard all fully developed, and you just need a 3 to play with in the system, rather than have to put the team on his back and carry it as a freshman, then Michael could get those guys over the top by being a very good role player.
Likewise, if Andrew had been added to one of KU's top teams that needed a 3, he would have been ideal as a on year freshman for that task. Xavier fulfilled it well too.
But, no, so far, there isn't a stretch of six games. preferably ten games, where you look and say, hmmm, this freshman Andrew Wiggins has been so dominant that we need to put the team on his back and let him carry us to a ring. Self in fact decided early on that he was NOT that kind of player; that was why the team was strapped on Embiid's back. Andrew most definitely needs a team with James Worthy and Sam Perkins and a great point guard to get a team over the top.
In order to address Self's probable expectations about Wiggins foundation height from the moment Wiggins signed with KU, I have to lay out a bit of my own thoughts back then. I do this not to toot my horn, but to say that if I were insightful enough to see Wiggins' and the team's prospects in rational terms back then, and again early this season, then Bill Self, who then knew more about basketball in one of his remaining hairs on his head, than I know in the entirety of my brain meat, certainly understood what I understood and in vastly greater detail.
First, I supposed that the team would lose 8-10 games sometime after I studied Wiggins and Selden after the final signings of this season's freshmen.
Second, I supposed this, because I knew the schedule and I gathered from high school performances (feeds and stats) that Wiggins and Selden were neither of them lights out trey shooters capable of shooting 40% plus in D1. If neither wing could drain the trey, and the PG would not be an All American grade penetrator and trey shooter, then I supposed opposing defenses were going to take away most of Wiggins' and Selden's awesome athleticism getting to the rim by sagging and fouling when they got to the rim.
If I could figure this out, Bill Self could figure this out.
Next, what I could not figure out, Bill Self could also figure out, because he had spent a few years watching them play in summer games and in high school games. I could not figure out that Wiggins would have trouble with LSAs at the rim, and he would have trouble dribbling against pressure defense on his incredible first, second and third steps. And, regarding Selden, I could not figure out that Selden would have trouble guarding some of the faster guards even after adjusting to D1 speeds. I could not figure out that while Selden had a nice long first step, he did not have particularly quick feet. I just had not seen them play enough to make those kinds of assessments.
But Bill Self had.
It is not credible to me that Bill Self could have watched many performances over a couple of years of Selden and Wiggins and not realized the limitations I mentioned above, plus probably a much longer list that even now I am not smart enough to recognize. Self had to have known these things. And knowing them, he had to have known that not only was Wiggins not the next Lebron, he also did not have an extraordinarily high foundation; that what he had was some incredible wow moves and a very high ceiling, but a lot of basic stuff to work before his foundation was high. Same with Selden.
So: my point here is: Wigs was always a high ceiling guy, not a high foundation guy, and Self knew it, when he took him.
So: why did Self take him?
Well, Self reputedly takes considerable pride in "coaching 'em up." He uses the phrase not infrequently. He has had considerable success coaching guys up over 2-4 years, but he has had IMHO almost no success in coaching OADs up in one season. I don't really think that Wiggins is sharply better than when he arrived. Almost certainly Wiggins dribbling has not improved significantly. Selden I can see some improvement in. He seems to turn it over less and seems to guard better and help off ball better. But Selden's biggest weakness, his dribbling, seems not to have improved at all.
Wiggins and Selden are not alone in not improving greatly in their OAD seasons. Once of the recurring knocks on Calipari is that his OADs don't get better. It is said that Cal just lets them play. I think there is some truth to this, but the truth does not mean that Cal can't "coach 'em up." Nor do Xavier, Josh, Andrew and Selden not getting significantly better imply that Self cannot "coach 'em up."
(Note: Joel gets excused from this comparison, because he was not forecasted as an OAD, and he is in any case an anomaly, because he has played such a short time and so was sashimi raw when he landed in Lawrence with a lot to learn and rather a blank slate to put it on.)
There are, I believe, rational reasons why most OADs don't improve much in the year they are in college, regardless of coach.
First, these guys are so good that most of them have never had to change to be able to make it at any previous level, and so they are inexperienced at adapting.
Second, they are going to be drafted regardless of whether they change and so their is not an intense incentive to change.
Third, coaches understand both things just mentioned and so they tend to string their teams around what the OAD can already do. Self tried this regarding Wiggins in the beginning, but the team just didn't click this way. He could have asked Wiggins to change, but instead he just shifted gears to Joel Embiid and let Wiggins just keep doing what he already does, only less frequently.
Anyway, this is my take on what was Wiggins' actual foundation height going into this season vs. what you suggested many perceived his foundation height to be. Mostly this season, board rats have talked about his high ceiling and then mistakenly assumed that he had a proportionally high foundation. I believe his performances, especially like those against Texas Tech in March with Joel Embiid out suggests not that he is a bad kid who doesn't try hard, but rather is a kid with a foundation not proportionally as high as his ceiling.
Rock Chalk!
You make a key point. If Andrew Wiggins, or Wayne Selden, could have played like Carmelo Anthony, then you absolutely want them.
But the fact is that only certain OADs, and not most, are good enough to put a team on their backs and take them to a title; this is my whole point.
And those OADs that are good enough to put a team on their backs and carry it to a title usually are studs from the beginning of the season. They don't need a season to develop. Melo didn't need to wait to March to dominate. Neither did AD and Kidd Gilchrist.
We need to be a bit more discriminating in signing OADs.
Unless they can dominate games like Carmelo and AD and Kidd Gilchrist could, they very likely may not be worth the down stream costs they create.
OADs to be worth the down stream costs have to have super high foundations (ability to dominate games now), not just super high ceilings. In fact, the ceiling just doesn't matter, since they aren't going to develop that much in a single season. Melo and AD and Kidd Gilchrist developed hardly at all in their single seasons; that's again is the essence.
Sign high foundation OADs, not high ceilinged OADs.
Sorry if that is how it comes off. I am saying a little different; that Self had to try it, under the circumstances, but, also, that, yes, KU probably could have won the tenth title without Wiggin and Selden, and with the combination of playing another two five star non OADs and what we had coming back. I am saying that Wigs and Selden have been good, but not great, and that the price of that goodness (not greatness for the greatness of the players lies 2-3 years beyond) is the OAD merry go round, that revolves faster and faster and triggers an endless repetition of moving from not much defense to some defense, of a high pop tart offense, to a medium pop tart offense, in any given year, plus the high risk of not finding the right three OADs needed to fill the holes every year.
You never turn away a great player. Self didn't. But you also never want to get into the position that you have to fill more than one or two OAD holes in your team, or your team nucleus becomes an OAD nucleus that is almost never experienced enough, strong and skilled enough and sound enough fundamentally to win the ring anyway.
I will try to distill it to this.
In D1, we don't need the OADs with the "highest ceilings," unless they are willing to stay long enough to realize enough of those ceilings that they are head and shoulders better than all the seasoned D1 players they come up against.
What we need are players with "high foundations."
Any player, an OAD, or a non OAD, if we are to bring them in and start them as freshmen, has to have a high foundation; that is the key. That foundation has to be higher than the seasoned D1 players they will face, or there's no point to starting freshman.
Any OAD that has a high foundation, i.e., a higher foundation than seasoned D1 players, I want.
Any OAD that has a lower foundation, or the same foundation as seasoned D1 players, I don't want. I would rather have the guys for several years.
This means that the high ceiling player's ability to make wow plays has to make so many wow plays that it offsets his TOs, for instance.
The high ceiling OAD that makes 4 wow plays per game, but turns it over 4 or more times, is not a net benefit to the team. You might have to vary my calculus a bit for the percentage that the opponent converts those TOs to points, but you catch my drift here.
This is a huge copy and past from jaybate!!!!!!!
Copy and paste.
Copy and paste.
Copy and paste.
Copy and paste.
What I loved most about Tarik was that he made everyone better out there, after a period of adjustment. He was a steadying, stabilizing, great bear out there. He was directing people. He was bringing basketball IQ into this team. He was getting the team to run the stuff. It was amazing to watch. Tar just kept running around setting great big man mountain screens, not in a rough way, or mean way, but in a "right way." He just kept being where he was supposed to be in the offense. After I saw his performance, I just knew, slayr, that you were going to on cloud nine about it. Tarik's personality impressed on this team in this game in a way that not only the starters, but the subs, bought into. He became the daddy out there that let the rest of the players run the stuff around him. How many times this season have you said: this team doesn't really run any offense even when it tries to? The offense ran like clock work for nearly ten straight minutes in the second half. I was watching it. It ran so flawlessly I could follow each action unfolding. I know, Tech was not a great team, but the last time we played Tech they disrupted us to the point that we did NOT really "run the stuff." Tar gave me goose bumps a number of times. He was playing the team like a big man plays base violin in a jazz quartet. He would get them moving around him. He would do a quick release and goose the tempo some. He would settle his mass onto the low block and say revolve around my gravity boys. He would signal Jam Tray, Big Daddy is moving out high so they have a little different look, and Jam Tray would catch the signal and move low and wait for the Tar to move the game to him down low through a pass to a wing and wing entry into Jam Tray. It was a thing of beauty what Tar did out there. And he did exactly what he said he was going to do. He was going to use his opportunity to make the team play like a team. Tar was on the glass some. He was in transition some. When things went wrong, he gauged his pace up the floor to be some one to coordinate with on the way. I could almost feel him through the live feed. I felt like if Self had called my number I could have gone down and been one of the planets revolving around the big sun. I know Tar is not as great of an athlete as Joel, but Tar has grown up with the game and knows intuitively how a big man can orchestrate a team. I have not see a KU big man since Cole "BE" the big man that really had the force of physique and personality to "BE" the post. And while Cole did it longer and against better teams, even Cole never did it with the cool, assured control of all the trim and throttle that Tar showed ,when everything was clicking. Darnell Jackson once or twice came close, but he was just not quite the man mountain that Tar is either. It was like watching Charlie Parker laying down the line be bop line and letting the others play around him, with him, then around him, then with him, etc.
It was why I keep watching basketball.
It was the beauty deep in the game that once in a great while gets brought out into the open.
Like Mother Judith said to Tar, "Manifest your destiny."
And he did.
And the team played together like the kind of team I most love to play on and watch.
He reminded me at a times of Willis Reed and there is no higher compliment than that for any that saw Red Holzman's perpetual motion machine he build around Willis in the Garden so many many years ago now.
There are great bears among men. They are rare, but they are there. To have the power of the bear is a great gift. But like all gifts it can not always find the right circumstances to manifest in the fullness of its sweet power.
I have been calling Tar a great bear, a mountain of a man, for awhile because I felt it in him.
But I had no idea if he would ever get to show it with this team so centered on awesome athleticism.
But out of the improbability of a starting five of Niko, Tar, Justin, Wigs, and Selden, there it immersed uncertainly at first, slowly, then more and more, and then first the starters joined the great bear, and then the subs he knows so well joined in, and it just kept building and it built through half time and it crested with the walk ons.
Rack the tape of that game and show it to every big man that ever plays at KU forever afterwards. That is the way a big man is supposed to orchestrate a game. The game is not about him. But he is at the center of everything and at some point he can move around in the center of it all and it is not a controlling thing. It is a gravitational thing. Where he moves the gravity moves and everyone revolves around that gravity and he moves with insight part of the time and on feel part of the time and the players revolving around him sense when he his play calls for staying within the stuff and when it calls for improvising on the stuff and the team becomes truly greater than the sum of the parts.
So help me Phog!!!!!!
"Would we have been better this year with three other freshmen not good enough to be OADs?
Perhaps not this season, but likely next. Clearly, Embiid, the guy who was not projected OAD, was the only player of our OADs that we clearly could not have done without.
The question is how much better were we with Wigs and Selden, than the guys we have behind them? HEM nailed it here. Wigs and Silden had higher ceilings than anyone they played against, but their playing present levels of performance were often exceeded by non draft choices.
Unless you come out of high school bigger, stronger, faster, and a better dribbler and Trey shooter, than experienced D1 players, you are just another freshman about to get schooled, Regardless of how high your ceiling is and how are you were going to be drafted for how good you will be in the NBA in three years.
Unless we win the rain this season, the only two lasting effects of having signed Selden and Wiggins will be:
1.) The POR for having been able to sign them at all; and
2.) The need to replace them immediately, because long-term players were not developed.
I am not salting Self. He tried it largely without OADs for 10 years and only got one ring and beat for a second one by a team with six OAD's. He was reaching the pinnacle of his career. He had a lot of players depart. He had to try it sooner or later.
What I am saying, is that unless he wins a ring, the experiment have turned out not significantly better than playing largely without OADS, and have resulted in him having to fill large voids year-to-year with the same kind of high ceiling, adequate performing OADS, or, like Humpty Dumpty, have a great fall, because the long-term players were not being developed.
Self is masterful at trying to split the difference and invert situations to find opportunities that are not readily apparent. He is a master at resisting doing one, or the other, and instead doing some of both. I believe his initial idea was to try to sign two OAD's each season from now on, bless maintaining a three man, long-term nucleus developing and only needing infrequent replacement. But when Wiggins surprised him and decided to come to KU, he could not very well say no to the reputed next LeBron. Coaching the best players is part of what great coaches strive to do. He had to take the bait. But as him has written repeatedly since the signing of Wiggins took place, there were going to be adverse consequences for signing Wiggins. Self crossed a tipping point in the nucleus of the team. Embiid, Wiggins, and Selden became that nucleus. And that nucleosis needed three quarters of the season, not to reach its high ceiling, but just to become competent Division I players. Alas none but embed could ever become strong finishers at the room. And Wiggens and Selden still cannot play a fast paced game without baking pop tarts at a high rate.
There are 11 games to go, so the experimental results are not complete. It could all come roses for Self, if Joel comes back, Andrew finds his mojo on both ends of the floor, and Selden keeps guarding and protecting. But if this team were to lose to WVU, and again early in the conference tournament, then this season could in the best case scenario at most be an Andrew and the miracles, or Joel and the miracles, type of situation; I.e., A situation where not the best team gets hot and when's six in a row.
Is that really what the gambit of signing so many OAD's was about?
Finally, one thing I remember about Danny and the miracles: they were one heck of a sound defensive team.
Can this team become that before the big Dance starts?
What gives me the most hope for this team are as follows:
1.) Joel comes back employs six games in the madness;
2.) Self saying as he did after the Texas Tech game, okay, now let's get serious, employing that he has of late been working on the stuff, rather than actually putting the spurs to the team;
3.) Wiggins having a higher gear then we have seen so far; and
4) Tariqk coming into his own and actually reconstituting this team the way he did against Texas Tech.
Against Texas Tech, to you for the last three quarters of the game, played like a traditional Bill self team. They guarded well and actually ran the offense. Failure to run the offense effectively has plagued the OAD laden team with Embiid at the hub all season long. Of course it is much easier to run the stuff against a Texas Tech than it is against Marcus Smart, Markel Brown, LeBryant Nash lead defense. But what I saw in Tarik, was a conventional big man doing conventional things in a conventional offense and seeing it operate fluidly for the first time this season. Not to knock Joel, but she is not intuitive yet about setting screens and hedging in a way that makes the offense and defense cohesive. Joel's strength is to reduce inside shooting percentages to levels that And opponent cannot win with.
If Tarik can get the team to run the stuff effectively against the pressure defense of WVU, then I think we have made a major breakthrough capable of carrying this team to a ring, by playing the five with a committee of Black and Embiid.
But still, we are on the OAD merry-go-round, like it or not.
It was about as strong of a signal as potential recruits could get short of an official announcement.
Wiggins, Embiid and Selden appear to be goners.
So: it's unofficially official: Self and KU are on the OAD Merry Go Round.
Time to tape new names on the lockers and change the warm bed sheets.
Alexander, Oubre and Myles--you guys get the hot bunks and the over hyped expectations to deal with for the next 8 months.
Time for Self to find 3 more OADS for when the next three rollover in another 8 months.
What were Andrew's, Joel's and Wayne's last names again?
Finding three OADs each year is going to be a chore for Self. True.
But think what this means for KU, CBernie, and Sheahon for Self's next contract negotiation.
If they don't give him what he wants, then he walks and KU is left without a nucleus of a competitive team, i.e., with a hole the size of three OADs.
Now do you see why UK does not walk away from Calipari?
Now they have to replace not just Cal, but all his OADs, or watch the team lose 15-25 games for a couple seasons, while a new coach rebuilds a nucleus, or they hire another OAD attractor, which would be staying on the OAD Merry Go Round.
And the crazy thing is with all this great talent of Cal's, UK went to the NIT last season and may go there again this one.
And Self went from winning 30+ without OADs to 23-7 in March and needing to win the last conference game, 3 in the conference tourney and 4 straight (the Semi Finals) in the big dance to reach 30+ with OADs.
All in hopes of a ring.
And taking on the risk of a coach leaving and not being able to hire another that can fill the OAD void.
I love Self, but...
It's all madness.
The 09 team fit together better and faster and played much more aggressively. They seemed fiercer competitors.
To really decide, you have to decide which way the game would be refereed. Then rules. Now rules.
Sherron would have punked Naa.
Tyshawn was lightning fast but very soft. Remember how he used to fade away from contact on drives? Selden holds an edge, as much as I love Tyshawn.
The biggest edge would have to go to the current team with Wigs over Brady. Brady was a lot more sound in most ways and a better trey shooter, but Wigs just has an enormous amount of talent and size and so huge edge Wigs.
At the 4, Marcus Morris after mid season was an accomplished garbage man 4 that outplayed pretty much every one he matched up with at 4 from mid January on. Advantage Morris over Ellis.
At the 5, Cole was a lot more sound, and territorial, after he got his face busted up, but Joel is much the better athlete and much taller. Edge Joel.
When this year's team plays very well and Joel is at his still raw best, I would take this team.
But anything short of this year's team's best and I would go with Sherron and Cole; they were tough, tough, tough hombres by February. Marcus would have been exactly the kind of guy Perry would not have liked to player against. Brady would be the weak link, but then Brady played a lot of good long 3s even up without TOs and making his open look treys. If Wigs were on his game, he would eat Brady alive and force KU into a zone, though.
Neat question.
Tony Bennet is a very intelligent coach with a ton of how to gleaned from his dad, Dick Bennett, and Bo Ryan. I haven't seen Virginia play yet more than just a little bit. But what you describe sounds a lot like what I used to see Dick Bennett run. I read where Tony said he had converted over to the Hi-lo out at Washington State, but the hi-lo can have old plays, or actions, as Justanothefan so insightfully described it, embedded in it. I am looking forward to seeing what you describe to see if it looks like the old stuff Dick Bennett developed.
Regarding your insightful remarks about opponents choosing to shut down our bigs, and overplaying our guys out at the trey, that seems to describe a good bit of the scheming and more accurately than I did. Notice against OSU that all of Wigs' treys were waaaaaaay the heck out there. They really want them driving, or passing back to Tharpe. My guess is they are now as you describe pressuring the long trey, not so much because our guys can drain it, but because they want to force our guys to drive. They close the lane for driving and try to force a dish to Tharpe. The key is that they want our wings dribbling and making choices with the ball, because they think they are prone to bad choices and TOs. And if they close the lane then force a dish to Tharpe and close on him if he penetrates, they've got us by the short hairs.
Yes, JV was a heckuva guard for KU and good enough to hang around the L for a long time, while getting in the door coaching. Intelligent. With insight. Always a combination if mixed with positive thinking, persistence and problem solving that make for a successful person.
Bad outside shot guards in the game have always fascinated me, because they make unmistakable the other parts of basketball that are pathways to be "impactful" in Self-ese. He could guard. He could disrupt. He had long legs for his size. He had super long arms for his size. He could dribble like nobody's business. He could get to the rim with enough strength to finish and take the beating. He could lead. He could disrupt. He was shifty, wily, and opportunistic in good ways. And he could see the floor.
The only knock I could ever lay on him was like a lot of good guards he had a tendency to over control the ball. It could stick on him. But in his defense, the number of team TOs probably were always lower with the ball in his hands than in anyone else's.
One of the problems with all of us fans judging players to be ball hogs at times is that we are not in the practices to see whether or not the other back court players can protect and move the ball to the right places as well as a player like Vaughn could. As a result, sometimes when I used to say Vaughn controlled the ball too much, I was perhaps not taking into sufficient account the ball handling abilities (or lack there of) of his teammates. A team with weak ball handlers at both wings puts a terrible burden on a point guard. And it tends to create two somewhat misleading impressions. First, it can make a great ball handling PG like Vaughn seem a bit too much of a ball hog, when he keeps it in his hands to hold down TOs. Second, it can make a sound, but not great athlete, like Naa, look less good than he really is.
Despite our recent harsh judgements of Naa, he is a decent, first-starting-season, D1-point guard on the offensive end of the floor that gets heavily schemed against and sometimes overwhelmed, because opponents don't have to worry about Selden, or Wiggins, beating them off the bounce much, because while Selden and Wiggins are driving threats (awesome driving threats in Wiggins' case), they turn the ball over so much on the bounce that Self can't afford to let them drive the ball very much except in crucial create a shot situations.
Hmmm. I'm not sure that came out clearly. What I mean is Selden and Wiggins are beasts to stop in a one possession game, when you put the ball in either of their hands and say go get a basket, because of their massive athleticism's and Wiggins' unprecedented first AND second AND third steps.
But if you put the ball in their hands trip after trip for a whole game you are looking at 6-8 TOs per game from either of them. Wiggins dribbling is especially limited with a defender on him hard. Its not that Wiggins can't get by anyone of god's children on the sacred wood. Its that if he is being guarded hard, his is apt to lose control of the ball, or travel, as he is blowing by the defender. He just needs another year of work to remedy that, but still its a critical weakness in the scheme of playing winning basketball as a team this season. This year, Wigs' and Selden's athleticism's have to be used sparingly to get the net benefit of them, otherwise it turns into the turnover olympics and their play turns in to a net cost.
What this does is put an enormous burden on Tharpe to control the ball and only get it to the guys in situations where they won't cough it up. And, at the same time, Tharpe must also accomplish the conflicting prime directive of Self's hi-lo (aka Dean's and Larry's Carolina Passing Offense as handed down by Henry Iba's hi-lo created for the 1964, or 1968 Olympic Team--I forget which just now) to keep the ball from sticking!
Opposing coaches understand the problem facing Self and Tharpe, and so they scheme to exploit Tharpe's predicament. He's a sound but not hugely athletic PG with playing with wings he can only go to judiciously, if TOs are to be kept from going stratospheric.
Opposing coaches and teams know that Wiggins and Selden are not every possession threats to drive to iron in the KU offense, because they turn the ball over too much doing it. Opposing coaches know that the KU game is to get it to the bigs for the high percentage shot and to hold down TOs by Wigs and Selden until the tipping points of games, when Self unleashes them to do their things. Opposing coaches know they only have to worry about Wigs and Selden going wild on them down the stretches of both halves, or when Self is trying to stop a momentum swing. So: they do the logical thing. They scheme to put Tharpe in a pressure cooker every game. They do it different ways, but always the point is to put Tharpe under the gun, because the wings won't do much damage till the stretches. They dare KU to go to Selden and Wigs every possession, knowing Self won't allow it more than a few trips to try to keep the other team at least a little honest. Tharpe finds himself in a worst of all possible PG worlds.
It is this dynamic that is the Achilles Heel of this KU team. It is why Tharpe's performances vary so widely. If Perry is up against an LSA 4, he is not an every trip option. Selden and Wigs never are, because they cough it up too much. Tharpe suddenly finds him self with no one but Embiid, or Black, to pass to for a threat at the hoop. And unless Naa is at absolutely peak energy, and maximum mental clarity, he simply gets overwhelmed by the scheming against him; then he gets passive as we all do when overwhelmed.
I have been as hard on Tharpe as anyone from the beginning, but I honestly believe that Tharpe would look like a sharply better PG, if he had wings he could go to every time down the floor as threats to put the ball on the deck without turning it over. Other teams would have to play Selden and Wiggins much more honestly and so all of this scheming against Tharpe would go away.
What has happened over the course of the season is that early on Tharpe's wings were just trying to figure it all out and Self was trying to play through them, so Tharpe got passive about being a threat himself. This meant that he was not taking advantage of the defenses that early on were over focused on stopping the reputed phenoms of Selden and Wiggins on the wings. Next, when it became apparent to opponents that Wiggins and Selden could not beat them from 3, they sagged way off them to stop the drive and for awhile only someone with the kind of blazing speed that Frank Mason has could get through the sagging defenses. Tharpe again was made to not look very good. Then opponents figured out that if you just guarded Selden and Wiggins hard, i.e. put your body on them, they would turn it over so much that Self really couldn't afford to play through them because of how many turnovers they would commit. This lead to a period when Tharpe snapped out of passivity, found his trey, found that Embiid was more than just a stick back artist, and began to get in the paint. At that point, though, opposing defenses began to scheme hard on Tharpe and KU's only answer to that for most games has been Embiid. And when Embiid got hurt, that meant that Tharpe was being put under enormous defensive pressure from all sides and his only viable, every-trip counter strategy, Joel Embiid, could not get her done either. Black seemed to be an option, but he fouled too much intermittently and could only get untracked offensively intermittently. Lucas was tried and though he "looked" good as usual, he could not relieve the pressure on Tharpe with Lucas' offensive game in its then current state of development.
On the offensive end, what Tharpe needs most right now is for either Black, or Lucas, or Ellis, or Jam Tray, to become an every trip, every game threat to go 15/10--a viable scoring threat capable of hanging 15 efficiently the way Joel could and getting enough stick backs to keep the opponent from getting brazen about releasing three and running on KU every trip. Its a tall order, but Tharpe needs at least one every trip option. Note: Joel also forces teams to release only two every trip, or get murdered on the glass.
The other possibility is that Self lets it all ride on Selden and Wiggins starting now and hopes they have played enough D1 ball to figure out how to protect, while they are impacting every trip--a game like OSU makes that a scary .
But the good news IMHO is that there AREN'T any other Marcus Smart's with a Markel Brown and a LeBryan Nash out there this year that can put the kind of pressure on KU that OSU did.
I'm not saying Tharpe is a sound guard in every way yet, nor am I saying that Naa is maintaining his mental focus as well as is within his power to do. I am just trying to cut him an amount of slack that he is do given the wings he plays with, who while they have grown defensively, continue to struggle with protection when asked to operate extensively with the ball.
So: while you and I have been proselytizing for some Lucas experimenting, what I think is more likely to happen is that Self is going to stand up in front of the team and say, "Guys, our big man is out for a couple of games and so it is time for great players to make great plays. We're going to shift the scoring load back around to Big Wayne and Andrew. We're going to break down opponents from the wings with ball screens and pick and rolls. We are done with the frontal assaults in the paint until Joel gets back. The big men are now going into stick back mode. They are going to sacrifice their bodies to get to any misses and cram them down the hole. You bigs, the gloves are off. You are free to foul as much and as often as you need to to get to the rebounds. No prisoners. Any misses by Big Wayne and Andrew go back in the hole, or people go down hard trying and take someone with them. Every time Big Wayne and Andrew touch the ball, its war. They are going to attack the rims like Flying Tigers attacking from the sun. They are coming down from on top and they are coming down with full force. Some backboards may get broken. Some rims may get bent the next few games. But the other teams are going to be looking at the soles of Big Wayne's and Andew's adidas coming down on them. You bigs. Everyone of you, and that includes you, Justin, everyone plays every game. We are the University of Kansas Jayhawk Flying Circus from here on out, and maybe after Joel gets back, too. I want to see any adidas on the floor that aren't preparing for take off. I want whatever mistakes are made to be made above the shooting box. Hell, I expect to see hand prints on the top of the back boards. Tarick, I want to see 260 pounds of muscle above the rim casting a giant shadow--coming down on people. Jamari, those shoulders need to be above the rim every trip. We are going vertical, staying vertical and only coming down to go up again, you got that? Because of our footer, we have played on the X-axis. Without him, we are moving to the Y-axis. We're in a dog fight for the next few games and we're going to fight it out above the rim, And you guys are going to put some footprints on the tops of some heads. And we're going to speed our opponents up. Sound like fun? I thought so."
Marcus Smart is the best bad outside shot PG since Jason Kidd, who was the best bad outside shot PG since Magic Johnson. And we know how good those two became as pros. Magic remade himself into a great set shooting trifectate in the L. Kidd only got a little better on the trigger. But great athletes and fierce competitors translate level to level. Smart is a great one. Nobody says Ty Cobb wasn't great, because he too was a jerk (and a racist). Nobody said Muhammad Ali (one of my heroes) wasn't great even though he was a jerk early that joined one of the reputedly most dubious and racial separatist quasi religious organizations ever. Pete Rose was reputedly a gambling addicted jerk, but one of the greatest baseball players I ever saw. Allen Iverson appears to be a jerk that reputedly may have participated in a violent crime. But he was pound for pound the best PG of his time. Great athletic competitors, like fiercely talented and competitive persons in all walks of life often are socially challenged jerks. We shouldn't like their jerkishness, or enable it, but we should not deny them their greatness either. Smart has the most incredible trapping range on defense I have seen in a PG. He came back for whatever reason. He beat us the way Ty Cobb, or AI, or Pete Rose would have beaten us. We need to get off his back and kick his ass on the floor being who we are. Get Smart! Not Maxwell but Marcus! Beat him down! Kick him while he is down. But don't pretend he isn't a great player, because he is. He did what he had to do to get the win and intimidate KU FOR THE NEXT GAME. Now we have to prove we are tougher, better, meaner, and more intimidating. There is nothing more fiercesome than good men righting a wrong. Just ask Japan after WWII. We burned most of their cities to the ground and nuked them twice AFTER we cornered them. Smart will find out what good men are capable of when the gloves come off the next time we meet. But he's still a great one. And great one's can get separated from their snot like all the rest.
Remember Stillwater!
Let's see. Tarik Black is playing his 4th season of college basketball, it's senior night, he got his BA before he set foot on campus, and he is going to have a Master's before he leaves after this one season? He plays a musical instrument and is 6-9 and 260? And he has a kind of positive outlook that the maestro of positive, Bill Self, admires? And he has the insight at this young age to say of Self, "Here, I’m playing for a coach who has a national championship, who has coached many great teams, that’s had similar players and just knows what to do, when to do it, and the message that needs to be portrayed at the moment"?
Black should give the NBA a shot, if he wants to, but he has "coach" written all over him.
Go, Tarik, go!
Will do, coach. And I'm expecting Perry Ellis to come up big, because Perry has been in one of those mother of all slumps that scorers, regardless of whether they play outside, or inside, get into. The great news for Perry is that he is getting his out of the way now, so that he can reset for The Madness. And I believe he will. He is too solid of a person not to. He is smart and I always bet on intelligence over the long haul. Perry is like all the guys that Self plays out of position. Though they are completely different kinds of players, he reminds me of Tyrel Reed. Both came to KU as scorers. And in the D1 game, at the different positions Self played them at, they had to learn that there just were going to be games when they could not do what they are best at, because of match-up disadvantage. Reed had a great, great 3pt shooting season his junior year (46%), but there were games that season when he got bottled up and then didn't bring anything else to the table. He guarded hard, but he didn't explode out of his position on defense and strip and disrupt, or create plays for other players on offense, or get in their and steal rebounds, or take charges, like he should have. It wasn't until Reed's senior season that despite the pre-operable foot injury that killed his 3pt% that he was big and strong enough to run around the floor and bump and grind with guys outside. It wasn't until his last season that he mastered the reach in the paint and strip the mid range rebound out of the hands of a blue meanie.
Perry can be so much more versatile than Reed, because he has the 6-7 height to go with his own hops on a par 6-4 Reed's 40 inch vertical.
I really do believe Perry could be special at the 3, even though no one else seems to. But whether or not he ever makes it there, he is eventually going to break through into that kind of intensity where he can make up for the bad matchup games with exploding out of his position for strips and blocks and disruption. There is no doubt in my mind that Perry will do it.
He will get his scoring mojo back sometime over the next five games. It will come back not just because Jo Jo is out, but because Perry will come out of his slump.
If he gets hot again during the Madness, we are going to be a very, very tough out, assuming Embiid comes back.
Rock Chalk!
Go, Perry, go!!!!!
I was applauding the players. I put their individual performances in the very best possible light I could. In fact, I probably was too nice about the spread between expectations and outcomes. Outcomes just did fall wildly below expectations. Who is to say whether the expectations were too high, or the outcomes too low. I for one expected the team to lose 8-10 games and said so very early on, and once last summer, if I recall correctly, so my expectations were not high at all for what many said was the most talented team at KU in a long time. There was zero chance this team was going to be a super team up front. Their only prayer was to be healthy and get on a role in March. The minute I looked at Wigs' and Selden's sub 40% trey shooting, it was a given that this team was never going to dominate from the perimeter, unless Greene, Frankamp, or AW3 turned into a big minute, lights out shooter, which none did, of course. The teams only hope to be dominant was in their bigs and that really came down to Embiid, because no one else could rim protect. Embiid progressed super fast, or this team would have very likely have ten losses already, maybe more, and the world would be talking about how Self finally had his bad rebuilding season that Roy and every other coach has undergone the last ten years after a run of 3-4 hot seasons.
They are at 22-7 with two games to go and, if they play with fierce competitiveness, should hole out the regular season at 24-7, even without Embiid, which would be superb for how far short the individual players have fallen vis a vis expectations.
So best case scenario, as I estimated back near the start of the season, for this supposedly most talented team of Self's teams is eight losses, assuming they hole out two regular season games and get Embiid back for the B12 tourney and hole out the B12 tourney and go down in the Madness, or maybe run the table 6-0, avoiding a final loss.
To bring this all into focus, best XTReme Best Case scenario, this most talented of Self's teams has to win 11 straight games and a national championship to go out with 7 losses. Anything is possible, but that is a very tall order playing at least two games without Embiid, and maybe 3 more in the B12 conference tourney.
Probable scenario: KU splits without Embiid the last two games, then loses one with Embiid played sparingly in the conference tourney, then wins until Embiid gets injured again, say in the Elite Eight. That would yield a 10 loss season. That would equal the high end of my expected range.
Worst case scenario: Whew! This is where it gets scary. KU loses both games without Embiid, and doesn't get him back for the B12 tourney, or the Madness, and goes out the first week end, second game. Then it is an 11 loss season with a losing stench at the end. I thought the only way that could happen was with an injury to a key player, which is what has occurred.
But I never dreamed it would be to Embiid, because I never dreamed he would progress in his first season to the point of being our most crucial player. I figured Wigs would be that, but ifs and buts were candy and nuts, eh?
Anyway, the point that remains set in stone is that Self managed to get these guys to buy into a winning scheme (being a big man oriented team) very early, once it became clear that none of them, except Embiid, was going to be nearly as good as they were expected to be.
Imagine what would have become of this team had they not bought into Self's concept for the team!
It is positively scary to consider.
Suppose they had tried to play up tempo every game, even run balls to the walls! How about 25-30 TOs every game!
Suppose we had played through Wigs the way so many had expected. Suppose we had depended on Wigs, who is not yet strong enough to finish at the rim, to be THE GUY and often has appeared stunned at how rough the game was. Disaster!
Imagine if we had crafted a controlled running team around Wiggins' and Selden's and Mason's trey shooting! OMG!!! Help me, help me, help me, I think I'm going insane from that vision of free masonry bricking treys!!!!!
Next, imagine if Self had stuck with Perry Ellis as his most consistent scorer!!! OMG, can you imagine what in god's green earth would have happened in all of the games that Perry has done the disappear-o in? The W&L statement would have looked like an investment portfolio full of derivatives in 2008!!!!
Next, imagine if Self had crafted the kind of spread it out and let Tharpe, or Mason, operate in the center and create that yours truly suggested in a flight of madness one time. OMG!!!!!! It would have been a season of Tharpe getting the ball stolen, or Mason going 1-12 on missed finishes at the iron. More losses than Viagara bottles at a retreat for impotent Casanovas.
I'm not talking about this stuff to knock the players. They didn't create the expectations. Self and staff didn't create the expectations. The recruiting gurus drunk on listening to themselves and the media needing to sell us all shizz we don't even need created this insidious situation. But too many of us bought into it.
Self had a nice recruiting class that got blown up into something utterly NOT what it was. Oh it had all the trappings of a hyped recruiting class all right, but it didn't have the stunning level and number of match up advantages that Cal's random freak of OAD recruiting possessed one season only.
And the guys Self had coming back? Tharpe? Give me a fricking break. He was going to be a barely acceptable D1 point guard if everything broke his way and if Self found a way to mask him, something few coaches can do with a point guard.
And Ellis? Did anyone notice how tough it was for him to get into the rotation on a team with a 6-8 180 recycle from Loyola Marymount? What were people thinking? What kind of drugs were they taking? Did they seriously believe Perry Ellis, who lost his job to a 6-8 180 pound 4 his freshman season, was suddenly going to be able to come in and dominate the glass against blue meanies on top teams; that he was going to be able to hang 32 on a top tier conference team--on a top ten team nationally?
What I'm saying here is that once you go through detox, i.e., one you get through the DTs of going cold turkey on Basketball Hype Addiction, you see that what these players have done was just about what they were capable of doing (and anytime you reach your potential, you are a winner as John Wooden said); that they had to work their asses off, and play as hard as they possibly could, just to perform as well as they in fact did.
The players should be enormously proud of what they have accomplished, and so should the fans. The players have to play in the real world, where the laws of physics still hold in a way that they do not hold in Basketball Hype Space. In Basketball Hype Space, players like Perry Ellis can hang 32 against Syracuse on a good night. In Basketball Hype Space, freshman that declare a year early like talented Andrew Wiggins can play like 23 year old men and not only hop over 23 year old men, but out muscle them too. In Basketball Hype Space a substitute from Memphis can transfer and play like a starter without a season long transition required. In Basketball Hype Space freshman Wayne Selden can know how much faster D1 guys really are and never have to learn how to sit and put his faked out, scorched jock back on his hips. In Basketball Hype Space, lightening speed is all it takes for freshman Frank Mason to finish successfully at the rim 50% of the time against blue meanies that are not trying to keep up with him, but instead waiting to club him at the rim in D1. In Basketball Hype Space, freshman Brannen Greene can guard great players, play under control, and drill it from anywhere regardless of the match up he faces in D1.
In short, in Basketball Hype Space, all of KU's guys--newcomers and sophomores-- are seasoned D1 players from the moment they lace them up, or in the particularly drugged up state that many have been in this season, they are going to alchemically transform into such after 29 grueling game, while studying and traveling and trying to get used to not burning the candles at both ends with the young women they meet away from home for the first times in their lives.
Its all preposterous and we KU fans should never take this drug of over expectation again.
And while I am advocating turning down the Hype Pill, thank you very much, I am trying to call attention to the fact that Self has had balls the size of a Red Giant to tell these guys the truth, or did whatever he did to get them to see the truth, or simply loved them enough to recognize and let them be who they truly were, rather than force them to keep pretending they were things they weren't.
I'm trying to get people to wake up to the phenomenal job Self has done to craft something realistic out of all the ridiculous hype about these players.
I'm trying to get people to appreciate that once again Bill Self found a way for 15 or so kids to become the best "team" they could have been, rather than the most hyped bunch of individuals they could have been.
And I'm trying to say these players have been through a terrible crucible that no young men should ever have to go through again. Its hard enough and cruel enough just to try to survive the competition of learning to play D1 basketball without a bunch of false expectations swirling around you. No brave, hard working young man should ever again at KU have to put up with the obviously half baked baloney of expectations that has stalked this team so cruelly.
And what I am saying is so, whether they run the table or not.
If they win a ring or not.
If they win a ring, it will still be because they faced who they really were and accepted a team framework that could get them to the promised land.
The truly terrible and insidious thing is this: even if this team wins a ring, it will still not have lived up to its hype. They will just be a champion (still the greatest thing in sport to become), but then the hype machine will be using them to put another incoming recruiting class behind yet another eight ball of Basketball Hype Space.
Love these boys for what they have done and for the false hype they had to overcome.
Love these boys for proving inspite of it all that being the best you can be still matters more than being the most hyped you can be.
The boys are for real.
They hype never was.
The boys are good and could get on a roll still.
The hype never will.
Rock Chalk!
about what I expected best case.
I just liked this post so much, I decided to post it twice!!!!! To wit...
Self is just insanely good at stealing wins and moving the pieces just far enough from game to game to get another W.
As Self keeps reminding people, this bunch of defensively challenged green wood that cannot protect on offense if another team even looks crossly at them, has a three game lead with two games to go.
It is an unbelievable accomplishment considering he had to play with Embiid and Black at half to three quarters speeds for over a month of the heart of the conference season, and without Embiid entirely for a week or so. I can bitch and moan all I want about how he shouldn't have brought Embiid back until about now, but the point is, he bought his team time to get a three game lead with two to go and the conference title, and the best chance they could have had to get a 1, or 2, seed despite the adversity.
He did this all by the way with the next Lebron playing rather like the next Xavier, not the next Lebron.
He did this with a point guard, Naadir Tharpe, that might have difficulty guardiing some of us!
And he did this with Naadir Tharpe, who's main strength going into the season was though to be his ball handling, which just turned out to be one of his greatest weaknesses. Lost in all the talk about Tharpe's defense and TOs is that he has turned out not to be a particularly exceptional ball handler unless the other team just leaves him entirely alone.
Oh, and his 5-star 4 that was supposed to be able to become a dominant player this season and a scoring machine, has except against weak competition, turned increasingly into a glue 4 that gets 2-4 ppg and 2-4 rpg. I mean, THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!
And did I mention that his great trey shooting perimeter guys--Greene, Frankamp and White--turned out not to be able to shoot much.
When you stop and think about it, Self only had three guys perform at, or above expectations this season.
Wayne Selden, who some thought might be an OAD, turned out to be a guy that has some good games and some bad games, got injured for a stretch, but generally turned out to be a solid glue 2 most of the time.
Frank Mason, they guy that almost went to Towson, and then gave everybody goose bumps with his after burners for two games early, then settled into a guy that came in an penetrated and couldn't finish at the rim, couldn't shoot the trey much, and really contributed the most when he tried to just glue.
Self's only really wonderful surprise was Joel Embiid. Embiid was thought to be a project that would be a back up most of the year and not come into his own until next season. Embiid learned faster than anyone dreamed and became Self's savior, only Embiid got a knee and a back injury that then greatly reduced his effectiveness for the last month of the season!
Hey, I almost forgot to mention Tarik Black, the guy Self and Coach K competed hard to sign. Tarik Black spent most of the season trying to stay on the court maybe four minutes.
Now step back and look at the descriptions of what actually happened with each of the guys on the team versus what the expectations were for each of the guys on this team. Get that chasm between expectation and outcome clear in your head. Now, put yourself back at the start of the season and pretend I told you then what these player would actually do, instead of their expectations. What would you have predicted would be the record of a team where:
the point guard couldn't protect or defend.
The 5 star 2 guard became a glue player.
The next Lebron at 3 became the next Xavier.
The 5-star 4 averaged 2 points and 2 rebounds in big time games in February and basically disappeared all season long against good competition.
The big 260 pound center often played fewer than 5-10 mpg.
The trey shooters couldn't make treys.
The Jam Tray played consistently in reserve, but never had a break out game.
Would you have said this team was certain to clinched the tenth title with a three game lead with two games to go?
Hell, I would have predicted the team to be in third or fourth place!!!!!
Self is a genius.
Not senior night, but the next game then, maybe? :-)
Self is just insanely good at stealing wins and moving the pieces just far enough from game to game to get another W.
As Self keeps reminding people, this bunch of defensively challenged green wood that cannot protect on offense if another team even looks crossly at them, has a three game lead with two games to go.
It is an unbelievable accomplishment considering he had to play with Embiid and Black at half to three quarters speeds for over a month of the heart of the conference season, and without Embiid entirely for a week or so. I can bitch and moan all I want about how he shouldn't have brought Embiid back until about now, but the point is, he bought his team time to get a three game lead with two to go and the conference title, and the best chance they could have had to get a 1, or 2, seed despite the adversity.
He did this all by the way with the next Lebron playing rather like the next Xavier, not the next Lebron.
He did this with a point guard, Naadir Tharpe, that might have difficulty guardiing some of us!
And he did this with Naadir Tharpe, who's main strength going into the season was though to be his ball handling, which just turned out to be one of his greatest weaknesses. Lost in all the talk about Tharpe's defense and TOs is that he has turned out not to be a particularly exceptional ball handler unless the other team just leaves him entirely alone.
Oh, and his 5-star 4 that was supposed to be able to become a dominant player this season and a scoring machine, has except against weak competition, turned increasingly into a glue 4 that gets 2-4 ppg and 2-4 rpg. I mean, THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!
And did I mention that his great trey shooting perimeter guys--Greene, Frankamp and White--turned out not to be able to shoot much.
When you stop and think about it, Self only had three guys perform at, or above expectations this season.
Wayne Selden, who some thought might be an OAD, turned out to be a guy that has some good games and some bad games, got injured for a stretch, but generally turned out to be a solid glue 2 most of the time.
Frank Mason, they guy that almost went to Towson, and then gave everybody goose bumps with his after burners for two games early, then settled into a guy that came in an penetrated and couldn't finish at the rim, couldn't shoot the trey much, and really contributed the most when he tried to just glue.
Self's only really wonderful surprise was Joel Embiid. Embiid was thought to be a project that would be a back up most of the year and not come into his own until next season. Embiid learned faster than anyone dreamed and became Self's savior, only Embiid got a knee and a back injury that then greatly reduced his effectiveness for the last month of the season!
Hey, I almost forgot to mention Tarik Black, the guy Self and Coach K competed hard to sign. Tarik Black spent most of the season trying to stay on the court maybe four minutes.
Now step back and look at the descriptions of what actually happened with each of the guys on the team versus what the expectations were for each of the guys on this team. Get that chasm between expectation and outcome clear in your head. Now, put yourself back at the start of the season and pretend I told you then what these player would actually do, instead of their expectations. What would you have predicted would be the record of a team where:
the point guard couldn't protect or defend.
The 5 star 2 guard became a glue player.
The next Lebron at 3 became the next Xavier.
The 5-star 4 averaged 2 points and 2 rebounds in big time games in February and basically disappeared all season long against good competition.
The big 260 pound center often played fewer than 5-10 mpg.
The trey shooters couldn't make treys.
The Jam Tray played consistently in reserve, but never had a break out game.
Would you have said this team was certain to clinched the tenth title with a three game lead with two games to go?
Hell, I would have predicted the team to be in third or fourth place!!!!!
Self is a genius.
Virginia's big advantage is their coach and the brand of ball he coaches. Dick Bennett, Tony's father, could and did win with nothing. When Dick retired, Tony stayed on and assisted Bo Ryan. Ryan is obviously one of the exceptional coaches of the game. Tony Bennett learned from a guy, his dad, how to win with nothing at all; then he learned how to play Ryan's game. Bennett and Ryan's games are idiosyncratic and something opposing teams run into infrequently. It is a different way of playing the game, not just a heavily physical way of playing (which it also is).
The ACC's dominant teams--UNC and Duke--have always relied on a lot of finesse and athleticism, so the ACC has always produced countervailing threats that were VERY physical, like Gary Williams' Maryland teams. Since Williams left, the ACC softened up. Turg has not produced a super physical team since he got there. Syracuse and Pitt seemed to toughen things up, but Pitt didn't have much this season, so they were not a force. Syracuse is alway zoning so while they are hoppy, they are not necessarily bruisers. Thus, Bennett came to the ACC at the perfect time to introduce some rock 'em, sock 'em ball into the ACC. I suspect Virginia is for real and going to make everyone miserable that plays them in the Madness. Florida has the most talent, but teams are not used to the way Bennett teams play. And they never really do get used to it either. Dick Bennett developed a style of play that is kind of like what Bill Fitch used to coach in the pros. It is very hard nosed. Tony has introduced more complexity and finesse into it, but bottom line the Cavs will get in your jock and kick you till it hurts.
I really like this for two reasons.
First, Black is foul prone and so starting Lucas buys Black five minutes before Black starts collecting fouls.
Second, I agree that though it is improbable, Lucas could surprise us and so why not turn these last few games and the Conference tourney into a laboratory to find out.
I am probably more optimistic than you about what Black can do in place of Embiid, but there is no question that getting him fouled up the first five minutes is just about the worst thing that could be allowed to happen for the team.
I think for diplomatic reasons, you start Black against the first game. If he picks up a lot of early fouls, you bring Lucas. If Lucas plays well, then you start him the second game in order to protect Black from early fouling.
But perhaps more important than which of Black and Lucas starts, is to make sure that Traylorand Black keep playing together.
Thus, if Black starts, I would seriously consider starting Traylor, too.
I have watched Lucas and I think he might be someone that Perry Ellis could play off of much better than Ellis plays off of Embiid and Black. Lucas has a much stronger sense of where other players are on the floor and seems able to move in relation to their movements more than Embiid, or Black do.
So: this last point of mine feeds back into your suggestion: start Lucas with Ellis. Bring Traylor and Black in relief.
This would sustain the rotation system, so that when Embiid comes back, if he comes back, it will merely be a matter of plugging Embiid back in to Lucas' spot in a still well-oiled rotation machine.
It also occurs to me that Self could move in another direction. He could go small and stay small by playing Wiggins at the 4 and a committee of Perry, Traylor and Black at the 5. About the only B12 team this season that Self would have to go big and stay big against is Baylor.
It will be interesting to see how Self plays it; that's for sure.
No. :-)
Seriously, it is possible, but not probable for the same reason it is not probable for defeated teams to win a ring.
But here is why it could happen.
Experience and depth are very hard to beat, if you matchup fairly well with an opponent.
Think about the Tyshawn-TRob team. They matched up well with UK. They almost came back and upset them. And that team had no depth. Neither team did for that matter. But if KU had had another 2-3 credible subs, KU's experience and depth would very likely have beaten UK's great young talent.
Looking at Butler's two straight Final Fours without 5 star talent, it becomes clear that WSU could easily go to two straight Final Fours, especially since WSU looks more talented to me than did Butler.
It was a great edge to have been to the Final Four the year before for Butler. It will be again for WSU.
But what tripped Butler up both years?
It finally ran into a team with a little more depth and with one super player it just had no answer for.
If WSU has a defensive answer for every great player it comes up against, given tournament seeding and who it has to play, then I would pick WSU as the favorite to win the tournament, because of its experience and depth.
But it is very tough to have an answer for every great player that one runs up against.
And for that reason, I suspect WSU will go down again.
But I never forget Wooden's first NCAA champion. Not one guy over 6-5. Few gave that team a serious chance of winning it all. It went undefeated. It won it all.
It can happen.
Nothing is written.
Everyone needs to read a book called "Outliers." Throughout most fields of endeavor in adult life, the most successful persons tend to have been the oldest in their graduating classes in high school. Being the oldest in your high school graduating class predisposes you to have always been the most mentally and physically mature of all of your peers throughout your educational process. This predisposes you toward the most academic, athletic, and social success. This then carries into test taking for college admission, which predisposes you to get into better colleges. In turn, getting into better colleges predisposes you to getting into better jobs. Starting out with a better job at a better firm predisposes you to more career success. "Outliers" is a thought-provoking book that should be read by everyone, though like any such book, it should not be taken as simplistically as some perhaps do.
Self can switch gears anytime he has someone better.
He doesn't have someone better. Mason is faster, but that's all.
Self's anger flared, perhaps because he knows he is cornered.
Great talent he might never have again and he just lost Embiid, the only guy that can make it win.
He is looking at probably 8-9 losses now even with the title, if Joel has to rest till tourney time, and ten without. Ten losses puts a damper on his W&L statement.
With him uninjured probably 1 or no losses.
Let's hope the treatments can work miracles again.
I read he declared a year early, but maybe I am wrong. But if he were 19, then he would be a late mature-er.
Getting punked by a jerk, like Smart, hurts, but as great a player as Smart also is, Smart isn't why we lost.
TOs, numerous as they were, didn't kill us.
Being girlie men that cannot really play rough and make it stick was also not the final straw.
Even the brutal truth that Smart, Forte, Brown, and Nash would start for KU, because they are stronger, tougher, more experienced and sounder fundamentally, than Tharpe, Selden, Wiggins and Ellis, did not finally tip the balance.
The ridiculously biased refereeing didn't put a fork in us either.
The injury to Embiid that took away KU's rim protection cost KU the game.
KU without Embiid at near full speed is just a young, mediocre team that is not good enough, or sound enough, or tough enough, to beat a team like OSU, which is very good, when they play that hard.
Embiid healthy and KU is a winner capable of winning titles and chasing rings.
Embiid hurt and KU is probably not even a Top 20 team, despite the 5 stars. The five stars are just not that good yet. Joel Embiid is who hides the fact they are unsound at guarding, protecting, and rebounding against most opponents.
With or without Embiid, this team is not UK's Fab Six. None of these guys could have started on that UK team, least of all Wiggins. Kidd-gilchrist would have had Andrew for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Why? Because someone foolishly told Andrew to come out a year too early. Andrew is a high school kid now. He shouldn't even be on the same floor with guys like Brown. It's not right. Next, were there a next year, I suspect Andrew would be physically mature enough to play at this level, or even the pro level. But now it is just embarrassing watching this boy trying to out jump men with the strength to actually play.
Selden is the age Wiggins ought to have waited for to come out. It's cruel to make great talent like Wiggins play beyond what his development is ready for, even if he can hop around and score some.
Selden at least has the strength to be on the floor.
But without Embiid none of them can hide how vulnerable they are.
Got to hope Joel is okay, or else.
If Joel were okay, this is a team with a lot of the pieces to be special. Self can mask Wiggins and Ellis and Tharp with a healthy Embiid, and hedge minutes with Black and Traylor and Mason. But remove Joel, and no one else ban hide the youthful limitations and Tharpe's limits on handling pressure.
One last thing--in the team's defense: being so young, they struggle with each new defensive scheme they meet; then once they have seen it, they aren't usually fooled again. Smart's greatness at defense, and he is by far the best defender I have seen in college since Jo Jo White, allowed Ford to zone trap in 3/4 and half court schemes that no other team will be able to pull off. Smart has the most amazing defensive trap range I have EVER seen. He was too good for our guys given they had not seen trapping with that incredible range before. Smart put on one of the greatest exhibitions of defense I have ever witnessed in college ball. He was everywhere the entire game. But our guys (and our coaches) will adapt. Part of the reason Self, the defensive guru, was so pissed was that Smart and Brown, two great defenders, were not on his team. And to add insult to injury, Thunder Stumps Phil Forte could out slide Tharpe, Mason and Frankamp.
Hell yes Self wants Lyle, if he can slide! And whomever is in Lawrence next year better be prepared for defensive drills like they have never seen. I don't forsee Self ever going through this again.
It sure was a horrible game. A bunch of pussies at the rim. Selden played great D and that was it for kudos.
Drive by a title insurance company and ask them about clouded title on 1889 land run lands.
Quote from Washington Irving's A Tour of the Prairies" describing the area of present day Stillwater saying, "The deep and frequent traces of buffalo, showed it to be one of their frequent grazing grounds;" then ask if Irviing were referring to buffalo pies?
Note that in WWII, nearly 30,000 soldiers and 10,000 WAVES were trained in Stillwater and then ask, "How many persons in Stillwater are related to them?"
Ask if Stillwater is so still, why is its crime rate slightly above the national average?
Remark that since Stillwater is classified as having a humid subtropical climate, why aren't there any palm trees.
Say, "Hey, I saw Goober Drilling is here in Stillwater. What happened to Gomer?"
Mention that US News and World Reports lists OSU at 66 among the top 100 public universities in America, and then say, "I thought sure OSU was at least 65th."
Ask if Eskimo Joes bar is yet another sensitive Oklahoma tribute to Native American culture?
Say you love Red Dirt music more than Potting Soil Music but not as much as Chicken Manure Compost music.
Thank all Oklahoman's for exhuming David L. Payne's remains and getting them the heck out of Kansas. Payne was known for leading the opening of the "unassigned lands," belonging to native Americans, so that a land rush balkanizing land tenure and obliterating native American rights to the land could occur in 1889. Payne's remains were moved to Boomer Lake, OK.
As always, thank them kindly for sharing Bill with us.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
Oops I phlipping phorgot about Phil Phorte!!!!
He is a dead eye that needs a close shadow.
Remember "A League of Their Own" when the manager, played by Tom Hanks, was confronted with one of the women weeping about something?
"There's no crying in baseball!!!"
slayr, trust me, Self's recruiting, all of our dicey off season exposes and the unforeseen will converge to keep you occupied this off season.
THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASKETBALL!!!
:-)
Seriously, someone gave $60M to KSU?
That's an outrage.
Did they make it on wheat subsidies and fracking?
If so it should be divided equally among KU, KSU, and WSU. :-)
What would KSU do with $60M?
Put gold plated roofs on XPERimental barns?
Get Snyder a dozen disposable artificial hearts and eye ball transplants?
Get interim head coach Weber a solid gold coffin to mock bury Frank Martin?
Build a respectable arena instead of that goofy band box they call a crib?
Build floating class rooms on Tuttle Creek?
Fund a hazmat team to protect them from biological warfare agents being developed out there and stored in ag silos?
Replace that cheap concrete KSU on the bluffs with even cheaper cinder block laid to spell out "Kansas State JUCO?"
Bring in Justin Bieber for the Landon Lectures?
Build a massive manure-to-biodiesel facility?
What could KSU possibly do with $60M?
@nuleafjhawk LOL!!!!
Keys to beat OSU
Break the press away from Smart.
Route the half court offense away from Smart.
Deny Smart his 5.5 steals and OSU cannot win.
Deny Brown the ball. He is the real key to OSU's offense.
Get the ball to Joel first three trips, get the ball to Wiggins first one trip. Repeat.
Prepare for pressing, especially the 2-2-1 but expect fewer types of presses.
Prepare for switching Defenses during possessions.