🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@HighEliteMajor With respect to Brannen Greene being psyched out. What a crock! You must think that BG is the dumbest player on the face of the earth. Unless he is the dumbest player he knows that he is on the floor for one reason only and that is to shoot threes. He sees the film and must know that his defense needs a lot of work. He cannot dribble the ball more than 5 times with a defender within 5 feet without coughing it up. His passing leaves as much to be desired as that of anyone else on the team. Let's give him a little credit for improving the rebounding.

And yet after all of this he was on the floor yesterday during the most critical part of the game. Why was he there? Obviously to shoot threes and he did. Making one that counted for something. Who put him on the floor? Since neither you nor KUinLA are the coaches I guess it was probably Bill Self. Obviously he must have felt terrible, being as stupid as you assume that he is, thinking that the coach has no confidence in his abilities.

Self could have had KO or Svi shooting to try and come back but he did not. As offensively challenged as a bag a hammers he played someone that he had no confidence in and who he had insulted and damaged his confidence with his "fools gold" comment. Leave the dime store psychology to Dr. Phil.

@ajvan When are we going to stop with ridiculous shizz about how KU would win if only we shot more threes or schemed for them. Who the hell would shoot them? I'm sorry bad question. Who the hell would shoot them and make them?

Greene's carriage unfortunately returned to its pumpkin state about 6-8 games ago. I don't usually sit around moaning and groaning about Self's substitutions except today. Why in god's green earth was BG in the game today? He did nothing good and plenty bad except for the meaningless 3 at the end.

Kelly has hit a few as has Frank but not much. Wayne finally hit one but he would be way better off taking 13-18 ft jumpers as would Graham. I know statistically that is a bad shot but a lot better than clanging yet another 3 so that the other team can get a long rebound and a layup.

Maybe we should pray for everyone getting hot as they were in January. Unfortunately Jaybate was correct back in about October when he pointed out that we didn't have many good 3 shooters.

@DCHawker Who devised the algorithm? I don't really give 2 figs about Kenpom but Nate Silver he ain't.

@Crimsonorblue22 BG is too skinny to have handles. Sorry I guess you meant the ability to dribble the ball without causing most of the Jayhawk fan base to have heart attacks. His rebounding has gotten better but he can't drive a car let alone the basketball.

@HighEliteMajor Wayne's inability to finish at the rim is a huge problem. The same could be said of his rebounding statistics. Given this and the fact that most on this board are down on him, why was he selected as an all Big XII honorable mention? The team is selected by the conference coaches. Although many if not most of the coaches are looked on here as something a dog leaves on a sidewalk, could they possibly see something that we don't?

I generally don't bet on anything other than I may get up tomorrow. On college basketball I don't even like to fill out brackets. I want KU to win but most of the time know that in the end they won't. Who wants to be right picking against their team or appear to be daft by picking them? I will leave that for someone else.

@KUSTEVE As has been made painfully obvious we don't have any idea what the coaches sitting on our bench really do. Because Danny was one of the better college players of all time and he was a "big" we assume that he was what made "big man U". Regardless of the fact that Self had Norm Cook and other bigs at Illinois who were very good. We guess that Joe Dooley had a great influence on Self and was the offensive guru. He is gone so we are sunk. We know that Norm and Kurtis are good recruiters because Self has credited them will some of our better finds. Other than that what do they do?

Snacks is credited with getting Cliff and has been alluded to have great Chicago creds. Can he or can he not teach the best way to set a screen?

Unfortunately none of knows Jack about what any of these people do or have done on a daily basis as assistants at KU. We know NOTHING about how TRob or Withey or Brandon or anyone for that matter was developed at KU other than the head coach was Bill Self.

Basketball in general has gone into the crapper in the past 10-15 years with very few players having basic, fundamental skills. There is almost no one who would argue with this. Slayr is correct that boxing our for rebounding is sadly lacking. One would think that a good assistant would teach them this. Along with the other thousand and one things that they do not know. Of course this is stuff that a good 5th grade coach would be teaching but for whatever reason is not.

This has nothing in particular to do with you but it drives me nuts to spend so much of my life (my wife thinks that I an crazy and she may be right) reading what I assume are reasonably bright people who jump to all sorts of conclusions on a myriad things for which we know nothing.

Where do you or anyone suggest that we find these people who can replace all of the people we are going to fire? Why are they going to be able to teach our next group of recruits things that they have shown no interest in learning since they have not developed the them after 8-10 years of playing by the time we see them?

This is just another example of a problem that we see. Let's pretend that it is a little cut. We pick and pick at the scab and soon enough we are convinced that we have gangrene and will have to cut our arm off.

Fortunately the year will end. Another will begin with 2 or 3 people we are convinced walk on water. After a few months we will realize that they don't and we will analyze the hell out of the situation and be certain that whatever the coach has decided should work has no chance. Is this really the "Great Mandala".? I guess only JB knows for sure.

@jaybate-1.0 Did you read this weeks Sports Illustrated? It had a couple of articles about college basketball and especially scoring going to hell in a hand basket. I actually liked what they call the style of ball we have been playing of late. Instead of BAD ball in is VOMIT ball.

Since you introduced the term my only problem is that "bad" has the connotation of inept. Can't dribble, shoot, pass, etc. While there may be times this might be the case, what you seem to imply is "good" ball is fun to watch, flows, and lets players demonstrate their athletic prowess. I like vomit (or ugly) as an adjective because it describes something that is aesthetically lacking rather than something that indicates complete lack of talent.

Funny thing about Wayne Selden. Has anybody noticed that he was voted as honorable mention all conference. This is not too bad for someone with 2 left feet and 2 right arms who can't get out of his own way and only plays because he is obviously the coaches pet.

The problems with models is that they reflect the ability to capture the past. Sometimes they continue to work and sometimes they don't. Maybe Kenpom has reached the end of his road.

@HighEliteMajor One term that I was surprised that jb did not use but I will is what I think is the major flaw in your 3 pt strategy and why HCBS called a strategy based upon it "fools gold". That is regression to the mean. We have been called the best 3 pt team in the big 12 and that is statistically correct (or it was before the past couple of weeks). However, I don't think that our 3 pt shooters are really that good. We shot out of our minds for a couple of weeks and many extrapolated that to mean that if we shot more 3s this would go on forever. Unfortunately our players have now returned from whence they came.

BG is undoubtedly a good shooter but 50% is difficult even for Steph Curry or Ray Allen. Living in the bay area I watch Curry all of the time and believe me BG is NOT that good. Kelly was draining 3s at the same time but he has returned to earth. Frank has hit some huge shots but never on a consistent basis. I fully believe that we must continue to take 3s and BG, Kelly, and Frank will get hot on some nights. But I also believe that all 3 will not necessarily do it at the same time as happened a month or so ago.

As far as a NC, I would really like to see that happen and maybe it will. But if it does Self would not only deserve a COY but a COC (could of the century) and that would not be from 2000 until 2015 but from 1915 to 2015.

I was sure I would see something along these lines before but nothing.

It appears that the Mayor was handed his a$$ last night by Scott Drew of all people and at home no less. The point was made endlessly by the color man that using all of his timeouts to stop ISU runs won the game. Along with Kenny Chery. Also note that this was done with Rico Gathers sitting on the bench. We should put a lot or credence in what the color man said since we believe them whenever they opine that KU should launch 3s.

Drew went with a smaller lineup of 3 pt shooters since Gathers wasn't doing much under the boards. He took probably the only player that has a sniff at the league out of the game.

The Mayor on the other hand kept having his players chuck up 3 pointer after 3 pointer with little or no success. Niang couldn't hit the proverbial KSU bull in the butt with a scoop shovel. What was working for them was Niang going inside, drawing defenders and passing to McKay for dunks. But no that wasn't good enough since ISU is known as a 3 point shooting team. He also couldn't prevent his players from making turnover after turnover at the end. What was he thinking?

Everybody here seems to love the Mayor for adjusting to his players strengths and not running a system. Did we see that last night. No we did not.

Maybe things really are as simple as the fact that it is very hard to win in the Big XII either at home or away. Maybe every coach doesn't go from a genius when they win to a dolt when they lose. Who knows?

@Kip_McSmithers The problem people perceive with the post in question is not that he/she called out Self for this game or for the KY game or for that matter any game this year. It is that the poster has called out Self about 95% of the time he/she posts both here and at kusports.com for years. Not withstanding an occasional disclaimer he /she doesn't think that Self can coach worth a shizz.

Perhaps the poster is correct. KU should win at least 98% of its games and most by at least 20 to 30 points. Good coaches do that. Don't they?

@drgnslayr I have to agree with much of what you wrote. Yesterday, however, since we were playing OSU I thought more to compare Cliff with Nash. Not from the style of play or their attitude but because of the initial hype they had coming in. After all that I heard about this great player for OSU I was way under impressed with him as a freshman and sophomore.

He has gotten much better but he is still not the player that people thought he would be. He has occasional flashes of great play mixed with some not so good. Cliff plays similarly. He grabs a great rebound and then fails to block out. He makes a resounding dunk and then fails to close out on a shooter. He had a really good jump hook in the first half but he has not yet learned to play every play. I think much of that is having to play against people who he cannot dominate like he did in high school.

It's not that he doesn't want to play well but his skill set and consistency are not yet they should be. Jamari played poorly yesterday. Self alluded to that in the post game when he indicated that Jamari didn't bring the energy that was expected of him. However, he is still more consistent than Cliff over the course of a game.

That yesterday wasn't a very good day is abundantly clear. Giving the ball away about 4 times to start the second half gave OSU confidence that they did not have until that point. We were listless and did not play very well. Self wasn't happy about the first half except for the made shots he thought we played poorly.

Now let us imagine how WVU fans feel today about having their lunch totally eaten AT HOME by Baylor. Talk about listless. Who would have thought that Staten and the rest could play that poorly.

And poor UofA. To get bounced by a middling team like ASU must be particularly galling.

Well at least UK kicked the bejesus out of Flordia. NOT! With the exception of Duke and Virginia yesterday was pretty unforgettable for the top teams.

It is gloomy and rainy here in the bay area (god do we need it). I imagine that the weather is similar on most boards for the top schools around the country. Even UNC can't celebrate their win against that powerhouse BC wilh the news about Dean Smith.

@drgnslayr One thing that no one has mentioned is how WVU gets on the offensive boards and they were missing a big man, Delvin Williams. They are relentless and pound like the devil. Not only do we need to beat the press but we must control the defensive boards. Especially since their press is keyed off of made baskets.

Super dumb play. However, anything that can put that agonized look on Richard Sherman's face after they panned to him is fantastic in my book. And the amazing thing is that his mouth was shut. What a jerk!!!

I think we are over analyzing this a bit. Self has things that he asks (demands) that players do given their abilities and the need to win games. I don't think that he is trying to "toughen" people or that they are in his dog house. When players don't perform according to his metrics they sit. He does this with all players. Kelly played a few minutes and was unable to deliver. This may have been because he was sick or for some other reason. I don't have a clue nor do others, but nonetheless he sat.

The point is that the everyone must perform to whatever level they are asked. Also let us not forget that he is coaching a team. I a reasonably sure that most of the people on the team know what is expected of them and equally important what is expected of their teammates. If you were a member of the team and know what is expected of each other and for whatever reason others do not perform but still play what would you think? I also do not think that a competitive player as hopefully all of the team are would want to be coddled.

How many times have we heard people say after they are done playing that their coach was hard on them and challenged them but that in the end it made them better players and better people.

One thing some people seem to forget is how Cliff has scored thus far. He has hit some 8-10 ft jumpers and is working on his jump hook. This is, however, not how he scores most of his points and especially those that we remember. He does that by getting free under the basket and putting in dunks and alley oops.

This is very effective when the rest of the team is playing well. Frank and Kelly are shooting threes and driving. Wayne is hitting some threes and successfully getting to the basket (whether he makes them or not) and Brannen is hitting threes. When the others are not playing well Cliff does not become open and slams are not available. As JB pointed out, Cliff does not yet have much of a BTB game. For better or worse Landen can do this better.

We can once again expend a lot of keystrokes arguing about whether Bill should play someone who is not effective in a given situation for the long run. That is pretty much a waste of time since he wants players develop while we are still winning. When Cliff develops a better BTB game and can consistently hit 10-15 ft jumpers he will get more time. Until then he is being used for situations in which he excels.

He would also help himself by doing a better job of boxing out especially on free throws. A pointed remark was made after the game by Bill about people not doing this.

I too was extremely worried when left and limped to the bench. He will most likely feel pain under similar circumstances but some of it is psychological and not just playing through pain. Very likely if he gets the toe stepped and there is pain the first thing that goes through your mind is OMG I'm back where I started after the initial injury. He goes to the bench, is examined and the pain becomes less and you realize that this is not what you were afraid of. This is probably more true for younger players who have never had a serious injury.

We have seen players, especially pros, who after rehab are deemed to be healed by doctors but who are not effective until they get their confidence back. Derrick Rose is a classic example.

I think that a large part of their better play of late is that the players are becoming more comfortable with each other. Not only have they had to learn the defensive and offensive sets, but they have had to learn their own roles and as importantly how to mesh with their team mates and what the others are the most capable of doing. This has been especially true of Frank and Devonte. There will be more boneheaded plays and mistakes to come but that will get better as they play together more and as they get more confidence in themselves and the team.

A large part of the UK debacle was a lack of confidence that they could compete. Now they know that they can. Part of the problem with Temple was that these were kids who wanted to go home for Christmas and not travel half way across the country. Self said as much himself after the game when he said that he probably should not have scheduled that tough of a game at that point in time.

I had the game on but could only watch the last 10 min because of cooking. I never had the feel that Texas could come back. After that I watched the ISU game that I had dvred since I was on vacation for the past couple of weeks.

Other than screaming at a couple of bonehead plays, I feel good about the game at AFH. As you said, they beat us by getting down the court especially after our made baskets. That is something that the crowd and Self can cure. They have some good players with good motors but they did not seem to have the people with a killer instinct that we have run into before at Hilton.

@drgnslayr The other positive sign for Brannen was the fact that he played as many minutes as he did with relatively few defensive breakdowns. I saw a couple of blow byes but not bad for that many minutes. One of the announcers mentioned his rebounding and defense. Who would have thought?

It appears that KU and most of the other elite BB programs have a big problem based upon the last couple of posts. I don't disagree that screwing students in terms of the # of seats or location is bad. The problem is that all of the major programs have become very expensive and with the exception of big 10 teams BB also carries those programs. UNC, Duke, Kansas and UK are pretty much in the same football pickle. A good team every now and then but nothing to hang your hat on over the long run. Where does the money come from. Well in Kansas it does not come from the state. Here and in most places it comes from Williams fund members and their counterparts at other schools.

Not only does the big money come from athletic team supporters but from a small percentage of them who can afford to drop a mil or so here and there. I find it hard to believe that many of those people are "with it" or "cool".

It has not escaped my attention that most of the posters here (including myself) do not like the ugly uniforms dumped on us by Addidas. I'm sure that our tastes in unis are not that far from that of the big donors. Although the recruits may like dayglo colors I don't think that the people who build new dorms, new practice facilities and pay a pretty penny for coaches do.

Now we could do away with the expensive things but then the kids wouldn't like that either. I do not think that things are as bad as many here seem to think. Supposedly we need to do a bunch of things including installing a new offensive package to recruit 5-8 OADs. In reality there are not nearly enough kids with the needed skills to stock more than 3 to 4 schools at the max.

Chicken little was NOT right. The sky is not falling. Part of the problem is that as a group we are too close to the situation. We know almost too much about the weaknesses of this SF or that PF or PG. I feel extremely confident that the real board rats at other schools think that their guy sucks at this or that and how can we possibly beat KU. Imagine how the fans of Baylor, Mizery, or KSU must feel. They generally do not beat us and we do beat them.

Shane is one of my all time favorites. Alan Ladd and Jack Palance shooting it out. What could be better. The final scene is a real tear jerker. Actually one of the latest Geico ads is a takeoff of it. The one with the "words can hurt" and the guy hits his head on the "The End".

Maybe KU could do something like what was done with Alan Ladd. He was a real heart throb but only about 5'4" or so. They would dig ditches so that the ladies could stand in them and be shorter. If we could only do something similar with Cliff and make him appear to be a footer.

Interesting. Is hunting a sport? Most people who hunt think that it is. There is the chance of dying but that is assumed primarily by the huntee as opposed to the hunter. It isn't a game, therefore what?

For those who want to forget the UK defeat this gives us a lot to think about since this was much worse. Who gives the east end of a rat heading west about OAD/TAD. There wasn't one on the floor for Temple and they made us look like a junior high team. From what I could see the only people who look like they could play beyond a CYO league were Mason and Oubre.

So much for the clamor of Cliff starting. WOW!! That was impressive. A great example was with about 3 min left Cliff had inside position on a not very impressive Owl but didn't get a body on him (I guess OADs don't need to do that) and the rebound was taken away.

Brannen was another example of what went wrong. He hits a 3 in the first half and on the next play on the other end of the court he wanders away from his man who then puts in a 3. What the hell difference does it make if someone makes a boat load of 3s and then watches the game on the other end.

I have been a big Selden fan but the next time I see him shoot a finger roll layout I am going to puke. He and Svi seem to think that if you can roll the ball to hit the front of the rim that you get something.

Boy Perry was really good tonight. Other than shooting a face up jumper he does not appear to be able to shoot without spinning. That becomes really hard to to defend. When he is going left simply wait for the spin to the right and stuff it. He also needs to take the ball to the basket with some authority. In the first half there was a play where he gets a rebound and Temple is not really in position to do much. Unfortunately there was a player who was about his height within 3 feet so the ball gets pitched back outside. For crying out loud, it isn't possible to get the ball closer to the basket for a supposed PF.

Inside out, outside in doesn't really make much difference when you play like we did tonight. The only thing that approximated KU basketball was Frank going to the basket and Kelly and his ability to follow a miss and get up quick.

@wrwlumpy I also became a KU fan in 1966. I had transferred from St. John's University in Collegeville Mn. Besides having the best coach in NAIA football it had a fantastic church and the world's largest Benedictine monastery. When I attended my first game at the phog it was like going to church with the ritual of the Alma Mater and the Jayhawk chant. With the lights down and a spotlight on the flag it was awesome. The lights were one of the reasons I have never liked day games. I was reminded of this during the AFH celebration when someone referred to it as a cathedral for college basketball.

As my job for the school, I was lucky to be a manager for the track team. As Ted Owens pointed out at the 60th celebration, the track team practiced in AFH during the winter. Since the games during the week were after practice I was always there before any of the fans. I would stake out seats for myself, my girlfriend and some friends. With the raised floor the seats were about at the height that the cheerleaders kicked. When they would arrive I would take their coats to the track locker room. For games on Saturday I could do the same thing since I was on the list of people who could simply sign in.

Watching JoJo White and the rest of the team was fantastic. JoJo was about the most mature student that I have ever seen. Watching the 1968 NCAA regional with KU with JoJo, Louisville with Wes Unseld, and Houston with Elvin Hayes from about 5 rows behind the basket was more than exciting. Vernon Vanoy more that held his own against Unseld and Hayes even though he was only about 6' 8". We were supposed to play Louisville for the finals but lost to Houston.

What memories in that building!.

Unfortunately the Vegas line is set to make the betting 50-50 on each team. They make money on the vig. I'd guess that KU fans are betting KU as well as cheering for them.

You can get it at http://www.kustore.com/style/allen-fieldhouse-60th-anniversary-dvd/20723741. ↗

Got mine last Friday after pre-ordering

I wouldn't put too much importance on post and reputation counts. This is my first post. I just joined last week; however, I have been reading posts from before people were begging jaybate to post here