@JayHawkFanToo: Can you recall, was Tyshawn's and EJ's a definite period, or number of games, or was it an indefinite suspension?
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
@Crimsonorblue22: I am trying to recall if Self has tended to do indefinite suspensions, or definite ones in the past. It seems like indefinites are his preference.
@HighEliteMajor: It is certainly a possibility.
@Crimsonorblue22 Good points. Forgot about the head banging with Felix. So: he has perhaps been a bit concussed, also. Wilt reputedly got so sick of the double, triple and quadruple teaming and all of the fouling that went with it that he jumped to the Globetrotters to escape it.
Today is my day for asking an irreverent question, I guess.
Self said Selden was injured early and some times his uneven play hints that his injury recurs intermittently.
Embiid is like a lion taken down by a shot to the knee, then to the back. One cannot help but wonder if there were another injury shot about to be inflicted to take him down for good.
And then there was one--Andrew Wiggins.
And Andrew walks around kind of like a guy walking down a dark alley glancing furtively in several directions.
What is going on here? What if Andrew goes down? What would be the odds that 3 OADs all got injured?
How are the OADs at UK doing injury wise?
This is verging on pseudo-spooky.
Maybe the OAD rule should be changed simply to keep the guys from getting hurt in D1?
Or maybe the players need to start wearing titanium and carbon fiber exoskeletons and we change the name of the game to Bionicleball.
Increasingly, this season seems to be segmented into two seasons.
The first season was when fouls were called very tightly inside and out and there was next to no butcher ball.
The second season was when fouls on the perimeter were still called tightly, but the refs began to "let 'em play" inside. Butcher ball came in session in the paint and in transition with a vengeance, while the guarding of a perimeter player had to remain gingerly done, though a bit of loving hand checking was permitted.
In the first season, there seemed to be few injuries, and what injuries there were were injuries that players appeared to heal from while playing through; this implied kinder, gentler injuries.
In the second season, fouling scaled up to Flagrant I and tried to fall just short of Flagrant II, but often appeared to achieve Flagrant II without being called. Fouling began to take on the look of premeditated assaults in certain cases. It began to look like coaches were coaching their players about how to approach the threshold of Flagrant I, but hopefully avoid Flagrant II.
In season one there was a little flopping on defense.
In season two there was a lot of flopping on defense, and even some flopping on offense.
Or so I recall anecdotally and with aging memory.
Does anyone else notice the recollected tendencies described, or not?
Do KENPOM, or Hoopstats, have a flopping stat yet?
ESPN reports Embiid got an MRI for his back today.
The key quote was:
"It didn't come back with anything major."--Self
The reporter apparently did not ask: does that mean it came back with something minor?
No further scoop on Joel's knee.
Self said he still does not know if Embiid will play Saturday vs. TCU.
Here is the link:
I do not recall if he got a one game suspension, or an indefinite one. If anyone knows, please let me know.
@drgnslayr : what else can I say?
DEFINITIVE PHOF!
@globaljaybird Copy and paste. Back injury is usually forever in my anecdotal experience. Ask Larry Bird about back injury. Anyone that saw him pre back injury knows why Red Auerbach thought he could become the greatest basketball player ever. He was, like Mickey Mantle in baseball, so freakishly gifted in every possible way, that even as an agonized near cripple, he could play at a hall of fame level. Joel may come back and be very good, but he seems very likely never again to be what he could have been. Was playing for a 1-seed worth it, if that were the case? In hindsight, of course not. But Self and defenders of playing Embiid always have the alibi that there was no way of foreseeing this outcome. But of course that is false. There was no way of forseeing with specificity and high probability this specific eventuality. But it appears reasonable that playing on any unhealed knee injury is risking worse injury of it and further risks other injury through compensation. He is in modern medicine's therapeutic hands now, and that is always a risky place to be, too. Intervening to heal complex systems also has it share of problems.
So: it seems now that Joel has already joined the list of KU players that saw their performance levels sharply curtailed by "playing through". The only question now is: can he ever get off that list that others could not?
There is always a first, I suppose.
@HighEliteMajor : so glad to see you spell it out for board rats. Board rats' denial about injury and willingness to believe leadership that spins a hyper reality contrary to observable facts is something board rats can learn from and carry into their reads of political leaders and bosses in their work places. An informed public applying logic (rather than trust, fear or faith) as the litmus test of analysis remains the greatest bulwark against being mislead by self-interested leadership. Not saying Self was wrong, or right to play Embbiid. One would have to know more facts to judge. I AM saying it does not serve the best interest of The Legacy to swallow obvious horse manure and call it leadership soufflé.
Rock Chalk!
@Crimsonorblue22 Yes, fer gosh sakes, yes, how did ah fergit the Jam Tray!!!
Eisenhower assaulted Normandy with the most awesome military force ever assembled, but no one was certain the invasion would succeed. Weather could easily have wrecked the plan, but it did not. The inability to get many of the glider and paratrooper forces to their intended destinations followed by their inability coordinate into effective fighting units in the darkness could have wrecked the plan, but instead their own chaos caused so much confusion among the Germans that they did not know how to capitalize on the chaos. The Germans could have wrecked the plan by bringing their Panzers up immediately, but they did not. The miscalculations at Omaha that cost so many lives could have wrecked the plan by exposing a weak flank that those at Utah might not have been able to hold, but it did not. Montgomery's left bogging down could have wrecked the plan, but the Germans did not amass enough force soon enough to exploit the situation. So: inspite of all the SNAFUs, the Allies, the greatest single amphibious invasion force in human history established a successful foothold and primed to begin to grind down their enemy with overwhelming ground and air force, plus staggering logistical advantage.
But then things ground to a halt in hedge row country in the American sector.
The invasion planners forgot that the hedge rows in Normandy, where the American army was to advance and then make a great wheeling flanking maneuver were ancient and dense and grew upon 6-12 feet high berms of ancient, Osage Orange roots densely entangled in packed soil.
The invasion planners had anticipated that Jerry would put his machine guns nests in the hedge rows and be virtually impossible to destroy without tanks leading the charge. The invasion planners supplied way more tanks than would be needed, because invasion planners tried leaving nothing to chance that did not have to be left to chance.
But when the Sherman Tanks went confidently to attack the machine gun nests in the hedge rows, they had to crawl up the berms, expose their unarmored undersides of the tanks, and at that moment German machine gunners would pick up their anti-tank weapons and fire into the exposed underside of the Shermans and the Shermans, prone to catching fire anyway, would burst into flames and explode.
Suddenly, the most awesomely large and successful amphibious invasion force in human history was stopped by biological fences grown for centuries to keep cattle in.
It was a humbling moment for the great military minds that had planned and commanded the allies.
They were helpless.
Bulldozers could partially solve the problem by bulldozing through the hedge rows, but the bulldozers were not there at that moment. And the longer the Americans stayed bogged down in hedge row country, the more time the Germans had to reposition for a counter attack that might crush the Allied right flank, which would in turn leave Montgomery's slowly moving left caught hopelessly in a pincer. Thus did the greatest amphibious invasion in history suddenly hang precariously in a balance of unforeseen consequences of invasion.
What happened next is among the most famous stories of World War II and so I shall recount it only briefly. With the greatest strategic and tactical minds in the Western Alliances stumped, and able to think of nothing else but waiting for bulldozers to be shipped over and moved into position, an American enlisted man, a farm boy the story goes, said that he thought that if they just went back to the beach and got some of the steel girder obstacles the Germans had set up in the surf to tear the bottoms out of landing crafts, that he reckoned he could weld them on to the front of Sherman tanks and those tanks could then drive into the hedge rows with these long prongs of jagged steel in front of the tank piercing and plowing through the hedge row rather than rolling up and over it.
Mercifully for the history of freedom, there were no naysayers, or at least none with the authority to say no, standing around at that moment saying that it was a cock eyed idea that probably would not work. No one said, "wait, let's build a model of this on my lap top first with my CAD CAM software to see if it will work." No one said, "you know, all strategies have counter strategies and so we have to stop here and evaluate the possible unintended outcomes and consequences." Instead, the idea was tried as soon as elbows and assholes could get trucks moving to the beach and back to scrounge up steel and an arc welder. And the farm boy went to work without blue prints it is said and welded a gerry-rigged looking gob of jagged steel on the front of a Sherman and lo and behold the thing worked like a charm. And in minutes the expected life span of a German machine gunner in hedge row country shortened to less time than it took to drive a Sherman across a small field and blast him to the nether regions.
All of the above comes to my mind when I think about this KU team and its current predicament. It began the season with just about the greatest assemblage of young talent in the history of KU basketball talent. The team invaded D1 and despite many and ongoing SNAFUs in execution and performance this KU team succeeded in establishing an ideal beach head from which to pursue KU's tenth straight conference title with the intention of using that title to gain a Number 1 seed, which itself could be used to flank much of the competition in March Madness and so make a run at that basketball equivalent of the Axis Powers--Syracuse and its Field Marshall James von Boeheim aka The Zone Fox.
And here the greatest Kansas University expeditionary force in the history of the Self Supreme Allied Commander Era sits bogged down in the Big 12 basketball equivalent of hedge row country with two of its Shermans--Embiid and Black--out, or nearly out, with blown tracks, and everyone including Self, and me for awhile, were sitting there saying, well, we just have to sit here in hedge row country and wait for someone to bring in some bulldozers to clear us a path, when...
THERE AREN'T ANY GODDAMNED BULLDOZERS COMING IN TILL NEXT YEAR'S RECRUITING CLASS!
It looks to me like its time for a farm boy to get this team of Self's up off its butt and going through Big 12 opponents again like crap through a goose.
Well, General Self, I got me a pair of Big Smiths and ah done kept a lot of Fergusons and Gleaners goin' at harvest time with bailing wire and plug tobacco.
First thing you do, sir, is you gerry rig your starting five, no matter who you pick to replace Embiid, into a 2-2-1 zone press and you play that sucker evergoddamntime down the floor and fall back into your favorite m2m, just like John R. Wooden, the Indiana Rubber Man did once upon a time.
Next, you continue to play your hi-lo offense with a four man rotation of Black, Ellis for starters and Lucas and Justin for back ups.
And you stand pat with your perimeter rotation, only go long and stay long at the 2 with Selden and Greene alternating about 20 minutes a piece.
And you keep startin' Tharpe and then bringing' Mason, until he makes his first mistake and then bring Frankamp, until he makes his first mistake and then bring Tharpe until his first mistake and so on until none of them three is makin' no more mistakes.
And now here this: that Wiggins kid--ever danged time KU gets down by so much as one stinkin' point, clear out the side for Wiggins and let him go one on one for the money.
Whenever KU is ahead, run the usual stuff.
But whenever KU is behind, just keep clearin' out and givin' the ball to Andrew.
its about damned time we put ourselves on that Canadian's back and saw what he could do in the carryin' department.
And don't be afraid of Justin Wesley. He has been waitin' for such a time for his whole life. He will not let you down now. Improbable players must be asked to do improbably great things sooner or later in a championship season.
And I meant championship season.
We ain't sitting in these here hedge rows waiting for to get our clocks cleaned in round one.
We are here to grab the enemy by the nose and kick him in the ass.
We are join' to Berlin and there ain't no goddamned hedge rows that are gonna stand our way.
Unnnerstand?
Rock Chalk!
A very tough break for Joel, but a big chance for the team to close ranks and do what Self teams are famous for--find a way to "getter done." No ring came without injury bumps. Rush missed a third of a season.
@wrwlumpy, yes, if ISU did not have someone out for some reason, which I don't think they did, it was a VERY strange game. I did think after seeing WVU play KU that WVU was on the road to putting a very good team together this season. By conference tournament time, it is going to be no fun at all playing them, but I suspect we will have to face in the finals, if we are in different brackets, if we get to the finals. :-)
@drgnslayr On target. Chastening shared in and I was one of the doubters from the start. But..I'm not ready for the head wig to stop seeing the path forward.
I said at the start of the season our team was destined for 8-10 losses this season. I have also said the guys could be fully baked bread by March, I am sticking with this notion.
You have been unerringly accurate in your reads on this team between the "learning experiences." By this I mean you have correctly charted the strengths and weaknesses and paths of correction. Your crystal ball has only clouded during the "learning experiences," but that is how it is in the analysis business.
Best case analytic scenario: you have the process accurately and reliably figured out, but cannot EVER get all the "learning experiences" identified and timed correctly in prediction; this is a by-product of estimation amidst emergent complexity, i.e., there is not perfect forecasting analysis and seeking it has to be resisted at all costs, because seeking it actually leads to misreading what you in fact have figured out correctly. There must be some tolerance for error in forecasting.
Worst Case Analytical Scenario: one does not have the process accurately and reliably diagnosed AND one falls victim to emergent complexity.
I still think the facts of the season fit with your being within the best case scenario of analysis.
And here is why.
Last night, despite the sting of losing, confirms this team is mostly the positive and negative that you have said of it.
The key that is this: the team shot poorly inside, shot the worst from trey it probably is capable, and generally did not play its game, and still barely lost in overtime to a hot team and rival on its home floor in a rematch. On a bad night, minus a rotation player, and with a starting center hobbled, and a starting 2 guard stinking up the floor, KU barely loses to KSU on one of KSU's best nights.
Inference: KU is one helluva a good young team that could not quite figure out how to guard the paint without Embiid as a viable rim protector, and is still learning how to handle pressure defense.
This circumstance, though nasty medicine, is NOT inconsistent with the expected development trajectory of the team that you have been enthused and analytically accurate about so much of the time.
You did not accurately forecast Embiid's rapid development, because he falls in the realm of the unforeseeable amidst complexity. You also did not forecast Embiid's knee injury; that falls under the same rubric. If Embiid recovers, the team will get back on track. If Embiid does not recover, what I saw of Tarik last night (if the ankle recovers) makes me think Self could restring the instrument with Tarik, alter defensive coverage some, and still get back on track.
I am sticking with my supplement to what you have been saying and saying that Andrew Wiggins is in an normal, everyday, classic, garden variety slump. Slumps start in one aspect of play and then spread to one's entire game. This is exactly what we have seen with Andrew. When a side is cleared out for him, as at the end, he still can do the super human things he has always been able to do. But it is also a fact that Andrew was walking around the floor looking for all the world like Brady Morningstar did in his mother of all slumps, and like so many other KU players have looked in such slumps over the years. At first they don't even think they are in slumps. Then they aren't worried about it and just playing through it. Then at some point, if it is one of those mother of all slumps they have never really been in before, they start to walk around questioning the nature of their existence in tennis shoes. They are neither as exuberant when something good happens, nor as despairing when something bad happens. They are looking around not quite sure reality is real. They are trying to maintain their balance in the midst of what feels like some kind of a fall from grace with the sea of life. But as we all know, and as you among us almost certainly have aching first hand knowledge of, having laced them up for so many more years and at so many levels above most of us, slumps eventually end.
Alas, Wiggins slump is occurring at the same time that Embiid's knee is cutting his productivity by a third to a half. And Joel has no long background in the game against which to draw perspective on his problem. It is even possible that Embiid's knee is better than I believe and that he too is having a slump.
Last night's game also included the trough phase of Selden's volatile freshman performance cycles.
And Jam Tray decided to leave the straight and narrow for a moment just to make sure Coach Self understood that there is no figuring out 18-23 boys.
If you crucified this team's players last night on an X-Y graph, Embiid would be in a deep trough, Wiggins would be in a fairly deep long trough, Selden would be in a sharp trough, and Jam Tray would be flat lined below both.
And yet KU almost won shooting 12% from trey.
And we know that these guys, except perhaps Embiid, are going to come roaring out of these troughs SOME TIME. It could take a couple more weeks even, and some more losses, too. But these guys are going to roar out of their troughs as surely as all the KU players of the past did. Brady at one point was playing mop up minutes it was so bad, before he came out and shot 50-70% from trey for 3-4 games and got back in his normal ranges of performance. It IS going to happen and Wiggins is going to go off and Selden is going to find himself again.
Now, so far I have just put some perspective on the negatives.
Let's now add in the positives.
Black is emerging the last two games as a definite starting type of player in the paint, if we can just keep enough bailing wire on his ankle to keep him going.
Perry got 11 boards the hard way and did not cower going to the basket without knowing much about who would be playing at the other post for more than a minute at a time. This tells me The Designer is breaking through a wall in the midst of this disaster. He is not TRob, or anything, but he is starting to be able to stand the heat in the kitchen and still do his spin moves.
Next, Conner Frankamp looked like a completely different basketball player out there last night. He looked like a @#$%%^ed !@#$%^ing point guard. He looked very quick. He looked comfortable guarding at D1 speeds. He looked comfortable whipping the ball around. We have, for all intents and purposes, a new addition to the rotation.
Next, Brannen Greene should clearly NOT be on the floor from a strictly clinical basketball point of view. His neural nets are not wired in enough to play without errors. But this is not a clinical situation. This is the living myth wrapped around the KU basketball legacy within which a Bill Self team is struggling against rising complexity and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to keep the title streak alive and try to capitalize on a once in a coaching career player in Wiggins. Brannen Greene is like a proto type P-38 Lightening being forced into duty before all the bugs are worked out simply because it can do things none of the other players can do. What people and Self have been confused about is that they thought that what Greene was necessary for was three point shooting. WRONG. We need him for his length on defense, his scrappy personality, his wild stork mentality and game. We need him for the very reasons he should not be playing under normal circumstances of a Self team full of seasoned veterans trying to avoid goofy plays and TOs at all costs. We need Greene, because half baked neural nets and all, he can disrupt like nobody's business on other guards. His trey shooting, if it ever were to click in this season, would just be icing. We need the guy to come in and screw the other team up just a leeeeeeeetle bit more than he screws up our team. And he screws up every time he gets on the wood, and he will continue to no matter how much, or how little, PT he gets, because his brain has not grown together yet, just as Travis Releford's had not when he was this age. Bill Self read the hand writing on the wall last night. You could see the light bulb go off over his head when Brannen came in and disrupted like a crazy MFer. That's what this team needs more than trey shooting, ball protection, rebounding, energy, or anything else. It needs at least one, crazed, disrupting MFer to bring in from time to time to put the fear of insanity in opponents hearts. KU, this team, we fans, need the perimeter equivalent of Cole Aldrich to come in and wild stork the opponent for as long as it takes to disrupt them, no matter how many air balls, fumbles and other incomprehensible bungles he makes. Without Greene, this rotation has no one to put the fear of insanely unpredictable energy into the enemy. Sometimes Kevin Young's greatest contributions last season were not when he learned to grab 10 boards with 180 pounds, but rather when he simply completely unexpectedly climbed up the back of a wide body, or an LSA, and took the rebound out of his hands from behind!! KY would go completely bat shizz unpredictable bonkers at any moment and that is the definition of disruption. Disruption is the insane and impossible happening frequently. It takes away the other team's comfort zone.
Self has to embrace Greene the way he did Kevin finally. It is the only way this team is ever going to get to the next level defensively.
And with all the above said, Sir slayr, get ready for some more bumps and losses, as Self brings this unprecedented ensemble cast into harms way in March when they are hitting on all cylinders and dishing out insanity in necessary amounts to opponents up to now only worried about all the talent.
Rock Chalk!
@drgnslayr; a funny post, wish I could take credit for it. :-)
Just so everyone is clear, jaybate 1.0 did not post this.
I do believe this is a duplicate post of slayr's.
@drgnslayr: thanks for THAT link. What a cool idea for them to add a special practice test taking room for surrogate test takers of SATs. Even better, isn't it cool that they pulled it off without Cal knowing about it. :-)
Just joking UK fans. I was just recalling what Cal didn't know about surrogate SAT test taking at Memphis and extrapolating it in Lexington for comedy.
Joking aside, you are right about things getting competitive about infrastructure.
Nike and UK vs. adidas and KU.
It reminds me of Richard Petty and MOPAR battling Cale Yarbrough (or was it David Pearson?) and FOMOCO in stock car racing back in the 1960s.
Richard gets a 426 hemi.
Cale gets a 427 wedge.
Richard gets a Plymouth Super Bird.
Cale gets a Talladega Torino.
The only way FOMOCO and MOPAR could end it was to agree to back away from unlimited sponsorship.
Hopefully, KU will get a full allotment of goodies before Nike and adidas call it off, if this were in fact going on.
"Prayer for globaljay and Woodrow"
Woodrow saw globaljaybird and his family through thick and thin,
Spare him and them from the pain they are in.
If it is his time, then let him run long and play soon in the fields of The Lord.
But if he were spared by your infinite grace to live among them another spring;
Then let him lie down without pain at Globaljay's feet this winter again,
And bring love and devotion among his family and him.
Amen.
@globaljaybird, what is the word on their newly eligible player, Javon something? Is he a difference maker that could make them a substantially tougher out?
@bskeet--copy and paste. And thanks for collecting the headlines and for what your write, too.
@lincase: Great to hear from you and glad you weighed in. We are making this up as we go and I am no longer first string here. I am glue back up to ralster, HEM, slayr, global, konkey, ict, bskeet, approx, JayhawkFanToo, et al. I am just trying to leave what little I have left on the threads. slayr and HEM carried the board on their backs for several months and global and lulu glued. I finally threw off my medically-induced rouge smoking jacket a couple months ago and started limping around in the paint here with my keyboard in a mind-boot, while the rest of them kept rim ramming over my head. I owe everyone a debt of gratitude for helping me through my difficult stretch. As did you, I kept reading while I was not posting. But bottom line, without Approx and Bskeet stringing this instrument, slayr and HEM would not have been able to tune it for the rest of us to play on and you and I would not have gotten the chance to come late to the ongoing scrimmage. Hope you keep reading and writing as the spirit of the living myth moves you. Rock Chalk!
P.S.: Jesse Newell moved to the CJOnline.com and does does his live blog of games there as a duo with Ben Ward and Kevin Haskins occasionally, plus Jesse writes a lot of column inches of high quality pre-game and post-game QA that you really can't get elsewhere. A number of board rats here, but by no means most, go there to chat most games. There are also a bunch of other familiar names from Newell's old live blog. Newell reached out to the board members here, which I respected. He gets interactivity. He gets the quantitative aspect of the game better than almost anyone outside of those running stat web sites full time, plus he has frequent access to the greatest coach in the game today, which is something even the full time quants running the stat web sites lack. So: JNew is in a unique position to blend QA of the pro quants with access to the games greatest coach today, to gain insights into KU basketball that cannot be got elsewhere. He valves what he gets in both stories and in games on the blog. Ask him a question, and while savvy enough not to shoot himself in the foot, he is apt to tell you what he can and apt to say "I don't know" if he doesn't." This makes his work data rich, insightful, and as close to REAL TIME news as the sports internet is currently capable of delivering for KU hoops lovers. Really, others do live blogs, and others do stats, and others have access to coaches, but he is the only one stop shopping willing to reach out to sports fans and connect doing all of the above. His work is really the only thing new under the sun in sports reporting and broadcasting in the internet age that I have found. And like all new things in mosh pit of internet sports journalism, it needs calling attention to, or it will be missed and not supported. I try to beat the drum for what Newell does, because: a) I like the insight QA enables into the human accomplishments and sacrifices coaches and players make; b) I like there him being a triple threat (Self access, Q&A/strategy, humanity); and c) I was young once and surrounded by a status quo that resisted the obvious innovations young men are put on this earth to make. I can't do much for him at my age given my amateur status, but I can at least call attention to it here and there. Every pro jour no has to eat and JNew cannot keep providing the QA and strategy and straight shooting unless people click and read him. So: click on his stories every day, if you can. Every click helps. And, no, I am no relation to him, nor have I ever met him. I am not knocking other pro journos either. Everyone covering the Jayhawks seems to be doing a good job. But JNew is trying something new that needs some love. If we don't give it to him, he will have to fall in line with the others doing meat and potatoes of status quo sports journalism: game summary, PR stories, HumInt, man bites dog click stimulators, etc. All the pro journos want to write more substantial stuff, but their media strategists and their market research tells them that least common denominator sells. And it does. But in the internet age, there are market niches, too. And these market niches can be grown, just as sports journalism was once a market inch of mainstream journalism that was grown into it own large thing over time. Most things are sensitively dependent on initial conditions. Support JNew now, and you will support the concept of his triple threat reporting and the bough will be bent the right way. In the long run, it will make sports journalism grow richer and more interactive for the owners of media, for the pro journos, for the mass readership (what little of it remains during the great disaggregation of reader markets we are witnessing), and for the online communities of sports fans. As always, I am for everyone winning when it comes to economics. Rock Chalk!
@drgnslayr: exactly!
@ralster: I would rather have 5star, or OAD point guard than either near Towson PG Frank Mason, or Deandre-bait Naadir Tharpe. My preferred PG would MSU's PG, or boeheim's guy, if I have to settle short. I would rather have had Marcus Teague than Tyshawn, after I saw them head to head. And I surely would have preferred DRose to RR, Sherron and Chalmers. But since most teams cannot fill all five slots with the best guys at every position the deciding factor almost always is: can your great players meet, or beat their great players, AND AT THE SAME TIME compensate for your weak links. When you have an incomparable defender like Rush he can compensate even when Chalmers and Julian run into guys they cannot handle, which both ran into. Another example was the Florida team with at slow footed trey gunner that Taurean, Horford and Noah triangulated to cover for all the way to two straight rings..
My point remains: in basketball, you are not as strong as your weakest link, rather, you are as strong as your strong links' abilities to compensate for your weak links. The better your weak links are the less there is to compensate for. Tharpe may be the toughest compensation problem Self has faced, because he is a weak link at PG, but the guys last year compensated for EJ with one knee most of the season; so Embiid, Selden and Wiggins should have the talent, if not the skill this season to compensate for Tharpe AND Mason. Tough job , but great players can do it.
I gotta go with Black this game. Played so well he may have to be moved into starting rotation. Second straight game he became the team's center of gravity. Our only big not just making plays but with a big man's sense of territoriality. Joel got his double double the last 5 minutes when WVU quit guarding him to press back court. Joel was the reason we needed Black to step up! Realize this is about floor burns, not just great play, but Black stood in against a lot of tonnage and a lot of length in the paint, when Joel and Perry couldn't. If Black's wheel holds up, we are looking at a 20-25 minute man. 15-20 spelling Joel and 5-10 spelling Perry. He and Joel could totally over power certain teams by themselves. But the ankle?
@ralster: frankly, Selden and Wiggins defenses are a big part of Tharpe's problems. Because Selden and Wiggins are so young and relatively unfanatical in their defense, i.e., because they rely so heavily on talent to compensate for skill and consistent intensity, they cannot provide the steady help that a Rush, or a Chalmers, or an RR could provide late in their careers. They play a kind of defense like their teams played in their early years, when they were good enough to win conference titles on talent, but then get bounced early by distinctly inferior, but highly motivated "teams".
Notice that everyone of Naa's bad games coincides with Selden and Wiggins having their hands full guarding their men and not being able to help Naa, or Selden and Wiggins simply not showing up at all. And Selden and Wiggins have not showed up frequently so far this season. The team would have lost another 3-5 games had not Embiid developed as a rim protector to cover up the games that Selden and Wiggins phoned it in with talent and no intensity, or skill.
As the season progresses, Selden and Wiggins are starting to get the hang of the mind set, preparation and intensity required, but remember what happened to Rush's and Chalmer's teams their freshman seasons in the Madness. They were beaten by a team of stunningly inferior talent, but better skill, teamwork and intensity.
The key thing to remember about the Baylor game preceding the WVU game is that it was in fact Naadir Tharpe and NOT Selden, or Wiggins, that picked the team up and put it on his back, when its young super talents' confidences had been devastated by Texas.
I am not trying to be argumentative with you here.
I am trying to defend Naa here in the same way that I sought to defend Brady.
It is true in a very limited sense that when a solid player runs up against a great player the way, Travis Releford did playing against Michael Kidd-Gilchrist in the national finals, they often are in serious trouble and their team often cannot compensate for them at the highest levels of competition.
But in my memory there has never been a team without a player in its rotation that did not eventually run into a mismatch. What separates the great teams from the not so great teams is can their great players compensate for that mismatch. This is why it was always wrong to site Brady as the problem with those teams. And that is why it wrong to site Naa as the problem with this team. If Frank Mason really were decisively net better than Naa in making the team reach its potential, Frank would already be playing most of the PT. The same was true of Brady. Self had to have understood and judged that Brady's limitations were easier to compensate for than Travis's or EJ's in their early stages of development.
The key to this team is NOT Naadir Tharpe's limitations. They are a given. The key is Selden, and Wiggins and Embiid's (an now perhaps Tarik's) abilities to compensate for Naa's shortcomings. And clearly, so far, Selden and Wiggins are struggling mightily in compensating for Naa once the competition at their own positions begins to tax them even a little.
Always the fault of losing, just as the virtue of winning, comes down to your best players. The best players have to be able to do what needs to be done, when the lesser players can't do it. And this is why great players are not just great talents. Great talents are ante to the game of building "winning teams", but the great talents must possess competitive greatness sufficient to compensate for their less talented teammates, or their is no "great team."
Embiid, Selden, and Wiggins are the only guys on this team with every game MUA and so they are the ones that have to compensate for Naa, and for Perry, who is playing out of position at the 4, if this team is to achieve greatness.
Embiid, Selden and Wiggins have to make up for the nights when the bench can't bring it, not the other way around.
By definition lesser players are glue that hold the team together.
By definition, the most talented players have to make great plays and make great compensations.
Naa should not be held responsible for the short comings of these three great players.
They have to step up, when Naa, and Perry, cannot, or else they are not great players.
I am always quick to point out that Michael Jordan is not the greatest player to ever play the game. Bill Russell was by every team statistic. Wilt was by every individual statistic. But Michael Jordan was the greatest 2-3 player that ever lived, because when he put his mind to compensating for his perimeter teammates, there was no one else that ever came close to being able to tip the balance always to his team down the stretch of any game. That is why he is the gold standard in what perimeter players need to aim for.
Selden and Wiggins need to watch some tapes of Michael.
Embiid needs to watch some tapes of Russell.
Then they need to go out and save Naa and Perry every time they need saving.
Rock Chalk!!!!
@HighEliteMajor, a problem with not having as much talent, length, motor as others, is that one has to play (forgive the metaphor stacking) at the edge of one's envelope in order to look good. Any fall off from the emotional edge needed to be at one's best leaves a player with lesser talent looking indifferent, or bad.
We see this with Perry. We see this with Frank. We see this with Jamari. It is not new either. We saw this with Brady. And so on back.
The envelope limitation also manifests with injury. Joel can play on the knee, but he cannot dominate. He can get up sometimes, but not most times. And when the opponent exploits his weaknesses, he is slow to adjust, or cannot adjust. And when he gets fouled up, he cannot really play very well with the fouls. And he never really looks very good until a stretch of the game, like the end of yesterday's gam where the defense practically began to ignore him in pursuit of pressuring the ball in back court. The list of injury limited envelopes is now long at KU. EJ had to everything perfect for him to have a good game by the time he had "healed" late in his senior season. Travs Releford had to give up his high flying ways and adopt "an old man's game." Kaun went from a guy that could run the floor and rebound to a guy finally that never cleared the floor, muscled, guarded the post and never looked for a rebound, or a shot that he had to jump for.
Your break down is thorough, accurate and informative. Not much to add to it. But I do want to explore the origins of what you describe.
The origins are: leg length, newness at starting, and teammates.
"1. Leg Length:"
Clearly, Naa started out with one of the most visible limitations a Self player can have: short legs. Short legs on a short body with an average or long neck guaranty an acutely short drop step. Against a good point guard that can read footwork like cruise missile reads terrain, a short drop step always requires one of two compensations:
a) sag way off until you don't get blown by but you can't guard the trey, get over the top of the screens, or disrupt passing lanes; or
b) crowd the baseline hand, guard the trey and wave at your defender as he drives by and you hope help arrives (this works only if you have a great rim protector like Joel when healthy, or a fabulous wing defender willing to forego his offense to guard his man AND your man).
These two bad outcomes of short legs are why there is in effect a natural selection process in basketball that by Division 1 level tends to produce a bunch of long-legged, short-trunked athletic freaks. This selection toward the long-legs with monster drops steps and slides then creates a basketball ecology that is especially lethal to a player like Tharpe, no matter how much he Hudy-izes his legs and footwork.
I must digress here for compare and contrast with Tyrel Reed. Tyrel was 6-3 to 6-4 and gangly and a bit slow footed his first two seasons at KU. He was a much better trifectate than Naa, but he had every bit as much trouble guarding guys, because though he had a long slide and a long drop step, he lacked the leg strength and upper body strength that enables one to make that first drop step/slide with lightening quickness and completely eliminates the second drop step and makes turn and burn an abstract concept never to be witnessed.
But give Tyrel three years with Hudy and countless hours of monomaniacal training and, voila, Tyrel, though he did not pass the eye test, could guard almost anyone at the trey stripe and guard the driver WITHOUT a great rim protector behind him all the time, and without much help. Why? Because once properly muscled, he had the leg length to be a sound perimeter defender on a 2 and in a pinch on a point guard, plus he had the mental tenacity of a defender, plus, luckily for Tyrel, a 40" vertical that allowed him go up with those he turned and burned to catch and so harass from behind near the rim. All sound perimeter defenders have these basic abilities in D1.
Naa lacks a long drop step. Naa needs a rim protector AND wing help in order to stay on the floor. Naa also has to be emotionally on edge to get the most out of what he does have. If he isn't the fall off is nonlinear.
Self as the kind of long wing defenders and rim protector that can compensate for Naa. But Naa needs to be on an emotional edge, or the compensation will merely leave him undistinguished on both ends. And if rim protections wains, or one, or both of the wings has their hands full guarding their own man and so can offer little help, while Naa is off "the edge", then Naa look horrible.
Obviously, no player can be on "the edge" every game. And some players are more up and down than others in terms of intensity and focus. Naa appears to be a bit more up and down than some, but hardly most. Still, when Naa is down, and Joel is injured, and Selden, or Wiggins, have their hands full, a bad game for Naa is almost inevitable. The only thing that can avoid it is him getting up on an emotional edge and playing an opponent that does not surprise him with new defensive looks he has not gotten comfortable with yet.
"2. Newness at Starting"
All fans need to constantly remind themselves that even if Naa were not dealing from a short leg deck, he would still be in his first season as a starting point guard and he would still be seeing new defenses almost every game, especially against teams with exceptional coaches.
To wit: it is probably no coincidence that Naa has played poorly in his first meeting with Rick Barnes and Texas, and Bob Huggins and WVU, while he played exceptionally well in his second meeting with Scott Drew and Baylor. Naa is not physically gifted enough to compensate for "new stuff" run at him offensively, or "new stuff" run to defensively. Few except the most talented athletes are. This is not really a knock on Naa at all. Quite the contrary, the small N tendency so far this season is that if Naa gets a second look at a team, he does well against it. (same with Perry Ellis, too).
Naa has a head coach and staff that don't like to make adjustments during a first half. They like to make them at half time. Thus, if Naa confronts something he has not seen before, and he lacks MUA (as he usually does), he is going to have very rough sledding for that first half at the very least. Help does not come from the bench till half time, along with a heavy weight chewing out. Thus he comes out the second half and sometimes looks much better, because Self has figured out a counter. But while Self is remarkable strategist and tactician at half time, he is not the greatest at adjusting during the second half to what "new stuff" an exceptional coach throws at him the second half. Thus, if Self guesses wrong at half time about counter measures, and if the opposing coach is exceptionally skillful at his own counter measures, Naa is in deep trouble the second half too.
There is no substitute for great talent at any position. Just as tactics can save bad strategy, great talent can save bad tactics and bad strategy. This is why all coaches want all the great players they can get, and work endlessly at trying to figure out schemes that mask their less talented players.
Self is in the peculiar position of having to mask a point guard with a sharp defensive weakness in order to get his relative maturity, ball handling and trey shooting in the game, something his team of L&As needs desperately against LSAs like SDSU, Texas, and so on. But I digress.
Naa is going to get much much better as the season goes on each time he gets the next new scheme thrown at him behind him. Bob Huggins, a future hall of fame coach, threw a 2-1-2 stretch (or what some might call a trapping 1-3-1 half court press against KU that Naa had not seen and that largely flummoxed Self, too. Self never did think to put trey shooters in the baseline corners, which is one of the most egregious tactical errors I have seen him make in ten years at KU. Naa could hardly be blamed for his usually clever coach doing the equivalent of sending his team over the top in trench warfare into hopeless odds time after time down the floor in what turned out to be Huggins and Self having a little mano a mano test of which coach's team could gut out a win without trey shooters, and without any maneuver at all. It was bizarre to watch these two great coaches default into this philosophical grudge match. The only thing I can figure is that Self was trying to prove a point to future coaches that would try to exploit Naa and KU the way Huggins was doing. Go ahead, Self seemed to be saying, we are going to nip this strategy in the bud here and now. We will not change a lick and we will beat this strategy the hard way, so future opponents are tempted into using it. Only time will tell if Self were right or wrong, but one thing is for certain: Self probably got caught off guard and probably could not think of a good counter tactic in the moment, or he probably would have used it when the game got to nearly tied with 5 to go.
"3. Naa's Teammates"
Naa is not the captain of a bunch of throat slitting brigands that erupt in rages at the thought of being laughed at. This team has no high gear of rage at all. These players hardly show any emotion at all. And they have had their butts kicked around so much that they don't show much swagger any more either. They are increasingly work man like and neutral in their approach to games. They really don't like contact, or violence. They frankly run from it, even though they can dish some muscle out from time to time. It is a team that claims to have great chemistry, but that chemistry appears to be the kind that is rooted in parallel play of digital age children that don't make a lot of eye contact, or shuck and jive even a lick. We are in short in unchartered team psychology here. It is not just that they are new together. It is that they have a superstar that is a reserved Canadian; a budding superstar center from Cameroon who having tasted the kind of violence he attracts in D1 would now rather fight a lion, a couple easterners in Selden and Naa that have not a shred of prairie populist fire in their gizzards; a Chi guy not that far removed from living in abandoned cars, a hick from French Lick Kansas, a great man mountain of an intellectual in Tarik, a dashing southerner with a wild hair in Brannen; and perhaps the most internal, stoic human being from Wichita ever to play the game of basketball. This group of Jayhawks are each "characters" in the traditional Self mode, but they are characters that Self has no clue about how to meld into a band of fire breathing defensive fanatics. It is like Self finds himself in charge of a team full of furiously committed trappist monks each zealously committed to individual prayer, when not mashing the grapes, rather than a loud, coarse bunch of reformed hooligans committed to kicking ass and taking names later in order to get some respect in this world. But Self's monks are fantastically talented in their own ways, just not at all precedented among great teams in college basketball. Self is confronted with trying to get the Anime generation on the same page of Henry Iba Ball 10.0 and is doing it pretty much on dead reckoning. If Self were ever getting bored with the challenge of college coaching, this team most certainly has put an end to his boredom. Self frankly has little clue about this team's buttons. He pushes them and gets more or the video game stare that he already had. Self rants in Okie, Norm rants in Bed Stuy, Jerrance rants in Chi, and Andrew Wiggins says, "Well, yes, you do sound a lot like my father, but not the least like the Canadian English I grew up speaking and, really, is all of this necessary. I jump the same height with or without this ranting. I make the same percentage with or without the ranting. We don't act this way in Ontario." And Joel is kind of the opposite. He is trying to respond to everything the coaches say, because his father is a military type in a continent where starvation, genocide, ebola, and some wild game really do exist, even if you grow up on the right side of the power struggles to control Africa and play a mean game of volleyball and soccer. But Joel is saying, "What exactly does it mean to be named Snacks? What exactly does it mean to say Hide Yo Kidz! Why exactly if they smash me on the floor and nearly crack my skull wide open am I not able to blatantly do the same thing back again, and what is it with my teammates lack of fire and reserved speech?" And Perry is walking around saying " I do to like to talk" after which he returns to not conversing.
Naa has a very difficult team to orchestrate. It is like being the general of a multinational force of computer game freaks that consider diversion from computer games to be surfing YouTube. This is a team of parallel players being forced into a harsh athletic world of 7-8 prison bodies out to escape poverty. Naa has the difficult job of trying to strike the right balance of exhortation and calm that will stimulate them out of their parallel play, but not overstimulate them into Turn Over machines.
Frankly, Naa deserves a flipping medal for how far he has brought this team, because Self sure as hell hasn't got much of a clue either about how to make a team out of a bunch of parallel players. It is not that any of them are not committed to team. They do love each other. It is that they are from a remotely connected, Blue Toothed generation that is going to change the way the world works more profoundly than any other generation before it. Naa is a part of it and yet being asked to bridge the old world with the new.
God, this is what makes basketball so great. It is the bridge of cultures. It is the bridge of generations. It is the bridge of greater talent and lesser talent. It is the bridge of life itself.
Ad astra per aspera!!!!
The epigram that never loses relevance.
EVER!!!!!!!
jaybate intelligence estimate
To: Board Rats
From: jaybate
RE: WVU THREAT LEVEL--HIGH
Bob Huggins team last season was one of his rare bad ones. He rebuilt his team this season and it looks like he designed it specifically to beat KU. Three combos and two bigs. The combos play a lot of minutes. The bigs are two deep. This WVU is modeled after SDSU and Florida and to lesser degree Texas. It is big, brawny, deep, and has long and strong guards. Couple this with Huggins thug ball and this means the threat level for an upset of KU is HIGH, I REPEAT HIGH.
WVU plays a 9 man rotation, which takes away KU's favorite device: using depth to wear down and foul up opponents.
WVU plays four freshman bigs standing 6-9 to 6-10 and weighing 230 to 255. This takes away much of KU's edge inside. Specifically, WVU will have a small matchup problem with Embiid, if Embiid were healthy (which remains to be seems), but it also means that Perry Ellis could easily be neutralized playing two guys bigger and heavier than himself. Tarick Black could be critical to this game, because of his size and weight. Jamari Traylor could have problems impacting much. KU bigs are more skilled and athletic than WVU's but if KU's bigs thought Texas was rough, they ain't seen nuttin' yet.
At PG, Huggins starts 6-1 190 Juwan Staten and plays him 37 mpg and backs up with 6-1 player. Staten will be a very tough matchup for Tharpe and we are likely to see a lot of Mason, because Staten will not tire easily.
At 2 guard, Huggins starts 6-3 195 Eron Harris and plays him 30 mpg. Selden, or Wiggins have the height on this guy, but will have trouble with his speed.
The 3 with 6-4 200 Terry Henderson is where KU has a big edge if Wigs plays the 3. But 6-7 Remi Dibo lets Huggs get long at the 3 when needed. Still, the 3 seems the place to attack.
Defensively, WVU pressures, which KU still struggles with. WVU also likes for all nine rotation guys to get one strip a game and the bigs try for blocks. WVU likes to win the Disruption Stat and any team that likes to do that is trouble for KU, if KU fails to protect, because KU doesn't disrupt much. Likely Self will try to amp up KU's defense some to compensate, but bottom line, WVU will muddy this game up and apply the muscle.
Offensively, somethings never change. Bob will still be running his father's weird old variation on the shuffle offense that Huggs and Frank Martin ran at KSU before each departed.
Bottom line, this is the kind of team that can give KU fits. It denies KU's edge inside and puts pressure on KU's perimeter player, all the while muscling.
I'm still not sure KU can handle this sort of team.
WVU started slowly, because their freshman bigs have been slow developing, but they are starting to get the hang of it.
If Embiid and Black only 75% of normal health, WVU may win.
If Embiid and Black are full title boogie, then KU should win.
Home court will be important for KU, but SDSU proved that if you put enough muscle on KU in AFH, the home court advantage vaporizes.
Devin Williams is Huggs go to guy inside.
Eron, Dibo and Henderson are the trifectates on the perimeter. PG Staten takes very few treys.
6-9 Nathan Adrian likes to step out and take the trey, also.
WVU's slow start, while Huggs fit in the freshman, makes them underestimated.
KU better watch out.
P.S.: if Joel has to play hurt the rest of the season, there LIKELY will come a game or two in the madness where KU WILL NEED Wigs to beast for 40. Best get one under his belt before then for practice!
I don't understand the line of reasoning that Self players don't beast offensively.
Julian, who couldn't shoot a lick went off for 30+ once or twice, didn't he? And Wigs HAS to be more dominant than Julian, right? And Julian's teams had Rush and Chalmers.
BenMac went off for 30+ a couple times and Wigs has got to be better than BenMac, right?
Heck, poor old Bad Mouthed EJ went off for 39 once. Surely Wigs is more dominant than and so more likely to beast for at least 39 than EJ, right?
I sense you aliases are kind of underestimating and making excuses for Wigs good but not great numbers so far this season. Imagine if Wilt had put up Andrew's numbers so far. Would anyone even remember Wilt?
I am more optimistic about Wigs than some of you. I think that line of Wigs in the Baylor game was pretty weak for a player of his caliber. I think a lot of his lines have been pretty weak. But I think he has gotten better and he was just slumping with the transition from 3 to 2. Change is hard. Wilt and Danny never had to make such a big change. But the change, change, it will do him good, as Sheryl used to sing. And I think Wigs is going to find himself at 2 and start fulfilling expectations with a few offensive beasts (unless he has been hurt all along, which is always possible).
Go, Andrew, go!
Show these over protective aliases you can still soar now that you know how rough D1 really is!
Beast for 40!
Rock Chalk!
The point that building a Wichita-KU Rivalry could generate some cash appeals. It might also be fun, like a UK-UL game. It could be a good game, too.
Since the Louisville-UK rivalry (LKR) is brought up as a model, let's consider this model for comparability in order to decide if we should use it as a model for KU.
City of Louisville is a nationally recognized high school basketball recruiting hotbed. Wichita is not.
The state of Kentucky produces a lot of D1 recruits each year, Kansas does not.
The state of Kentucky and both schools are in the EST which means their rivalry will be hyped for EST where the most recruits and eyeballs and clicks are. KU-WSU is in a part of the CST where few recruits, eyeballs and clicks are and would not have strong appeal to major CST markets like Chicago and Texas.
Hyping the LKR promotes regional interest in the schools in neighboring basketball recruiting hot beds in the Ohio Valley. KU-WSU would not that I can see.
UL and UK have long split the best in-state recruits. KU has increasingly gotten most of the best in-state recruits.
KU has to think about national recruiting exposure in everything it does. To do that it has to market itself in EST, TEXAS, CHICAGO and SOCAL every chance it can. A rivalry with WSU does not promote that, just as a rivalry wihth KSU does not.
The way to create a rivalry with WSU is to add them to the B12, but they would have to bring enough TV market revenue to offset the diluting effect in tv share per school. If, say, the a major donor were to invest heavily in building a 60k football stadium, a football program, and 15-20k basketball arena, for WSU, then the Big12 might admit them and KU might approve. And then the rivalry might flourish. But I don't see that happening.
Really, this is a no brainer in terms of basketball and marketing. Playing Wichita State would be a waste of a game, if we could schedule a good team in a big TV market instead. And we can, because we are a reliable brand that wins 80% a year and increasingly brings hyped players that draw crowds that fill arenas and hold eyeballs and get clicks. A home and home with an MVC team? I don't think so.
Next. KU HAS long appeared to have its successes under reported and it's failures over reported by eastern media like ESPN.
Logically, broadcaster behavior is not being debated.
Finally, I don't see what the Forbes imaginary program value estimates have to do with KU's apparent asymmetric treatment by eastern media.
@drgnslayr , I think Self's move of Wiggins to the two is his first step in moving in the direction that you would like to see. We are soon going to begin to see him impacting Games in the fashion of BenMac coming off screens and some cutting through the clutter. Andrews days of having to mix it up with strong 3s and helping with bigs are fading. Self has apparently decided that Silden can do that better. And that Wiggins can create from the two better than Selden. I think the move makes a lot of sense. Of course, I am biased because I called for it on the heels of you advocating for more Kobe style game for Andrew.
Oh, and with Joel's production and mpg reduced from playing injured with a brace, it seems to shift the burden of scoring to fewer players and more to the perimeter, where Andrew plays. Lastly, Self seems in process of shifting Andrew to the 2 where he should have even greater MUA for scoring and less muscle and fatigue on defense. It all seems to point to some monster Kobe kinds of games sometime soon.
KU's offense has seemed to be getting less and less diversified each game recently. There tends to be one guy that gets going and Self plAys through him, so no this idoes not appear to be shaping up as a spread it around every game team like in '08. Rather, this team takes turns with players having big games. Soooooo that's why I was thinking a great scorer who has been up to 29 already while trying to learn the ropes, might have a monster game.
And players having one or two monster scoring games in a career has been a phenomenon of self Ball most years. So since Andrew is arguably the most talented perimeter scorer Self has had, it only seems logical that he would explode for a much bigger game than 29.
Wiggins is clearly in a slump the last two games. He let it get to him in Austin. He fought through it and helped the team in other ways in Waco. So he is going to come out of it sometimes over the next 3-4 games.
Andrew has scored as many as 29 points without really taking a game over. He puts his prints all over a game or two, but he has yet to explode like BenMac did, or for that matter like EJ did. I believe Andrew will do so. I believe he has a tremendous amount of energy building up in him. I believe the learning curves of playing Self Ball with the team and of just how tough it gets in D1 are starting to level off and so from here on it is just a matter of time before he transcends a game.
I say its 3 games from now.
@wissoxfan83 They are in an eye ball and click bidness. Period. Which ever programs can generate the most eyeballs get the most KY Jelly. If KU joined the ACC, Self would be national coach of the year most years.
I've said for quite awhile now that the Big 12 needs an EST footprint for WVU to be in. Then KU needs to market itself as America's team. This is the other way Self can be coach of the year each year.
But in the final analysis, Self is getting the big paychecks, he is respected by everyone that knows a lick about the game, and life is going to go on at the Father of All College Basketball programs. Period.
So.
Next. :-)
"Out witting Scott Drew at coaching is like outwitting Rebel Wilson at dieting."
--jaybate
KU has had to play second fiddle to over rated teams in the Eastern standard time zone for decades. Being as good as those teams, or nearly as good, was never enough for KU to get treated with respect by media. It was not until Self's 10 year run of absolutely phenomenal success on top of Williams 15 years of phenomenal success that KU began to get treated nearly equally. And even now, there is no doubt that ESPN and CBS broadcasters favor teams from the Eastern standard time zone. And it appears that the NCAA seeding committee often favors teams from the Eastern standard time zone still. If Wichita State wants to be considered the equal of KU, then they need to stop knocking KU and start winning at 80% for the next 25 years, plus go to several more final fours, plus win a ring. If they have a beef, direct it at the national media and the NCAA seeding committee, not at KU. KU faces the same obstacles Wichita State does. KU just wins one hell of a lot more and for a lot longer! Next.
"Enough talking heads spoil a game."
--jaybate 1.0
HEADLINE WIN!
BEAUTIFUL WIN!
THARPE PUTS SUPERSTARS ON BACK .
SELF'S TURN TO BELIEVE.
WIGGINS LONGEST TREY!
THE DESIGNER BECOMES HAUT REBOUNDIER!
TARICK: BOOT OFF, KICKS BEARS
DREW DRAWN AND QUARTERED!
TRAYLOR EXPOSES BAYLOR
MASON AND GREENE QUIET, TO EXPLODE NEXT TIME
WHITE OUT OF SIGHT, NOT OUT OF MIND
TEAM FUTURE HANGS BY LIGAMENTS
EMBIID, BLACK JOIN KAUN, LITTLE, REED, JOHNSON, SELBY IN PLAY-THROUGH HALL OF FAME
I am going to agree and disagree with slayr's persuasive take.
I am going to agree that the game is slipping into a new equilibrium strategy; i.e., if the refs are going to determine the game with fouls, then you are playing the refs as much as the opponent and so you want get the most FT by driving and by flopping. I also concur that the amount of the fouls called on the guy guarding the driver is forcing the big into ever more creative (and more sudden) XTReme Muscle fouling that is NOT being called.
So:where do I disagree?
I disagree that it was not broke; that basketball officiating was working the past several season.
The past several seasons saw a fairly steady decline in scoring, because every offender was being body checked and bludgeoned on most plays. It also also the corresponding emergence of the low skill, high bulk, butcher baller reach a zenith. And there was the rise of XTReme Cheap Shotting as a counter measure for the hand checking and body checking. And there was the predictable stretches of the half where the whistle was swallowed to fit the game back in a short broadcast window. So: we witnessed the utterly bizarre phenomenon of two teams feeling each other out like prize fighters for 5 minutes while the refs called a few fouls to feel like they were setting the tone for the game, only to have the two coaches signal their teams that it was time to take the gloves off for the next 5-8 minutes while the refs swallowed their whistles to make sure the game fit in the broadcast window; then when the game had been sufficiently shortened, then the foul calling started up again. And so on. THE GAME WAS UTTERLY BROKEN, BECAUSE THE OFFICIALS WOULD NOT CALL THE GAME BY THE RULES.
Now back to this season.
The broadcast windows appear to be stretched to allow the extra length of games where more fouls were going to be called. But this season the refs call the game incredibly tight outside and around the man with the ball. And the coaches respond by adapting ball driving strategies geared to force the refs to call lots of fouls. With both teams scheming to force the refs to call fouls, the total fouls called quickly stretch the game out to the edge of the new broadcast window. So: what happened? The coaches quickly realize that at some point once again the refs have to swallow their whistles on certain kinds of fouls, or the games will never get over. Since the refs have been explicitly instructed to curb the fouling on the ball, the coaches have adopted a strategy of drawing fouls on the ball and fouling ever more egregiously away from the ball.
Tied up in this is also the flopping phenomenon, but also something more undesirable. Since referees are human the more situations you can create for them where they have to make a choice between a call with a positive, or indifferent crowd response, and a harshly negative response, the more chances their are to use the current on ball foul calling and the current off ball non fouling calling to your advantage.
In previous seasons, there was only two switches on a single variable: not calling fouls at all versus calling fouls. This favored the home team some.
But now there are two switches on two variables. There is on off for off ball fouling. And there is on for on ball fouling. This means the ref is being confronted with way more foul call choices than last season. And each tie the call is not cut and dried, the ref subconsciously favors the home crowd.
So: what are we to infer from this?
First, all rules changes trigger a new equilibrium strategy between coaches.
Second, coaches will always bend the rules as far as they can.
Third, you do not want to create rules changes that force the referees into even more non cut and dried calls, or more minutes of the game where they have to look the other way.
Right now, what is going on is that coaches are figuring out that refs are largely looking the other way the entire game on off ball fouls in order to fulfill their precept of calling the on ball game much more tightly.
Things are getting egregious now on the off ball fouling and they are getting egregious in the favor of the home team, because the coaches know that the refs don't want to call ANY off ball fouls they don't absolutely have to call. So: they let a call go like the one on Embiid, because there will be no crowd furor and the game will smooth onward despite the butchery, but they call the egregious fouls by the road team.
In turn, coaches adapt by fouling more egregiously at home and less egregiously on the road, except when they finally decide they HAVE to dish out pain and then they REALLY lower the boom.
I am not so sure anything terrible will happen in the Madnness. It will be an exaggerated version of the regular season vices, just as in the past it has been an exaggerated level of whistle swallowing over the regular season. The best teams at bending the rules this season will have the biggest advantage, just as the best teams at bending the old rules had the advantage.
I still stick with my old solution which was to call the rules inside and out, on ball and off, the same from beginning to end, but set the games at fixed lengths in which the clock never stops.
I believe that will solve most of the problems and reward the most athletically gifted players and the most skilled players over the butcher ballers and the floppers.
@REHawk Also, I want to make it clear that I am not down on Perry Ellis. I just think he is struggling with the 4 role when ever he has to play it as a power 4. When Embiid was fit enough to let him roam, Perry had superb games against all but the LSAs. When the ground level cameras show him he looks quite short out their compared to some of the power 4s in height he faces. Perry is a very good ball player caught in a role that doesn't fit him, when he is playing players that can muscle his spin moves and get up and block his Js. Notice that no one else fares even as well offensively at the 4 this season. And Jamari has had flashes but nothing good sustained as long as Perry. This is a role problem. We don't have a player on the team really well suited to playing the 4 against the long and strongs. Perry right now is stuck in the same thankless role that Brady Morningstar was. Both were very good players. Both were being asked to play out of position. Both looked pretty good against a lot of the competition. But when the long and strongs showed up, both saw their contributions dwindle. The only way that I know that Self can mask Perry is to run an offense that screens his man some. But that is not very popular in Self's offensive thinking. Whatever, Perry has got to keep fighting. And he will.
@REHawk I am getting very interested in Dean's old four corner if they are going to call it tight on the perimeter and butcher ball inside. Put the guys where the fouls will be called.
@HighEliteMajor, I like your additions. Wigs is going to get hurt trying to get to the iron on a regular basis in any kind of conventional offense (see my recommendation for using he or Selden in the center of a four corner at the end). Curl screens seem the agenda for both Wigs and his backup, Brannen vs. m2m, and I have always been an advocate of screening on zones, too. The ball can be whipped around the perimeter to make the zone slide, and one post can be used to screen for the other post, or a wing. Good shooters just need a second to get the look. 2-2-1 seems necessary against the SDSU/UT types. If Joel and Ellis can't muscle with opponents and score, then it is imperative they set ball screens out of the paint, pivot and crash the boards. The days of Embiid's phenomenally quick spin moves seem over for awhile. Wiggins needs some clear outs and be allowed to put the ball on the deck, even though his dribbling is suspect, so he CAN dish to open guys. Agreed. Regarding running every opportunity, I would like to see Self signal running for 5 possessions, walk it for a couple possessions, run for 5, etc. Squeeze and release on running seems a half step this team could make. I'm afraid full on would get these guys too sped up and the opponent to used to one speed. The spine of our agreement here is that the the team suddenly has less of a power game inside, the subs don't seem ready to pick up the slack inside, and so its time to shift to speed and varying speeds and increased playing through Wiggins, Selden and Ellis on the move. Finesse the break, if you have to finesse.
One more suggestion: I was reading Dean Smith's book on basketball last night. He said they used to run the four corners whenever the other team was getting momentum. Selden and Wiggins hold enormous MUA on most of the guys that guard them one on one. They only run into trouble in crowds in the paint. My thinking is when an opponent starts to roll get the following on the floor: Embiid (if he can go), Wiggins, Selden, White and Naa (or Frankamp if he gets back). Spread the floor with three 3 point shooters but leave Embiid on a low block. Put the ball in either Selden's, or Wiggins' hands in the middle. Let either of these guys work one on one with their man, while the other is way out side with the other guys. If Wigs is working for a bucket, and the defense collapses kick to one of the trey shooters, or dish to Embiid, when Embiid's post man commits to stop Wigs (or Selden).
Or just flat out run the four corners with the same team. Its time to start getting something out of the three ball shooters collecting dust, when we have no power game, but we do have a gimpy footer that can still grab some boards for put backs.
@drgnslayr Olwell said and no disagreement. Would only add the following:
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Players must be coached in the effective way not to back down; and
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As I posted elsewhere, switching wing duties between Selden and Wiggins might help our toughness at the three, which we vitally need down the stretch.
Late in the Texas game, we began to see Wiggins playing the role of the two on offense, so that Selden could get down and concentrate on being the initiating scorer from the wing 3. I hope this continues and that Seldon takes over more of the defensive duties of helping the bigs in the paint. Selden seems more competitive.
For what it's worth, I advocated moving Wiggins to the two earlier this season, but at the time, I wasn't sure what to do with sold. I wasn't sure he could play the three. But now it appears that he can. It will be interesting to see if self continues the experiment. It would make Brannen a natural back up for the 2 role as played by Wiggins. And the way Selden would play the three, it would White quite a good back up at the three.
Rock chalk!
@drgnslayr , The art of all disciplines is timeless. Craft and technique, however, evolve and make comparisons problematic, but still sometimes informative. Mahan did a decent job of this for naval strategy and tactics , even though his book was reputedly developed largely as a rationalization for building a two ocean navy for the Harrimans, Morgans, Rockefellers, and Rothschilds. :-)
IMHO these sorts of encyclopedic inquiries, if highly promoted, rarely emerge unless there is a big change coming that needs rationalizing. But maybe digital searching enables such unpromoted inquiries today even if not. Sounds like a good read. I will add it to my list, too.
@drgnslayr The ricks book is very much worth your reading. The conflicting points of view on generalship among generals themselves is not often discussed so extensively in a book. I would like to hear what you think of it.
Rick "Butcher" Barnes probably showed his team two KU games: Florida and SDSU. Barnes probably then said that's all it takes to beat them. The young Texas team probably followed their coaches advice. It worked. The pictures above record a very small part of it.
Board rats have forgotten that the kinder gentler Rick Barnes the last two seasons was a product of KU having had way the more toughness in players than Barnes had. The way the Texas team beat up on KU in Austin recently is the old Rick Barnes butcher ball and is why I nick named him Butcher Barnes serval years ago.
HEM has nicknamed our team the Finesse Family. It fits. So far.
Right now the finesse family is like the farmer, the wife and the sun in the legendary western "Shane." They are hard-working, honest people. They are willing to stand up to Jack Palance and the villainous land barons that hire Palance and his gang to terrorize the good farm families. But they lack the means and experience necessary to fight back effectively.
The finesse family has come far in this season. Their work ethic and skill and devotion to each other have elevated them and allowed them to immigrate into the High country of basketball--their dream. Alas, some bad actors do not want the Finesse family to live happily ever after in the High country.
The question now is does the Finesse family have a man in buckskins living in the barn behind the house, so far just doing scutt work, but capable of doing what needs to be done?
"Shane...Shane..Shaaaaaaaane!"