Hudy can wear a suit of pink knight's armor. She has a bunch of guys leading the nation!!!
Rock Chalk, SUPER WOMAN!!!!!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
First it makes sense that the actual spread would be somewhat different than the published spread for security reasons.
Second, regardless, game outcomes bust spreads from time to time. Every gambling history or article I have read indicates it. It is reputedly a significant risk to bet balancing; this is commented on by those inside and outside the business.
Third, whether the spread is the same as the game spread/published line, or not, the spatial imbalance and rational expectations imbalance remain structural impediments to effectively managing risk.
The reason for using state of the art stats is to minimize the risk. But it doesn't end the risk. It would just manage it. And I don't see how it could manage spatial and rational expectation risk without some reshaping of better expectations.
But since I am still learning about this process, I am most grateful for your continued input.
Some years a Camby is all it takes. Like some years having an Anthony Davis is decisive. UK had 6 OADs, but without Monobrow UK just wasn't a contenduh!!!!
This year, a team with Camby, or Monobrow, would probably clean up in D1. Capice?
If this year's KU team had Camby, or Monobrow? I would bet the farm on KU running the table from here on and winning the ring, wouldn't you?
The UMass roster was comparable in quality to any D1 Elite team that season. Cal and WWW reputedly saw to that. That was really the team that started the legend of WWW, as I recall. What more need be said?
@JayHawkFanToo said:
You are missing the main component of Vegas betting. the line is not static, it changes all the time to balance betting.
I am seeing that clearly and it is in fact a crucial premise of my hypothesis. Were it not for the imbalances of spatial distribution and rational expectations, that are, or easily would be, empirically verifiable, a single, dynamic betting line could bet balance without risk of spreads being busted intolerably by game outcomes.
But no matter how much you move the line, because of the spatial imbalances of bettors and the rational expectations of betters driven by experience of those imbalances, moving a single betting line, probably either cannot, or can only with gross inefficiency, off set the imbalances.
Where the gross inefficiencies occur comes once the game is played. The bet balancing that plays out based on the spatially imbalanced betting population that is simultaneously imbalanced in its betting by its rational expectations of prior outcome tendencies, inevitably creates a balanced bet prone to being busted by the game itself, without significant "adjustment" of either the game outcome (using refs to keep the final score within the spread), or the better expectations (reshaping bettor expectations for spatial imbalances and rational expectations imbalances.
Its actually appears pretty simple.
I mean, if they don't intervene some how, the game outcomes would tend to break spreads, because the spreads are set to exploit the biases of the bettors, and so those biases would then be contradicted by the reality of the games. There is no escaping the the gross imbalances in population distribution, regional biases of betters, information asymmetries of regional betting, and the relentless effect of rational expectations on bettor expectations, shaping betting that is based on a dynamic that is fundamentally different than the dynamics of the two teams that determine whether or not the teams make the spreads, or bust them.
In turn, because betting is so enormously heightened for the March Madness, it would be logical to see considerable effort directed at countering the spatial imbalance of bettors with a long pre conference and conference season of hyping the Big 12, occurring and being fine tuned by "adjustments" via refereeing to manage spread busting to tolerable levels.
And of course a long the way, one would expect various kinds of exploits of the grand scheme by both insiders and outsiders seeking to profit maximize of the contrivance of the system.
While it doesn't matter to Big Gaming who wins, it matters very much to them that their spreads are not busted at too high of a frequency.
This seems to be the nub of it.
The BIA can neither confirm nor deny vulnerabilities in the team scheme, but I would keep that under your hat too. 😄
The game is changing always. I just think right now Self is ahead as he usually is; that's why his W&L statement for 11 years is at .820.
But the reason I come here is to learn what I am missing. And each season I miss some things and board rats like you--with a strong insight--wake me to them.
You can rest assured I will be looking for what you are advocating. And agreeing and crediting you if/when I see it; that is the beauty of the community/team approach to problem solving!!!
Stick to your guns. The truth is the truth. If you're right, I WILL see it sooner or later.
And thank you for trying.
It takes patience and generosity of spirit to try either way.
In the end I am always improved by discourse with someone with an insight that tries to wake me up to it.
And I like waking up.
Rock Chalk!!!
Wow, I didn't realize Roy and Turg were playing such weak schedules. Thx for the heads up!!!!
About this time each early conference season, KU wins a couple, steals one on the road it wasn't supposed to and loses one. It winds up in the lead having to pick up the split on the back nine. About that time, we think we have a team set to run the table, the team runs into a "funk," and some player enters a mother of all shooting slumps. KU loses to a team no one thought it would lose to. It regroups. it labors for a couple wins. It gets its mojo back and starts a tear. An injury hits. Players play through some injuries. Heroism becomes common place for a time. Boom! Another title.
I'm not a big believer in great improvement over the course of a season.
I'm a big believer in one or two guys getting it at one moment, or another, over the course of the season, and another one or two, sliding backward down the curve, then into the cryogenic tank.
I think Brannen, or Svi, are the candidates remaining that might "get it." One or both.
I think Hunter and Landen have gotten it the first semester.
I doubt Carlton, or Cheick, get much better.
But I do think Cheick will stop shooting 15-18 foot Js out of the offensive flow.
Or Cheick will experience cryogenic ice for January and be thawed February 1st to see if he has learned not to take those Js.
I also think that Carton and Cheick will continue to give the C5 important points and production that guaranty double doubles for C5.
I will take the red pills and call them crimson.
I will hope the red pills help me pick out Agent Smith in a crowd.
Rock Chalk!
He ran two possessions of Bad Ball in the first half of the Baylor game. I always make a mental note of it because I often hear persons saying he isn't playing any Bad Ball. He ran the EXACT drive action that was quintessential Bad Ball. But then went on to other stuff. He ran a ton of High Low the second half of the Baylor game when he was defending the lead. But when the lead closed some he went back to the Quick Trigger Trey game. Some possessions of Quick Trigger were run out of four out 1 in, but most were run out of the high low.
Multiple Offense 2.0 usually tries some of everything Self has done in the past the first half, then scopes down to the one or two things that worked best the first half, given which players the opponent is playing the second half and what point spread is at that time of the game.
And as far as giving players a green light at the trey stripe, well, by the stretch run of the 2008 season, Chalmers, Rush and Sherron ALL had the green light from the trey and they got their trey looks with essentially the same approaches, as I recall it.
The one thing Self has more of this season than any season I can recall is guys that can ding the trey: Frank, Wayne, Perry, and Brannen are all reliable. Devonte is so busy doing other things that he does not seem quite as accurate lately. Svi is believed to be, but he has never showed it except for one or two games in isolation. Still even without Svi, that is more than Self has had on other teams. So that means that more guys have the green light from trey land. BUT and this is an important but, KU is still taking about the same number of treys it has most season, except for last one down the stretch when everyone was injured and Self invented Bad Ball to back into the title.
I go back and forth on that KU-UK Finals game in 2012.
I love those guys with all my heart and I really do believe they were fighting back with their usual never say die attitudes and their competitive greatness that they possessed in spades. This part of me thinks they were closing in for the kill and just ran out of time.
But there is the other side of it; the strategic side of it that I recall @drgnslayr being the first to call board rats' attentions to a day or two after the game. He said UK could have beaten us by a hundred points with that team, but they let the air out of the ball to slow the game down and not humiliate us.
I think there was something to what he said, though I hate to admit it.
But the truth I have settled on is some combination of the following.
UK blew us out in the first half. The second half Cal did what all Larry Brown disciples like Cal and Self do with a big lead. They stop playing balls to the walls and they start defending the lead. The lead necessarily shrinks. If it shrinks below a certain amount, they then goose the tempo back up and try to separate again, then slow down and defend the lead again. Last season I called it spending the lead, while playing Bad Ball. But you can defend/spend the lead with many offenses played at a tempo geared to reduce the remaining possessions and so greatly reduce the statistical possibility of coming back for a W.
I think UK was a team of overwhelming talent that season and had that rarest of all combinations a few huge talents that were also furious competitors. Monobrow was a great, great competitor on top of being a great talent. So was that goddamned guard of theirs. And Kidd-Gilchrist was an every game MUA.
KU on the other hand was a great, great team that was massively overachieving, because of character and the pieces fitting together just so.
Both coaches bring a Larry Brown point of view to game strategy, despite running different offenses, and know each other do.
I think there is no getting around that UK beat the shit out of KU that first half.
It was quite like KU beating the shit out of UNC that first half in 2008.
The reason one team can beat the hell out of another team the first half has to do with that team being better than the other team, and having a really peak performance.
The reason the lesser team comes back is that it has a great coach and players with great character that play very well as a team, and they are doing it against another team defending a lead.
Remember Roy's Boys took KU to the buzzer that second half of the UNC game.
Recall Bill's Boys pushed UK down the stretch also.
This is what happens when a talented team plays a great team with lesser players, and the more talented team has a peak performance the first half. The great team with lesser talent can and does fight back relentlessly as the talented team in the lead defends that lead.
Once in a great while teams come from behind and win. Most often they come from behind and just don't quite get it done. But to have a chance win, you HAVE to come from behind and coming from behind against a super talented team is a huge accomplishment even if you finally can't get it done.
But, still, the fact remains, the team in the lead is purposely playing defend the lead and spending that lead.
So its complicated and the answer is its some of both.
@DoubleDD said:
The key is Coach is changing how he coaches. He is indeed stepping outside the box.
I am not as sure Self is changing how he coaches as:
a.) Self is putting the finishing touches on Multiple Offense 2.0 that he has been working on pieces of the last two years; and
b.) fans are catching up to how Self has always coached.
Regardless, we agree that what he is doing is very effective right now.
Naw, I never forget that. It just isn't necessary to talk about, because its obvious, like the difference between Chucks and modern shoes, and difference exerted on asymmetric recruiting by the contemporary petroshoeco-agency complex of today, versus its absence then.
But if you want to talk about it, well, what it distills to is this: if neither Self, nor Wooden team has recruits ready to start as first year players (e.g., Wooden's first two ring teams with Hazard and Goodrich), it was much tougher to get W's in the old days because almost every game you were going up against mature, well drilled 22-24 year olds back then, and now most of your games against highly ranked opponents are 17-18 year old, low foundationed, high ceilinged Sushi that has to play like an AAU team till about February.
On the flip side, if you've cornered the top players, like the Jabbar lead, or the Walton lead, first year UCLA teams, or like Cal's 2012 UK team with monobrow, then you are playing guys with such great talent that you are in the driver's seat in either era.
KU wins, because:
a.) Self is a step ahead of every one in what he is doing;
b.) Frank is amazingly consistent;
c.) the team has yet to have its Mother of All Slumps that it absolutely will have;
d.) opposing coaches have not yet figured the correct way to prepare for C5, but trust me there is a way.
This roster has huge holes to exploit, but Self is confronting opposing teams that are frequently young in the new OAD era, or they are very short, or they are long but very slow footed, with so much to prepare for with MULTIPLE OFFENSE 2.0, that they cannot get off their heels much of the time.
IMHO, OU will be a very good test to see how KU responds to having its vulnerabilities exploited.
Lon Kruger is an Okie Baller on a level just half wrung below Self. If Kruger comes as KU with some really good old fashioned Jack Hartman play, i.e., some long guards that can both shoot it and drive it, and tells his bigs to forget about which guy is playing the 5, and they rough up Perry, well, then we will know something about what this team is made of.
There is no question in my mind that we are watching a ton of masking by Self right now.
The question is which teams have coaches that can both see through it, and have the correct talent to exploit the holes.
I suspect OU has the coach and the talent.
But it is at that very moment that Self usually pulls a couple rabbits out of his hat.
I can tell you for a fact that Kruger's study of video of KU will NOT reveal the order that Multiple Offense 2.0 will unfold.
Self has been saving that for a game like OU.
Here is a possible rabbit for you.
Diallo has been doing a lot of incredibly stupid things the last three games, after starting quite well.
Dial's shot selection was so terribly outside the flow of the offense that it almost looked in retrospect as if it may have been a misdirect. The legend created for the opposing team's scouting reports would be: Diallo is playing himself out of the rotation. He is wild. He likes to shoot the long 2 point jumper. He's not who we have to worry about. He's a pipe cleaner that has never played the game. Fuggedabouthim.
Boom! Diallo comes out and plays exactly the kind of game Self wants against OU. Energy. Rebounding. Shot blocking. Not a single jump shot. More over he crashes the rim. He terrorizes OU for 15-20 minutes. OU players don't know what hit them. Lon does, but there's nothing he can do about it in the second half when Self springs the trap. Next.
But while that is possible, what I think is going to unfold is Self figured he could only hope to beat either Baylor, or OU, but not both, and so Self decided to gamble the big Amp performance on Baylor, and decided that he would rather suffer through a grinder with OU, than with Baylor's size and power inside.
So: the likely outcome is: KU can't hit shizz from trey after 58% from trey against Baylor. KU goes into alternating Bad Ball and squirt and run. It is major ugly. Board rats herniate everything that will herniate wishing for the Quick Trigger Trey game to materialize. It doesn't. The longer the game goes the uglier KU has to play to win. KU loses. Next, many of the board rats that only post when KU loses come out in force. They post a bunch of stupid stuff about how Self's offense is out of date, and if Player X plays that many minutes KU hasn't a chance of going deep, etc.
But life goes on and Self has already planned to pick up the split on the back nine.
OMG, you must not have watched the UMass team with Camby. Camby was the first or second best center. Period. UMass had as good of a roster their big season, as most of the elite teams.
Cal never wins big without a marquis player and a ton of depth and some guys that do something or other that stimulate investigations that Cal is later found to know nothing about. Its an apparent pattern.
UMass. Camby and lots of bodies.
Memphis. Derek Rose, CDR, Dozier, and probably better depth than this year's KU team.
UK. Why master the obvious.
Same formula.
Common thread: same Big Shoe-Agency Complex.
I just don't recall Cal taking a team with no Mickey D's to the Finals, do you?
Self did.
@DoubleDD said:
Something tells me Coach is about to embark on a national dominance that hasn’t been seen since the Wizard.
He is sitting in a career position that is vaguely analogous, only Self has been winning conference titles for 11 years, whereas Wooden was finishing second most of the time. And those second place finishes meant that he could not win Self's one ring, until he figured out how to win his conference.
Both guys were widely considered one tier below the very top of the guys in their profession. Neither guy had won as many rings as the top guys in their profession at the time, and neither guy was getting as much talent as the top guys in their professions at similar career stages, but most everyone in their professions recognized them as incredibly bright and keen basketball minds and furiously competitive. Both had great pedigrees, but Self clearly coached at the more elite basketball school at KU, than Wooden at UCLA during the 1950s. Wooden had to build UCLA into a power. Self took over KU as a power.
So: there are significant similarities and significant differences.
The point of all this is to say that both men found themselves at the final third of their careers needing to break the strangle hold on talent of their elite competitors to go on a tear the last third of their careers.
Wooden broke the strangle hold by adopting the same recruiting and sugar daddy practices as other elite programs.
For Self to repeat Wooden's tear, or even win half as many rings, he will have to find a way to break the strangle hold other elite teams have on the OAD point guards and OAD centers that are actually ready to start and play 30 mpg that he has so far never been able to sign.
If Self can break into the open field on recruiting and stay there for ten seasons, he could do it. But as of right now, I do not see the daylight to run to.
I would bet Cal would not trade rosters with Self even up even this season.
I doubt Cuonzo would either.
I doubt Coach K would.
I doubt Coach Izzo would.
I haven't followed Arizona closely as I did last season. But last season Stumpy wouldn't have traded rosters even up in a millennium of Sundays.
Self has coached against one really terrific coach so far, Izzo, and Izzo figured out one way to beat this KU team.
I see a way to beat this KU team very easily, but I am not taking it public because I don't want to be part of any discourse that contributes even a whit to this KU team losing a game it may need to get the next conference title. The only thing I will say is that if you look at the line score of the MSU and Baylor games, it shows up without any fancy stats. Baylor was on the right track. They just ran into a buzz saw that day and Drew isn't skillful enough to capitalize on certain things the way Izzo was.
We are not out of the woods.
This team is very vulnerable.
Self is fooling the sheiss out of everyone with masking as usual.
But Self isn't fooling himself.
Coach K, though I despise him, would see through Self's game in a second. But I don't know if he has the right players to capitalize. I haven't watched Duke closely this season.
But several teams do. Baylor did. Drew just got finessed by Self as usual, and on a day KU was playing a perfect game.
Since John Calipari failed to win a national championship with 10 projected future draft choices (OADs and 2 ADs), I would add him to the list of coaches that likely would not be a contender with a rotation that included Jamari Traylor, Hunter Mickelson, Landen Lucas, Frank Mason, and Devonte Graham. I doubt that John Calipari would have recruited most, if any, of these players to Kentucky. If Cal didn't even know enough to recruit and sign them, I fail to see the logic that he would have been able to be a contender with them had he taken over KU and coached them. I doubt Coach K would have recruited most, if any, of these players to Duke. I doubt that Stumpy Miller would have recruited most, if any, of these players to Arizona. I also doubt that Billy Donovan would have at Florida, either.
And here is the real clincher. Among the KU guys that these other coaches did recruit, more than likely: a.) they wouldn't have bumped one of their guys to get one of these KU players; or b.) if they had been willing to sign the KU guy it would have been pre-emptive recruiting, something we have seen these stack teams try from time to time.
It at least appears that the recruiting asymmetry between KU and other elite majors contracted with Nike is rather acute the last few years.
Of all the players you mention as highly ranked KU players, probably only Perry Ellis would have been a player that Calipari, Coach K, Stumpy, and Donovan would have signed instead of the players they did in fact sign.
Look at UK and Duke and Arizona for the last three recruiting years prior to this past year. The reputed rank of their high profile players has been pretty staggeringly high.
I just don't see how these coaches mentioned above could likely compete nearly as well as Self has with this current KU roster, given what they have had to compete with and what they have accomplished the last several years.
Remember, Bill Self took a team to the National Finals that didn't even have a Mickey D on it and even made a game of it against Kentucky down the stretch, when UK started and rotated 6 OADs.
Self is such an incredibly resourceful coach that he had a team with Naadir Tharpe playing point guard on track to make a deep run in the NCAA, had Embiid stayed healthy. Naadir Tharpe!!!!! Cal, Coach K, and Stumpy, have never had to start a point guard for a season remotely as weak as Tharpe.
My point in all of this is NOT to say that Self has NO talent to work with. He obviously has some good players, usually 2-3 that other elite teams would want on their rosters.
But my point IS to say that he has operated with substantially less talent than Cal, Coach K and Stumpy the last few seasons, and that most of his highly ranked players are not as highly ranked as Cal's, Coach K's, and Stumpy's highly ranked players.
Further, every time Cal, Coach K, and say, Tom Izzo, run into some lean talent seasons in their careers at their elite programs, they fall much farther in winning percentage than Self.
It appears Self just is significantly better at operating at a high winning percentage with less talent and less highly ranked talent than these other coaches.
These other coaches don't have to sign all of the OADs they sign. They could sign the same amount of OADs as Self. They could also have signed several of the guys that Self has in fact signed in lieu of being unable to sign OAD PGs and 5s most of the time. But they don't. They know they need the big edge in talent to compete and win, just like Self knows you need that talent. But the difference is that Self appears way more successful with lean talent than these other guys on their infrequent years of lean talent.
First, I always think you know what you are talking about on this subject; i.e., that you have looked into it and are accurate, as far as you take it.
Second, I do not gamble and so I am not an authority on Big Gaming. I am late to the study of the gaming industry. I wouldn't have looked into it at all, but for the fact that it is necessary to understand, if one wants to understand the business of sports, which is necessary to understand, if one wishes to advocate informatively for KU Basketball.
Third, it appears that Big Gaming is the core business, Big Media appears to be a possible means Big Gaming uses to re-shape bettor expectations and stimulating betting volume, and sports are largely content used as marketing tools for promoting media watching and sports betting.
Fourth, If Big Gaming operated in a perfectly evenly distributed spatial universe of bettors, and spatial universe of teams/games, you would probably be exactly right and we would probably not only not be having this discussion, but we would probably also likely not be witnessing the recurring phenomenon of the Big 12 being over-hyped and then not living up to expectations most seasons.
Fourth, in USA, the spatial universe of bettors is highly unevenly distributed, because the population is highly unevenly distributed. Here is a percentage of US population broken down by time zone.
Eastern: 47%
Central: 32.9%
Mountain: 5.4%
Pacific: 14.1%
Alaska and Hawaii: .6%
In trying to balance betting on basketball games, there is always a problem of overcoming the imbalanced spatial distribution of bettors; i.e, overcoming the tendency of EST betters betting more on EST teams and EST games than on CST teams and CST games and vice versa. One spread may achieve balanced bets in the EST, but not in CST, and vice versa.
There is also the imbalance triggered by bettors forming rational expectations over time; i.e., bettors seeing EST teams tending to win more games in the NCAA tournament and tending to win more NCAA championships.
In essence, spatial distribution imbalances and rational expectations imbalances have to be corrected for in order for any given spread on a game to satisfactorily balance betting at its highest reasonable volume.
Re-shaping bettor expectations of outcomes appears one of several feasible ways the problem can be addressed. I highpothesze that reshaping bettor expectation of which conferences are best over the course helps increase betting on CST teams by CST bettor and EST bettors in a way that enables a spread to overcome the intrinsic imbalances of spatial distribution of bettors and rational expectations of bettors.
Because reshaping bettor expectations appears feasible to do with mass media, same as mass media can reshape consumer presences in advertised products, it makes sense that such reshaping would be done to enable the balance betting that you refer to as the objective of Big Gaming in setting and iterating spreads to achieve betting balance.
What the architect of sustained excellence against the odds looks like:
What Self is doing is the stuff of legends.
Think about all the coaches with medium and long stacks that either can't keep up with him, or only exceed him for a season or two?
It is absolutely insane what he is doing with players like Mason, Devonte, Hunter, Landen, and Jamari that the other elite majors probably didn't even recruit. What Self is doing is already verging on the greatest coaching job he has ever done.
If Self wins a ring with the talent on this team in the height of the age of medium and long stacks, it should probably go down as the greatest coaching job in college basketball history.
Why do you suppose they build up the B12 each year only to see it fold?
Hypothesis: Betting.
55 FOULS AT THE LINE
(sung to the tune of 55 DAYS AT PEKING)
Theme from the film "55 Days At Peking" (1963)
(Dimitri Tiomkin / Paul Francis Webster)
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom, bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
The year was Twenty-Sixteen
T'is worth remembering
The men who lived through
Fifty-five days at the Line
T'was called the Baylor Castration
A wack-o, Waco war
Waged by all Jayhawk nations
And the KU Basketball Corps
The t-shirts of Blue and Crimson
They cloaked the racks from dorms and sororities
The intoxicates and the sober
The lustful and the tease
Then came the sound from scoreboards
The rolling sounds of fury
And the lane and the foul line
Were briefly as empty as a tomb
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom, bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Then the referee of the foul fest
Gave the signal to begin
Let the players on both teams
Be fouled up in the gym
They stormed the rim without inhibition
We blocked and altered like hell
And they came in Nike blouses
Screaming "World Wide Wes" as they fell
The whistles that so long were swallowed
Were hucked up to tweet and sing
And through the ages
You will hear them echoing
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom, bom-bom-bom
Fifty-five fouls at the Line
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom, bom-bom-bom
Fifty-five fouls at the line
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom
Bom-bom-bom.........FADE
:shit: n. shit
:hankey: n. hanky
:poop: n. poop
So: who is the cheap, unimaginative bastard that could not think up different emoticons for these nouns?
No, about sex, I am resolute. There are no bad orgasms. Men and women were put on this earth to sustain, even enhance, genetic diversity. This is as bed rock as the "c" term in E=mc^2. :couple:
(Author Here: RIP/DFW--in the interest of ensuring our new No.1 ranked Smashing, Thrashing Jayhawks (that have lately been playing to a man the best basketball seen around these parts in years) avoid getting big heads until after they win the conference title, and national championship, some irreverent questions are posed by yours truly. Without further ado...)
What if Hunter Mickelson lifted weights and was cut enough to out clean and jerk Ronnie Howard?
What if Wayne Selden's barber razor cut a part on both sides so as to help Wayne stay aerodynamically stable on drives from the wing?
What if Perry Ellis became at least as aggressive as Melissa McCarthy trash talking perps with Sandra Bullock in The Heat?
What if Frank Mason didn't act as tired after one Bad Ball drive once in a game, as he did last season after 15 each game?
What if Devonte Graham started playing the game with a stove pipe hat fitted to perma-form that state of the art 'do of his?
What if Brannen Greene tried a sun lamp?
What if Svi Mykhailuk tried a sun lamp , too, while simultaneously trying to master just one 3-point shooting spot on the floor?
What if Jamari Traylor took injured leg dragging lessons from Mario Little?
What if Landen Lucas lifted weights and was cut enough to out clean and jerk Hunter Mickelson and Ronnie Howard?
What if Carlton Bragg traded in his Mylar Man super hero costume for a stretched version of Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man Rig?
What if Cheick Diallo enrolled in 18 foot Jumps Shot in the Flow of Team Offense 101, or at least audited it a couple of weeks?
What if all the walk-on started manning up and taking it to iron, instead of taking all of these sissy trifectas, when they get in?
What if jaybate 1.0, who is now so old that he cannot entice even nymphomaniacs free basing aphrodisiacs at closing time in a red light district in Bankok with a trash bag of China White on his shoulder and is not only fecally challenged, but is also a Steven challenged, jamless Namjoon, left posting to the youngin's?
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
Unreal. Had no clue Dan Moynihan spent his first six years as an Okie! Great find.
If I were young and in therapy, I could probably put at least one therapist's kid through college getting to the bottom of my repetition you aptly note! 😄
Thx, u r very kind.
Xclnt point. Now I have to start wringing my mitts again!!!!
I think of Madison.
But I love Lawrence.
I had a mentor in Madison.
But I have my daddy in Lawrence--St. Jimmy.
Bo was a nice, but gooney blind date.
But I married Bill.
I am a basketball monogamist.
He makes the earth move under my feet...
Especially yesterday!
I have graduated from both schools to become lifetime fans of both, but with all due respect, nothing the Badgers have ever done can in basketball compare with my Jaybirds; either overall, or yesterday!
Damn, yesterday was a Mt. Everest moment in how to play the game.
It was all Bill Ball.
He ran a bit of everything he has been assembling.
And the team was shifting seamlessly among all of it.
Quick trigger Trey for lead.
Faint with two possessions of Bad Ball.
Transition.
Defend the lead in the High-Low down to 13.
Quick trigger trey back to 15, then 20.
Perfect, timely matchup substitutions.
Defend the lead.
Passing offense.
Anticipate the rough stuff of Scott trying to cheap shot back into the game with some hard fouls.
Press and steal a possession to encourage despair.
Defend the lead.
One foot on the gas and one on the brake alternating, while the CVT shifts constantly, seamlessly.
It was the sweet fruit of two years of sweat, toil, labor and determination in the Horejsi Laboratory at the Institute for Advanced Basketball Studies in remote Basketball Tibet!! It was the flowering of MULTIPLE OFFENCE 2.0.
Beauty walked the razor's edge.
It was the Subaru's quiet, humble, but tenaciously competitive engineering team finally getting the continuously variable transmission to work correctly, after decades of others trying and failing to make the CVT work with elegant efficiency long envisioned in principle!
Bravo to Bill and his staff and players!!!!
Naismith, Allen, and Iba were all beaming up in the rafters above the scoreboard.
This was one of those sublime moments in the greatest game ever invented.
It was one small step for a team.
But one giant leap for MULTIPLE OFFENSE 2.0.
Rock Chalk!!!
@nuleafjhawk
" I think Self takes a fair amount of offense to coaching against someone who really isn’t a coach."
PHOF
I agree.
And what's sad is that come the systematically biased officiating in the Madness, we are all going to be thinking back to how good erratically bad officiating was!
I have never seen Bill Self rub it in, but he did today.
Usually when an opponent shoots 39% from the field and 27% from trey, Self slows it down, and defends his lead, so as not to humiliate a fellow coach. Self's preference for not humiliating his colleagues with lopsided victories has been one of Self's admirable and retro characteristics that have endeared him to many in ever coarsening age of narcissism and preening vulgarity that we as a nation labor through. This he did today.
But when his team also shoots 54% from the field and 58% from trey, and his team is playing great basketball on offense, defense, transition, and even huddling during time outs better than usual, Self usually pulls his starters and first and second rotation guys and turns it into a 80-60 win that helps the opposing coach save face back home.
Not Saturday, January 2, 2016, a date which should live in infamy in Waco, Texas, but which should be savored by KU basketball fans as a day when justice was finally done to an impudent twit named Scott Drew that has unnecessarily disrespected Bill Self for many seasons in hand shake lines after games, and even put it to Coach Self and his Jayhawks, once in a game in a galaxy far, far away.
There have been many memorable lop sided victories in basketball, but to put this smashing thrashing into perspective, one must reach into American military conquests to even begin to do it justice.
KU's crushing of Baylor was the basketball equivalent of the WWII Battle of the Philippine Sea aka The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, or perhaps even the dreadful massacre called the Highway of Death in the Gulf War.
Brave men like Rico Gathers were beaten senseless, guarded senseless, scored on with impunity, run ragged, and generally treated like pinyatas at a birthday party in Hell.
Baylor walked on the floor actually looking like it had the talent to beat KU.
But Baylor walked off James Naismith Court looking like a bear turned into road kill by an eighteen wheeler and then skinned and packed into Jimmy Dean sausage casings and spit roasted two weeks over Reactor Number 2 in Fukushima, Japan.
I don't recall a talented basketball team being beaten as badly as KU beat Baylor EVER!
But did Bill Self stop playing his fabulous foursome of Wayne Selden, Perry Ellis, Devonte Graham, and Frank Mason?
Answer: not for a long damn time.
Remember, the final score was 102 to 74.
And it didn't feel that close.
Look at the PT: Wayne, 34 minutes; Perry, 24 minutes; Devonte, 32 minutes; and Frank, 28 minutes.
Hell, Self doesn't necessarily play these guys this many minutes in close games!
Oh, well, Perry's and Frank's minutes were a little low, but they did have 3 fouls a piece.
Come on, when was the last time Bill hung 102 points on a visitor and played his starters this many minutes?
You can go back to The Big Bang and not find something comparable.
Hell, The Big Bang was probably not that much louder than Allen Field House's orgy of noise for what Self and KU served up to Scott Drew and his neutered bear cubs.
Think about it.
Casual observers of headlines and the box score will say, well, yes, of course KU won big because it shot 58% from trey and Baylor only shot 29% from trey.
But remember, KU's last game KU shot 29% from trey and beat a decent UC Irvine team by 25 points.
Baylor shot 29% and got a century hung on it.
KU finished +28.
There was much more going on in this merciless beat down than one team with a hot hand and one team with a cold hand.
One team played what at times appeared a perfect game against a talented team that was simply eviscerated.
Many is the time I have seen a team get shelled like this for a half and walk off the floor shaking their heads not sure how things had gone so wrong.
But I have NEVER seen a team as talented as Baylor come back on the floor and get beheaded twice in one afternoon.
Every time out, it was like Scott was standing there without his head--taken from him by the KU players and Self during play, and being handed back to him by his own demoralized players.
Without putting too fine of a point on it, it was like watching Scipio Africanus march a Roman Legion through baby nursery.
To go on any more about the magnitude of the slaughter of these innocents would be to indulge in gratuitous prurience.
Suffice it to say that as usual C5 handled their post men with 19 Points, 13 Reebs.
Wayne was the blazing star of the game with a shooting hand so hot it literally left a contrail, wherever he went.
Perry had a good, but average for him, outing.
Devonte played one of the greatest games I have seen a KU 2 guard play. He finally grew into the shoes left him by Nic Moore and showed that the role Nic created in the WUGs in Korea is what made that team a champion and can make this one a champion also. I have been harping on Devonte being inefficient all season, but today he was not only efficient, but efficient playing a brilliantly high risk game doing everything for everyone on the team, ranging from taking over the game for stretches, to being Frank's and Wayne's Tour de France grade domestique other times. It was an absolutely beautiful game of basketball.
Frank is fast turning into an alchemist before our eyes. He is becoming a kind of Hermes Trismegistus in sneakers. He is thrice great. Frank glides around much of the time almost like an AWACS flying over the frey linking every one without even appearing to be doing much, until a little redirect is needed and then boom he makes one of his incredible plays that he makes look easy, but which one sees no one else doing in D1.
Hunter got lots of raves from others and rightfully so, despite getting fouled up early. He hung 7 points, six rebounds, 3 blocked shots, several alters and lots of good post defense in only 17 minutes due to fouling. Were Hunter to put together 30 to 35 minutes of such play, we might have been watching a day approaching what C5 put on today.
Bragg looked good in his 10 minutes, but Self was very careful to come with him as a first substitute at the 5 against a replacement, who was about as slim as Bragg and a perfect match up for Carlton. Still, Carlton did his job.
Landen saw 11 minutes, less than I expected. He too did his duty, though.
Diallo was productive, but one can score when one takes 4 15-18 foot jump shots outside the flow of the offense in 6 minutes of play. My hunch, and its just a wild guess, is that if Cheick had shot half as much he would have played twice as long. Just a wild guess. :-)
Jamari slipped into his unproductive ways in rebounding and scoring in his 10 minutes, but his hedge defense was seamless, he dished two assists, and got a fine block.
On the Greene and Svi front, Greene got the big 18 minute opportunity, looked very rough, but was productive. Svi looked very smooth, but was not very productive shooting and rebounding. Greene got 3 rebounds and fought hard on defense, which justifies his roughness more than his shooting, given the role he is being asked to fill. And miracle of miracles, BG got an assist. He also didn't make Self palm his forehead. Svi looked smooth, as I said, and did not make Self palm his forehead. But Svi at the FT line kept him from being knocked out for the rest of the season. Svi managed to score 5 points on FTs in only 4 minutes and 1 FGA. Svi is not out of the competition yet, despite Brannen holding an edge.
The only black lining to all of these silver clouds I can find are the high number of fouls by C5. Hunter had 4, Jamari 4, Lucas 3, Bragg 1, and Diallo 1. That is 12 fouls on C5! What does this reveal? It reveals that big strong bigs with quick feet are one way to take KU into a Free Throw shooting contest on a day when KU is not shooting as astronomically well as KU shot against Baylor. Think about that: 12 fouls out of the 5 position. I reckon C5 could hold Wilt under his average giving 12 fouls!!!! Bottom line: you can only give huge numbers of fouls against good teams, when they are shooting poorly and you are hot. Do it on the reverse kind of a night and you are apt to get into problems.
But my did I have to look a long way to find anything negative to say.
Great, great, great exhibition of team basketball at the expense of Scott Drew.
What could be better?
Maybe a week of great sex with a beautiful woman?
Maybe.
Rock Chalk!
Agree hugely with debt owed Nic Moore. I consider him a spirit member of this team.
The reason the team has stepped up a level today was Devonte starting to really understand HOW to give the team what Nic gave it. It has taken Devonte awhile, but I thought that the Baylor game was the first time he really got it. Wouldn't be surprised to learn he and Nic had a little exchange recently. Devonte was bringing more than execution today. He was being whatever Frank needed! It was a beautiful thing to watch!!!!!
In team bicycling it is called being the domestique. It takes great versatility, generosity, and Joie d'vivre. It is crucial to winning cycling. It elevates teams way beyond their top riders.
THAT WAS WHAT NIC GAVE THE TEAM IN KOREA AND THAT IS WHAT HAS BEEN MISSING TIL TODAY.
Devonte played a great, great, GREAT game today.
It's true those teams lacked an OAD CENTER, but....
But neither of those teams in those years had a double double machine like C5.
And frankly, C5 would have eaten Okafor alive. Heck, Okafor disappeared just facing Frank.
Our C5 is a new force to be reckoned with. You can see every post man we face is thinking way too much about scouting reports trying to remember what each of our 5 guys can and cannot do!!!!
"How many set plays or screens were done for Mamadou? It is not hard to script say six plays."
Agree, poor use of Marmaduke, but...
As @drgnslayr says: that's not how they play in the NBA and the UCI coach is infected with NBA ball.
HEM,
I doubt Top 25 guys choose based on their rank being improved. They are covering their down sides. If you are as good as your hype, you want two showcase scoring games--one each semester, plus you want to play but not have the saddle and be a target. This was what Self gave Xavier and Wigs. If you are overhyped, you want a place that can afford to let you figure things out, while playing on a winner in the headlines. You also want your flaws coached and masked. Self is giving Diallo this. But he and his handlers appear to want something more now to keep his rank from falling more.
Diallo is a year from being a big force in D1.
But he reputedly wants the money end of this season.
As long as Self just uses him for what he can do now we are gold.
There is no dividend to investing more in him, because the investment won't pay till next season and he has so much raw athleticism the NBA will take him now.
Self is playing this perfectly.
We didn't get anymore LOW RISK OADs after Wigs started and went first after 1 season.
That's not how the system appears to work. You get what your shoeco-agency complex conveyor can give, no matter what. Rings didn't matter after '08. Xavier didn't matter. Wigs didn't matter.
You can't get blood from a turnip and you apparently can't get 5-10 OADs from an adidas feeder system.
MOST APPEARANCES SUGGEST OADS ARE MARRIAGES OF CONVENIENCE DRIVEN BY SHOECO-AGENCY COMPLEX NET BENEFIT EXPECTATIONS AND SCHOOL/COACH CONTRACTS.
Diallo's foundation is too low to coach him up to a dominant D1 player better than C5 in one season.
And even if he were, Self has no incentive at all to make the same mistake with Diallo he made with Embiid. He put a saddle on Embiid and that put a target on him, and that injured him, thus killing KU's ring chances AND Embiid jumped.
So: His highest utility function to the team is what he is doing less the 18 ft Js.
The 18 ft Js appear to be bargaining chips about what his handlers seek for him this season for him to come back next season, or perhaps the light just hasn't gone on yet? 😄
To reiterate, all OADs appear to be marriages of convenience on both sides.
Wild Guess Hypothesis: Diallo chose KU because:
a.) Harden signing shifted the net benefit expectation curve to an adidas school;
b.) KU and Self were most willing and likely influential among adidas schools to expedite getting him cleared;
c.) Self figured the clearance process would set Diallo back long enough to make him need a second season;
d.) Diallo's handlers figured he might need a second season.
Now, Diallo and handlers have decided his best chance to get drafted early and high is to show he can make the 15 foot j in the 10-15 mpg he plays.
Shooting desperately and struggling with playing within the offense makes the pros less likely to take him.
And the more he shoots it the more Self sits him the second half.
Self is giving him rope.
Self is getting all he needs from him. Self said all he needs to do to help the team is rebound, dunk and bring energy.
Self didn't say shoot 18 ft Js.
If a choice is to be made on developing Bragg, or Diallo, beyond the narrow roles assigned, Bragg gets the minutes till Diallo and his handlers commit to another season. Commitment will require stopping 15-18 ft jump shooting.
So why did Self want Diallo?
For C5.
Just a hypothesis though.
My hypothesis is : These apparent occasional defections seem to occur around times of reputed changes in net benefi expectations, I.e., around the time of James Harden getting $200M.
The question is not why did Self take what few he could get?
The question is why did any come to Self, Pitino, or Ryan at all?
That reveals what drives the system.
Assuming you and others are right, and Self, Ryan and Pitino won't start these guys, which I of course think the facts flatly contradict, why do these adidas-lean players go to these adidas-contracted schools and coaches at all????
The give away is that OADs that can start at KU do start: Xavier, Selby and WIGGINS.
Self has made it pretty clear with those three that if you come to KU and can start, you start.
Self even made Selby start with a boot!
Self recruits OADs as heavily as anyone.
The problem appears to be they don't sign as often as with some, so Self cannot start them as often.
And adidas-Self appears to have the same problems signing them that adidas-Pitino and adidas-Ryan have had.
It appears a shoe-brand-agency complex problem.
If you as a coach and school contract with the wrong shoe brand-agency complex, the dump trucks don't apparently come as often. And when they do come, they more often bring the higher risk OADs.
If the dump trucks don't come, you don't have 5 low risk OADs to start. Or 4. At most you have 3, and more likely you have 2, 1, or none sign with you, regardless if your name is Self, Ryan, or Pitino.
In turn you have more 3rd,4th and 5th year guys for the higher risk OADs to have to beat out.
In Ryan's memorable phrasing, it's significantly about the "rent-a-players".
And don't forget Bo commented tersely on the refereeing at crunch time in the Finals, too.
I suspect the term "rent-a-players" and apparently asymmetric refereeing are ones to keep in mind for coming years.
At least that's the hypothesis that fits the data so far.
You sign the Selbys, and Alexander's. You get the OADs that aren't really OADs at all. They are guys that don't get drafted low, or not at all, get picked up in the NBA and often wash out shortly, or fill end of bench slots..
Self signs a Wiggins and he starts, gets drafted numerous uno, and becomes NBA rookie of the year.
Self signs Alexander, plays him 15 mpg before losing him to a loan investigation, then he isn't drafted and sits on a bench in the L.
But either way, the dump trucks don't come in the big numbers. The problem appears similar in Madison and Louisville.
The adidas conveyor appears the limiting factor for Self, Ryan and Pitino. It appears a pretty low number of players that are raided from the Nike, adidas or UA conveyors during college recruiting. Wiggins, Selby and Jaylen Brown come to mind.
Good take.
But for Cal's way to work for Self, Self would need a similar stack of OADs as that dumped at Lexington, so Self could afford the same high spoilage rate as Cal.
What talking heads and board rats rarely consider is the high spoilage rate at UK.
Cal has more 2ADs, because he has more 1ADs.
And because he has had so many full dump truck loads of OADs for several years (before this apparent penalization for underperforming), the new guys coming in push a lot of one time OAD phenoms into journey men, or, worse, into broken spirits (Dakari Johnsons).
My argument against the NCAA and NBA allowing the OAD dump truck game is because it increases talent waste and makes players and universities bear the increased wastage of the system.
Pre OAD, a high school senior jumped and got big bucks even if he washed out. The system rewarded players for taking the risk of jumping early.
Now the system doesn't.
If you wash out at college, you pay the cost and the NBA takes less risk.
Worse the dump truck stacking of talent appears to increase wastage.
Yes, I recall that two. And I seem to recall that was before injuries began to limit him.
I felt last mid year was the beginning of him reaching the productive part of his KU career, only to be slowed by injuries.
Injuries jump out with highly productive players, because that productivity drops sharply.
We overlook the effect of injuries in less highly productive players, but the injuries are just as limiting and sad.
Jamari may never have become the next Trob, but injuries and lost pop the last season and this seem to have robbed him from being the best he could have been.
Here's hoping those legs recover their pop.
Oooooh, I can't stand any relation to Calhoun (Ollie is an LB guy, so ok), but it's a high correlation small n comparison that tracks with a coherent logic, and so justifies further quatitative research. 😄
The long history of college hoops has long evidenced core classes being attracted and moving down an assembly line to mature bodies, skill sets and minds (full neural net grow in, once broken hearts in romance, dealing with exploitative media, and experience under the grind of a long season and the pressure of big games) and being combined with a few young players late in the core class' cycle of eligibility to yield a vintage season or two, followed by an attraction of a new core class and a repetition of the cycle.
The OAD system has eroded and blurred the cycle but it still operates some at schools unable to get regular OAD dump truck service.
Even at schools with regular OAD dump truck service, there is a new analogous cycle emerging. The teams with the most OADs turned into 2ADs (for many possible reasons) combined with a full dump truck load of new OADs, become by March among the toughest teams to beat. These OAD driven programs seem to have an every two year cycle emerging.
These cycles--whether the short ones at OAD dump truck schools, or the longer ones at non-dump truck programs--are tendentious patterns subject to a lot of injuries and players failing to pan out though, so they are not highly probable to play out at maximum strength amplitude.
To beat this horse fully to death. 😄.
And let's hope we make it through this year without a false flag attack to shape the outcome of the election.
Super idea for a post.
PHOF!
Damn, wouldn't it have been sweet to have won that 2012 thing and have kept the streak a live?!!!!!!
Let us restart it this election year.
Wow! thanks for the info on Hyer. Appreciate it.
I know board rats worry about Jamari playing a lot, because neither his line score, nor more complicated indices like @HighEliteMajor's mentioned PER, suggest the Jam Tray is very productive.
But...
It appears to me that Self is already ahead of the curve on Jamari.
Jamari plays about as many minutes against the types of players he should be expected to play against, as one should logically expect.
Jamari plays a lot against short mobile bigs, whom he is well suited to guard, and who are guys that our highly athletic perimeter guys can rebound against to pick up the slack in Jamari's rebounding ability.
Against the long centers, Jamari tends to play much less, unless one of our long guys is fouled up, sick, injured, suspended, or just stinking up the court. But Self does bring Jamari in against those long centers a few times apparently just to take them out of their comfort zones briefly, and maybe make them run a bit more. I like that.
Against the older centers that are tough guys, prison bodies, and XTReme Muscle types, whether long or short, Self has a tough call. His high ceilings--Diallo and Bragg--will get him more productivity than some of his low ceilings, but he has to look at himself in the mirror the next day. Self has to ask himself: is it okay to squeeze out some extra points and rebounds and risk the potential season ending, or career ending injury of Bragg and Diallo at the hands of these mugs?
It appears to me that Self has a pretty hard and fast rule and ethic about injury risk.
Self doesn't appear to think its right to send green kids into situations where they are to young, inexperienced and weak to defend themselves from the violence.
At the same time, once a player is mature enough to take care of himself, Self appears to think that injury is a part of the game and that if you get injured , when you are mature enough to take the risk of injury, you damned well better take the injury risk and play through injury if you possibly can, even if it triggers a shortened career.
I tell board rats: Self is a hard man about injury, but it appears he has a just code about it, whether I agree with it, or not.
Take Jamari Traylor right now. It is pretty clear to me that he is injured again in the legs. He moves around the floor now like a guy that has lost most of his pop. Remember how explosive he was his first two non redshirt seasons? He was quite awesome at times.The first few games he showed a little explosiveness. But now he does not come close to the kind of explosiveness he showed routinely his first two seasons.
It seems to me that Jamari could benefit from sitting for a month or two and hopefully getting some explosiveness back for March. And Self has enough depth to sit him. But Self's reasoning seems to be that injured, or not, each guys is pencilled into a role on the team for a season. If you can, playing injured, fulfill that particular role, then man up and play injured. Its is a players role that is so vital in Self's system. Self creates a team that is a bunch of roles. Players are supposed to staff and perform those roles. Jamari's role is to guard short, mobile centers. Scoring and rebounding is icing. It was like this with Sasha Kaun when he had no knees left his last two seasons. His role was to guard the long post. Scoring and rebounding were icing. Both Jamari and Sasha could fill their roles with while injured; that was all that mattered. Fans worry that Jam and Sasha can't do much else but their narrow role, but Self doesn't. Self figures if he can get that role fulfilled, the other players can do the other things he needs. Self runs into real problems only when he has to ask other players to take over Jam's and Sasha's roles; that creates a ripple effect throughout the team's individual roles that Self has to juggle and keep juggling to make work. Self knows if an injured player can keep fulfilling a narrow role, it means everyone else gets to keep doing their roles at a high level.
To me, Self has already narrowed the scope of Jamari's role before the season started. All that happened was that in pre conference, there were quite a few opponents that either had short, mobile bigs (Aztecs), or that had big tough experienced bigs (i.e., Costello), so Jam played quite a bit.
I expect Jam to play some against Gathers, because Gathers is one tough cookie that could easily bully Diallo into being a fouled up mess, and could bang both Hunter and Landen off spots. I suspect Landen will be our best bet against Gathers, but playing all of C5 him will absolutely help keep him off balance, and so I expect them all to play again. We don't have a single guy that can shut Gathers down. Keep making him adjust to new kinds of defenders and offenders is the best way to contain him.
Fifteen years ago, I used to wear Luccheses, when I traveled in the mountain west on business. I bought one pair custom fitted, when I happened to have more money than sense one time. Usually the problem is reversed. Its nice to have custom fitted boots, but I decided its not really a necessity. If you wear boots daily, its more important to have several pair, so that you never wear the same pair two days in a row. Good leather boots (doesn't have to be Lukes, Nakonas and others will do just fine, too) will really reward you with effectively life time wear if you rest each pair four days between wearing them, and know a cobbler that knows how to resole and reheel cowboy boots.
Three major nevers in cowboy boots.
Never buy riding heels for walking in. Spanish goat walking heel in Lukes were my favorites. I had four pair.
Never buy really good boots to ride horses in. Get a pair of Ariats, unless you're riding in a parade.
Never say Lucheeeesey to someone devoted to them. They never forget.
I don't wear boots anymore. I don't like the put on and take off time anymore. But when you have the right boots and they are on, there is NOTHING better.
Big secret. If you become a thrift store schlepper regularly, like I am, and you're willing to put up with riding heels, you can find decent used Luccheses from time to time. Lamas and Dan Posts are a dime a dozen. Hold out for the Lukes.
Alas, Hyer's out in Olathe used to be decent in my childhood. But I don't know whatever became of them. Someone said they became Olathe Boot for awhile and made great boots for a time and not so great boots later, then maybe went out of biz.