I largely agree with your analysis that this team is showing better chemistry than some recent teams and completely agree that I cited only one example. My intent was never to suggest this Team had bad chemistry. My intent was to indicate that it has like any other team some early kinks to work out on the chemistry front and it will be harder to work them out with 1-2 players new to the team coming aboard mid season.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
HawkChamp said:
@jaybate-1.0 no one is denying it happened. Most of us think that theory is off base and not true. I personally don't care the extent to which you propagate it, and I will listen to your theories in the future. It's why I'm on here - I enjoy reading what other people think, but I will also comment when I think you might be misinformed. I disagree with you about chemistry issues between Malik and Svi, so we will have to agree to disagree.
āāāāāā-
You look good backpeddling. š
Why would you say I posited a theory, when I did not and you are the only one talking about theories? Hmm? š¤£
And why say no oneās denying it happened when no one is denying it happened? Itās like saying no oneās denying itās the 21st Century, when nooneās denying its the 21st Century.
I just love this kind of stuff.
.
drgnslayr said:
When I read this my first thought was that Billy isn't coming back. Then I read others who think Billy will be back. If Billy is coming back, why bring on Sosinski?
Is it possible the Lawson brothers might leave after this semester? I haven't heard anything like this but I don't see why we add Sosinski if we get either Billy or Sousa. I wonder if they are happy with the post appearing more crowded next year?
PHOF
JayHawkFanToo said:
jaybate 1.0 said:
Things spread TO this site...not FROM it...in my experience.
Your experience is wrong. Google āKU basketball Sosinskiā and you will see this thread show up....with your post on lack of chemistry between two players which anyone that has followed the team knows is incorrect and now is all over the Internet.
Google is called a search engine, because it searches. Thatās what is supposed to happen when you search, you silly Billy. It happens with what you just wrote and posted, too. Do you realize that you just compounded the issue. OMG!! OMG!!! What you wrote is going to be on Google. Oh Lordy! What ever are you going to do? Itās all your fault now!!!!
@JayHawkFanToo and TEAM CHEMISTRY will show up in this thread!!!!
Run for your lives!!!!!!
Ahem.
Next, how can my experience be wrong? I experience what I experience, right? Youāre not the experience police now, too, are you?
My experience may not include everything that happens in the flipping world (how could it), but itās still my experience of appearances, right? So flipping what? Get a grip. You can do better, as you like to say to me.
Now think again about what you just did. Feel the XTREME HEAVIOSITY of it. By responding to my response you are now guilty of being āsearchableā. Bad, bad, bad, shame on you!!!
Think about that. Now you are to blame, too. Everything is searchable. That means everything! Well, except for the conservative searches that Google reputedly has been biasing results for. Surely Google wouldnāt do that, would they?š§
Now, Are your rhoids fired up? Isnāt that your pet phrase? No, wait, thatās NOT it.
Lemme see, what is my experience of your pet phrase, @JayHawkFanToo?
Hmmm.
Lemme see if I can remember the experience, itās, um, āare you off your meds?ā Is that it? Um, thatās it, isnāt it? Are you off your meds? Correct me if Iām wrong. I recall the experience appearing to be itās āare you off your meds?ā I donāt know how you meant, but I mean it as a figure of speech only. So: Are you off your meds?
Nah, of course youāre not.
This appears par for the @JayhawkFanToo miniature golf course.
Do you feel pretty guilt about being searchable in this thread?
Buck up, @JayHawkFanToo. You are going to be ok.
Iām not spreading bullshit. What I saw and described REALLY happened. Bullshit would me prentending I didnāt see what I described, right?
HawkChamp said:
@Texashawk Its just jaybate - there is no real evidence that Svi and Malik have chemistry issues. All conjecture.
You saying itās just conjecture is just you being @HawkChamp.
I never just āconject.ā
āConjectingā bores me.
I always start with facts, or observations. In this case I started with an observation that stood out enough to catch my eye when I wasnāt looking for such an appearance.
It was what it was and I described how it appeared. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The really interesting question here is why are you just being @HawkChamp and saying another board rat is āconjectingā?
What makes you do that?
Rock Chalk!
Iām not sure why this riled so many.
These sorts of apparent micro cold shoulders go on all the time among competitive men. Part of Selfās greatness is the way he puts certain players in the dog house and rides them till even the guys that donāt like the guy in the doghouse finally come to defend the guy. This is old news. Self has always done this to buff out rough edges between certain players.
My point here is that if Self has to tend to a bunch of new guys at semester, he is going to have less time to do the button pushing and mind games that drive teams together into a band of brothers.
I would expect that there were other kinks in relationships and undesirable cliques going on this early in the year in the games so far that I didnāt see.
It seems par for the course each season for Self to work through these pretty methodically.
Whatās different this year is 1-2 new guys coming in at semester.
Things spread TO this site...not FROM it...in my experience.
Now u know me and you know thatās not how this will go.
Hereās how this will go: I bring you a fact, then you try to bring me a fact refuting it, i.e., bring me a time in last nightās game when Malik thanked Svi for setting him up for an easy two. Capice?
An opinion never trumps a fact.
Next.
.
It does start with Cuse.
UK was just scrimmaging their sushi.
This is a test, if Cuse has its usual complement long guys recruited specially to play 2-3 zone and occassionaly betray the dark underbelly of D1.
Lightfoot is the guy to watch. If his PT and productivity stay up, he is for real.
Going to be a great experience for the team learning patience and passing to the high post at the FT line. We win if they can do those two things. We lose if they canāt. Simple as that. Always is against Cuse.
During the Totedo game, Svi and Malik were on a 2 on 1 fast break. Svi was dribbling and could easily have finished with an ESPN moment, but deftly dished to Malik for a completely uncontested layup. Svi made the right choice, not because it was unselfish, but because it increased the probability of a made basket. Both players appeared to then run back to defense without ever making eye contact. Malik celebrated as if he had made a great play, when all he had done was shoot an easy layup off a prudent dish by Svi. Under normal circumstances, the player that receives the easy dish acknowledges the passer some how. It is one of the oldest, most commonly observed etiquettes in basketball. But between Svi and Malik I saw nothing after the shot, nothing on the way down the floor, and nothing on the defensive end. It stood out to me. Usually in a blow out against a cupcake players are particularly exuberant in their recognition of each other, too.
Nevertheless, it was only one play, and it is always possible that the camera missed something, or that I did.
I don't want to make a tempest in a teapot here. Each season, Self has to work and relationship issues on the team. Jeff Withey had a terrible time breaking into the inner circle of Thomas Robinson and Tyshawn Taylor. Every team I was ever around had age cliques, and racial cliques, and friendship cliques. Some teams have interpersonal conflict over two players liking the same girl, or one player losing a girl to another player. Some teams struggle with players not accepting the richest guy. Some teams just have two guys that just would loathe each other under any circumstances, but have to find a way to work together on the same team.
Self appears to invest heavily in introducing recruits to players already on the roster the year before the recruit joins the team to find out if he thinks he can blend the new recruit with his existing players. Self cannot do the brilliant strategic and tactical things he does, and he cannot get his players to play out of position and take on roles that might not be optimal, with just any kind of player personality type. Self apparently has a keen sense of what kind of personality type he can work with and he listens to his roster players about whether they think they can work with this possible new teammate.It goes much deeper than wanting "good chemistry." Good chemistry is sort of the end result. He is apparently looking for guys that will do what he needs done in the way of roles with their considerable athletic abilities, whether its what they most want to do, or not. He also needs "flexible" minds. Self apparently anticipates that things never go fully as planned either year to year, or game to game. He never fully knows who will sign. He never fully knows who will jump when. He never fully knows who will be healthy and who will develop, and who will manifest emotional cracks and psychological issues under his and college basketball's intense pressure. As a result, he not only seeks talented guys, but he seeks guys that can adapt to some of his rather extraordinary "flexibility" as a coach. Self is a basketball genius. Geniuses do a lot of unexpected things and need persons around them able to adapt to them, or else there is little benefit to being a genius.
If you listen to Bill Self, he has said the type of player he likes to recruit. The attributes he mentions are:
Athleticism to make plays one on one.
Explosiveness to explode out of position to make plays and help others that are getting beaten.
The get better gene.
Work ethic.
And finally, he likes "characters."
Self says he has to be around guys for inordinate amounts of time and he needs characters to keep it from getting too tedious for him.
But I have a hunch there is an additional reason why Self wants "characters" and the particular kinds of characters that he wants.
Self's kinds of characters tend to be pretty idiosyncratic guys that nevertheless have a strong desire to belong to a group. Not all characters want to be parts of groups. Only certain kinds do. Certain characters know they are characters and know they have often been made fun of, and felt alienated because of their idiosyncrasies. Some of those characters become kind of anti-social. They compensate for the rejection and alienation with selfishness. If the world is going to make fun of me and alienate me, fine, I will beat them to the punch. But there is another category of characters that are cut ups, and kind of socially unpolished, and unevenly but precociously intelligent (about somethings and not about others), and these guys have talent, and insight, and know they are a little out of step, yet desperately WANT to be in step. SELF IS THE ULTIMATE COACH FOR THESE KINDS OF PLAYERS. Self appears in looking back to have been a broad shouldered, slender fingered kid with long hair and a weird mixture of jock and sensitive. He probably longed to fit in--to be accepted, even though he was already bright, insightful and popular. He talked funny. He could crack wise, but there was no mistaking he spoke in elliptical, fractured syntax. He may have had some autism, or some dyslexia, or whatever. He was forever seeing things quite differently than others. He was a jock but he was pals with all these musicians that became country singers. Self is both lug and stylish. He was no-jump white guy in a black man's game that had to come up with things like glue and old man's game and defense to justify keeping himself on the floor as a two guard with an average stroke.He had some athleticism, but he has been in awe of real athleticism. But he could make persons laugh and love him, even though he was still an odd, quirky mix of characteristics for a jock. Look at all of his players and you see the same thing. His players are characters just a little off kilter from "normal" in their personalities.He is an awesomely demanding taskmaster and perfectionist that demands his "characters" to bond with their mates in boot camp, then drives them relentlessly to get better, while accepting their eccentriciities so long as they don't get in the way of work and team play and winning. What other coach on the planet would have been flexible enough to have an "artist" like Tyshawn Taylor on his team, make a point guard out of him, and then when he came to him in a psychological crisis tell him to take awhile off in the middle of a championship season? This to me was Self's finest hour; this was what revealed why Self wins 83% of his games with a bunch of the best players, or other years "with guys like we used to recruit at Tulsa." He coaches and relates to characters on a level that maybe no other coach has EVER come close to doing. Self is so flexible at working with his characters that he can range from provoking Mario Chalmers into a near fist fight in a huddle intentionally, to seemingly letting Frank Mason walk around in a Psi zone of Frank's own devising. Mario Chalmers and Frank Mason are about as different as you can get and they are BOTH characters. One is extroverted and one is introverted. But Self never spent a second trying to change who Mario and Frank were. He only worked on "who we were" with them.
Self is a genius.
And each year he has to work a lot on maneuvering his characters into wanting to work with respect and effect and belief in each other. We don't see more than the tip of an iceberg of what he does with the interpersonal stuff to make the teams play so well together.
And I am telling you right now that there is no other coach on Planet Earth that could be getting Lagerald Vick into the harmonious level of team performance that Vick is so admirably doing right now. Vick is one complicated cat, as Self might say, if were ever so unwise as to speak of such things in public. LaGerald Vick is a great talent, but HIGHLY idiosyncratic personality. Vick and Self are most fortunate they found each other through Larry Brown, who is probably the only guy on planet earth with more insight into basketball and player personality than Self.
You have to work with genius up close to recognize it.
Brown and Self are UP HERE.
The rest are down here.
Self has a strong survival instinct.
But he has a problem with adding players that have not been through Boot Camp.
His teams depend on chemistry.
If guys have not bonded in boot camp, itās tough to predict how team chemistry will respond to many of his psychological tricks.
Right now Malik and Svi are pretty distant and he would like to be working that issue, but wonāt be able to with not one but two new guys coming aboard and Preston with car issues. .
He knows he needs Sosinski, but he canāt let him just walk in.
Same with de Souza.
But they have to earn the players respect.
Frankly who this going to be a big challenge for is Devonte. He has to make his mates accept the new non boot camped blood.
Udoka Azuibuke will develop more slowly.
Billy Preston will be a back up this season, if becomes back.
CNN will begin to like Donald Trump.
Hilary Clinton will campaign in a bustier.
Bill Clinton will swear off the ladies.
George H.W. Bush will swear off the ladies.
ISIS will defeat Russians in Syria.
Iranian leadership will convert to Christianity.
Rockefellers, Morgans and Mellons will sell their shares in the New York branch of the Federal Reserve and lobby for a publicly owned central bank.
Flat earther's will be vindicated.
Last add: gotta see Doke and SOS on the floor together. Serious ball screening!!!
One more thing I like about Sosinskiāthe first three letters of his last name: SOS.
Self sent out an SOS inside and the big guy responded like an absolute Jayhawk!!!
Sosinski will be crucial against Krzyzewski (/ŹÉŖĖŹÉfski/ shih-ZHEF-skee).
He gives us a good match-up in consonants.
He will also keep all the biased, Eastern SPorts Network broadcasters tongue tied whenever he runs by and talks trash to Krzyzewski (/ŹÉŖĖŹÉfski/ shih-ZHEF-skee).
Rkck Chlhckski
Classic exchange the both of you!
Awesome if true. And keep him next season. Never enough 260 pounders inside.
Guesstimate Defense: He will be third back up and they will play junk zone, when he is in.
Guesstimate offense: use him to set ball screens to get him out of the way on offense.
Otherwise he just camps backside and tries for rebounds.
Naadir kicking some kielbasa!!!
Embiid the Equitorial Monster in the NBA!!!!
So glad RR is still out there making people better.
Frank yanking 1.77 rpg even in the L!
Amazing world when TROB is overseas and Diallo is in the show!
I forget. What did your magik mentor teach about the reputed reference to the bullet hole in JFKās Lincoln limousine windshield that was concealed from the nation between 1963 and 2017 until the reference to it was released buried in a bunch of useless stuff that apparently should never have been classified?
š
Imagine how quickly the Chancellors would have counsel find a way to end minor sports if the petroshoecos pulled out.
Yesterday!
They would lobby the Fedās and that would be that.
I would gladly give up the minor sports to get the petroshoecos and their summer game teams out of control of where recruits have to go.
I detest what the petroshoeco capture of college ball has done.
March Carney.
Apparent Tournament engineering with whistle asymmetry and biased seeding.
The same 4-6 schools with the best shot EFY.
It is all so contrived.
Endless rule changes aimed not at improving the game but at making sure the OADs get their hype.
D1 is captured by a shoe oligopoly.
Itās run like a car business, not a sport.
4-6 teams.
The rest are irrelevant.
āDan Brown is a character from 'Foucault's Pendulum!' I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.ā
āUmberto Eco, novelist/scholar, Medieval studies and semiotics
Thx for the insightful synopsis. Think of me as the choir.š
Buffer 1
It nauseates with the appearance of private capture of public entities.
The implication depresses.
Wilt was the ultimate hub player.
His average MUA was so enormous that even .550 FT shooting did not matter.
Everything in competitive sport is about MUA.
All strategy and tactics, all training and team work and psychological training are geared to achieve maximum sustainable MUA.
This is why the hub player should be the benchmark and paramount criterion of any ranking system.
The player with the greatest Average Sustainable MUAāthe hub playerāis the top rank!
PHOF
I bet he has never played as many minutes as as hard as he played vs. UK in his life. Have you ever tried tried to perform completely outside your fitness envelope after just doing that?
If heās throwing shot puts, why is Self having him do it? Canāt he work on shot putting in practice?
Outside. Physical. Envelope. Already.
I am a believer that counter intuitive anomalies allowed to persist usually imply bureaucratic gaming behind the scenes.
Hasan Defense looks like a counter intuitively persistent anomaly.
He should apparently already have been benched a couple times, but hasnāt been.
Nothing to see here!
Talk focuses on Beaty, but...
Defensive Coordinator Clint Bowen would seem to have some responsibility for Hasan Defense and the authority to sit him, or request he be left home. But no reputed action.
What if: Iām Beaty, and I suspect Bowen wants my job (because he got passed over), and I goofed and depended on Bowen for defensive recruiting. Bowen argues he hasnāt got a credible replacement for Hasan. Might I have to grin and bear the possibility Bowen were letting this happen with Hasan, and maybe even letting the defense suboptimize to put me on the hot seat thinking he might get my job, or be kept again for the recruits he has in the pipeline?
Or alternatively, what if Beaty were forcing Hasan on Bowen, so as to have grounds to s-can Bowen?
Hypothesis: maybe Zenger perceives the what if situations and Zenger and maybe Beaty probably already have a new āassistant HCā coming in to slot in above Bowen to take over calling defense and defensive recruiting, while Bowen is kept at DC til Bowens incoming recruits are assimilated and Bowen can be eased out ?
Or what if Zenger and Bowen are in league? And Zengerās support of Beaty were fake?
Who knows?
But I bet Zenger regrets ever hiring Weis and using him as a broom about now, so CBernie could be absolutely sure there were no Perkins/Mangino/Gill era skeletons to haunt her. CBernie is gone leaving Zenger holding that bag.
Chancellors are supremely wily devils. Bureaucratic politics is all they do, when not ādevelopingā, so they get good at it. She even created an attractive situation for her replacement which is crucial. No skeletons and Zenger can be the new Chancellorās fall guy whenever the fire gets too hot. Zenger is everyoneās punching bag, but he appears to have a plan too. If he can survive long enough to get the numbers up, he can finally drive the š bus, rather keep avoiding being thrown under it. Zenger appears little ācā catholic, ie, with a worldly inclusive view. He can tolerate smart and stupid, his order following and others counter playing, to stay on the job. He can do the dumb thing (not the wrong thing, heās likely honest) his chancellor wants for her CYA to keep his job. Guys like that often prevail. It all comes down to recruiting numbers though. They have to keep vectoring up. Survive and advance. Itās worked for Zenger. It worked for Roy in easygate. Itās why so much of the world operates this way. Onward through both upward and downward.
āad astra per asperaā
Never optimize.
Just āsatisficeā and survive.
But are we advancing?
Are we star bound, or is fault in them, or in us?
Maybe Hasan Defense is pals with a couple incoming recruits?
Beaty = BEATy
But we thought it meant BEAT someone, not be BEATen by everyone.
I do it often, too.
Then the probability is we are outta luck, because there is low probability Doke will last playing big minutes. He will also get the usual flu and sprains, etc.
That 10-16 FG number vs Pin Oak U LOOKS good, but is already perhaps suggestive of fatigue or minor injury. A wide load footer able to back down mid major bigs and only working inside should be more like 12 or 14 of 16 on only 20 minutes. Look at Lightfootās numbers. Self was forcing him to impact more offensively by giving him more FGAās per minute than other starters and his efficiency declined nearly to that of a perimeter player. That is concerning.
Even with Doke, we are going to need to master playing small with Lightfoot/Garrett, if Preston and DeSouza are no shows.we know Cunliffeās coming and can free Garrett from perimeter work. Might as well start working on Garrett at 4/5 now.
This is a quantized argument using the decision criterion I wrote about several days ago.
Beatty's future SHOULD hinge ENTIRELY on whether or not he is net-increasing the total number of D1 grade scholarship athletes each year.
If yes, retain.
If no, fire.
Despite my doubt that he could continue net increases, our erstwhile fellow board rat has researched it and asserted that net-increase continues to occur.
Thus Zenger rightly stays the course.
Good.
Now I want to make two further points.
First, Zenger and Beatty certainly do NOT have to stand pat on assistants, or on who is game planning and play calling. They most definitely can improve organization and execution without firing the head coach, and without disrupting the existing recruiting that is the reason that Beatty is being retained. The staff effectiveness can be expanded and enhanced.
Second, even with all the losses, and player control issues, if Beatty can keep net increasing, then I vote for keeping him not just one but two years. Two years from now, if he were not at .500 that season, then would be the time for a change. Beatty deserves a chance to see if he can coach a team with D1 numbers. Two deep isn't deep enough. You have to be three deep to afford to make an example of anyone to keep the players fully motivated.
Its pretty tough for Beatty to be a demanding perfectionist and task master, until he has enough numbers to be able to credibly threaten to run a few noncompliant players from time to time, without falling back into the Weis abyss of not enough guys on hand. Players understand Beatty's hands are tied on discipline; that he has to suck up to keep them around to keep building his numbers. Players are human. Some will take advantage of him during this suck up period of the rebuilding phase and that sort of thing can be contagious. But once he gets his numbers up and can begin wielding the disciplinary stick with credibile authority, Beatty may produce a much more disciplined product.
This is rebuilding.
I just looked "proplexed" up in the old "jaybate 1.0's Unabashed OnLine Basketball Dictionary" that Google has recently set up search filters specifically to prevent fans from finding and clicking as part of the new Net Anti-Neutrality.
(Note: just kidding.)
proplexed
adjective proĀ·plexed \ pro-Ėplekst \
Definition of proplexed
1 : filled with uncertainty because of distraction by professional basketball : puzzled
2 : full of difficulty playing college basketball, while thinking about pro basketball.
ā proplexedly play \pro-Ėplek-sÉd-lÄ, -Ėplekst-lÄ\ adverb
etiology: first appeared on Kubuckets.com. Emerged from misreading and imputation.
Durant was the best B12 player we ever faced in the Self era so far. Period.
Given the feast and famine tendency of life, come February, Self will probably have Billy back, DeSouza in silks, no big will get injured, and we will be posting about PT grumbling and transfer rumors!!!!!
Self has many gifts and abilities as a coach, but one is his uncanny ability to reliably identify, develop, and scheme around hub players, especially knowing when to risk they are ready.
If you hear scuttlebutt that Self is viewing Dedric that way, then I would NEVER bet against Dedric in that role!
Lawson has had the rep of having lots of stretch potential; ie, inside and outside on both ends.
And Self has developed as many stretch talents as any D1 coach the last 10 years when you recall Rush, Marcus, TROB, Wigs, Perry, Josh, etc. Frankly I donāt recall any other coach the last decade developing stretch 3s AND stretch 4s, but Iām sure there must have been some.
Self is human though. He is not as reliable in picking projects that can become the kinds of rotation players he will require. Jamari never quite became what he was apparently anticipating. Injury starting his third year or so probably had something to do with that shortfall. Jam only had a brief stretch of playing with both the uninjured potential Self sought to develop, and the developed skills one needs in D1. And even it was such a brief burst of lane driving and exploding for plays that it did not appreciably improve the stats HEM rightfully sights. Even so Self still got to 30 win seasons relying on Jamari quite a lot, so even in these sorts of players he is head and shoulders above most coaches. Itās doubtful Calipari would even take a flyer on players like Jamari at UK, though he appeared to some at Memphis.
Maybe I did not make myself clear. The hub player is based solely and entirely on ability, development and performance. It is because he is far the best most complete and MUA dominant player at that time on the team that Self makes him the hub.
Therefore he would necessarily rank at either the ultimate, or penultimate, classification of player.
An OAD recruit may be a great talent, but is he capable of being the hub? Most arenāt. Rush and Embiid were by about one third of the season. Wiggins clearly was, but elected not to. Chalmers was offered the role, as a freshman, but was not up to it.
And so on.
The hub role is probably the most reliable indicator of the peak talent level of a player available. It is a gold standard and so a benchmark against which to rank in descending order all your other categories.
Each of your categories should reflect degrees of falling short of the hub players completeness in all the categories you usefully address.
Ranking is a relational game requiring a standard.
The player capable of being the hub is at the apex of your rank order.
All of the categories you define are essentially degrees of falling short of the hub standard.
But itās your ranking, so I am only a consultant on this. š¤
Good work.
Maybe add a hub player classification; I.e., the player a team is schemed around.
Wayne Simien his last season.
Brandon Rush was the hub of all his teams, even 2008, when Self schemes the team around preserving his role even while he was injured. No other player than Rush was so good that he defined the team even when he was out half the season.
Everything revolves around the hub player.
Sherron his last two seasons.
Marcus Morris.
TRob was that in 2012.
Embiid before injury, when the great OAD whose name I momentarily forget refused to put the team on his back apparently in order to minimize injury risk.
Perry Ellis his last season.
Frank his last season.
The hub player is a guy that is so dominant in all phases of the game, either naturally (Embiid), or by development (Frank) and holds MUA so often, that Self largely schemes around him and picks the other starting and rotation players to complement him.
There are great non hub talents like Xavier and Kieff Morris that Self plugs in to complement a hub player. And they might even have become hub talents had they stayed longer and developed.
But actual Hub players are a rare breed and are the most universally developed players with exceptional physical and mental abilities. Hub players are so complete that Self even wants them as hubs knowing they too will have 1/3 bad performances and he would rather have them on their bad nights as the hub than anyone else on a good night.
To be a hub player for Self is the highest compliment in college basketball IMHO.
Okay! If both @REHawk and @HighEliteMajor are feeling secure in Garrett NOW, then I will stop my Sleep Eze and get on with envisioning Garrett as a modern day version of Freddie Slaughter on Woodenās Runts in the event of injury to either Doke or Mitch and go back to uninterrupted golden slumbers!
A lot of ifs, but I catch yer drift.
I asked, because I really canāt see how this will workāhow Self can compensate with scheming. The only things I see Lightfoot having going for him are fundies, want to, and work ethic. Otherwise he looked indistinguishable to me from the bigs on Pin Oak U. Not talking about eye tests, or star counts, here. Talking about actual observable ability to defend and offend vs. typical Big 12 bigs. He had a solid 24 minutes vs. Pin Oak U, but...
What we saw with Doke vs. Pin Oak U is going to be a tendency in many if not most games. Doke gets a foul in the first 3 minutes and Self sits him, as long as possible, to save him for the second half. Playing Doke 35 minutes as happened against UKās saplings at start of season wonāt work by January, much less March.
Further, by then, If Doke gets a foul the first 3 minutes of the second half, then Doke will likely sit till ten to go. This season is like 2012, but with a foul prone Withey replacement, no TRob, no back up, but lots of perimeter scorers. With this yearās bigs, I donāt see how this hunts, unless Self:
a.) hat rabbits another big;
b.) schemes something like the small Wooden teamsāa place he seems unwilling to go; or
c.) devise something heretofore unseen among college ball elitesāat least since the 1960s.
I know many seem to think Mitch can become a 5th year senior his second season, because we need him, or because Self can nip and tuck the way he did with Jamari, but even Jamari was explosive and played in 3-5 man paint rotations.
This seems like a really sticky wicket going forward that turns to super glue with injury to Doke, or Mitch.
But Self does amazing things in these sorts of situations.
If I were Self, right now I would be practicing a lot of 5-0 with a set some one hasnāt seen for a long, LONG time, unless he were sure of a hat rabbit in the paint in January. Self absolutely needs a Geico big.
P.S.: I donāt want to beat on Mitch here either. You go with what you have and you make the best of it. But two bigs with Doke likely a 20-25 minute man most nights to protect him for the last 10 minutes and to hold down wear and tear, and Mitch with situational substitute abilities forced into 15-20 minutes most games seems a tough row to hoe. But Mitch may be an ordinary man forced into heroic circumstances and may enter the gallant hours. Until itās clear there is no hat rabbit coming, that we will all have to BELIEVE and impart the psi of Jayhawk nation to Mitch, I choose to focus on the problem rather than default to faith. One senses this teamās very own private Battle of Midway looms in the mists shortly. Admiral Selfās four deadly attack carriers steaming on his perimeter have survived the fates. His battlewagons in the paint are thinned to 1 dreadnought and 1 light cruiser, both still being shaken down. The USS Preston sits half submerged back at Pearl with unknown prospects for rejoining the fleet. Can Self stay with battle wagon concept in what increasingly looks like a carrier group? Can he stay 4-1, when 5-0 seems who we will be reduced to against top opponents for at least a third to 3/4s of big games, especially against experienced elites?
Go, Bill, go!!!!
This is why you get the big adidas bucks that seem to put us in this situation.