🏀 KuBuckets Archive

JayHawkFanToo said:

@justanotherfan

It is my understanding that he "fool's gold" comment was taken out of context. All Coach Self was saying is that a teams should not rely primarily on 3 point shooting but have a more inclusive repertoire on offense so, if the 3 is not going in, you have other options; in any case, the comment was related to KU offense and not defense.

I agree with you on this point. Self was certainly talking about offense when he made the comment.

However, I think the comment reflects his overall philosophy to a large degree. Self does not believe you can shoot tons of threes and win consistently. Just look at last year's national semifinal. Villanova outright blitzed KU from the opening tip, and Self made zero adjustments. He refused to go small. He wouldn't hedge hard over the top to take away the three. He didn't extend Doke beyond the paint on Villanova's bigs. He stuck with his gameplan and watched as Villanova rained fire down on KU.

This is a deep rooted philosophy, not just a flippant quote from Coach Self. Obviously, his strategic belief wins out more often than not (see his record), but if KU wants to win the big ones, that belief has to change with the times.

And don't get me started on the Grimes situation...

I'm not questioning Alabama, or the SEC overall. My point is that UCF proved this year that no non P5 team, other than Notre Dame, will ever be in a position to get into the playoff the way it is currently put together. They have not lost in two calendar years. They did everything they could do, and weren't even in a position to just barely miss.

Wofford has a couple of guards that can score. Their big man will likely have trouble with our bigger guys inside, so it is basically on their guards to carry them. If they are hot, they can stay in it. If their guards are not hot, though, it could get ugly quick.

My only issue with the playoff is this - it doesn't exist to crown the overall best team, it only exists to make the P5 more money.

UCF has not lost a game since December 2016. Yet they can't get a shot at the national title. P5 schools might say they need to have a tougher schedule, but I doubt any P5 schools are trying to get UCF on their non-con slate right now. This system is ultimately just a money grab.

Last year, people said that if UCF went undefeated again, they should be considered for the playoff. Well, they did that, and once it was clear that UCF was closing in on another unbeaten season, those people that had said they deserved that shot went strangely silent.

And that's why a top 8 is necessary. Each P5 champion, plus the top Group of Five team, then three at larges. Sadly, it will never happen because it is a money grab.

One of the reasons we help so heavily on drives is that Doke is not a great rim protector. As a shot blocker, he is very underwhelming for his size. We remember a guy like Jeff Withey just being incredible in that regard. Well, Doke is basically the opposite of that. His timing isn't instinctive enough to take full advantage of his size and athletic ability.

I think others have hit on the other issues, but continuing to view the three point shot as "fool's gold" is a big issue. When I was growing up, we had coaches tell us to give up open threes because teams would get suckered into taking lots of them, even after they started missing. There was always the belief that eventually a team would go cold. In today's game, you can't just assume guys will eventually start missing because they might stay that hot all game. Heck, Lagerald Vick has been hot for three weeks now. Steph Curry has been hot since 2013. That's just the new normal. Old school coaches have to change that mindset because guys aren't just going to start missing.

@Woodrow

I was just about to type that, but you beat me to it.

@JayHawkFanToo

Honestly, it's pointless to go back and forth on this with you because you will back whatever story the president and his handlers put out next, even if it contradicts things they have said previously.

You're entitled to your opinion, obviously, and I respect that. But ultimately, this investigation will roll on because there's a ton of smoke, and while we can't see the fire yet, there are a lot of people that are starting to act like their seats have gotten a lot warmer lately.

@JayHawkFanToo

Thing is, we don't know if Trump was involved or not. We do know that he originally said he had no business dealings with Russia, but that turns out to have been false.

That's what makes Cohen's plea such a big deal. It's not just that Cohen admitted he lied - he admitted that he lied about there being no business connection with Russia.

The president had to submit answers regarding his business ties to Russia. Did he admit to those ties, or did he submit false statements?

There has been evidence from the beginning that Trump had some business relationships with Russia at the very minimum. If he wanted this thing over, he could have admitted as much back in 2016 during the campaign, particularly since, assuming the deals were all legitimate and legal, it would not have been criminal to have those relationships.

So why lie about a legal thing? That's the question that you have not (and likely cannot) answer. Why lie?

My scenario gave one potential explanation - that there is something highly embarrassing that would be revealed by the truth. There have been allegations that Putin has a compromising video of Trump that he could use as leverage.

But there's another scenario out there, one that involves not just embarrassment, but outright criminal behavior. That's what Mueller is investigating.

So far, all we know for sure is that the president, and everyone around him apparently lied about legal activity for (if you believe the president anyway) absolutely no reason at all.

That doesn't make sense.

The investigation will continue.

But its becoming more and more likely that there's something at the bottom of this rabbit hole that Donald Trump really doesn't want the world to know about.

@JayHawkFanToo

Let's imagine a scenario.

A person is at home one day minding their own business. The police knock on their door. Apparently, there has been a robbery nearby and they want to know where the person was at the time of the crime.

This person did not commit the robbery and does not know who did. However, they do not want to tell the police the truth about where they were because they were engaged in an affair and don't want their spouse to find out where they were at the time of the crime because they were with their lover. The person lies to the police.

The person gives a sworn statement (subject to perjury) about an alibi.

The police investigation into the robbery continues, but the person's alibi falls apart (because its based on a lie). Remember, they did not actually commit the crime being investigated, but now the police double back to look into them because their alibi proved to be false. The police ramp up the investigation because they have more and more evidence supporting that this person lied about their whereabouts at the time of the crime. In reviewing the initial alibi, they uncover some other illegal acts (misappropriated funds on their company credit card, false statements on an invoice to cover up expenses for their affair, tax crimes) committed by this individual.

Ultimately, the police determine that this person did not commit the crime. However, their previous statements did subject them to perjury charges. Their other acts also subject them to criminal liability

Under your argument, this person committed no crime, because had the police not been investigating this other crime, they would not have perjured themselves, and their other criminal acts would not have been discovered.

Unfortunately, that's not how the law works.

BeddieKU23 said:

@justanotherfan

Yeah its definitely a transition. I wonder if they go after another option coach such as Army's or somewhere else.

Another thing to consider for an option QB that isn't a good passer is to switch positions (usually to either RB or WR). Their athleticism typically translates well to those spots, and it gives them a chance to keep their scholarship without transferring.

JayHawkFanToo said:

@justanotherfan

Your chart is out of date. Mueller started the investigation in May 2017 so he has been going for one year and a half already. There have been 32 indictments and 26 of those are for Russian nationals that will never be extradited. BTW, the Russians asked for an immediate hearing only to find out the government was not even close to proceed and likely will never see a courtroom. Papadopolous got a 14 day sentence, that is not a typo, it was not not 14 years or even 14 moths but 14 days and costed taxpayers $7M. Manafort and the other guilty pleas were for tax issues that happened before Trump even declared his candidacy and unrelated to any thing Russian or for lying to the FBI about something that was not even illegal.

So far the entire investigation has been a nothing-burger.

I mentioned my chart was a year old in my post. Thankfully, Michael Cohen entered a guilty plea today, so Fivethirtyeight updated their chart this morning.

!0_1543516385081_upload-50dbcad6-1303-48cd-b320-d7922479ae42 ↗

As you see from the chart, this investigation is still fairly short compared to other investigations.

Your statements indicate you may not be familiar with how investigations of this size and scope work. You start from the outside, and work your way in. That means that generally, the earliest indictments and convictions are for bit players or for things that are only somewhat related to the ultimate probe. They are things that came up as the investigators worked the larger case.

However, as the case gets closer to the center, the bigger players get caught. At this stage, we don't know how many layers deep the Mueller probe is, or what indictments have been filed under seal. To say its a "nothing-burger" without that information is very premature. There could be a dozen Americans that are under sealed indictment that we know nothing about right now. I don't know that. You don't know that.

All I know is that Trump had nothing but good things to say about Michael Cohen a year ago, and now he only hired Cohen "because a long time ago he did me a favor."

approxinfinity said:

@justanotherfan nice find on the chart!

Fivethirtyeight.com has some great information.

@DoubleDD

See the chart I posted above about how long other investigations have taken. If this were a basketball game, its not even halftime yet given that many of these investigations have gone over six years.

Also, this investigation has already borne out lots of indictments, convictions and guilty pleas. Saying the investigation isn't going anywhere just because Trump hasn't been indicted is incorrect. There is a criminal investigation being conducted. Whether it leads to Trump or not, Mueller and his team have uncovered quite a bit of criminal behavior. They are still going through documents and evidence. The president just returned his own responses a few days ago.

The investigation is ongoing. Maybe Trump has clean hands here. But the investigation isn't just Trump. There are others out there that were speaking with foreign actors. And that's why this investigation will continue to roll.

These types of investigations take a long time to play out.

Watergate, the biggest political scandal to date, begins in either August or October (FBI report came out in October, but they were investigating prior to that) of 1972. Nixon resigned nearly two years later, August 8, 1974.

@DoubleDD, you say you want the Clinton's investigated like this. Guess what, they were. Whitewater was investigated for more than seven years. So were the gifts to Mike Espy. The Henry Cisneros perjury charges were investigated for more than 8 years.

This chart is a year old, but it does a good job of showing how long these investigations can take. Because its a year old, it doesn't show any of the guilty pleas or convictions the Mueller team got earlier this year.

!0_1543440994156_upload-5fdac81a-1dab-4aae-81f8-5bdb55ada595 ↗

So the Mueller team has a ways to go to catch up to the Whitewater timeline.

Additionally, the Mueller team has already gotten several convictions or guilty pleas. Complaining about ruining peoples lives seems to be a common refrain, but I don't hear much complaining when people are convicted or plead guilty to various crimes across this country every day. If you commit a crime and your life gets ruined as a result, well, that's life.

It's pretty clear that Manafort committed several crimes even before he committed this most recent act of perjury. He admitted as much in his guilty plea. He was convicted of many other counts. He could still face criminal charges in state courts for various crimes.

I'm not sure what the point is in defending a convicted felon for having to serve prison time. That baffles me.

@BeddieKU23

Biggest difference in an option attack is the QB. You will have to recruit new QBs to take over. However, the WR, linemen and other skill guys should be able to translate.

H-backs can move to TE or FB fairly easily. Your primary running backs should be able to transition to any offense.

But QB you need someone that can throw a bit more than what option guys are asked to do. It may take a couple of years to find that guy.

dylans said:

@nuleafjhawk I know, right?

Imagine how many sacks they could have if the defense on the back end was any good. Currently third for sacks ahead of that beast of a D in Chicago.

You mean Khalil Mack?

My biggest issue with what happened in Making a Murderer was the Dassey conviction. His "confession" didn't match the physical evidence that the police had, yet they treated the part where he admitted to helping in the killing as true, while discounting the brutal murder he described since there would have been substantially more blood and such inside the house had things happened the way he said.

The police exploited a vulnerable, maybe not quite mentally sound kid, then used that against his uncle. Now, I can't say he for sure didn't do it, but the evidence wasn't very strong, and was gotten in a very questionable interrogation, especially considering his age, mental capacity and the overall situation. The whole investigation was basically a long list of things you shouldn't do. Given his previous situation, once he was a suspect, the local police should have called in someone else to investigate. Just bad all around.

Big 12 helped out by the fact that its not just their top teams doing the heavy lifting. Just about everyone in conference has a quality win on their resume already. That should help come March.

Okay, let's see if I can explain this. The NET has five components, ranked from highest weight to lowest:

1.Team Value Index, which is based on Game Results (i.e. wins or losses) factoring in the opponent, location and winner.
2. Net efficiency, which is just offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency. I will guess that very strong defensive teams will benefit here.
3. Winning Percentage (this one is straight forward)
4. Adjusted Winning Percentage (a bit confusing, but somewhat easy to understand)
5. Scoring Margin (capped at 10 points).

The first red flag to me is that NET considers opponent, location and result to get its Team Value Index. But how do I rank teams in the first step? KU plays Tennessee on Friday at a neutral site. KU wins. So I know how to do the location and result. But what value do I give Tennessee? The NCAA says this is designed to give credit to teams that "beat other good teams." Tennessee is ranked 27th by NET. So does KU get credit for beating the 27th best team, or the 5th best team (according to AP) or something in between? And remember, this factor gets the MOST weight! Yet I can't figure out how they are even evaluating teams at the start of all of this. Moving on.

NET efficiency makes sense. It's something like the KenPom rankings. It will take some time to balance out, although it should be noted that right now KenPom's top ten is Duke, Kansas, Virginia, North Carolina, Gonzaga, Nevada, Michigan, Michigan State, Auburn and Tennessee. By the eye test, there are some misses (Duke ranked first, mostly on the strength of blowing out everyone, then losing a close game to Gonzaga), but I have no doubt that every one of the teams I just listed is a very good team, potentially Final Four quality. Its fairly easy to reverse engineer this part because the numbers are out there.

Winning percentage is easy. No issues here.

The adjusted winning percentage is a bit of an adventure. You get 1.4 "wins" for a road win, 1.0 "wins" for a neutral site win and 0.6 "wins" for a home win. For losses, the reverse is true. 0.6 for a road loss, 1.0 for a neutral loss and 1.4 for a home loss. This seems counter intuitive, as teams are punished for losing at home to very good teams. That makes very little sense.

Capping the scoring margin makes sense, but the cap is too low. There's a big difference between losing by 10 and actually getting blown out. Getting blown out isn't really reflected in this metric, which makes the margin useless.

The biggest flaw with NET is that it counts wins and losses at least twice, possibly three times. It counts it once in the winning percentage (WP) , then counts it again in adjusted winning percentage (AWP). It also counts it at the top in the Team Value Index (TVI). The AWP and WP do not account for opponent. It is entirely based on result (win or loss). TVI accounts for the opponent, but isn't clear on how that opponent is assigned a value.

The AWP will really skew once conference play starts. Imagine being a team like Texas Tech, knowing you have KU, K-State and WVU all coming to Lubbock. If you lose all three of those games, AWP counts that as 4.2 losses against you. If you win all three of those games, it counts as 1.8 wins. That seems... absurd. Those are three tough games. It rewards you for playing road games, but because it doesn't factor in opponent when doing AWP, scheduling weaker opponents on the road (you won't be punished for the loss as much) will actually help your AWP! That makes no sense.

It will be interesting to see how these rankings even out as more data is input, but I am not optimistic.

mayjay said:

@justanotherfan KU's national notoriety would go up if we produced more actual NBA stars like Pierce.

KU has lacked in producing next level stars for a program of this level. In the last 25 years, KU has produced two true stars in the NBA (Pierce and Embiid), a handful of good players, and a host of productive players and career backups.

It would be nice if Grimes can find himself here because I believe he can really be a star at the next level with his size and talent. But I want him to also be a star at KU so he isn't a guy that was restrained by college hoops, then broke out in the NBA because that actually hurts KU more than helping.

I'm worried about this system only because it fails (at least so far) to give credit for quality of wins, awarding quantity instead.

A 5 point win over Texas shouldn't be worth less than a 10 point win over Texas State. This is just weird. More thoughts tomorrow.

@nuleafjhawk

KU is nationally respected and recognized with a significant degree of difficulty. That comes from a lower rate of exposure than most other major programs.

It's not impossible, obviously, but KU is the most consistently dominant program in the country and yet probably only the fourth or fifth most recognized program. That says a lot.

nuleafjhawk said:

@KUSTEVE It motivates the SHI* out of me. I know it's early, I know the polls mean zero right now, but I'm tired of KU being disrespected. We could be 38-0 and Duke, Kentucky and Carolina could all have 12 losses and they still get all the press, all the hype.

In my opinion, anybody that is a KU fan should be ticked.

KU lacks a nationally recognized rivalry to help promote the games. UNC and Duke have each other. UK has Louisville. KU has... nobody. It's tough to be a nationally respected program when most of the games you play don't matter outside the state. In that respect, KU is something like Gonzaga, but in a major conference.

We need an annual rivalry game that gets national TV exposure (i.e., not K-State). There's no game that KU has on its schedule every year that is worth promoting for several days leading up to it like you can Duke-UNC or UK-Louisville. The only time you can really build up a KU game leading up to it is when KU is facing Duke, UNC, or UK.

So what's the solution? Well, there are a few options.

1. Get the Border War going again. It matters outside Kansas, which is a big issue in getting national attention.

2. Start an annual series with (pick one) UCLA, Indiana, Ohio State, Arizona, Michigan, Louisville. It has to be a prominent program from a major conference, and has to be something that will always draw a national audience.

3. Create an annual Naismith Classic, something like what UCLA did with the Wooden Classic before merging the event into a tournament. Find a weekend in the early season to host two games at AFH and play ball.

Stanford basically has two guys you have to worry about. Beyond that, they are probably a below average P5 team, which shows up when you see they have double digit losses to each of the P5 teams they have faced so far this year. KU should be able to follow suit and win by a comfortable margin. KU by 16.

There are likely to be at least eight P5 openings this season, with some potential name jobs (Southern Cal?) open. Maryland will be open. There could be a couple of ACC jobs (Louisville, UNC) open. If KSU wants to act, they better act fast because things will heat up quickly this week.

The other thing to be aware of for KSU is that since Snyder effectively forced Prince out the last time around, and wields so much influence in that athletic department, some of the coaching candidates may not want to take that job if Snyder (or his son) is going to be around the program. Add to that the fact that the Texas Tech job is the better job in the Big 12 (particularly since KU just hired Les Miles), and K-State may be heading for some tough sledding.

Since the Big 12 doesn't want (and maybe doesn't need) to add Memphis and Cincinnati (the two potential adds that make the most geographic and athletic sense, there's no point in moving from 10 teams at this point. Adding West Virginia meant the Big 12 could only expand east because a conference covering three time zones is just unworkable.

I will say this - if the Big 12 is left out of the CFP again this year, the conference may want to talk with the Pac-12 about breaking up the CFP. Big 12 and Pac-12 have both appeared in the CFP twice, and on each occasion, the other conference did not appear. It's as if the Big 12 and Pac-12 share a bid to the CFP. This year the Pac-12 has one loss Washington State probably being left out, while the Big 12 has one loss Oklahoma probably left out. Meanwhile, the Big 10 is likely to get the last bid unless Georgia upsets Alabama in the SEC title game, giving the SEC two teams in again since most think a one loss Alabama still gets the fourth spot. Notre Dame is undefeated and in. Clemson is undefeated and, barring an upset against Pitt, also in. Either Georgia or Alabama is definitely in.

Time to think about shaking things up and demanding an expansion to 8 teams.

DanR said:

Interesting sub

Confusing substitution. Doesn't make sense for Q or KJ.

BigBad said:

DanR said:

Grimes got the oubre treatment

Needs it

KU has to find roles for everyone that fit together. Right now the fit just isn't quite working.

Grimes got lost tonight. I think he will be okay, but KU still hasn't found a way to maximize all of their best players at the same time. That has to get fixed.

Apparently Dedric can dunk

Dedric is better than he has looked. I think we have to start tinkering with lineups to get him going.

Play four out with him as the lone big man. Play him with Mitch as the stretch 5 to space the floor a bit.

We need to figure out how to space the floor for him to operate. Maybe let him face up at the FT line more. He needs to get some easy catches and baskets to get his rhythm going. Once he does that, I think he will get back to the level everyone was anticipating.

A little food for thought:

Most immigration to the U.S. actually comes from Asia now - primarily India and China, but other places as well.

Many of the "illegal" immigrants in the country were actually once "legal" immigrants. They are now here because they have either overstayed their work or student visa, or have not met the conditions to have their visa renewed.

Asylum seekers are a different category than regular immigrants. Lumping them together is lazy because they come to this country under different programs and must meet different requirements.

I'm not going to try to dive into all of the politics of it because immigration and asylum are complex things.

I will note that just because Democrats don't support a border wall doesn't mean open borders. Did you know that Mexico actually has had a negative immigration rate with the U.S. over the past few years. That means more people went from the U.S. to Mexico than from Mexico to the U.S.

Just a few items to think about while you sit on the couch in a food coma over the next few days.

stoptheflop said:

Regarding 3 point shooting at Madison Square Gardens, the bigger arena usually hampers 3 point shooters and I expect that to affect Marquette's final score more than KU. Plus, how are they going to stop Dok? I expect a repeat of the last two games with Dok and Vick dominating. And, maybe one of our freshmen steps up. I can really see the difference not having the experience of Frank and Devonte at point. This will take awhile.

MSG is a traditional basketball arena. It's not like the domes they convert to basketball for the Final Four. The only reason three point shooting suffers in MSG is because the Knicks play there.

Mahomes will learn from these mistakes. He can make some spectacular plays, but he will also learn which ones he cannot make because of balance, pressure, speed of defenders, etc.

But you can't rein in his confidence. He has a once in a generation arm, and he has the confidence to use it to its full potential. There's no reason to rein that in, because he will make more plays than he will miss.

BShark said:

@JayHawkFanToo Last year's stats with mostly the same players. If anything they have underperformed from 3 to start the year. Combine that with KU's poor defense which allows nothing but wide open threes and we could be looking at a break out game where Marquette scores over 100.

To @BShark's point, Markus Howard was a 40% shooter on 275 attempts last year. Sam Hauser was 48% on 195 attempts. Jamal Cain was 47% on 55 attempts.

Those three are currently 26-75, or 34.6%. Last year they were 232-525, or 44.1%. Chances are they get back on track and trending closer to that 40% mark. Either Howard or Hauser could hit 4 or 5 threes in a game with no problem. Neither has ever shot below 40% from three on the season (both are juniors).

Often, we think about regression to the mean meaning performance will go down, but for these players, their past performance suggests they will start shooting much better.

Combine that with the weaknesses that different people have been identifying, and this could be the type of game that eats KU's defense up, particularly off primary ball screen actions.

JayHawkFanToo said:

@KUSTEVE

...and he left KU on probation...like UCLA before and SMU afterwards. Brown is a great basketball mind and coach but as a program manager he is toxic; let’s hope Miles is not anything like him in this respect.

Miles doesn't have that history like Brown does/did.

In fact, Miles has not just been a good coach - he has been a program builder. Oklahoma State would not be where they are today without Miles' tenure.

LSU had as good a period of sustained success under Miles as anyone, including Nick Saban.

I don't know whether he can do that at KU, but he's as well suited as anyone to try. The question, more than anything else, is how long his KU tenure will be. I believe he will be successful, but can he train a KU version of Mike Gundy over the next 5-7 years while he rebuilds the program? Gundy took what Miles built at OSU and has taken the Cowboys to a bowl in every season but his first, has six double digit win seasons and has even won a conference title. That level of success at KU would be a dream come true to be sure. If Miles builds a foundation that leads to that, his hire will have been an absolute home run.

This is the type of game where Self has to show some lineup flexibility. He may need to stagger Doke and Dedric a bit more to help himself defensively. This is a tough team to work out, because our best five players don't necessarily work well in a lineup together (Dotson, Grimes, Vick, Dedric, Doke) either offensively or defensively because the inside guys aren't mobile enough defensively, and tend to get in each other's way offensively.

KU may need to experiment with Dedric at the 5 in some lineups, or Doke with four guards. I'm still not sure of the exact solution, but it is time to tinker with some lineups to figure out what works on both ends so we aren't doing this in January.

That game was W-I-L-D

The NFL has a serious officiating problem. They missed several things that were plainly obvious at regular speed ON TV!!! And that was supposed to be an "all star" crew. If that's the best the NFL has to offer in terms of officials, they should fire everyone and start over. Just ridiculous how bad they were.

And it wasn't just that they made some bad calls against the Chiefs. They made some calls that just flat out didn't make sense.

The officials were almost as big a story in a game that featured three MVP candidates, 900 yards of passing offense, 105 total points and no less than six of the most exciting players (Mahomes, Goff, Gurley, Hill, Hunt, Donald) in the NFL. That should literally NEVER happen.

The biggest challenge for Les Miles is to take control of the NE Kansas/NW Missouri area from a recruiting standpoint. The stretch between Warrensburg and Topeka, anchored by Kansas City, stretching north to St. Joseph and south to Ottawa or so doesn't produce talent like DFW, Harris County (Houston) or Dade County (Miami), but it's a starting point.

I think Miles has some ideas up his sleeve, and he has more credibility than anyone that has coached at KU, KSU or Mizzou probably ever, so he has a chance to move KU immediately to the top of the heap with local recruiting. That may not pay off with the class of 2019, but it should start paying off in 2020.

KUSTEVE said:

@FarmerJayhawk That's the only way to do it. Pooka to the left...Pooka to the right ... shorten the game. Do the football version of the 4 corners. It might be a little ugly, but the wins will be really nice.

Pooka can't carry it 30+ times per game all season. They need either multiple backs or some other threats, otherwise Pooka will be hurt five games into the season.

Miles is on a plane to Lawrence today. He needs to be on a plane to recruit tomorrow.

Apparently Vick's shooting hand is still the hottest thing on the planet.

The Chiefs defense with Berry back at his level of play would look something close to league average. With this offense, that's a luxury.

Twitter is saying the deal is nearly done for Miles.

Beaty is coaching for a coordinators job somewhere at this point. He's not going to be a head coach, but if he shows something in the next couple of weeks, he could find himself a decent landing spot.

As @Texas-Hawk-10 said, the new staff has some significant recruiting work to do. KU is the only school in the country with fewer than 8 commitments for next season. That's a huge hole to fill. Every second that passes is a wasted opportunity for next season. Whoever gets this job needs to be on the recruiting trail immediately, if not sooner.

It looks like KU may, for once, be playing this exactly right. They look like they are hiring a HC (and maybe coordinators) that are not currently tied to CFB programs. This means that group may be able to salvage this recruiting class if the hiring happens by Monday. That would be a distraction for the current staff, but honestly, this season is lost anyway, so it makes sense to salvage what you can for the future.

JayHawkFanToo said:

@justanotherfan

Here is info ↗ on the other topic...nothing really changes.

Automatic voter registration is something that happens in nearly every new democracy where the U.S. goes to oversee elections. They simply register everyone to vote that is eligible, then hold an election.

And before you start talking about voter ID, most countries (aside from the U.S.) issue each citizen a voter ID when they reach voting age. Nearly every developed country on the face of the earth does this. It's actually one of the ways those countries combat fraud because everyone is registered to vote, so you can't double register, or use someone else's ID to vote, because that person is already registered to vote and has a voter ID.

Automatic registration makes double registering more difficult because everyone is accounted for. There's no possibility that you aren't already registered, so there's much less confusion. Automatic registration with an automatically issued voter ID is even better because then you have a unique identifier for each voter. If the GOP was serious about rooting out fraud, they would have proposed this years ago (hint: they aren't). And before you say no one has suggested it, this exact system exists in many countries around the world. The U.S. has even helped implement a similar system in new democracies.

As for Citizens United, you should understand that it extends free speech to corporations, and more specifically, to donating money to political candidates, saying that money = speech.

If you are against politicians being bought by large lobbying interests, you should be against Citizens United because that's some of what that ruling essentially allows. Now, obviously I am generalizing here a bit, which is always dangerous, but I can't really type up an entire rant on this opinion.

As for gun control, universal background checks and mental health screenings have been proposed (and rejected) for years. I doubt we see anything substantive on gun control because too few people lack the political will to do anything on the subject, other than offer their "thoughts and prayers" after the next mass shooting.

What we will likely see over the next couple of years is the Senate rejecting every proposal coming out of the House simply because the Democrats support it, and the GOP and Trump speed packing the courts - Republicans complain when the Democrats question judicial nominees now, conveniently forgetting that after the GOP took over the Senate, many Obama nominees didn't even get hearings because the Republicans wouldn't even bring them before the Judiciary Committee, let alone the full Senate. But that's another story for another day.

JayHawkFanToo said:

In a somewhat relayed story ↗, creepy porn lawyer can now add domestivpc abuser to his resume. What will CNN do, replace him or give him his own show? 82 guest appearances in a couple of months has to be a record.

This story is bizarre. It was originally reported that his estranged wife was the victim, but almost immediately after that was announced, his wife/ex-wife? announced that she had not been the one that filed the charges.

I'm curious who the accuser is on this. Perhaps a new girlfriend? This story is off to a strange start. I don't want to assume anything without more facts because this is already really weird.

dylans said:

@justanotherfan How fast do you think Hill can run down the field with an oxygen tank?

Still probably faster than me.

Air quality could be an issue for this game.

We may see guys needing to take breathers more often, as even if the wind direction is ideal, the air quality will probably be low with all of the smoke in the area. It should be a good game, but it could have some interesting moments because you can't really condition to breathe in that type of situation.

Teams like Vermont and Army are tough matchups for teams like Duke and KU because they are going to slow the game down as much as possible because they can't run up and down with KU/Duke, etc.

Vermont was able to "exploit" the fact that Azuibuke struggles to come out from the paint to defend. They couldn't exploit it to the level that Villanova did because they don't have that level of talent, but they were able to get some open shots and make some plays in the half court.

That said, they ultimately couldn't keep KU out of transition and even though it was a slog in which they shut out one of KU's best players, they still lost by 16. Vermont did nearly everything right and still got beat by double digits. Same thing for Army, although Army got dragged into a track meet they never had any hope of winning even when the game was close in the first half. That's why a team like Virginia that always plays slow is more vulnerable to upset than a team like KU or UNC that plays at a faster pace.

Besides, if you can slog out 84 points with zero from an anticipated all conference player, and just 10 from your future NBA lottery pick, you're doing okay.