@KansasComet yea, Big Monday and 16k bottoms on the benches, does seem like it ought to geek someone. But if some girl is giving you the blues and making you run party to party in the night looking for her, or what have you, 19 year olds don't always see it quite as clearly as we do. :-)
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
@Blown agreed on discourse separation. But, approx has a pretty good track record so far, so I'm doing the wait and see. Regarding change, it is a female dog, but even when we decide to cast it off, we grow a little bit in the process.
As Sheryl Crow sang, "Change, change, it will do you good..." :-)
@RockChalkinTexas my bad. I meant to include Heslip. Thanks for the assist.
@KUSTEVE Best I can tell so far, Heslip seems the only Failor Bear we ought to have a speed edge on. But I hope we are faster than all of them.
@drgnslayr forgot to answer your query about the hemoglobin factor. Yes, HEM found me a marvelous jpeg of a bloodied up grail, and so I thought I better make a blood reference in my attempt at a post modern, baroque basketball iGrail.
And again a hilarious "re-purposing" of the original REHawk avatar suggestion. :-)
@JayHawkFanToo, creepy? oh, my, pre-game tension. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. :-)
@drgnslayr--howling with laughter at the hose and nozzle you apparently inserted. Love it.
What you really ought to do next is take a big Nike, or Adidas, petro-basketball shoe and insert it into the side of the shoe the same way. Now that would be an icon for the ages!!!!
P.S.: Please email REHawk which ever version he likes best. Your version with the gas pump is a little more edgy, as they say in Hollyweird.
MEMO
FROM: jaybate basketball intelligence network
TO: KUBuckets board rats
CLASSIFICATION: FOUO (for official use only)
SUBJECT: BAYLOR PRE-GAME INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Peter Principle coach with a lot of talent, as usual, rotates 9 players > 12 mpg, including 8 > 17mpg. This team can match KU's length in front court, and equal some of KU's athleticism there, too. Baylor's back court rotation is mostly longer than KU's, except for Selden. Wiggins has two inches on their wing. Baylor wins with rebounding (+10.9), shot blocking (double their opponents) 3pt shooting (39% for team with two 46-47% trinitarians), by getting to the FT line a third more, and FG defense inside. They have 5 guys over 6-7 that play. If Selden and Wiggins were to come to play, they would hold MUA at 2 and 3. Perry Ellis at 6-8 and 225 could have a good game, because he can out quick 6-8 270 Rico Gathers who only plays 18 mpg. Gathers will be a bit like the Georgetown widebodies that Perry out maneuvered. When Gathers is out, the other players are finessers like Perry--the other kind that Perry likes to play against. 7-1 Isaiah Austin can probably stay with Joel for 25mpg, but Joel seems the better rebounder and scorer. On KU water-marked paper, Joel outweighs Austin by 25 lbs; that is about as likely as Joel having killed a lion.The two giants are a wash at shot blocking. When Baylor plays well, they are very hard to beat. When KU plays well, so are they. KU's rebounding will be sorely tested by Baylor. If KU can rebound, it can match Baylor at shot blocking, and FG% defense inside. Neither team strips much. The game should come down to whether KU's long perimeter players can muzzle Baylor's great trey shooting, and whether KU can find ways to score inside when the trees are tall. Getting an edge in strips and holding down TOs could determine the winner if both teams play well.
Baylor Trey Shooters to Hound: 6-2 Heslip and 6-6 Royce O'Neale.
Key Match-ups:
Perry on Rico Gathers and Jefferson Corey: Could go either way for Perry. Either player could start blocking his shots, unless Perry is in the right tail of his aggression distribution.
Embiiid on Austin: challenging match up for newbie Joel. Austin is the first guy his size, with some athleticism, that the lion killer has faced in D1. Austin has the experience. But Embiid has "the feet." If Joel isn't cowed by having a few of his shots crammed in his face the way he does to others, then Joel's quickness could get Austin in foul trouble. They both have size. Were Joel truly 25 pounds heavier, then we should expect to see Austin get worn down as the game reaches 10 to go. But is Joel really 250? Is Perry really 6-8? Is Jam Tray really 6-7? Are Frank and Naadir really anywhere near 6-0? Was EJ really 6-4? Was Cole really 6-11? And so on.
Wiggins on Royce O'Neal: If Wigs came to play this could be the MUA to exploit.
Tharpe on Kenny Chery could be a real headache, but Tharpe has been getting enough help lately and Frank Mason could be an Advil for Chery.
On paper it should be a close game. But on wood, KU seems to be playing better than Baylor and maybe a bit more athletically. Depth looks similar, though if Traylor and Black continue to improve their tandem play in back up, KU becomes more and more invincible.
Self likely will be having his guards long pass it up the side lines to make Baylor run back, try and get some quick looks before the 2-3 is set, then make the zone slide right left right left before shooting; that should reduce the time Austin is on the floor.
Baylor is going to going to change up its defenses unless it has a lead in which case it will sit in its zone and dare KU to beat it from outside.
Word has to be getting around the league that for whatever reason, Andrew Wiggins does not like contact. Baylor has the depth to put Andrew on his but a few times, but probably won't unless he comes out strong. Wigs really did not like the face punch he got a couple games ago, so he's like to catch on of those, plus he pay as well put on skate boarding pads, if he wants to go to iron while Rico Gathers is in. Where ever Wigs slashes, Rico is apt to bare the forearm on the greatest prospect since Lebron.
(Note; Forearms to the head go with the hype. I wish to heck the Wiggins Brain Trust would shut off the hype until after the season. Self apparently prevailed upon them to turn it down for a month and Wigs started finding his way. The minute they turned it back on before the OSU game, he did the disappear-o. Wigs seems too young to be able to self-hype and play well at this stage of his development. The hype is clearly not who he is as a person, however much his talent may justify it. And getting roughed up is also clearly not who he is. If John Nash were a beautiful mind (and he was), then Andrew Wiggins is a beautiful athlete. Like Nash, Wig's extraordinary talents can take him places in youth that he is not necessarily ready to go. For god's sakes save Andrew Wiggins. I am about ready to make t-shirts with that slogan. Turn off the hype machine and just let him grow up this year and play; that was the point of the OAD think anyway. He's seems a great kid. One year without hype is not going to kill his earning power for all those that want a piece of him. And one year without hype could let him become one of the great ones. But back to the game.)
KU's Big Offensive Need for this Game: Greene, or CF, need to come in and make 3 treys this game to offset the gunners on Baylor. 1 or 2 treys are not enough. We need them to take the next step. We are very likely to see a lot of very long, stretched 2-3 zone today. This seems to favor Greene, but when 6-2 Heslip is in, Self can afford to go to CF, if Greene comes up snake eyes on his first attempt.
As usual, Self is worth 5 points on Drew.
Every game from here on out would be a great game for Andrew Wiggins to play like a #1 draft choice, instead of a guy who can't quite adjust to the roughness.
He's going to have to go into the seams on the zone a lot, work the baseline some for lobs. And he's not going to be able to get open looks on his side of the zone, unless he feeds the post and collapes the zone for a kick out. O'Neale will be on his side.
He ought to have a monster game, because there are going to be a lot of times, when he has more MUA than anyone else on our team. But he had that against OSU and disappeared from focusing on defense. Royce O'Neale is going to require his defensive attention again. Here's hoping he has reached the stage of being able to do two things at once.
Finally, Tarick Black could become a factor due to size and weight. Once Embiid and Austin exit the game, Black has a pretty big heft advantage that could translate to rebounding...if the refs are letting them play.
We will need a productive bench again, because there bench is productive.
NOTE: DESTROY AFTER READING
Second Q: will Failor start in Zone or M2M?
Deleted by the author.
@drgnslayr What we have here is a failure to reliably trifectate. :-)
@JayHawkFanToo Again, this may be telling us more about you than the ink blots. Do you have a couch where we can continue the analysis remotely? :-)
@JayHawkFanToo , this may say more about you than the avatar! Now tell us what you see in the rhorschact (sp?) ink blots tests? :-)
@approxinfinity, may I suggest amending "our daily threads" to "give us this day, our daily threads." :-)
~A sports apparel oligopoly desperate to spike sales first insists teams wear new uniforms for every game; then every half; then after every made basket--schools comply.
~A sports apparel industry even more desperate to spike sales insists teams wear newly developed tele-suits made of fiber optic fabrics that continually show jump cuts to new uniform looks interspersed with commercials showing torture images, followed by SI swimsuit models, followed by buy suggestions.
~Science discovers the secret to eternal life before Dick Vitale dies.
~Ground effects tennis shoes are invented that allow slow, fat guys to sky.
~Chips are embedded in the brains of referees, players and coaches to eliminate the risk of teams busting Vegas spreads, to keep games in windows, and to make coaches more likely to play OADs that aren't ready.
~Rapid emergence of space colonization forces Self and staff to have fly coach on Space United to control cost of in-homes on the moon, Venus and Mars.
~The gaming industry starts a real time betting line on the outcome of video reviews and within months every play is being reviewed and games last 14 days.
~Jimmy Fallon quits Tonight before appearing in a single episode to replace Bill Self, who in turn takes over the Tonight Show; Self hires his old assistants to be the house band called Jerrance and the Snacks.
~An arctic cold front bursts the water pipes in Allen Field House turning James Naismith Court into an ice rink where a hockey fight breaks out.
~D1 basketball becomes the last profit generating business in America and is quickly subjected to the management principles of Peter Drucker--in three weeks it, too, is insolvent.
~ESPN's Holly Rowe, fed up with fat jokes, reads about French dominatrix Catherine Robbe-Grillet in Vanity Fair and decides to bring some discipline to sideline reporting.
~Doug Gottlieb aka ecent anti-KU Dipstick is locked into a chastity jock by his employers at CBS and assigned to negative-cover KU full time--in three weeks he is found swimming nude in Potter's Lake with Willie the Wildcat and forecasting the end of KU basketball, as we know it, to anyone that will listen. No one does, except for a few Chi Os without dates, and when they hear his anti KU rants they ask SAEs without beer money to pelt him with party balloons filled with a solution of body hair depilatory and pledge urine. The SAEs without beer money comply. An LPD police investigation ensues. It finds there is insufficient evidence to bring charges against the SAEs, but turns over evidence to Douglas County D.A. Will Inndight, who finds Gottlieb and Willie the Wildcat broke no laws but may have violated good taste in relations between broadcasters and mascots.
~Shameless NCAA leadership moves March Madness to the Soichi Olympics site in Russia in exchange for a 10 percent cut in Putin's oilco revenues; then begins selling Putinwear--with slogans like "KGB Rules" and "Get your oil-backed rubles here" and "Ski Siberia: Its More than Just Gulags," and "Russian Hoopahs Do It in Permafrost."
~An NCAA rule change makes forearm smashes to the head worth 1 point inside the trey stripe and 2 points outside it.
~John Calipari suffers a hair fire that renders him even less aware of surrogate test taking.
~Digger Phelps uses an invisible highlighter the color of his invisible tie to telestrate crucial plays in a blacked out game.
~Tom Izzo adapts to new tighter foul calling by dispensing with making his players work out in football pads and instead buys the team tights and tutus and forces players to stand on point for hours on end.
~Stumpy Miller is given a Nike shoe box to stand on during games and can finally see well enough to win the PAC 12..
~KSU leadership decides to stay the course with Bruce Weber, despite Weber despairing and hiding in an experimental barn with a milking bucket on his head.
~David Letterman, holding out for his alma mater Ball State to win a ring, dies on stage--but audience and staff fail to notice for two and a half weeks. Ball State still does not win a ring.
~The NCAA requires all D1 players to have children out of wedlock and then to have local media spin it as a positive.
~Hype is found to cause cancer.
~Steve Alford does not come to practice at Pauley Pavillion for three weeks and no one notices but a chainsaw juggler in Venice that Steve has become inexplicably fixated on.
~Frank Haith is never positively diagnosed with cell phone addiction, but he is found to have super glued his Samsung to his right ear.
~Methamphetamine production is cracked down on in Missouri and 15,000 Tiger fans with cracked teeth begin cracking Sudafed on camp stoves in the stands during games.
~To stop his Tulsa Hurricane's losing ways, Danny Manning tries The Hair Club for Men, but accidentally checks the box for a "Dr. Phil Style" instead of a "Bill Self Style."
~ESPN's Andy Katz is found to have been living conjugally with a Maine Coon since 2007,
~Clark Kellog gets lock-jaw, but then is successfully treated and cured.
~El Nino and sun spots trigger the unintended consequence of making young coaches want to model Scott Drew--incompetence goes epidemic.
~Jim Boeheim denies he suffers from narcolepsy; but then sleep-coaches his way to another ring.
~Cin quits telling Bill to enjoy the process.
(Note: Obviously all fiction. No malice.)
@Blown: you experience less anxiety in AFH than on the Tube for the following reasons:
a) TV is designed to condition you with paradox, then pain and pleasure stimuli, followed by a consume suggestion, whereas AFH, while an environment now highly designed to make you contribute to fan noise is not designed to paradox you, and deliver you pain and pleasure stimuli with a consume suggestion;
b) you are participating in and editing your experience, rather than having it parsed up and fed to you in bytes beyond your control;
c) you are renewed by renewing a connection with an aspect of your own legacy that you recall fondly--direct, bodily participation in the living myth of KU basketball (i.e., the pilgrimage effect); and
d) rekindling of the long dormant mating search; i.e., the visceral search for flesh and blood, imperfect, but truly nubile babes and occassionally finely kept women of experience populated in unusually high densities that you could actually chat up if the spirit moved you, if you were to follow them out to the concourse at half time;
There are other reasons, but they pale in comparison. :-)
@drgnslayr Let's go sick'em!
@drgnslayr : just a great flipping post!
"He is one of the shortest guys on our team, but when we needed him most, he played some tall basketball!"
Best flipping sentence you ever wrote. I gauge these things by how much it makes me want to strap'em up and go play. I'm out in front of a basket in a snow storm finishing this reply! I'm too old to be doing this, but if I gotta go it might as well be with ball in hand!
Rock Chalk!
Starting Tuesday, copy and paste. Today and tomorrow the guys have got to be recharging getting geeked by the coaches for an incredible opp to deliver a TKO punch TO THE CONFERENCE RACE that is going brain a staggering Baylor and buy Self some games to do some head work on Wigs and Ellis and further develop the haymaker backup punch of TRAYOR AND BLACK! Also it's pretty clear now that Self is going to have his way with Greene and Conner. From here on out he is tempering their steel. There isn't going to be any touch feely PT. These two guys are going through the toughening box of produce and perform or get out. Make it or screw, as they used to say. By March Greene and Conner are going to be producers, because it's the only way either cocky gunner gets to stay on the court. For every one that wants to give PT development time to one guy watch these two slowly , steadily become hard cases, nerves of steel types, the kind of guys that make what they take on demand. After a season of what Self is putting these three guys through (white is part of this...he is the unemployed guy waiting to work for nothing if Greene or Frankamp crack. This is brutal competition aimed at producing one can-do dead eye made of steel, not Dr. Phil insight. Self wants a SEAL assassin from trey come tourney time, not just a comfortable trey shooter; this is coldwater training to find who can take the most pain and execute with extreme prejudice on cue!
@DinarHawk: Self expected pressing but it's clear Ford set him up with the junk presses in the first half, then totally fooled him with the 2-2-1 second half. The first half junk presses were some of the most cockeyed I ever saw. And meant to give Self and staff the wrong press to talk about at Hal time; then WHAM! Open in a well drilled 2-2-1 and sustain till KU cracked from trying to run a press break technique for the wrong press. Ford was brilliant. No way was Self copping to getting tricked. He just smoothed it over it saying with out specificity that they knew they would press. Each zone requires guys to start in different spots and break to different seams to break it. You are trying to get to the seams, then break guys to the next open space based on where the zone will deform next. 1-2-1-1 is a game of drAwing point and wing to the ball and passing behind the wing and quickly pivoting to breakers down the sideline before the second one can block the passing Lane. It unfolds down the sideline. KU HAD PREPPED FOR THAT AND DID OK THE FIRST HALF. The 2-2-1 surprised them and they never once got the ball into hole between the 2-2, so they never deformed the zone so and got to hit breaks at the point of deformation on the back two so the anchor never had to commit away from the iron so no easy baskets were had. Passing over the top of a 2-2-1 is roulette. Bounce passes are the coin of the realm. Self got snookered.
@KUSTEVE, its not a question of peaking too early at this point. It is more a matter of trying to figure out how to win both games this weekend.
Self was probably pretty confident heading out the second half that he could win the game and wanted to give his starters some limited minutes. He knew by game time in the first half that Baylor had been extended to the buzzer, so he knew he could either play some of his guys that would be needed against Baylor's height less.
But then OSU's 2-2-1 press the second half surprised and put Self on the defensive. They had pretty clearly not prepared for it. Facing that defense unprepared is very tough and TOs are sure to follow, no matter who you play. Your only option is to play the guys that you think will bake fewer pop tarts, not no pop tarts.
When Self gets surprised he tends toward his most experienced guys. Thus, Selden may have been playing bad, but he was likely to make fewer mistakes under the pressure of the 2-2-1 than Frank, or Greene, while the team was adjusting to playing against it. I frankly think Self has some doubts about Wiggins and Ellis' abilities to read and adjust to new things. He sure as heck did not want Greene, or Frankamp, in against a 2-2-1 press. He didn't even want Mason in it until Mason had had a chance to watch it awhile and specific situation arose where Mason could contribute something specifically needed. Mason was brought in to attack Brown with three fouls and foul him out. He could have kept Selden in but Selden needed a blow and he did not want to waste Selden's fouls further trying to foul Brown out. When Brown fouled out, Selden hadn't played very well, and was exhausted, so Mason got to stay in against the shorter subs. Tharpe had to stay in, because it took Tharpe and Mason to break the 2-2-1, even part of the time.
Why was Traylor in instead of Ellis? The problem was that KU kept getting pushed farther and farther out. Self wanted someone that could push in.
@REHawk, I have to confess that after watching the game, I am not too sure what happened. :-)
Self was trying to sub a lot, which was consistent with my amping forecast and OSU's lesser depth.
At the same time, the game just did get away from Self and his team, so that in the end, they were really having to deplete the energy budget regardless.
One variable that I forgot to consider in my pre-game analysis was the kind of game Baylor would be involved in and the fact that Self would know by game time, whether Baylor had had to deeply deplete its energy budget, or not.
Baylor was stressed to the final buzzer in its game with the Sooners, if I recall correctly; that means that Self knew that he could put the spurs to his team that first half and not have to worry about having less gas in his tank than Baylor come Monday night.
With 20/20 hindsight, what seemed to happen from afar was that Self had approached the Baylor contest in a somewhat neutral posture, assuming that the issues from last season, and the fact that OSU was a major competitor for the title, would be enough on their own to get the team on sufficient edge, and then waited to see what happened to Baylor. Knowing that Baylor had been extended, he apparently decided to give his team a small goose against OSU and let the horses out of the barn the first half, not worrying a great deal about the energy budget versus Baylor, but rather focusing mostly on making sure his team would have more gas in the tank than OSU had come the last ten minutes of this first game of the two.
When KU blew them out the first half, as Self probably understood they might, and knowing Baylor would be pretty depleted, Self sent them out flat for the second half and anticipated subbing a lot to maximize his incremental advantage in energy budget. In short, he bought a big lead and then started nursing it.
But then Coach Ford threw him a huge spitball. OSU came out not in the kind of junk presses of the first half, but in a right and proper and disciplined Wooden-style 2-2-1 full court zone press. It did exactly what the 2-2-1 is always supposed to do. It is supposed to slow the opponent down and make him set up farther away from the basket to start his offense. It is also supposed to wear an opponent down emotionally more than physically. You have to concentrate the entire time a 2-2-1 is being played. You have to think. What happens to offensive teams is that they are not used to concentrating non stop during all of a possession--possession after possession, but rather running down, composing themselves setting up and getting ready to run their offense.
In short, an offense used to thinking entirely about what it is going to run has, instead, to focus 5-9 seconds on how to get down the floor safely before setting up. The 2-2-1 creates this wearing effect, without minimal risk of breakaways associated with m2 m pressing, whether you have a tall post man playing anchor, or not. Hence, small teams should always use it, but "conventional wisdom" today misfocused on the idea that there is no net benefit to running it because it does not force high turnovers on ball, requires a problematic conversion to half court defense, and XTReme Muscling in half court can achieve more disruption and higher set ups, keeps most teams from doing it.
But, and this is a big but, Travis Ford has realized that the new way the game is being called has stopped the use of XTReme Muscling to force offenses to set up farther out, and has essentially made M2M pressing too risk for getting fouled up, This means that not only is everyone getting more FTs, but they are getting better, closer looks than in the previous seasons of XTReme Muscle Ball. Ford just recalled his read of They Call Me Coach by Wooden and realized, with the game being called more like it used to be, that the 2-2-1 had a new lease on life.
If you can't muscle ball handlers in pressing and half court m2m, then the 2-2-1 is the best way to force offenses farther out in their initial set ups for their offenses, and each foot farther out you make a team set up its shooting percentage from out their drops something like one or two points on all their shots, if the offensive team is not very disciplined in working it inside to get closer shots.
I can follow Ford's strategic logic and its effect clearly to this point.
KU has shaky outside shooting anyway. Selden and Wiggins have been 35% trey shooters most of the season and clearly neither has the kind of range to step out two feet farther and hit the broad side of a barn. Selden and Wiggins have been working on shooting very close to the trey stripe to try to inch their trey percentages upwards. Thus the 2-2-1 combined with half court defenses (zone, junk zone, and m2m run by OSU willing to stretch way out) was a perfect prescription for handling KU, because it pushed all shots farther from the basket. KU's FG% fell precipitously the second half, even as its trey shooting percentage warmed up considerably. KU made the classic mistake of letting OSU's little defenders push them farther out.
Where my insight stops is why KU could not adapt to the stretched defense of OSU either to slashing into the gaps of the 2-2-1, or into the gaps in the stretched varieties of half court defenses that OSU threw at them.
The rule is you pass and run into the seam to catch a pass, or dribble into the seam to dish. Why KU did not do this, I do not know.
KU's only effective response was to tell Jamari Traylor to slash to iron from the high post, but, while he got favorable calls on charging, he was still not picking the best opportunities to to make his mover, nor was he getting the ball in the hole to set up a 3 point play.
Frankly, I hope Self finally embraces the 2-2-1. We have the depth to run it more aggressively than OSU. And we have much bigger anchor defenders. It is a great defense that inexorably leads to runs once the opponent reaches the limit of his concentration.
Self apparently dislikes it, because it is not about creating mismatches in length and athleticism, which is Self's offensive and defensive philosophy. It also slows and opponent down, and Self is often trying to use his defenses to speed teams up into transition back to offense so that his great L&A has more chances to outrun and out jump and wear down the opponents that way.
But Wooden was a the same way once upon a time, before he adopted the 2-2-1.
Wooden learned that breaking down of an opponent's concentration over time is a tremendous net benefit and that in time, after slowing him down, it speeds him up to the point of being overwhelmed by length and athleticism moving into transition after mental errors resulting from broken concentration, rather than from superior arm length and athleticism (e.g., Mario Chalmers and RR).
The 2-2-1 won a ring with 6-5 Freddie Slaughter at the anchor.
The 2-2-1 won rings with 7-0 Jabbar at the anchor.
The 2-2-1 won rings with the 6-11 Walton at the anchor.
The 2-2-1 won rings with the 6-9 Patterson at the anchor.
It can be adapted to work with every kind of anchor.
And KU has an abandance of anchors this year.
And the 2-2-1 always makes the other team expend more of its energy budget breaking it than you do playing it. Properly played, you are never chasing and reaching for steals. You are keeping your man in front of you and slowly steadily retreating to the defensible half court position. But sooner or later the opponent cracks and throws it to one of your guys and you are off to the races.
Viva the 2-2-1.
P.S.: After ridiculing Travis Ford for a long time, I now have to pay him respect. He saw deeply and clearly through the instabilities created by rule change and came up with the fitting answer to how to guard under the new rules changes. Way to go, Coach Ford, no more height jokes from me.
If I told you before the game that Wiggins, Selden, and Ellis were not going to contribute significantly, you would have said KU had no chance.
Don't lie. You know you would have. I would have. Travis Ford would have. Ken Pomeroy would have. His stats would have. Nostra-flipping-damus would have.
I know they blew the lead. I know they couldn't handle the press. I know Wiggins is a mystery on the order of the sphinx.
But this was perhaps the biggest negative statement game in KU history. A negative statement game is one where you beat a good team despite your stars playing poorly.
This KU team is so good it doesn't even need 3 of its 4 stars playing worth a damn to win.
Stars? We don't need no stinking stars!
The next Lebron? Fuggedabouthim!
Mr. NBA Body? The linebacker at 2 guard? Our recent 20 ppg guy? Geddouttahere!
The Designer? Our leading scorer? Only pussies need a leading scorer.
All we need are a stretch from Cameroon and a PG nobudddy name of Naadir, a guy what lived in a car, some Towson reject, and a guy so foul prone he usually don't playz, see?
Stars?
KU DONT NEED NO STINKING STARS tuh beats Mr. Backflip I Stuck Around Uh Year Tuh Gettmeuhring and his band uh clowns picked tuh win the B12.
No way should KU have broken out to big lead. No way should they have eeked out a W. Not with Wiggins, Selden and Perry phoning one in!
Only a very, very, VERY good team with a great, masking artist for a coach could win that game.
And they are and he is.
Next.
@KansasComet: Lucas is a fine player and will assume Black's role next year. Right now, Black is coming on and Jamari and he are learning to play together. Its a numbers thing. Lucas could do fine. But Self is honoring Black's last season, and Jamari is coming around as a 4, after having played the five the last two years. Jamari is not pretty on offense, but he keeps getting it done in most other ways and brings that explosiveness. Landen is just one injury away from being on the line of fire and he will do well, if needed. Frankly, he moves around the floor the best of all our bigs, even Embiid and Perry. He just doesn't have Perry's gifts around the hole and Embiid's twinkle toes. Landen will not be smoked out by the incoming frosh either. He will be hard to beat out, even though Self probably will bring him second. Landen is a player.
@KansasComet: Self sees something, and Black is giving it inspire of his foul problems. Black hung 17 points in one game; that is what he can do under certain circumstances and that's darned good. But what Black brings to every practice and game, however long or short he is on the wood, is an example of how to play in tandem with another big man. Black is teaching all of KU's big men how to play in a tandem. I know Embiid and Perry have to start, but Embiid in particular still is not savvy about playing in a tandem. Every minute in practice and in a game Embiid sees Black play he is getting the right way to play in tandem modeled for him. This is worth a lot. Black is also modeling the same thing for Traylor, who came to the game late and has also never really learned how to play in tandem. Jam Tray was born exploding out of position, but he has never quite gotten how to play together with another big. He has come far under Black's tutelage this season. Really, watching Jam Tray and Black grow into dance partners has warmed my heart as much as any of the other good things that have "developed" on this young team. When Black gets fouled up, we don't get to see much of it, but when he doesn't, then Jam Tray and he are starting to move as intuitively with each other as two bigs are supposed to do. They may never get to Marcus-Kieff levels of intuition, but then they were twins and played together a lot of years. What we have to hope is that Black can stay on the floor longer, and that Embiid/Ellis begin to master the tandem dance step. So far, Embiid and Perry have been like two ships passing in the night doing what they do with out much coordination or ability to anticipate the other. Perry is kind of an internal type. And Embiid just has played long enough to intuit how to play with Perry. As a result, neither one is getting any leverage from playing with the other. They just both have lots of talent and are more or less doing their things separately; this is like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis alternating between solos without the bridges that cause the band to take off to something greater than the sum of the parts. I know it would probably be considered "weird," but it might be good to have Perry and Embiid take a ball room dancing class and take turns leading and following just to force them to get attuned to what the other is doing. Another less gender charged approach might be to put them both on skates at a rink and tie a rope between them and take turns having them skate ahead, behind and beside each other. Really, Embiid and The Designer could make beautiful music together once they BOTH know their partner and where he will be when.
@HighEliteMajor: got to agree with you that KU nation expectations, further primed by media hype re-inflation, are leading us to underestimate how tough it is to beat a team with a great, experienced point guard, like Smart. I was among the first to say that Cobbins loss to OSU marginalized OSU from serious contention, but I think OSU is a very dangerous team today. Travis Fiesta sits in a hair triggered ejection seat in Pickensville. If he doesn't make some hay with this team, he could be termed a failed experiment in going short at head coach. Thus, OSU Coach Fiesta is going to be willing to pull out all the stops today for a road win against KU to give the Pokes an edge at least against other challengers to KU. Further, Coach Fiesta is not going to forget that Kevin Young contact on Smart last season. Since the recent trend seems to be that you can cheap shot with a forearm and not get ejected, I look for OSU to come out cheap shotting. Further, I think there is some chance that Self is going to be tempted to send them out flat today, and to substitute massively the first 30 minutes, in order to try to prepare to win the Baylor game Monday. The possible combination of take no prisoners by OSU, plus Self trying to steal one the flat way, makes me do a little dry washing, even though I too expect KU to win.
We are going to learn a bit about which coach--Travis Fiesta, or F. Scott FitzDrew--Self respects the most. Self needs to win these two home games in order to avoid having to go on the road for a win against either. At the same time, he tends to only amp for one game. Since Baylors seems to have the greater depth of talent, coaching being equal, Self would likely elect to play OSU flat and amp for Baylor. If he amps for OSU, then it would seem Self thinks Travis Fiesta is the tougher coaching challenge, and F. Scott FitzDrew the softer one.
Whatever, it is a great Saturday-Monday to be a basketball fan; that's for sure!!
Rock Chalk as always, HEM,
P.S.: I am continuing to get a lot out of your posts. I have tried to do what I can to contribute to the site, but, without my fastball, the best I can do now is try to be a control pitcher and concentrate on middle inning relief. its okay. Regardless, the game's the thing and its damned good to still be alive. :-)
@HighEliteMajor--wow, that's a nice potential basketball grail image. I would like to use that. I wonder: is it in the public domain?
@KUSTEVE, first, it appears you maybe right that Doogie is being a homer, but I also think ParisHawk appears to be right that someone has to play the role like Doogie appears to be playing for this game. The talking heads are apparently a team--a team trying to maximize eyeballs and clicks.
How might a team of talking heads try to build clicks and eyeballs?
I suspect they would start with a map of where the eyeballs and clicks are to be gotten. I suspect the talking heads would be picked for their expected abilities to get eyeballs and clicks from certain regions, plus not repell clicks from other regions assigned to other talking heads.
Next, Team Talking Heads (apologies to David Byrne) would look at each game and its teams and figure out how to promote that game to the bread and butter concentration of eyeballs and clicks that Team Talking Heads tries to appeal to; that would be a place called the Eastern Standard Time Zone.
The game has to do okay in EST, or there is little point in broadcasting the game. You make a CST game do okay in EST by linking it temporally to games in the EST (it leads into, or follows an EST game), and by telling its story within the framework of its significance to the major EST teams; e.g., out in the provinces, these are a couple of good teams that could eventually be the teams our EST teams have to smight for a ring. This is where all of the ACC and Big Ten talking heads come in on the dais. But, again, Team Talking Head might as well grab what it can out in the provinces, er, CST, and that's where Doogie comes in.
You would want Doogie to support at least one of the CST teams, but at the same time you would not want Doogie saying, "Look, these teams are way better than the teams back in EST," You would also not want Doogie building either CST team into a team that is likely the greatest team in college basketball; that would undermiine what you are trying to do in EST. Finally, you would want a guy in Doogie's role with the kind of looks and speech pattern that eyeballs in the EST zone would identify with. You would want Doogie's role to appeal to the EST guy's fantasy (or reality) of what it would be like to be exiled to the provinces for work. You would want Doogie to play the role of the EST guy that couldn't make it at a big time EST school and had to go out to the CST, to get to ball, and to get a gig afterwards. In short, you would want Doogie Godlove.
Team Talking Heads has impact guys and glue guys, just like Bill Self's basketball team does. Each guy has a role and each guy has to subordinate himself to the goal of Team Talking Heads: maximum eyeballs and clicks.
So, you say, but, but, but, jaybate, why doesn't CST glue guy Doogie heap the love on KU, when KU obviously has the bigger marquis player, likely better team, greater overall talent, and the better record? Why isn't he talking about how KU is at home and likely to clean Okie State's clock? Why is he scorning KU and loving on OSU?
Well, at one level, it is about Doogie Godlove being an Okie State grad and so we can on one level say he is being a homer for his old school.
But, remember, Doogie is on a team and just as Wigs, or Selden, could drop 30 most any game, but subordinate to the team so that they only do so selectively, Doogie has to subordinate to his team.
Doogie has to get EST eyeballs and clicks, plus get as many CST eyeballs as he can; that seems his mission.
What Doogie is apparently doing works on a lot of levels.
If you were an EST eyeball, which would you rather see? A game being promoted as a sure KU win, or a game with an upset in the making? Would you rather have all your EST hero talking heads in agreement, or would you rather have one of your EST hero talking heads, the black sheep brother, if you will, the one you loved and envied his chutzpah for going out in the provinces to ball, sticking it in the eye of CST Goliath (KU) and being loyal to his school? Answer: EST eyeballs would probably love what Doogie is doing?
But there is another dimension that Doogie appears to be playing to here. In the CST, what percentage of the eyeball pie chart is KU fans and what percentage is "non KU fans sick of being beaten by KU?" Answer: "Non KU fans sick of being beaten by KU" is the vast majority, so Doogie is positioned to attract the lion's share of CST eyeballs and clicks, too.
So: Team Talking Heads is covering it bases. You might say: Its nothing personal. Its business.
So: how in the future can KU counter this dynamic apparently underpinning Team Talking Head coverage that, at least, seems counter productive to Team Jayhawk in Doogie Godlove's case?
The Big 12 needs to expand into the EST with an EST division for WVU to play in; then Team Talking Heads EST players can promote the game more strongly from the KU is an EST time zone conference team angle.
Next, KU needs to continually emphasize two things:
1) red, white and blue uniforms; and
2) tradition.
Tradition and patriotism sell in the EST, because that is apparently how the EST eyeballs view themselves as being with in the American experience.
The early ownership of the Dallas Cowboys figured this out long ago. If you are outside the EST, become America's team.
The more KU ties itself to tradition and to embodying what America stands for, the more successful will be its marketing. And expanding the B12 into the EST will make it that much easier to market those concepts.
Doogie Godlove would have a great deal of difficulty getting eyeballs and clicks by siding with OSU, if KU were being marketed more explicitly as the embodiment of America's team. What American, regardless of time zone, wants to pick against America?
We are not dealing in realities, when it comes to Team Talking Heads and promoting games.
We are dealing in perceptions of signs circulating in sign markets.
Or so it seems to me, at present.
About media re-focus on Wigs.
Well, so much for letting the hype die down. ;-)
A new hype cycle promoting the brand starteth?
Bleacher Report story digest: expectations were too high; humanize; build sympathy; re inflate expectations. More "impactful."
Keegs: Wigs plays better against better competition; competition getting better today. Shoots 35 not 31 from trey. Reinflate expectations.
Thoughts on media refocus:
Maybe Joel got too big?
Too "Impactful?"
Nothing going on with Wigs game that a 40% trey wouldn't cure.
Games are what happen to us while they're busy reinflating hype.
A game awaits.
@wissoxfan83 P.S., the woman doing the GIS work is a graduate of Wisconsin's venerable geography department.
@wissoxfan83, isn't it about time you started studying the history of KU basketball with the aid of a GIS framework to inventory and model the spatial and noise variables in understanding why, say, Dick Harp called a play at the end of the '57 NCAA championship for someone other than Chamberlain? :-)
We will call your work "The Spatial Legacy of KU Basketball."
@wissoxfan83, so, are you familiar with the woman geographer at Bennington College, or somewhere that is building GIS models of Gettysburg and so far has revealed how sight line issues may explain some of Lee's more questionable decisions during the battle? Wish I could recall her name for you, but she's a doer. Her next big GIS assignment is to model the Nazi concentration camps to try to glean some spatial understanding about how the camps location and sight lines in approach zones lead persons into a false sense of trust regarding what they were getting into. As always, technology opens up about as many more questions as it answers, and as always the answers come up with need to be scrutinized from many different fields of expertise, but I was very excited to see someone using GIS in history for strategic analsis, baed on spatial constraints.
@drgnslayr, I want to take a second and address your use of the term "conspiracy theorizing" to characterize my post.
For what its worth, I avoid conspiracy theorizing like the plague. And if what I write sounds like conspiracy theorizing in either connotative, or denotative meanings of the term, then I want to make clear that I have no intent to express, or imply, a conspiracy theory.
In fact, I sometimes try to poke fun at conspiracy theories in my writing.
The connotative meaning of conspiracy theory is that it is an already proven explanation of a conspiracy, either legal, or illegal. If a conspiracy theory were already proven you would not be wondering about it and I would not be exploring it hypothetically.
The denotative meaning of a conspiracy theory is all negative. It refers to some nut asserting something covert and illegal is going on without throughly verifiable facts to support the claim. I am not suggesting anything illegal is going on. And I am not suggesting a conspiracy is going on. I most certainly have no interest touching conspiracy theory with this denotation with a ten foot pole.
To reiterate, from what I can see as a layman, I don't think anything illegal, or covert, is going on with shoe companies in sports, though being a layman, I am not sure that I would recognize subtle kinds of illegal behavior were it in fact going on.
There appear to me to be lots of things that firms do that they do not explain to the public; that does not mean they are illegally conspiring, or that they are engaging in conspiracy of any kind.
I cannot see how Adidas wanting (hypothetically speaking) Wigs and Embiid to come out different years, or the same year from a marketing stand point, could possibly be viewed as illegal conspiracy. But again, I am a layman in that regard and so make no claims to knowing such things. Note: I am not saying what Adidas wants. I am not saying they have any influence in fact over these players decisions. I am hypothesizing only that it might be better for Adidas if they came out in series, rather than simultaneously, from a marketing strategy.
I am analyzing the possible role of shoecos from the point of view of producer oligopoly, firm incentives, and strategy, not from conspiracy--legal, or illegal.
And again I don't know what would be legal, or illegal, in these regards and so I have no interest in trying to analyze from a legal perspective.
Next, I don't wish to say what Adidas actually wants in this regard, because I don't know.
What I am trying to do is hypothesize an explanation about what might make sense from Adidas angle, given certain hypothetical assumptions about Adidas possible situation?
Adidas may have no situation like what I am hypothesizing. I don't know.
I have no idea what Adidas is actually doing and have no reason to think they would be doing anything wrong.
I mean this to be about as far from either connotative, or denotative notions of conspiracy theorizing as I can make it.
Rock Chalk!
@bskeet, forgot to mention the stellar title and homage to John Irving.
Let's just hope KU isn't guilty of "Setting Free the Bears."
@VailHawk definitely well this seems to be headed.
If self gets new housing and Adidas stands firm, Self only needs 10 more recruiting classes to beat Wooden's record for titles.
@nuleafjhawk , let me re-purpose the quote thusly:
"If I were them, I wouldn't give a shit about us either."
Flips and comments by Smart are irrelevant.
All that matters is he is a great 6-3 point guard that beat KU one time, and would have beaten KU twice, had not Self resorted to some XTReme Cheap Shotting Lite with KY to throw the sapling Smart off his game.
Smart will be ready and Smart and Ford will pre-empt Self with an XTReme Cheap Shot Lite of their own.
The early cheap shot psychological warfare should be well scripted. Wiggins for sure will taste one. Embiid, too.
OSU's fans may have given up when Cobbins went out, but Travis Fiesta and Smart have been prepping for this game for a year.
I just hope no one gets hurt.
“I think he probably needed to know that I liked him, to be real candid,” KU coach Bill Self said. “I love the kid. He knows that. But I got kind of frustrated with him, and he knew that."
Toughening box.
@VailHawk, great question. Think Self's range of emotions in a game. You have probably noticed that Self's levels of emotion and intensity ebb and flow during a game. You have probably noticed he is modulating his shows of same based on whether he thinks his team is too lax or too sped up. Sometimes he is calm, almost neutral, letting them labor. Sometimes he exhorts. Sometimes he is anger and fury. How they play is often influenced by influenced by him. He knows what geeks them up and calms them. They want to give him what he wants. What he does on the bench he can do in the days before a game. He can be loose or intense. He can get them over or under confident, businesslike or intense in the run up to games.
Sending them out flat just takes holding his own emotions to neutral and giving them a lot of "stuff" to think about. Amping them means overt appeals to their hot buttons, acting fired up, letting them know their reputations are on the line, or simply tapping into their trust and devotion to him.
Think of how much you yourself notice Self's emotions on the bench from a TV. Imagine being within feet of that for a day or 4 before a game. He can make you feel 10 feet tall or like you are inept, or most anywhere in between with just a few words.
@wrwlumpy OMG!
Its better than where the Dean's live.
@drgnslayr PHOF
@wrwlumpy, you post made my day. Really a good insight to share. And that mention of the half empty arena brought its significance instantly into focus. Tubby is following Billy G, Pat Knight and Bob Knight. Someone at TTech loves basketball, because they keep hiring guys that know the game. I know. There are jokes about TTech being the places basketball coaches go to die. But one day, if they stay the course in hiring good coaches, with good shoeco relations, they will turn the corner. Thanks.
@Blown: Good luck with the graduate degree. GMAT? You can do. Believe. And repeat as often as necessary. No scholar worth diddly cares about one having to repeat such things. Its all about want to.
@drgnslayr, vaya con dios, Basketball Friar Slayr. Let the radiance of the game shine from your soul. Banish woe from thee. Thou art a vessel of basketball goodness. Thy beloved wife is there merely to give thee the perspective to realize that this is so. :-)
(Note: Nuleaf is excused from reading this one.) :-)
It is that time of year when we, well, some of us basketball sinners, give up nonessential habits to cleanse the basketball soul. Being the type to always go overboard on things, I thought first about giving up basketball, but I would infarct and die after the first week, so what would be the point of that?
It followed that I had to find something a little less dangerous to give up.
Hmmm.
It occurred to me that I might feasibly give up losing.
What a great habit to give up!
Proposition: let's give up losing for Basketball Lent.
But, jaybate, you say, I have never heard of Basketball Lent.
Without putting too fine a point on it, that's because it is a fantasy I am making up out of thin liturgical air here.
Be that as it may (and as it is), Basketball Lent starts NOT after Fat Tuesday, like, say, Roman Catholic Lent, but it starts today.
Call this Fat Thursday of Basketball Lent. Go to some gymnasium today and get in a pick up game and hoist a bunch of 30 footers and lose. Play some horse blindfolded and lose. Try to dunk on ice and lose. Play eucre and don't draw. Gamble with a professional gambler named Dodge City Dick and get picked clean. Fly to Vegas and play roulette. Lose your dog (but then get him back). Get all the losing out of the way you can today.
Then let's give up losing till the day after the NCAA Finals--the last day of Basketball Lent!
Let's cleanse ourselves of the symptom of original sin, since we dare not give up original sin, for that, if I recall correctly, could rub certain serious types wrong, as doing so is not an option on the pull down menu of several religions involved in the whole non-basketball Lent thing.
Like secular New Years resolutions, secular (well, not secular really, kind of mythical in point of fact) Basketball Lent sacrifices are easier to talk than walk. Nevertheless, the act of trying builds character, likely earns liturgical basketball group-ons, and cannot hurt with the Basketball God's own TSA staff at the Naismith Gates.
We have, brothers and sisters, already taken a significant step in the direction of giving up losing in the first three games of this year's round robin.
But we face a substantial challenge this weekend.
How will Friar Self and his Monastic Order of KU Basketball Monks give up losing against OSU and Baylor--two contenders for the Big 12 crown--in three days on its home court?
Ah, st. jaybate of the Burnt Ends, you say, home court is the EASIEST place to give up losing.
Yes, and no, my brethren, and sistren (fake religious word alert).
Home games, you see, are must wins, as my fellow givers-up-of-losing should recall. Home games against title contenders are XTReme Must Wins. Why, losing a home game against a contender means having to go into Philistine territory (i.e., an opponent's crib) during the fatigued, late stretches of round robin hood season, to get a split to keep title hopes alive, and to honor our promise to forego losing to cleanse the heathen threads of our basketball souls' vain tapestries.
Were KU to win the Saturday-Monday games this weekend (i.e, forgo losing), KU would have essentially set itself up for ONLY having to sweep non-contenders the rest of the way to win the conference, plus pick up probably one more sweep against a contender on a Philistine court to win the Big 12 title.
Given our combined commitment to forgoing losing the above is possible, if not probable, given the flaws and imperfections of board rats under the basketball god's meta-scoreboard.
And yet, and yet, it is possible, brethren and sistren (alert: fake religious word repetition).
And so if there were one thing that i, st. jaybate of the Burnt Ends, have learned in the long, absurdity-suffused years of my basketball loving life on this mortal McPherson Strut and coil springed existence, it is that singing and making music are pathways to harmonizing the inner self, so that the difficult cometh easy, and the impossible taketh a wee bit longer.
(st. jaybate of the Burnt Ends embraces the tone of a Gregorian chant, because rap cannot move the old mofo to as deep of a place.)
Oh, angels of iron and wood on high
Oh, angels of iron and wood on high
Oh, angels of iron and wood on high
Beat thy wings that we may fly
Beat thy wings that we may fly
Beat thy wings that we may fly
Beyond the splits up to the sky
Beyond the splits up to the sky
Beyond the splits up to the sky
As Pokes and Bears beaten cry
As Pokes and Bears beaten cry
As Pokes and Bears beaten cry
Hoops eleison I recall
Hoops eleison I recall
Hoops eleison I recall
Now, thus internally harmonized, let us consider how Friar Self and his Oreadian Monks may go about this challenge of forgoing losing this Saturday-Monday.
Recollection is that Friar Self tends to:
a) decide which team is the toughest out;
b) send them out flat for the lesser team to grind out a win;
c) amp for the better team;
d) substitute liberally the first 30 minutes in the first game, or when ever the score permits, to stay fresh for the second game;
e) substitute liberally the first half of the second game to stay fresh for the last ten minutes;
f) save wrinkles in the first game for the second half:
g) save different wrinkles for the second half of the second game;
h) win one pretty and one ugly; and
i) think next whatever results.
The good Friar's historical method is in short a study in trying to win both games, not just one.
It tendeth to work, but, lo, in mysterious ways.
And the intrinsic risk of the Friar's approach is the game that the team is sent out flat for; that is the game when the Friar's teams get knocked off, particularly by teams with names that begin with B.
So: for which game should Friar Self send them out flat?
To amp, or not to amp, that is always Shakespeare's endlessly relevant question for mannerist periods, and for periods transitioning into the baroque? And we are most definitely transitioning into the baroque, Heck, we may even be entering the post-baroque, burned out phase of the latest enlightenment, but I am diverting from the metaphor and the main point here. Fie on your quotable relevance, Shakespeare!
In a basketball world of finite amps and zero-sum energy budgets (i.e., burn up too much energy in one Saturday-Monday game, and you have too little energy to win the other game), how does one distribute the amps and the energy budget to win the both games?
When I, blind, stooped, dyspeptic, diseased, vile, loathsome, shape shifting Tiresias aka st. jaybate of the Burnt Ends, striving desperately to give up losing for Lent, think it through, I come to an unexpected expectation--a counter intuitive intuition--a mind blind insight--an analytical guesstimation.
Baylor, though it has been bumbling of late and has Scott "I never really know what I'm doing" Drew for a coach, has more talent than OSU (though not necessarily the best player for OSU's Smart seems that) and, Baylor, after spending its share of time at the basketball wailing wall (as did KU earlier), you know, that Bush's Base Baylor, that Kenneth Starr Baylor, coming as it does in scheduling, second, is probably the tougher out, since OSU is Cobbins-free now.
(Here we give brief pause as st. jaybate of the Burnt Ends is in the best medieval sense of the church roasted at the stake by the liturgical sentence police for that last one, only to arise alchemically from the lapping flames emboldened to do still worse things to his native tongue albeit with virtuous heart and losing forsaken in the giving up of basketball lent.)
Now Brethren, and Sistren, do not for a moment think that this means that OSU is not a tough and dangerous out that Self might be tempted to amp for first in order to settle for at least a split. This would, after all, be the conservative play. This would minimize harm done to the current miraculous 3-0 conference record.
But Friar Self likes to play to win both, almost as much as George Washington and the Mahatma wanted to throw the Crown of Great Britain out.
But Friar Self has to weigh where he would rather try to win an away game were he to play it conservatively (and against his tendency) and only go for one win: Gallagher Iba, or the Waco Indoor Defense Grant Center.
This is where it gets iffy for Basketball Lent, IMHO.
Self has some history of struggling at Gallagher Iba, especially when Travis Fiesta (not a Taurus) Ford has a sub atomic particle with a burr hair cut and a mean trey simulating the quantum out front. Smart makes life a lot more difficult in the Newtonian realm of planetary-sized point guards. Smart is the real deal. A once in a half decade PG. And we have the kind of pint-sized PGs that Smart was born to bend, fold and mutilate, as well as torch. But the liturgical bottom line here seems to be that OSU lacks a credible starting big man inside, or credible backup big man, and KU has proven it can find ways to win against these teams simulating seven cherubs spreading it out on a renaissance ceiling.
And Friar Self has some history struggling with Scott Drew at home and away. Drew is tough to coach against precisely because he has lots of player talent and does not know what he is doing. Coaching against Drew is like playing chicken in semi-trailer trucks with an opponent that doesn't know how to drive. You can't really anticipate what he is going to do, so you can't really count on out thinking him, because he isn't really thinking. He is panicking. And panic is itself a kind of mad strategy that can work, at least randomly.
So: Friar Self has to think long and hard about which team he would rather amp for:
1) an opponent with a great PG and SG, but no inside game to counter KU's formidable inside game and depth; or
2) an opponent with enough talent to play KU head up a lot of places and a panicking coach that might do almost anything, except respectfully shake hands after a loss.
I tend to believe KU's sapling players (mostly from other parts of the country with little awareness of Baylor and Drew) have let hype over focus them on beating Marcus Smart and OSU, as if Cobbins were still with OSU, when he is in fact not.
I believe KU's players in this condition, if amped, could annihilate OSU only to have a huge let down against Baylor that would lead to an L.
A split is not inherently evil, but neither is it an ecstatic identity with basketball heaven, either.
I believe the smart play against Smart and Company is for Self to take the big risk of sending the team out flat against the Pokes and squeak out a win down the stretch--to use substitutions and size and board control and help on Smart to wear down OSU without a peak effort. This approach risks Smart going off for 30 points against our ponies. But the decisive blow would come from Brown burning us and Nash finally fulfilling his destiny out of a messianic desire to show Wiggins/Ellis they are not all everything. But if KU shoots its average, I believe the KU numbers and size will eventually overwhelm OSU even with KU playing flat.
Then amp the heck out of the team for Baylor and I believe KU's best can overcome Scott Drew's wildly varying coaching even at its most improbable best.
AMEN.
MEMO
TO: Nuke Lose, Sports Reanimated
FROM: jaybate, jns, (controlling owner, publisher, director corporate intel, in-house counsel, outhouse counsel, CEO, King, CFO, General, CJS, Theocratic Major Domo, Druidic Chief, Conga dance teacher, desktop janitor, director of mobile charging operations)
RE: Regarding your Magic Eight Bull Biscuits
Did you identify KU as one of a magic eight before the season? No. So: why should we take your current prediction any more seriously than what you wrote at the beginning of the season? What you are doing here is mastering the obvious and anyone with a keyboard can do that. Get down and give me 20 on fingertips in the mud, ex-PFC Lose.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)