"It's the end of the world as we know it/
And I feel fine..." --REM
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
It is a tribute to the ephemeralness of information on the internet.
Poof!
It's gone.
Whether it shows up again is impossible to know for sure.
Poof!
Good bye post.
Thanks and I believe quite devoutly in a Christian sky God. It's the wet ware that was around, when I came along. And it works for me. And if I had been born in Brooklyn with Russian immigrant parents, I would likely believe in a Jewish sky God, or an Roman Catholic sky god, or a Russian orthodox sky god . Or if I had been born in the Arab community is suburban Detroit, I probably would believe in an Islamic Sky god. And they would work for me and I would probably secretly believe that I was not the chosen and the others were not infidels for believing what they believed, just as I do today, though publicly peer pressure might occasionally make me have to say such things to get the whole sale price, or to get my child a good education, or a good job, or marry into a respectable family, if he/she wanted such things.
All will be well and all manner of things shall be well.
@approxinfinity said:
concrete
You are a astute and insightful analyst of the interface of digitalization and its effect on meaning in culture. You are enough younger than me that you could put into clear words what I could only fumble around the edges of.
We are dealing with a paradigm shift in the foundations of meaning in a digitized culture vs a predigitalized culture that will be as pervasive and "impactful" as occurred to meaning in the ascent of bureaucracy and industrialization during the era of paper on printing press has been.
The early phases of this changes produce alarmist analyses that emphasize the incomprehensibility of what is to come and naively argue that because the change is incomprehensible to us that it spells doom. This is a prejudice of educated intelligence; that without broad, fitting and effective knowledge human action is doomed. Wrong.
History records humanity negotiating these periods again and again. It is frankly what we do. We are creatures that endlessly create meanings out of sensory input that may or may not help us live. Nature's indifferent context then selects us endlessly in tiny increments towards meanings that work, whether they are true or not in any given moment.
Life is the record of expedient fit with context.
All meanings possible at a given time have been tried at one time or other in large or small attempts. Times and context change and new meanings are tried along with old ones.
What works is repeated, if it does not too suddenly traumatize the order.
What does not work is often kept if it perpetuates the order.
Digitalization changes meaning as you say with such breathtaking clarity.
The question is: can we find a way to benefit from it by making it not too traumatic to the order?
I never worry about humans creating new effective meanings the way Jean Baudrillard did, when he said humans had destroyed first god, and now the truth in their progression from agrarian, to industrial, to digital, and that without truth humans were doomed to a random, meaningless existence not unlike plants; that Baudrillard could conceptualize only as a void likely to lead to extinction.
Baudrillard betrayed what I referred to above as the prejudice of educated intelligence. It believes like a slave master that meaning, order and rational work can only occur with the epistemically equivalent of masters and slaves. Note that the institution of slavery has always been an integral part of not just the culture and its legal and economic institutions, but a part of its epistemology also. One learns to be a master or a slave. Similarly one learns to be an educated person or an uneducated one. Hence education is not only an institution of law and economics but of epistemology also.
Baudrillard reasoned that if digitalization and mass culture make knowing the truth about reality; I.e., ends meaning coherent relation of individual with knowable context as he understands it; that humans are doomed because they will make effective choices only randomly and the prejudice of an educated intelligence assumes that that will be insufficient for effectiveness human culture.
First, most animal and plant cultures get on perfectly well with out the kind of knowing that Baudrillard's prejudice of the educated intelligence is mourning the loss of.
But second and more importantly, there is no reason to assume that human beings, which are so prolific at imagining and making up and imputing meanings will not invent a fitting new meaning of what is going on in the dynamics of knowing information in the digital age--as you just have.
Unexpected shit is going to continue to happen.
Digitalization itself will trigger some of it as people are slow to learn the implications of the fundamentally new at any time.
But we WILL get the hang of this change too!
Whether we do anything good with the new opportunity; that's the $64^100000000000 question.
Put yourself back at the time the Egyptians, who believed in nature god's you could see and feel and that verifiably did things in their work , like the Nile, and the sun, were confronted with some Jews that invented a sky god that they god say or attribute anything to without you being able to disprove it. You knew a lot of bad shit was going to happen because of all the lying, cheating and deception that the new wet ware was going to make possible. You didn't really see how anyone could believe this nonsense. You prayed to the Nile and it silted your farm land richly. The Jews prayed to this sky god and said it damned you AND made the Nile silt your lands. And these crazy bastards were running around cutting the foreskins off their own kids and saying god and god's book made it law they do it.
You didn't like it, but you knew they had successfully changed the nature of meaning with this sky god invention. And they designed damned good pyramids for you. So, you went along to get along.
Meaning is expedient that way. Meaning is more a strategic reconciliation than a fact. Meaning is as rigid and objective, or squiggly and subjective, as is expedient at the time for the deeply wise--especially for the great philosophers and theologians. There is no question that great Christian and Jewish theologians would have been great nature god theologians before sky god's were created, or, if you prefer, revealed themselves. Abraham would have been a stunningly good nature godder had he been born awhile earlier and not known about Yahweh. Jesus was by all accounts a solid Jew before god revealed himself to Jesus. Meaning thus is a strategic reconciliation with what can be known. Wise persons? They try never to lie, because they understand the underlying flexibility of the truth. Lying is even more rigid and subjective than the truth. Thus, Lying is wrong is not just as a moral, but comes as close to an inflexible truth as there is.
We will adjust to this new digitalization of knowing. Some eggs will get broken along the way. Some already have been. But we will adjust.
Bill Self Memorial Unuversity
IMHO, one thing that people are still not clued into sufficiently about the digital age is that ALL information on the internet appears unreliable to significant degree by definition, because it can be altered so many intentional and unintentional ways without any ability to verify and paper trail it beyond a reasonable doubt. Michael Crichton's novel "Rising Sun" dramatized the intrinsic problem with authenticity of digital images long ago now, but the problem is inherent in all digital information. Changes can reputedly be made that are untraceable and undetectable. Not only digital photos but all digital information is suspect IMHO.
Without putting too fine of a point on it, it appears internet information is likely way more protean and unverifiable regarding accuracy and authenticity in both real and legal senses than any one can yet adequately grasp.
When a mass of data disappears, not just the data disappears but that data had contextual links to other data that we cannot even begin to understand without extensive investigation and analysis, and even then we may or may not be able to arrive at understanding beyond a reasonable doubt..
There are just endless steps from keyboard, to RAM, to hard drive, to wifi hub, to internet relays, to servers, to storage, to retrieval, where information can be corrupted accidentally, or intentionally by means probably not even discoverable. Heck, even random packet loss can corrupt. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt what appears actually is, or was, the accurate, authentic action of a communicator appears to be VERY difficult on the internet. How does one prove beyond a reasonable doubt that digital content was not corrupted? that the intent of the communicator was not tampered with? If Gerry Spense, or someone of his caliber, were in court, I suspect it would be very tough. This has been the problem from the beginning with the concept of total information awareness. So what if the government is totally aware of all information if the information it is totally aware of is corruptible to a significantly indeterminate extent? And reputedly our government itself is but one of many players actively engaged in poisoning the well of digitized information. Most governments are reputedly tampering with digital information and so probably are many other kinds of organizations. Who can even say beyond a reasonable doubt that this thread above was not tampered with even before it first appeared on any screen, or that it hasn't been tampered with numerous times since. There is no escaping this problem. IMHO it is part of the double edged sword of digital connectivity.
A wife!
The Bill Self Memorial Defensive Rims.
Its pretty clear that Cin said something to him at breakfast, or dinner, about his need for another championship to cement his reputation in KU and college basketball history.
Only spouses can get under a coaches skin and provoke them into this kind of public discourse. :smiley:
Otherwise Self would be talking about conference title runs and recruiting feel good.
Self is clearly feeling the heat from Cin.
Cin: Bill, honey, Tyler is about ready to walk down the hill and I've never asked for very much more from you than this 27000 square foot house, and the wedding ring, but, Bill, I did ask you to win one ring during Tyler's years at KU before you hung up the whistle and we start taking that world tour we've both been talking about for the last 15 years.
Bill: Ok,ok,ok.
Resets like this are fascinating micro events that some Ph.d. student of online communities should dissertate on.
Going from total digital recall to zero is fascinating.
I wonder if the information is lost to the NSA, also?
Or if its in some private sector server's backup files somewhere someplace?
Or if it is scattered throughout the cloud in packets that are marked for reconnection to a destination that no longer exists?
We live in such an amazingly unprecedented time.
What has happened to KUBuckets is a small example of why FEMA COG likely operates through a rapidly expanding deep space network and maintains military installations on a number of planets, or planet moons, or orbiting those bodies, located around the solar system.
The grand strategy of warfare is likely to significant degree being redefined without us really grasping it yet. For every MAV (micro air vehicle) swarm that will fight the coming wars on earth, there have to be massive information logistic infrastructures to command and control them. Just a couple atmospheric thermo nuclear pulses on earth coupled with some surgically placed bunker busters and the entire system for fighting through advanced warfare on earth is wiped clean and neutralized. It follows then that even the most sophisticated hardening of earth-based information logistic infrastructure cannot be trusted as a safeguard. In turn, we have to go out into the solar system and play a shell game information logistics; i.e., the logical inference is that we have to hide the data bases in various installations around the solar system and create relays of sufficient speed and encoded elusiveness that "our data" survives in an operational sense, and "their data" perishes.
For a long time, space travel has seemed a form of primary research--human inquisitiveness--and a little near space weaponization and communication function.
But it is clear now that the acute dependence on digital connectivity and nonlinear perishability of its data bases make space not the final frontier, but the next vast battle space, where the future of freedom, liberty and republic will be won or lost yet again.
My guess is the boys at US Space Command have been working on this from the beginning, all manned space programs have been largely covers, and that we have regular robotic flights around the solar system now and that all the comet and meteor exploration is looking for mobile data storage relay platforms and the potential ice needed for various kinds of on-body activity.
Time is the great enemy in space. The time it takes to move information from a data base stored under the ocean of a moon of Saturn takes probably takes hours to reach earth.
The key is timely relay of distributed information network across great distances.
Quantum entanglement will be the means for overcoming the obstacle of distance in time in space.
But you still have to have the database "out there" somewhere, and serviced regularly, in order to use quantum entanglement to do your bidding.
Just some idle thoughts on a fine pre-war Tuesday morning.
God how I hope we find a way not to have the next war.
Judging by the early life and education section of his wiki page, Poppa appears to have some spook background that perhaps allows him to be a little bolder than the average coach with the media. Just a hunch though.
Assuming Fraschilla is actually correct, and its an assumption worth reflecting on, the key questions are these:
Why isn't Perry passing out of the double on the low block to a wide open Lucas, or Traylor, or Mickelson, or Bragg, or Diallo every goddamned play? What is the problem here? Each one of these C5 guys has proven they have the ability to dunk it rather effortlessly this season, when they have a one step jump, which they should have with Perry passing out of a double? Every one of the C5 players should be doing it every time down the floor, but they are not. Again, each one of the C5 has the athleticism and strength necessary to dunk when open. If Fran is right, then why aren't they? Coach Self, why not?
Next, what the hell is a 3 that is shooting 57% from trey and that is playing stretch 4 against guys way bigger than him, doing on the low block being doubled, at all? Why isn't Perry outside shooting the lights out, or else forcing double teams outside, and so feeding each our C5 5s that can stand uncontested and dunk? Coach Self, why not?
My hunch is that things are more complicated than most of our C5s not being able to pot the triceratop, but its worth asking.
Carlton Bragg is now 2-4 from trey.
Good lord. Does this mean we are going to keep our small big in on the low block and our long big out 19 feet out?
Is this who we are?
Sometime Post Modern and Neo Post Modern works.
Some times it doesn't.
This picture of the TCU campus is an unfortunate example of it not working.
Really bad reference the foreground to Wright's Johnson Wax interior in Racine. Awful. Leonard Pynth Yarnell bad!
On the other hand, I LIKE the spire and building at the far end of the quad.
@HighEliteMajor said:
It’s interesting - @sfbahawk says, “Frank Mason didn’t all of a sudden become a wuss.” Right. The question is “why” did he and Selden have such great difficulty vs. WVU.
I am not buying the family in a snow storm hypothesis. Easterners are all used to blizzards. They grow up with them. I have lived there. I never worried about anyone being late, because of a storm. I knew they were going to be late.
I am not buying the scheme hypothesis. If it were the scheme, then Frank and Wayne would not have been the only ones baking pop tarts. Devonte would have had his baker's hat on, too.
I am not buying the Stanford analogy. Embiid was absent. Self was trying to maintain a team model hoping Embiid might somehow be persuaded to return. This team had no such injury to a starter impeding it.
I am not buying the "didn't just suddenly become a wuss" reasoning either. Why? All competition over the course of a game, a season, or a life intermittently exposes legacy softness that has to be hardened, or one has to concede one's ceiling has been reached. This team has been a team that suffered through hardship to prevail, but suffering is not the same as hardening. But to get to the top, you have to be hard to the core, or as nearly as one can be. This team found it has legacy softness in at least Frank, Wayne. The softness may be in Svi and BG, too. And in others that were not exposed. Suffering is NOT the same as hardening.
Frank Mason and Wayne Selden ran into a buzz saw fueled and run by a very tough Mountaineer logger--Bob Huggins, running what may be thought of as a thug-saw.
KU had this season been the experienced team dishing out the hurts to less experienced and/or less physical teams.
KU had gotten the idea that it was tougher than other teams, because it had met all such challenges of toughness.
It was an honest mistake.
Competition by its very nature exposes what we did not know we did not know.
The thug-saw cut Frank and Wayne to the quick and found soft marrow, not hard bone.
Now the bone must be healed and the bone callous thickened, so that the marrow cannot be reached so easily by a thug-saw.
Self has apparently hidden from he media.
Self has sent his assistant, Kurtis Townsend, to speak of not competing.
Self has apparently decided to get a thug-saw, but wisely not to become associated with it.
Pity the next opponent.
Pity WVU in its visit to AFH.
KU basketball players may all be issued Devin Williams model goggles for the return engagement just to send a clear message.
This isn't the end.
This is the beginning.
Huggins team out scored KU every time the tempo picked up. Huggins has designed his team to muscle in transition. WVU wanted to play KU in transition. Transition basketball is where being the most physical pays most Dividends to a muscle ball team geared to run.
KU has to learn to play this way or else.
There was softness in the face of a hard enemy.
Both in our coach and in our players.
Our players must come together and say that felt like Wichita State and Marsha. There must be yet another level of hardness we must rise to.
Coaches must come together and discuss how they might have been harder than Huggins.
Hardness must replace softness.
Beauty, salvation, titles and rings walk a razor's edge.
The razor's edge is hard.
WVU is a good team and a tough matchup for KU.
Their perimeter is faster and stronger than ours.
Williams is better than any one of our C5 bigs.
We need better cardio to play against the press.
Still, we played a pretty bad game and did not get blown out.
We can find a way to beat them.
But I fear it will involve a blood bath.
Yes, and "throwing it over" clearly surprised Huggins, who never adjusted. KU got the ball down the floor again and again and again in a great hurry.
KU's problem was that once down the floor, KU could not play with poise. The WVU pressure defense in half court was what seemed decisive to me. KU seemed prepared for the press with a counter intuitive approach that worked. But KU did not seem prepared for WVU's half court pressure defense with the play initiated by Devonte out front so much.
Really, this is not a mystery IMHO. Nor does it reduce to scheme.
It reduces to their perimeter players were stronger, faster and tougher than our perimeter players and denied us our preferred game--shooting treys on unfatigued legs, or driving the lane.
And when we went inside, they were men and we were either boys, or modest talents, except for Perry.
Diallo and Bragg were thin boys compared to their guys.
Hunter was not strong enough to muscle with Williams.
Jamari was not tall enough or talented enough to score on their inside players.
Landen rebounded okay, but needs to learn not to surrender the initiative. He and Self had no plays to work Landen for garbage as occurred the last two games.
Bottom line, we got in a little over our heads with the forces of darkness with our perimeter advantage denied us, and we buckled.
You must play to your advantage against good opponents.
They were sharply better than us outside.
The clear advantage we had was inside with Perry, and inside with our C5 with fouls to give. But we only exploited Perry, not C5 on the offense. I argued last night that Diallo should have been started the second half and been fed repeatedly to get what points he could give us early, when we could afford his mistakes some. Feeding him would have taken some focus off Perry for a while, then come with Landen and stay with Perry. The same could have been tried with Bragg, but I felt Diallo might have been able to use his turn around jump down low to great advantage. And that sort of attack might have let our guards crash the boards some for some stick backs.
We had to get off our heels to start the second half with more than just Perry. We had to get our guys going inside to create some room outside for kick outs. Our perimeter guys just weren't good enough to take over the game. But Perry showed some ability had he been paired some with early with Diallo, or Bragg. We needed a one-two punch inside the first six minutes to get back into it, then shoot some treys once close, build a little lead, and come with Lucas and Traylor and Hunter.
Our perimeter players are usually, but not always our advantage. Last night they were NOT our advantage. We wasted far too much time playing through them both halves.
You can't come from behind, or build leads, playing through unfavorable match ups, unless you have a favorable whistle.
KU lost the referees early by initiating the eye stubbing.
Perry needed someone to lob too across the lane, when he went to work, and that player was Diallo, or Bragg. Either one probably would have had to leave the game with an eye injury shortly, but that would have been a productive loss.
I am with Self on this.
KU should have played inside much, much more than it did.
Now, why they did not, I do not know.
Self may be trying to skate on responsibility for that.
I am pretty confident that after all of this sitting, all Self would have to tell Diallo, or Bragg, is: you can stay in the game as long as you can stand it if you will stay within 10 feet of the rim. And he would have guys ready for lobs from Perry, whenever he got stuck.
We didn't need 20 minutes out of either Diallo, or Bragg, but we did need 6-7 more points early in the first half; that could have made a big difference in how the game went.
With all due respect, what you are saying only has meaning in a metaphysical realm of basketball.
In the real world, where Self operates, he has a roster full of bigs that cannot stay on the floor more than 3-5 minutes at a time with a guy like Williams, and I believe you and everyone else knows this, after the pain of a loss passes for a few days.
But I will go through the motions with you on this in hopes that others are reading this.
What single player on KU's current roster are you going to find that can produce 15-16 rebounds per game over 40 minutes?
Answer: NO ONE. And NO TWO. Any single, or pair, of players would foul out for sure. Period. Or they would have to cut back to 6-9 rpgs, which would mean a ton of stick backs for the opponents. Playing any two of our centers would have guarantied at least 2-3 more losses so far and anyone that realistically evaluates counter factual outcomes of Self going with any two guys cannot help but come to the same conclusion. And here is the kicker. Having played, say, Bragg and Diallo, would not appreciably make them weigh more, be stronger, foul less, turn it over less, or shoot better in the last half season, or the next half season. Frankly, it has kept them from being injured and demoralized, and in position to contribute more and more as we go along. OMG! Look at Perry's face. And then recall how demoralized Perry was as a freshman. And recall that Perry actually knew how to play some his first season and was not a stick. Imagine what Huggins' Blue Meanies would have done to Diallo and Bragg for 40 minutes last night. One of them would be in the hospital and the other would have a scratched cornea and his nuts pushed up behind his eyes from stiff screens. And Diallo, anyway, would have learned nothing but how to be abused.
Next, what single player on the KU roster are you going to find that could have scored even 9 points against Williams? Shit, Williams is a long, strong and experienced post man that would have eaten any single guy we have alive. The only way to contain him even remotely for our players is to be able to inflict 10 to 12 fouls. Its that simple. I don't see why board rats are having such a hard time understanding this? If Diallo starts, he would have had 4 fouls 4-5 minutes in, and one of his eyes would have been swollen shut from an eye thumbing. Surely everyone gets this, don't they? This is how Huggins teams have always played, when ever they have had even a little edge in muscle. Huggs is the original thugger. Huggs wears black for a reason. Huggs is like all street fighters. When he doesn't have the numbers, he schmoozes nice, until he does. He paid Self respect, when he lacked the muscle to take KU down. Now, he's got it, and he kicked KU when it was down. Huggs loves this sort of stuff. Huggs would have loved to see Bragg and Diallo in the game. Williams would have knocked them down just to kick them in the heads. You know that! We don't have anyone at the five, including Hunter, that can play rough without fouling out. NO ONE. Hell, the only one of our bigs that can play some without fouling is Traylor, but Traylor doesn't do enough other things to go 40 mpg with him.
Really, Self is doing a fabulous job of milking what we have.
And board rats are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee about this team being a super talented team. Its not. It just has a little more experience than some of the other elite teams have that have more talent on the roster.
When KU comes up against OU and WVU, it is clear that KU has many, many weaknesses, as I have been trying to call board rats' attentions to for awhile now.
All of WVU's guards were faster than Mason and Graham. Period.
And they appeared as long or longer. And they outweighed our guys. They were better at everything than our guards, except for outside shooting. They were much better ball handlers and much better defenders and much more physical on ball defenders.
Go inside and Perry was the only guy on our team that belonged on the same floor with their guys, even if WVU had not pressed.
Wayne is the interesting case. Wayne is like a lot of big guys. He needs to be bigger to play well. Bigness has become a crutch for him, not just an advantage. When he meets someone his own size, or bigger, or longer, he dries up and wants to run outside and take open looks. Wayne needs to look in the mirror again and take the next step in his career. He needs to become a warrior, which he isn't. Wayne Selden is actually an extremely soft guy. This was what Huggins showed him. Guys like Huggins make their careers out of identifying the softies that look like studs but aren't.
Huggins did the same with Frank Mason, actually.
Here is how it is done to persons. You create a tough situation for them. Then so encumbered, you dare them to beat you. Huggs knew Devonte is soft; that's obvious. He's a sweet kid. But Huggs was gambling that Frank and Wayne, the outward tough guys, were soft inside. He forced the ball into Devonte's hands for the transition and then started abusing Frank and Wayne on the way down the floor and then knocking them off spots when they got into half court. If there has been a microphone on, we would have heard the WVU guys talking up a storm at Frank and Wayne, telling them what pussies they were. My favorite play of the entire game was when Wayne started in the corner, drove into the paint, over extended and as he was spread eagle and falling down toward the WVU player the WVU player stiff armed a fist straight up into Wayne's family jewels and stiff screened him. THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL, MEAN, CRUEL, PLAY GROUND BASKETBALL. FROM THAT MOMENT WAYNE SELDEN WAS NEUTERED--HUMILIATED--AND COMPLETELY BEATEN AS AN OPPONENT, unless he did even worse back.
Last night's game was not about a press.
It was not about talent, or skill, or even match ups.
It was about one of the last few play ground teams and low-down dirty coaches in college basketball sticking it to a team of Clean Genes coached by Bill Self, who got his own coaching nuts caught in a the palm of Bob Huggins merciless hand.
This was about an ordinary home whistle being magnified into a real big edge by some play ground ballers.
The game was actually decided early in the first half.
I believe @drgnslayr would agree had he seen the whole game.
Self apparently had KU come out doing a bit of cheap shot eye-stubbing, because he knew Huggs coaches that sort of thing. It was a classic case of preemptive warfare on Self's part. One of our guards, Frank, or Devonte, gave one of their guys a little finger under the eye lid. The guy left the floor and then went into the locker room briefly. The camera then showed Devin Williams, with his anti-eye stubbing goggles, and Williams talked to two Mountaineers and it appeared he was advising that that was not going unanswered. Shortly, Frank was holding his eye. Shortly Devonte was tripped. Shortly Frank was playing scared. Shortly a scratch showed up on the side of Perry's forehead.
Now, there is nothing unusual about that, but here is the difference between KU and WVU--between Self and Huggins.
KU and Self don't like to play that way, and as soon as it starts they want to go back to a fair fight.
Huggins and WVU?
Ha!
That's they way they like to play. And once it starts and no fouls are called, Hugg's guys get all dark alley on guys. The eye stubbing and the stiff screening are not ends in themselves, they are means to then floor guys and kick them in the head and nuts.
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if anyone on KU grew up on the play grounds at all.
I have always figured Wayne was soft inside.
I misread Frank. I didn't think he was. But Huggs read him right. Frank was/is, too.
Self and his players are what my mentor used to call suffers. He was not being disrespectful. It was just a useful category. Some persons in this world defeat an opponent by out enduring suffering. They tend to be counter punchers and even when they punch preemptively, they are doing it to channel the action back into non-punching. Their vulnerability is that they will suffer all the way into the morgue, when the only rational move may be to take an opponent out immediately and completely.
The other kind of person, according to my mentor, is the kind that likes to hurt others; that enjoys it and looks forward not just to hurting them, but to beating them into submission with hurting them. Neither of these types are actual warriors.
An actual warrior is a self made thing.
An actual warrior comes from one of the two categories, but he has remade himself to be capable of both, and to be neutral about both. An actual warrior becomes whatever is necessary to achieve the objective and recognizes that either, or both, ARE inevitably necessary, when everything is on the line.
Most talk of warriors is pussy talk. Either or stuff. Its both.
The above that I have outlined is the hard truth.
Self gets the better of most non warriors and some warriors.
Self struggles with Huggs, Ratso, and Coach K. Not surprisingly either. They are great coaches and great warriors with lots of talented players. Each encounter with a great warrior threatens one's survival, but also hardens one a bit more, if one survives it.
Self has trouble with the real warriors, like all warriors do.
No one is ever done growing regarding being a warrior; that is the wisdom of the aging gunslinger myth from the old westerns and the Samurai legends and so on. No matter how good you get, you can and will run into someone better, harder, either because they have been hardened even deeper than you, or because you have aged and they are harder and faster because of age
Bob Huggins did not win 700 plus games fighting fair; that has never been his reputation; that will never be his reputation. Fairness probably is a word Huggins never thinks about, except as an edge in working a referee.
Self ran into another older, and wiser warrior last night. One of the black hat types. Kruger ran into Self. Self ran into Huggins. It happens.
Huggins is a black hat warrior. Black hat warriors believe the balance of good and evil leans a bit to evil, maybe even a lot in this world, and that there is an edge in being associated with that lean. White hat warriors believe the balance of good and evil leans a little to good and believe there is a slight edge in being associated with the lean.
Buddhists believe the lean is an illusion. Its all 50/50. Its all both.
Christians believe its good or evil in an evil world descended from original sin and we prepare for salvation in heaven by trying to do some good in the midst of the shit storm.
Warriors may or may not pay lip service to the major meta-narratives if religion, but out in the battle space, they think its all strategic and only differ in how far they are willing take the amorality of strategy, before drawing a moral line they will not cross.
So: in effect, both the white hat and black hat types are camouflage out in the battle space, regardless of their virtues and merits outside the lines of competition. Under the hats are warriors that have learned to access both sides.
Self learned the hard way last night that Huggins is willing to go deeper into the dark than Self is; that Huggins is nothing to be messed with; that he will kick you when you are down, and do most anything to get you there. Self learned that Huggins thinks that guys that talk about putting their boot heel down on the neck of someone, as Self does, are pussies dealing in metaphors. Huggs believes in kicking them as hard as he can and as often as he can, when they are down, for real. Screw the boot heel metaphor.
In this regard, Bob is more seasoned than Bill. Bob is more REAL than Bill. Bob is operating without a layer of metaphor that Bill is.
Bill Self will go home and reflect on the experience of standing with his nuts being crushed in Bob Huggins grip and he will most likely decided that that will never happen again. He will emerge harder after his experience and his reflections.
The question is: will his players?
I believe so.
I believe a team meeting WITH coaches will occur shortly in which all parties are going to concede they have some hardening to do, if they wish to take this quest for a special season to the next level.
But beauty and salvation and titles and rings walk a razor's edge...
C5 at 9/16 was not the problem
Perry at 21/7 was not the problem.
50% Trey balling on 20 3ptas was not the problem.
Rebounding at -2 was not the problem.
The scheme for attacking the press seems like the problem, but it's really wasn't. Why? Look at the TOs for KU's three ball handlers: Frank, 7; Wayne, 6; and Devonte, 1. If the scheme were the problem, then Devonte would have had a bunch of TO's, because he handled the ball so much. Almost every pressed possession, Huggins defensive scheme forced the ball into Devonte's hands, thinking Devonte would crack. But as rattled as Devonte got at times, he only had 1 TO.
The problem this game was Frank and Wayne baking a baker's dozen pop tarts--13 TOs!!!!
13 TOs are 26 to 39 lost possible points. Let's say KU only converted 40% or so; that's still 10 to 16 probable points.
Imagine also how many more fouls KU might have drawn on 13 more possessions? And rebounds?
KU only made 60 percent of its FTs, but it only shot 20 FTs, so shooting well might only have added 2-4 points. Not a big deal.
That leaves the +12 on Fouls. But let's put that in perspective. If Frank and Wayne had protected and KU had had 13 more shooting attempts, KU might have 5-8 more fouls; that would have made fouls +4 to +7; that would have been in the range of a normal home whistle.
Svi's and BG's PT and lesser TOs also tell us scheme was not the problem. Both players shot poorly and played without excelling, yet their TOs did not sky rocket.
There was something going on with Frank and Wayne.
And it wasn't good.
Perry handled the ball a lot and played big minutes without big TOs.
Jamari didn't spike TOs.
This loss was on Frank and Wayne.
Something happened.
Each has seen this WVU press 4 games previously the last two years.
Frankly, for 3/4 of the game, the ball was getting down the floor rather rapidly. The problem was what was happening in the half court offense once it got there.
Here, Devonte's frequent poor shot selection hurt some, but he only took 7 fgas.
One give away was the FGAs of Frank and Wayne again: 6 and 7 respectively. Why were our our two perimeter studs shooting so little? Answer: TOs.
Another give away: Wayne's minutes. He played only 25 with only 3 fouls. Fouled up? I don't think so. Devonte played way more with 5 fouls. Tired legs? Nope. He was 3-6 from Trey.
Bottom line, Wayne showed up for a big game against a bunch of thuggers and punks speeding the game up and he could not focus. And his lack of focus came when he was having matchup problems. Huggs was careful to either match Wayne with length and strength he could not handle, or with greater speed. Huggs was out to stop Wayne and he did.
Self appeared to recognize Wayne's lack of focus and Hugg's match up exploits of Wayne's weak ball handling.
Self answered with Svi and Brannen and both players combined for lousy shooting (0-6), 6 fouls, 3 TOs, and complete absence of poise as glue men.
So: what did wily old tub of lard Bob Huggins and his usual cast of lousy shooting, stiff screening, eye stubbing, skin scratching, Blue Meanie playground throwbacks figure out?
It was actually pretty subtle and Huggs deserved some serious credit.
Huggs figured out that if you force the ball with the press into Devonte's hands and speed the game up, then Frank and Wayne would be forced into Devonte's usual glue role. As glue men, forced to make the second pass to get the ball where it needed to be for a score, neither Frank, nor Wayne could make the pass. And Huggs had perimeter defenders that could disrupt their drives and a big in Williams that could alter both. That left the second pass and neither guy could make it once sped up and trapped and pressured. Frank and Wayne baked pop tarts like Mr. Baker the Fine Pastry Maker. This forced Self to try size at the wings with Svi and BG. Same problem, only worse. No one could pass, or score, or defend.
For persons that say Self did not adjust, they are right. He had no checkmate move on offense to make and knew it. If an opponent can stuff all four of your wings, and Devonte was not mature enough to hang 20-25 to make'em pay in half court, then it defaulted to Perry and the C5 to win it inside. Perry did his duty. But Self had no wings that could, or would feed the C5.
Self's fault was not the response to the press in full court. Presses increase TOS, and speed games up. That is a given. Failure to get easy baskets was also not a death blow.. It's whether you regain your poise in half court; that is critical
Thus, Self's faults were three fold IMHO.
He needed to get the ball back in Frank's hands at the point each possession to run the stuff with Devonte on the wing gluing the second pass as usual. The wing post feed and the wing drive are not Frank's.
He stayed with Svi too long. Bad Wayne was better than bad Svi.
He didn't commit to low block scoring through the C5 at the start of the second half, which meant starting and feeding Hunter, or Diallo. I would have gone with Diallo, even though Diallo would have turned it over. We needed to get them out of their comfort zone inside to change this from a game where they were dominating our wings. Perry needed another threat inside to free him more.
To have won the game the way Huggs was scheming it, we needed 5-7 more points from Perry and 6 more points from C5. Diallo is always good for 6 points, despite his other short comings. Get them early the first half, then follow with Hunter and Lucas and Jam. Then get Devonte
On the wing and let Frank drive where is comfortable from, and things might have gone differently.
But the main takeaways are:
WVU is good and matches up great with us;
KU has to find its poise in half court against a pressing team.
It does no good to break a press as consistently as KU did and the turn it over in half court.
KU needs to work on its cardio.
Yup.
Geez, their locker room is smaller than Self's office
We've got a new rival
WVU is a very good team.
Oh no!
Not a court storming
Screw playing Bragg inside. Svi sits and Bragg takes over Svi's role!!!
Bragg = point center!
Bill has been Hugged.
If 11-12 PTS is our worst loss, we'll be ok
If Perry had not been an absolute man, they would have doubled the score on us easily
Yep!
Weird not shooting treys
We got mugged by THE HUGG!
Gotta put this one behind us.
Devonte learned a lot from this game. He has finally been eaten alive at D1 speeds. He ll never forget it.
Frank and Devonte have never run into TWO guards faster than them!!!
Frank's game from hell!!!
I agree. They need to shoot treys and stick back; that's Diallo
Svi has to exit.
Gotta take treys now!
Two won't do
But WVU's guards are just faster than ours. Amazing
In half court drive ball they are a copy of KU
If Frank hit ft
9 points with 7 to go is doable
We are actually playing ok for not having any half court offense that works. This is why Self should have reduced it to a low block game with Perry and Cheick first thing. Hugg was determined to take Frank out with the press and a long guard.
Way to go Cheick.
Very tough to make long treys with legs this tired
Valiant come back thwarted by Devonte's youth.
It's up to frank now.
Devonte killing us with bad shot selection on offense, BG on defense