🏀 KuBuckets Archive

The toughening box and injuries explain most of why the officiating is having such a devastating early effect on our bigs and why other team's bigs not injured are scoring and rebounding despite getting fouled up, too.

But I want to add one more trigger.

The lingering influence of Jeff Withey has finally receded and players AND coaches seem to have forgotten what the great savant of block and alter taught.

1.) Don't leave your feet when they drive at you. Extend arms fully and arch your shoulders back. Don't reach toward the shooter.

2.) When you leave your feet, jump straight up and reach straight up. Don't move into the shooter or reach toward the shooter.

3.) Block the shot a foot away and above the shooter.

4.) as you come across the lane, wait to commit to block a shot until the driver leaves his feet, so you know he can no longer change directions and jump into you.

Such varied players as TRob, Tarrick Black, Hunter Michelson and Jamari Traylor each learned these lessons from Jeff, or the knowledge left behind, despite having to jump more explosively to make up for their shorter heights.

Jeff understood that altering was more important than blocking, because you can alter more shots than you can block. He understood you can alter shots simply with footwork, position, and extension at the right moment. And altering, like blocking, occurs about 1-2 feet from and 6-12 inches above a shooter's release; not at the point of release.

This season KU's bigs are trying to block shots the way kids in my neighborhood used to do it. They are blocking at point of release. Duh! They would have been fouling under the old rules, too.

Time to get out the old footage of Jeff.

Jeff got so good they let him block some at point of release, because he arched his back and created the illusion of leaning back from the charging driver. But before he did that, he had learned to block and alter without being in the shooter's immediate space. And well above the point of release.

@Lulufulu

At the D1 level, guys don't suddenly stop being able to do what they are good at, even with scheming. Landon was a rebounding fool down the stretch. You just don't loose that to foul calling. Maybe a sickness in the family, or a girl breakup. But Self said foot and boot, and he's wearing junk in his shoe.

Lucas. Hurt.

Bragg? Hurt. Bank on it. A big guy sliding on 20-30 more pounds for more minutes than ever in his life? TENDONITIS! It's almost a given. Only question is: is he a fast healer, or a slow one, Slow ones just keep getting worse after they get a little better.

Devonte. Hurt. Maybe not as bad...maybe. But he is mentally tough, like Tyrel used to be, so for all we know he could already be playing operable.

You can hide leg injuries, but you can't hide the negative effects they have on things like jump shooting percentages, steals, and so on.

Bad wheels eventually have to be scoped around to avoid the lost scoring efficiency.

We have a bunch of guys with tendonitis and stress reactions in the legs; that's my witch doctor's opinion.

Buy stock in Vicky's secret, at least for awhile.

@HawkChamp

KU players wear lingerie for a reason and it is not because it is something more comfortable to slip into. They wear it for actual injuries and some times to look injured one place instead of another. In a few games two years ago he had everyone wearing lingerie so they all looked injured and only some were. Injuries aren't excuses. They are strategic realities. They've limit what can be done by individuals and so by teams. They alter what pages of the playbook get used.

Self appears to deny, understate, even mischaracterize injuries and sickness as other issues and so mislead media, fans and opponents in order to make it harder for opposing coaches and players to exploit KU's strategic limitations. It appears just SOP.

Self may win us a few, or several, games a year by this misdirection. It depends on the injuries and the talent available, how much he has to do it.

This year the team is short handed and appears to have an early cluster of injuries. So: we are seeing a lot of slight of hand. When you see lingerie, study the foot work immediately. It's the tell.

Next, crosscheck (no, not the voting software journalist Greg Palast says was used to throw the election), with the kinds of things a particular player in question can reputedly do, when healthy, versus what this player is actually doing in that game. Ask: is it the match up that's stopping him, or is Self scheming around injury, sickness, or a bottom third of the performance distribution?

Think about Vick, a reputed dead eye Trey baller not taking many treys and making few for some games now. Boom! The lingerie showed up. Something has been up with Vick.

Self reputedly likes guys to "play through," so they probably don't even tell him at first, but he can tell. He can tell when a gnat is on a player. The guy is nothing if not a detail freak! He apparently decides pain becomes injury and when to rescope roles and how to mask the rescoping.

We are not talking excuses. We are talking reality and illusion and strategy. Period.

Self likely knows opposing coaching staffs have a very limited amount of time to study recent game feeds in these stretches of two in three and 3 in six and implement injury specific exploits. So: he makes it hard on them to do it at all.

Self has won 82% of his games in some part because of doing this sleight of hand stuff with injuries. Most coaches aren't apparently as deceptive at this stuff, as Self. Even Coach K was had by him the other night.

But who knows? Coach K stayed in a game with only 7 guys himself. He was probably disinforming Self too.

Mark Fox is younger and earlier I development. Fox frankly looked like me watching a professional magician much of the Georgia game and Fox is a good young coach. He had a really good scheme for KU, but as the game unfolded and Self kept shifting gears, Fox appeared to grow uncertain about where the real weaknesses were and where the smoke and mirrors were distracting him toward. Had he guessed right about who to exploit and who not to?

Fox got uncertain and hesitated; that is what Self is so great at making other coaches do. He who hesitates against Self quickly sees Self's players start making plays. It's uncanny, but how it is.

@stoptheflop

INSIDE

Lucas--foot. Guess: Injury worse than reported. Maybe even more than foot. He's also struggling with being schemed against.

Bragg--apparently tendinitis in both knees judging by lingerie. He can stride out but not slide or jump much. It has made his J worthless. Tendonitis of the knees. Guess: Injury unreported
and getting worse then better then worse.

Doke: lingerie on one leg, if I recall correctly. Guess: Tendonitis one leg, no touch, still learning.

Coleby: Bad knee slowly rehabbing. Guess: Best guy we've got at post outside Landen. Really knows how to play the position and has the height and weight needed to play in March. Coleby will be in the rotation if he does not reinjure while rehabbing.

Lightfoot: knows how to play post but too light for March, so not being developed for this year. Svi and Josh are about same height and can do more things, so when need arises, Svi or Josh get the call.

OUTSIDE

Devonte: unreported tendonitis both knees. Lingerie. Trey and driving both definitely hampered.

Frank: unreported hyper extended elbow on arm with bandage.

Vick: tendonitis in both legs. Trey definitely hampered to point he's not taking it.

SUMMARY:

On a talented ten man team all four bigs injured and three perimeter guys are too. So Self has shortened the scoring to 3-4 guys and relies more on Josh and Frank with good legs. The rest of the guys Self is telling to play x axis and gut it out on defense and pass on offense. It's bailing wire time.

@wissox

Sounds right!

@ParisHawk

Yes, me too.

Just kidding!!!

No wait! Isn't Caterpillar HQ'ed in Fort Wayne? Or was that International Harvester? If it's Caterpillar, add FW ASAP! We need Caterpillar on our side!!!!

@BShark

Or is it Fort Wayne that's out to get us!!!?

@ParisHawk

I always believed 100 was probably in his late 80s, or even older, based on how far back he had first had knowledge of the game, especially Coach Allen. Frankly, based on what he knew, there was even a slim chance that he was a 100 years old, when he picked the alias.

For awhile after he stopped posting, I made no inferences about what had become of him. But the more time that passed, given even the minimum age range I suspected him to be, the more I have come to believe he either died, or slipped into infirmity severe enough that he could not communicate. I just believed he would find away to communicate around a little arthritis, or whatever.

I vaguely recall S omeone once posted something about thinking they had figured out who they believed he was and that he had died.

I was not particularly persuaded by that. I just figure the odds favor death, or infirmity, at the age I guessed him to be.

@kjayhawks

I have spent a lot of years working at understanding the game through Self's philosophic lens in order to try to learn his rationales for doing things.

I came from a time and a back ground that thought match-up zones and switching between m2m and various zones made a lot of strategic sense.

So: I fully identify with you notions that Self should play more zones more of the time.

But having said that, I want to tell you what I believe I have discovered about why Self and many other great coaches believe man2man is the smart way to play defense, if at all possible to play it well.

There are really two reasons.

The first reason is that when you play a zone defense, the offense always knows exactly where your players are going to be on the court. It is a tremendous edge to know exactly where each defender will be. It means you can attack away from their worst match up pretty much every time. It means you always know where there best defender will be and play away from him. Another thing is that you know you can always flood one cell of a zone, or compress it and expand it, or slice the seams of it, and I think Self hates giving an offense those edges.

The second thing is that it for a zone to be effectively played, everyone in the zone has to chop their feet all the time and they have to slide around the floor with the ball movement a much greater distance than do several of the players in a m2m defense. One of the unsung beauties of m2m defense is that only the guy on the ball, and one pass away really have to get down and play exhausting defense. The other two guys can actually rest some whenever they are two passes away. Over the course of a game, a m2m defense actually expends less of its energy budget than a zone team, at least a zone team playing truly good zone defense. This was an insight that was shared with me years ago with an old alias that reputedly died some years ago now. His alias was 100 and he was a tremendously knowledgeable basketball man who had actually grown up around the game back in the days of Phog Allen and had observed Allen closely for many, many years. He not only knew more about KU basketball since the 1930s than anyone else I ever met, including my own father, who knew a ton, he just flat out understood many aspects of the game like zone versus man to man. I will never forget one season when KU played MU under Mike Anderson and MU just ran KU ragged with Andersons full court pressing. The old alias named "100" pointed out exactly what Self had done wrong and how he should attack the Missouri press the next meeting and Self did exactly what he said he should do. It was one of the most impressive pieces of fan analysis and beating a professional coach to not only what went wrong, but what would work, that I can recall. And he did it again and again. The guy just knew his shizzle from baseline to baseline and sideline to sideline. He said that playing zone required certain kinds of athletes and they had to train in certain kinds of ways to really play zone at a high level. He always said Jim Boeheim coached the best zone defenses because he recruited players ideally suited to playing that way and he trained them relentlessly. He said Boeheim's guys could play zone defense at a high level and be in such fabulous condition that they could switch over to m2m and not get tired. He said great zone defense actually took more energy than m2m. And he said that extra demand on the energy budget of players was one of the reasons Self preferred m2m. Self wanted to play the best defense he could, but also have the most gas left in the tank for the other end to score on offense. Thus Self came to the unwavering conclusion that if you recruit good m2m defenders and they could match up well on defense, then play m2m to the bitter end and then go down on offense and make big plays late in the game, when the other team was gassed from playing zone.

I know what I am saying runs contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom about man2man and zone. In my high school ball, it was always less taxing to play zone than man2man. But 100 said no high school coaches coach the play of zone at the level of intensity required in D1.

Anyway, because of all of the above, I am very fascinated to see Self finally coming out and zoning some. He's clearly had some change in philosophy, but it will be interesting to see if it is just a case of showing some zone, or if he has really committed to playing zone at a high level and often.

Damn it was good to see President Obama hang medals on MJ and Kareem and Scully. I have to spend a lot of time defending Wilt from MJ and Kareem, but I want to take this moment and say I really have always loved and hugely admired both of those guys. And Kareem especially was an inspiration to me during his years at UCLA. Rock Chalk!

@BeddieKU23

Sometimes genius is knowing when not to be too much of a genius.

That zone was one of those times.

@RockChalkinTexas

Tell the techs to keep the radiation off your sense of humor!!!

@BeddieKU23

Self is probably about ready to start screaming the old Gregory Peck line from "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," or whatever the old Hemingway book to movie was.

Stretcher bearers...STRETCHER BEARERS!!!!

@RockChalkinTexas

You had me a little worried that we were gonna have to do this season for you instead of with you.

@Crimsonorblue22

Copy and paste.

@RockChalkinTexas said:

Winning ugly is still a win.

Damned straight, gal.

@kjayhawks

With Vick and Devonte in lingerie, and Frank sporting the de rigeur hyper extended elbow bandage, it was time for Josh to put some dinner on the table for his mates.

@Crimsonorblue22

Prolly deserved it excluding that base line defense.

But my heart belongs to Frank.

I am a Jon Coffman fan instantly.

I think Tom sent them out a little flat, what about you?

Anybody seeing the Hoosiers getting upset by Fort Wayne?

I'm no longer worried about the team, if the injuries are the kind that can heal over the next month. If not, then we're in a heap uh trouble come conference season.

@BShark

Back at ya.

@approxinfinity

no, I'm serious. I really believe we are looking at a ton of injuries and that Self is doing one of his bailing wire coaching jobs, where he just scopes the team way down to do just a few things that his uninjured players can still do, and then hopes and waits for the injuries to get better.

@Bwag

I really think you may not be attributing enough to the injuries.

Its pretty tough to run the stuff, when your bigs can't slide, or even rotate high to low, or block to block.

I mean this is like our perimeter guys are playing with invalids.

Bragg can barely slide. Its fascinating. He runs the floor okay. Gotta be tendonitis.

I know this is not an original thought, but this team could be scary good if it ever got healthy.

Frank really attracts a crowd. He must have had 3 guys on him when he passed back out front to Svi.

Svi finally does something to get rid of the :-1:

I swear: Coleby's knee still reminds me of pin head in Hellraiser.

Landen looks like he not only has a sore foot, but that he enduring an extended stay in Self's toughening box. Figured Self would have let him out by now.

Landen got a board.

It is really impressive that we are winning this game.

But that 9-0 run by the Dawgs kind of hurt our pride.

@brooksmd said:

I vote Coleby to start at the 5.

Ditto. Even if he can only go 35 seconds on the knee. He's the best we've got right now.

Frank made a freshman pass across the blocks. Whew!

Did Frank start the game with that linen on his right leg?

Josh forgot and played high school defense. He channeled the guy baseline instead of to paint.

:+1: Frank, Devonte, Josh, Vick. Coleby.

:-1: Landen, Bragg, Svi.

:grey_question: Doke.

After the game, Self will probably flatly deny that KU played zone.

He will call it a switching man to man, or something, so no one thinks anyone is injured. :smiley:

Maybe go back to lots of Big Macs. Sherron fought the pounds, but his legs didn't look like this until year three or so, did they?

Gawd, I though a couple of years ago was bad with injuries.

They've got to talk to Hudy about this.

Something is going on with whatever kind of lifting and exercises and supplements they are getting to make them look like this already.

Vick would be kicking ass and taking names later if his legs were in good shape.

Frankly, all ya gotta do is look at the leg lingerie and you can see who is hurting.

Our best big man is Coleby. That guy could play... if he had 2 legs.

Bragg and Lucas are obviously injured.

And so is Graham. And I mean BEFORE he got poked in the eye.

Who thinks that Carlton Bragg isn't playing with an unreported/underreported injury to one or both of his legs?

"Its the end of the world as we know it/

And I feel fine."

--R.E.M.

You can always tell when an OAD perimeter player has not yet played up to expectations. Posting focuses on specific athletic plays, like nasty dunks, rather than total points, total rebounds, trey percentage and scoring efficiency.

But not to worry. Josh is coming along and if Self can keep giving him 15 FGAs per game for awhile, he will get untracked for a big game. The UAB game got him a highlight dunk, which is required for OAD branding, but not the kind of numbers needed for marketing buzz. So: Self will likely get him another branding game ASAP, so that Self can get back to developing the inside game we will need for balance in conference and post season.

If Josh actually lacks a Trey, it could take 20 FGAs for a branding game.

Either way, it will come.

@HawkChamp

The 15 FGAs suggests it was a brander on a night when Josh couldn't quite get fully untracked. But we'll know for sure in a while. If Self keeps giving Josh 15 FGAs every game, then we'll know it wasn't a brander.

@drgnslayr

KU doesn't need more than 15 points and 12 boards out of the paint from its Composite post of Bragg, Landen and Doke. It's already getting the 10-12 boards. It's the scoring that seems a problem.

Self is building his own private Eddie/Keady UARK team wit Moncrief/Delph/Brewer and some invisible guys at 4 and 5.

Self's edge over the great UARK team is SVI. Svi let's Self stay great at the 3 man perimeter for 40 minutes, or let's Self play some small 4-1. Eddie/Keady never had that luxury.

Bragg is another potential edge, if he gets to where he can play.

Short answer is: IF your no name 4 and 5 can guard and rebound with the best, they will confront in the March Carney, as say Mike Bibby's great UA team, or the Nova team you mentioned could, a team can get along fine with great perimeter players only.

It's also helps if they don't see an opponent with a great post man.