Okay, I'm taking the music appreciation gloves off here.
I've seen every one of them but Orb perform live before the Wilburys and once with the Wilburys.
WTF was Jeff Lynne doing with the Wilburys.
Did he supply the junk, or the Ray Bans?
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Some times perfection just happens on Version 1.0
Yep, I'll gladly take the likeness of the little guy that is so much more hung than Dan!!!!
Sorry, Hoss, but many kinds of size matter!
I just love George Takei.
He appears a man of tremendous character.
He is a credit to men.
He is a credit to gay men.
He is a credit to human beings.
Why do I think so much of him?
Two reasons.
First, George commented to the press with amazing grace, reason and loyalty under significant pressure shortly after the last Star Trek movie premiered. The young director, out of obvious love and respect for George, put in a very brief shot suggesting George's character of Sulu was gay, as George, too, is gay. No doubt the director expected George, who had spoken out honorably and justly on behalf of gay men, to be pleased at the insert that was supposed to be a sort of surprise homage to George. But when a reporter asked him about it, George said that though he understood the director's intention, he was actually disappointed that it had been done. George said that he felt a deep loyalty to Gene Roddenberry, and to his vision of Star Trek, something that went far beyond the issue of sexual preferences. He said Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual and that George had felt honored that Roddenberry, who had known George was gay, believed in George's acting ability, and was unprejudiced about George's sexual preferences, and wanted George to make being Japanese okay again in American television. Sometimes persons forget that, while George was a Japanese American, he was playing a completely positive, Japanese good guy, something not only unusual in American television and film in the early 1960s, but still today.
Second, despite being a man of great dignity and seriousness, he has had the courage to make fun of his own gayness in a way that I believe heterosexual persons are also able to make fun of their hetero-ness. This to me did our culture a great, great service. Prejudice has never really been overcome until a person can fully be who they are, and express themselves in all the similar ways the segment of the culture NOT victimized by prejudice, is allowed to behave.
I have known many, many gay men over the years. I have always felt comfortable around gays, probably because while I was still a fairly clean slate as a young man, I was trained for my first job by a gay woman, who was something of a mentor for too short a while. Nor have I felt their stereotypical mannerisms any more or less ridiculous, nor anymore or less superficial than those my heterosexual acquaintances. But I think if I could have known George personally when I was starting out, at least the elements--serious and playful--of George that he has come to share with the public the last 15 years, I think I could have been a better colleague, neighbor and friend to the gay men I have known. I can't quite explain it, but i think I could have had a lot more fun and laughs, and more honest talks, with some of them than I did.
In the next life.
I am not sure how to interpret what you are trying to communicate.
But I will try to take what you give me.
If you agree that the referees botched the game with no-calls in a way that favored KU with a 90-88 win with seconds to go, which is what your summary of events leads me to infer, then ok.
At midcourt, there appeared little doubt that KSU was playing the percentages that KU was a poor FT shooting team and so was TRYING to put KU on the line. KSU desperately and obviously attempted to foul Svi at mid court. But the refs home-jobbed KSU on the attempted foul and refused to call it. This no call was the first huge favor the refs did for KU in this sequence you describe.
Next, the KSU player was trying to jump in front of Svi on the drive, and force the refs to call a charge on Svi, or a foul on the KSU player; not calling either a charge, or a foul, was the second no call on the same possession involving the same player--Svi--that favored KU.
Next, regarding the contact Svi made, refs are supposed to call it either a charge, or a foul, because contact on a shot was clearly made. Calling a foul, when contact occurs is what the refs are there to do. Surely a ref is still supposed to call shooting fouls in D1 basketball, even as engineered as it appears to be sometimes..
Refs are not supposed to decide the outcome of games. They are supposed to call inappropriate contact, whatever they deem that threshold to be. Surely a shooting foul to win a tied game with seconds to go is an important enough play to call a foul, rather than swallow a whistle to get a decided game over. Refs are supposed to set and call that threshold the same for both teams. This they clearly did not do in this sequence you have described.
Not making a call, either at the mid court, or at the shot on Svi's drive, was determining the outcome of the game.
It is set in stone that refs are not supposed to determine outcome of games by refusing to call obvious intentional fouls, and by refusing to call obvious contact on the shots.
For what its worth, watching on television, it looked to me like the KSU player actually did establish position; that is, of course, why I said he charged.
But whether the KSU player did, or did not establish position, by resorting to a no-call for the second time on the same possession--that second time on a made shot--the ref decisively determined the outcome of the game.
KU did not win the game with its play.
KSU did not lose the game with its play..
The referee selected the home team to win independently of what the teams were doing..
This much is indisputable.
Board rats sometimes misunderstand that other board rats are not complaining about the win. I imagine they are quite happy about the win. Rather, they are rationally concerned about the level of defensive play, given the level of the opponent.
I for one would be making this comment whether we won or lost
If it's just this season, it's prolly the election circus.
If it were recent seasons, too, I thought possibly the broad audience might be tiring of a sport causing their family members not to recognize them in large numbers after my generation played so much football. First hand experience with Alzheimer's is chastening.
KU scoring: KU scores well, shot 50%, and they played a weak team; Thanatos explains KU's 90.
Svi traveling: I counted three steps after picking up his dribble. Self says he travelled. Others above saw the travel. Maybe the Washington Post thinks Putin hacked the scoreboard replay as a favor to Svi?
Svi charging: the home team often gets that call, so I'll be a mensch and write that off.
I want you for my Media manager. You almost made it seem all okay. A Kelly Anne Conway level of reassurance and calm. Bravo, sir!
For a second there I blinked and forgot Self said ithis was his worst defense at Kansas.
Alas, they also looked bad defensively the last two games.
And 88 points is a lot to give up on your home floor to a rival that had to scramble just to field a team this season.
What is their KENPOM rating the last two games?
Maybe that 26 rank included the whole season; I.e., before Doke went out and DG started appearing to play unreported?
I thought they were progressing toward being a good defense until recently. I was comfortable that early injuries accounted for some early problems and they were healing. But..
After these lat two games something seems very wrong. Not irreversibly wrong, but concerning enough to Self to call them his worst defensive team in hopes of spurring them back into effective defenders.
I reckon some shorter practices should help, too.
This is bitter sweet.
The bitter: I grew up loving playing football.
This could have many drivers.
The possibly sweet: the American people may be starting to realize it's a brain damaging game that should be stopped until the brain damaging can be stopped.
I had some Ukrainean neighbors once. Resilient persons. Their people have been murdered by Nazis, Commies, Kleptocrats, and lately Neo Nazis. They just keep getting on with growing grain, building stuff, launching rockets, and sitting on one of the world's biggest abiotic oil reserves at the best point to distribute it to the largest super continent. How this all plays out I don't know. But ever since I read Alexander Hamilton reason that the world had two great center points controlling global trade routes and that North and Central America was one and the Eurasian center line was another, I have wondered if/when America and Russia might JV over EURASIA the way USA-GB have over the oceans. Ukraine probably wouldn't get run over AGAIN if USA/RUSSIA ally. This issue seems the hot button behind the fractious US election and this exceedingly spooky liminal period after. It's a game for all the trade marbles. One candidate wanted war with Russia to protect its Chinese relationship and one candidate wanted alliance with Russia that implied containment. And the Crown of GB was/is very concerned it gets its cut. This appears a very sticky wicket that really might be resolvable, but what do I know?!!! Glad I don't have to make these calls and just get to cheer for hoops!!! Whatever, the US constitution, busted in the chops though it's been regarding our civil liberties, KEEPS doing the framers' intention of pitting all sides against the other despite many at home and abroad on all sides trying to compromise this America I so love! It ain't pretty right now at all. But you can feel the most savvy players for the most powerful axes of private oligarchies head butting like great bison and being drawn in ever deeper into quick sand of constitutional process even as rules are apparently being broken everywhichway they can be. Shoot, they can all come and kill some or all of us tomorrow a bakers dozen different ways and get away with it, but afterwards they are still hog tied in the constitution pitting them against each other. The idiots that say it's just a piece of paper are constantly finding out how it triggers unforeseen alliances against them at home and abroad. The constitution has always drug would be domestic tyrants into the web of international relations, and has always dragged foreign tyrants into our domestic web; that's how it was supposed to work and that is how it has worked. It is an awesome contract!!!!
"Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out,
They leave the West behind!" Lennon-McCartney
Clear thinking. That helped me. Thx!
Pretty please?
Read @ Wissox post entitled "Please"
Helluva a good idea. I was just getting ready to post with a title "Please," asking everyone to double check topics before posting. :bowtie:
I was also going to post another called "Blatant Examples." Its lucky I looked first.:wink:
Nothing wrong with Devonte that 2 working legs wouldn't cure. The hyperextended left elbow is apparently indirectly influencing his release on his shot. And he can't fend off with it either. And the scout on him has to read: "hyperextended left elbow--non shooting arm--makes it super tough for him to put it on the deck going to his left. Thus, waaaaaay overplay his right."
Oh, and one more thing. Remember that to really play pressure defense on the perimeter, you have to be able to turn and burn, when you occasionally get faked out and the guy gets by you. Devonte is showing no signs of turn and burn; that was really what tipped me off to the bomb pins. He is a good actor. He covers it up well.
Yup. Landen is doing well. I'm not complaining about him since he got past playing unreported. The problem is all bigs need a partner in dominance.
The very word "Drew" means beatable in jaybate 1.0's Unabridged Basketball Dictionary.
But the difference this year is that KU has elected to play anti-pressure defense, or perhaps more accurately what might be called the EQUS (Encouraged Quick Unpressured Shot) Defense.
This means the only way KU can win is to be shooting a high percentage, and the other team has has to shoot the same, or less, percentage.
Gone are the vintage days of KU shooting 36% and beating another team shooting 49%.
And the really scary thing about the KSU game was that Weber blue printed one way to beat KU. Match their shooting percentages, keep their guards off the glass, and demand honest referees.
Gulp!!!
But I'm not throwing in the sponge on KU's defense...yet. My working hypothesis remains that them Jaybirds have had dead legs from intense practicing and DG is playing unreported. When Self decides he does not need to be their own worst opponent, and quits building them down, and starts building them up, well, we know all of these players CAN play Self Defense, except for Josh. And Josh shows every sign of being able to, once the building up starts.
One thing I am wondering about is if/when Self will put Josh in the toughening box?
Josh is the only player on the team that has not been sweated so to speak. He has not been made to loath himself and Self yet. He has not experienced existential self-doubt. Perhaps Self has softened and no longer thinks its even worth toughening OADs. Perhaps Self has adopted a double standard. Not even the toughest player coming in is Self Tough until he has had the needle inserted all the way to the medulla for at least a week and been blamed for everything wrong that has ever happened to the team in a season. Josh has been given a pretty boy pass. Josh had not been driven to the breaking point, then beyond, and then back. Among this experienced bunch, Josh is--in the psychological toughness department--unleavened dough. Yes, he is a great player and he can perform at a high level in D1 without it. But when the chips are down and a prison body keeps stiff screening him every time down the floor in the Madness (say if we play Duke for money) and the refs are rolling over for Coach K and waiting for the taunting to drive Josh into a rage, so they can eject him, or watch him take about five bad shots in a row. before calling a charge on him when he is whip kicked and tripped...how will he react at that point? How tough is he really? Athletically he is the unfair advantage you always look for, but is he a real Emerson CQC-6, or some half-tempered shizzle from China? Self has a very tough call to make. He rode Josh briefly, but injuries prevented him from really giving Josh a meaningful length reservation in the toughening box. He has been to Club Med Toughening. Sandals toughening. Chloe's Lavender Toughening. Does Self dare break him down now and rebound him in the middle of the conference and risk the title streak, but then take on the risk of him blowing up in the Madness? Or does he keep building him up and telling him how tough he is to win the consecutive title, and then mask him in the Madness? I suspect Self has already committed to the latter. I suspect Self is just going to ride Josh as far as he can and then call it a season, same as with Wigs. The loss of Doke and the failure of Coleby's rehab, and DG's mystery legs have clearly left Self without the power house hand that seemed to be in the offing. He is now playing a hand that requires endless bluffing. He has to know it. Time to play for titles again, rather than rings. If they get on a miracle run in March and get selected to win, well, then you just ride that. But the only thing still largely under his control now is the conference title. And building Josh down would largley eliminate that control for about two weeks to really toughen him right.
Ah, the trials and tribulations of clearing $10,000,000 a year!!!!
But Self is a wily devil and he has some very good players to bluff with.
Ya just never know with this guy what he might do next.
That's why it so fun to be a KU fan.
Myocardial infarction-The formation of an infarct, an area of tissue death, due to a local lack of oxygen. An infarction is a full on heart attack, rather than CHF (congestive heart failure), where no tissue death occurs).
Ukraine is wheat country, comrade!
And they are big in metallurgy, heavy industry, aircraft (make the jet plane with the longest wing span flying today), remote sensing and they have a growing space program with over a hundred launches!
It's got some gas and oil, too. But they are on the Russian teat for oil right now--a legacy of Soviet days trying to keep them dependent. The HUGE bulk of the crude is untapped under the Caspian awaiting the resolution of the fight of the 21st Century between West and East to see which private oligarchy--NY/London, or Shanghai SecPact) bribes, tortures and murders which central bank into ultimate control. Ukrainean oil in the Caspian and it's pinch point position on pipeline distribution, and the wheat, are the reasons every power hungry bunch of geostrategic pricks tread on Ukraine.
Pipe lines crucial to connecting central Asian oil and gas with European consumers run everywhere. Polite company mentions that. It's vulgar and sometimes dangerous to talk about the Ukrainean interest in the oil in the Caspian. It's like no one talks about the oil reserves off the Korean Peninsula, or in the disputed parts of the South China Sea, or off the coast of Cuba, or under the American Great Lakes, etc. Oil in areas being disputed over for ultimate control is best not mentioned, until the bribing, torture, murder and regime change wars to control it are completed.
Ukraine is also vital turf to control to all sides trying to get control of the Classic Eurasian centerline strategy reaching from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the Regime Change Wars have all actually been fights between different ambitious players making plays to gain effective control over this pivotal center line and its flanks to control the world's major trade routes . The rest of the 21st Century will also fundamentally be a struggle to see if any single alliance can control it. If anyone does, they effectively become a global economic hegemond able to control the major trade routes from that line outwards.
Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas used to be disputed over similarly in the mid and late 1800s and for largely the same geostrategic and oily reasons. Control them and you could control the coal, oil, gas and wheat there, plus the southern and central rail routes needed to connect to maritime trade routes and to control the approach zones to the anticipated canal in Central America. Ukraine is handy for controlling the Bosporus directly and in directly helps wall off Russian predation on the Middle East and the Suez. Canal, unless of course The Trumper can build an alliance with Russia in which case they get a seat at our central bank, after they strip it from the current private owners, and China becomes a partner or a contained opponent to be destabilized over 50 years.
Ukraine measures 233,000 some square miles, or just a hair smaller than Texas.
Like Texas it's got some cold country in the North and it's got some beach in the south. The Caspian Sea is its version of the Gulf of Mexico.
And like Texas, Ukraine is kind of betwixt and between cultures and has likewise a strong legacy identity of its own. Folks have been calling Ukraine home for 35,000 years!!!
All of this is a way of saying Svi ought to feel pretty darned at home here in another breadbasket with. Oil, gas, coal, and aerospace.
And sure enough, when I heard him interwiewed after he won the game for KU VS. Silo A&M, he revealed an accent very close to Bill's Okie accent with a twist of African American dialect and Hoopah talk.
Some peaceful day, he might return to UKraine.
And he will teach them about how much we have in common...once you gain 20 pounds.
Rock Chalk Svi!!!!!
Scott Drew should be an inspiration to everyone, whose father got them jobs they weren't ready for, in fields they weren't suited to, working for disingenuous bosses; that have had to manage ungrateful employees, while being publicly humiliated again and again by the best in their profession.
He has alchemically transmuted nepotism, inferiority and incompetence, into a viable career; thus proving access, opportunity and forbearance are critical drivers of success.
Drew has become, in short, except for his school's CST location, an ideal type for selection to win a ring in an apparently engineered March Carney.
Just kidding.
Drew endures and proves persistence, hard work and the ability to take a punch still counts for something in America.
Still, I hope we knock him into the Gulf of Mexico.
But beating a deeper, probably just as talented team, without KU playing defense, is a tall order, even for Bill Self.
Our only chance is: Scott is so used to seeing KU guard that he will probably waste too much prep on handling KU's old pressure defense, and not enough stopping our new "high trip" offense.
It really feels like Bill is ripping a page outta Roy's ploys. High trips with higher percentage shots plus opponent fatigue equals W.
Phog has to be howling with glee up in the darkness over the scoreboard at Henry infarcting over what Bill is doing.
Sixty point take what they give us and guard has become 90 point quick trigger and let'em shoot to get the ball back!
But quietly up in the shadows, Wooden has taken a seat beside Phog and Hank and said, "Your boy has finally listened to me. Conditioning, quickness, a single post, and a good clip, is the way to play this game. The young man is finally getting it. Perhaps next he will quit letting the opponent set the tempo."
To which Eddie Sutton pulls up a chair above the scoreboard and says, "Never. No way. Not. Gonna. Hap. Woody!"
@HighEliteMajor said:
As untenable as a 90-88 score may seem to Self, it counts the same as the 65-60 score he seems to enjoy
Thinking proportionally, 90-88 is really more like 65-64.98573.
🤓
First, the loose defensive morals of this basketballl monastery are enough to make me feel I have fallen in with offensive heathen.
SINNERS REPENT!!!!!!!!
Friar @wissox seems to have become positively reptilian. He would rather win 90-88 than 60-57? OMG! Forgive him Father!!!!
Friar @KUSTEVE thinks Devonte is saving his body? This is a sin against basketball manhood and may result in a lightening strike.
Friar @HighEliteMajor is openly skeptical about unreported injury to one of KU's top guards in the Selfian Era after him having two straight 28% shooting nights in Conference and barely being able to jump down the stretch of the KSU game? Ten Hail Jimmies, Brother HEM.
I could go on here, but the point is made.
There is a pox upon our basketball monastery,
A plague of locusts may be coming to devour our gardens and wolves may come to eat our lambs.
90-88 win with a travel and a charge on one's home floor against a cellar dweller? Against no talent sod busters with milking callouses on their palms and oat hay straw in their hair?
The Lord Basketball god shall ravage you all with hail until thou art beaten birds in the blighted corn and sin of Sodom East of Eden.
Two straight 28% games on a good shooter signal unreported injury.
Don't think so. I only recall him wearing a ton of stuff on his legs during those occasional stretches when Self would have everyone wear them to try to mask which guy was playing underreported. He's not doing that right now. And as I said, there are just lots of times when Devonte is not leaping as he used to do. That is always a sign that a guy his saving his hops for key plays, because his springs hurt.
Crean has been on the border line as a coach for along time.
He learned from Ratso, so he knows the game cold.
And he has stretches of getting his team's to play great.
But he seems to have some self destructive streak, maybe some lack of deep self confidence or self esteem, that infects his team's in predictably.
It's like he is stuck and can't quite get beyond it.
Sometimes I think he and Weber suffer the same problem.
@JayHawkFanToo said:
@jaybate-1.0 said:
Are you on drugs? The Big 12 is ranked the #1 conference,
No, I'm clean as always, but I am very worried about the bad junk that you just apparently speed balled and are now apparently caught in the confusing rush of, as you appear to release your surgical tubing! 🤓
You gave me the drug smear so, I'm just trying play it the way you want.
@DoubleDD , if I recall correctly, nailed this "Big 12 is great this season" junk. Addictively overrating the B12 happens almost every pre con year lately, at least as often as the B12 gets rolled early in the Carney.
The Carney Biz model apparently optimizes on over hype of the B12 in precon to make things work to a bottom line of balanced betting that lets the EST steam roll the B12 in the March. The system appears engineered front to back. But I'm not going to rely on that pattern and appearance of impropriety just because it fits well with your drug taking metaphor you gave me to apply to you; that's too easy for this conference time of season.
No one can SERIOUSLY look at TCU, KSU, TTECH, OU, and OSU and say this season, "Oooooh, even the bottom half of the B12 is stacked with talent" regardless of what the pre con stats suggest
ISU and UT don't look overloaded with talent either, frankly.
So what's inflating the stats to a misleading extent beyond the apparent engineering premise?
Here's the springboard for the illusion that your drugs are creating for you. The B12 has quite a few experienced, above average coaches trying to get out of the subbasement, basement and middle, and so they outcoach the midmajors and weak majors scheduled early, and their weak talent builds up some good "looking" numbers off that early lopsided edge in coaching that suggests more talent than is there, but that doesn't mean their teams have enough talent to finish in the top half of the B12, and do well in the apparently engineered Carney, where talent and mailing address appear paramount, and where coaching quality evens out much more than in precon.
Now, I've tried to talk you down here, but I think you may be far enough into this "Big 12 is great this year" junk hallucination that you may have to check yourself into a "creepy" rehab gig!
Man are you getting "creepy" with these drug metaphors!
Yeeee hawwww its conference season and bate 1.0 is playing some take what they give us!!!
Thx for noticing DG coming up short.
The strength of this team was never Frank, OR Devonte. It was Frank AND Devonte!
Got to get DG to a witch doctor to cast a good spell on his wheels.
@wissox said:
Did he [Doke] make that much of a difference on this team?
It's Graham playing under-reported that is weakening the perimeter D.
Re: Doke--He gave boards and block&alter, while Landon recovered and quality rest once he did recover. Though foul prone he was intimidating physically. Self was starting him to shorten games for Landen, but teammates are emboldened by any big hunk of man that can retaliate.
"We shall see, but I'm guessing we will see our opponents coaches scheme ways to exploit our weak interior."
This is coming, during Landen's 5-10 rest minutes per game. Longer if Bragg doesn't round out soon.
@stoptheflop said:
What in the heck is wrong with DJ's defense? Everyone drives right by him.
Assuming u mean DG, the tell is the leg lingerie. Nobody wears that stuff, because it's sexy. He must have some leg problems. His play has been off all season, but lately as he looks more and more like THE MUMMY from the draw string down, his entire game seems to have fallen off the same way Landen Lucas' game did, when he was playing under-reported regarding injuries.
When a #3 team beats a cellar dweller 90-88 on the #3 team's home floor, something really weird is going on.
Round up the usual suspect, print him, collect the Rollex, photograph him: Bill Self, face on, Bill Self profile.
Self has created a worthwhile opponent for his team amidst a string of bottom dwellers: TCU, KSU, TTech, OU, and OSU. The created opponent's name is Bill Self State.
Self ran them ragged in practice during the week of getting better.
He tongue lashed them as only scorpion tongued Self can. He withered their confidence outside the view of fans.
He took a #3 ranked team on a roll and crushed it into the kind of dead legged, half step slow, joyless bunch of players that are wondering what in God's creation it takes to make this demon with a whistle and fractured Okie syntax like them.
Then he sends them out with a joke of an offensive scheme the first half against KSU that amounts to little more than 4 out, 1 in, and take turns trying to make a play on your own, while I scream at you for playing defense like a bunch of babies.
They get lucky with a few treys and open a 10 point lead that would have been 30 points had Self even let them run the first week's offensive stuff.
He flatters them with confidence builders like "This is the worst defensive team I have had at Kansas."
And as if to show them just how unimpressed he is with the flipping lucky 10 point lead they eeked out the first half, he sends them back out on the floor and purposely has them run things that won't work with what little Helmet Hair is able to get his pitiful bunch of City Leaguers to take away! Seriously, its like Self told Snacks over halftime to text his old boss, Weber, and say, tell us what you are going to take away, cause Self wants to give them plays that won't work against it so they have to figure out how to beat someone themselves, okay? And Weber complied and Self rattle off four plays that absolutely wouldn't work worth a fecal deposit, and said, "get out their and win it with defense." And the players said, "But, but, coach, what defensive scheme do you want us to run this half?" And Self laughed that withering laugh of his and said, "Screw it, make up something yourselves. I've tried every thing with you babies, and you won't even stay with your own shadows. Get outta my sight. I'm not even sure I'm coming out the second half. You guys are destroying 11 years of teams building a defensive reputation at Kansas in one lousy season. Get outta my face."
And they trudged back out and not only frittered away the lead, but then completely stopped playing defense and said, "Let's show that sunnuvabitch, let's swap baskets the entire second half until he infarcts over there!!"
And that's just what they did.
They did not find a way to win it.
They fought all the way backwards to even with seconds to go, despite shooting 50 percent from trey for the game. Do you have any idea how bad they had to have played and how little they had to have guarded to fritter away a ten point lead while shooting 50% from trey? Its almost a statistical impossibility.!!!!
Against even a half way respectable opponent they would have been handily drubbed the second half.
But not this brow beaten, dead legged bunch with an OAD, and not against a hilariously bad KSU team.
No, the Ukrainian Kid, of all persons, took a pass on a break with seconds to go and dribbled and three-stepped his way into an uncalled charge and still managed to hole one that sent the farmers back to finish their manure shoveling chores.
Frankly, winning this spectacle of induced cluelessness on not one but two bad calls that unconscionably favored KU (KSU got home jobbed out of the game), seems perhaps this team's ultimate revenge on its own Machiavellian head coach.
Ha, Bill, they showed YOU!!!!!!
They proved they could give a game away, play no defense whatsoever, and still find a way to back into a win inspite of you!!!!
I watched the final minute and a half twice and, Bill, I actually think I saw the refs look at each other after reviewing the missed travel and the missed charge, and one appeared to say to the other, "I've never seen a coach screw with his own teams heads this much. Of course, the basket didn't count. Of course the kid traveled. Of course the kid charged. But I want to give this W to the KU players for putting up with all of his shit." And the other ref seemed to say, "Yeah, and if we do call it, KSU will just choke, and Self with finally give them some stuff to run that works and KU will win the OT by 5 and we'll have hang around here just that much longer for the same pay. The spread is toast regardless. I don't want to give Self that satisfaction. Let's just give his team the call and the win, and see how he likes facing them after they showed him they don't need to play his goddamned Self Defense to win. That ought to keep him up a few hours later than normal tonight."
And that's what the refs apparently did.
And the players?
They must have shouted:
Defense?
We don't need no stinking defense!!!
For what its worth, I just watched Devonte jump 3 inches off the floor while defending a break at 84-82 with 1;35 left.
Great. Its an absolutely crappy conference this season. You're not risking much.
But FF in the tournament? Without Devonte at 100 percent, and no depth at the post? And the defensive weak link with Devonte at 2/3s speed?
Now that is Ruth pointing at the fence.
I can guaranty you that you will walk on water with a beard before what you witnessed tonight had to do with turkey and New Years cheer. These are dead legs from the week of getting better that probably turned into two weeks, because, well, because Self just decided...what the heck, why not roll the dice and take they waaaaaaaaay out of their comfort zones.
P.S.: Self is a genius. But genius from time to time takes that don't pay off. Beating the piss out of a team that is going to have a short bench right now is a VERY big gamble, even if they win all these nothing games before ISU. The gamble is that the short rotation doing all this EXTRA work, when not needed, is going to lead to one of Self's occasional team burnouts down the stretch.
But again, he is playing for all of the marbles. His reasoning obviously is: this team isn't deep anymore and it is going to have to learn to play through sooner or later, if it is to get a title and make a run. But this really could blow up in his face.
Its pretty clear he decided to extend the legendary week of getting better into two weeks. These guys legs are completely dead.
And its pretty clear that he decided to make them labor by his age old trick of taking away all the stuff that works, and giving them no wrinkles.
And its pretty clear that he did it to try to make them beat a cellar dweller with defense.
But...they couldn't do it.
Down the stretch of both halves he cracked and gave them some stuff to run.
That's why he is calling them the worst defensive team he has ever had.
KSU is terrible. They are the kind of team that Self teams used to be able to strangle even when he purposely gave them junk that wouldn't work.
This team doesn't control a square inch of the court defensively.
Why?
Tonight it was because the legs were dead from "two weeks of getting better" aka killer practices working them relentlessly on every phase of the game. You know that's how its had to have been, because none of the guys were smiling. They all thought things were going so well that the rest of the season was going to be a march to the Carney. But Self threw them a curve and put them all in the toughening box. No more smiles from this team. The have felt the Self hate boner. They have been withered by the stinger.
Clearly Self looked at the schedule and said TCU, KSU, TTEch, OU and OSU could easily be beaten by 20-30 points each game and the team is going to get waaaaaay overconfident for the first good conference team we meet: ISU.
Clearly Self has made himself the teams fearsome opponent that the schedule does not supply right now.
But...
A KU team that cannot turn on Self Defense even under the most trying of conditions created by Self betrays a structural problem.
Devonte is probably playing operable below the waist and with a hyper extended elbow above; and its likely that it isn't going to change.
Self has decided to teach the team to win with Devonted the way he is.
KU will look much better shortly when Self lets up on their legs and their brains.
But...
But he would be resting Devonte now, if he thought it would help Devonte.
Inference: WYSIWYG with Devonte. The great player we saw last season is probably not coming back this season.
I can't lie, gal youngin', he is showing all the same signs that Tyrel Reed showed after his great season, only to come back and play about 2/3s as productively and always a step slower than the year before.
This Devonte is NOT the Optimus Prime of shooting guards we saw last season.
NOT. EVEN, CLOSE.
@Blown said:
Self called it the worst Defensive team he’s had at Kansas.
I am so glad you posted that. I was beginning to think I was in an alien tractor beam and being made to watch this simulacrum of KU basketball while they drained my bodily fluids and filled my brain with strange memories of DNA extraction.
If Self sees the problem, then I am not in an altered state.
I would argue its not even a defensive team.
T-Tech, OU, and OSU. Nothing teams. No time crunch.
Why is he even playing Devonte? Let the guy take the next three games off.
Self has completely junked all of the stuff I was talking about for the first half of the KSU game.
He has just turned this into four guys "stand on the perimeter and try to make plays."
They pushed it up to a 10 point lead with a couple of off balance treys.
Weird. He's up to something, but I have no idea what as the first half ends.
Lemme think, who do we play next and when? I will look.
Devonte has a hyper extended left elbow, and Jamari Traylor knees. ugh!!!
Its pretty obvious that he sent them out flat. Josh Jackson is the only one that looks even a little quick. Frank looks like he is in slow motion in a bad way, not in the psi way of earlier this season.
Is this Self's new secret weapon? He tries to let opponents score so much they get tired down the stretch?
Looks like KU is a team no one fears.
Good lord. I am looking at the stats and KU shot 50% from trey and only won 90-88
I'm watching the replay of this tutorial in how to make a cellar dweller look good.
My creative insights may be paralyzed shortly.
Holy cow, I wish I had watched this when it was actually on, so I would be done with it.