FOLLOW-UP:
Few days have passed and we escaped embarrassment from Iona. More random thoughts…
CB is crazy important to our success this year… both on offense and the boards. Opposition has to put their best defender on Chai and focus help defense on him, too. CB has to just keep developing like he’s doing. He’s becoming the Timme version in a guard! Playing smart. Seeing the game. Seeing driving lanes, timing, scoring space. CB is starting to get it. He has improved his athleticism enough to do about anything he wants. Definitely strong on the drive. I hope he weathers good through a few rough games and stays positive. He should become a very consistent scorer for us this year!
Jalen… not quite on stride yet. Not so sure he likes coming off the bench. He has to come to terms with himself. We are seeing HALF Jalen right now. He should become the catalyst for a much different, better team, on both sides of the floor. Self is grooming him into maturity… I feel certain of that… and it will pay off later this season.
Remy/Dajuan… which guy is going to run this team? I know both can… but who will? From a practical perspective… it seems when they are both out there that DJ needs to be the main controller. He’s less of a scorer and Remy needs to go get his points. We can definitely use his scoring threat. DJ needs to become still more aggressive. He is much improved this year, but he needs to attack harder, on both sides of the ball. He should be getting in some foul trouble because that is a symptom of aggressive defense. To me… our success depends on us ironing out the PG leadership. I’ve never bought into the concept of strictly “leading by consensus.” Someone has to stand up and take control.
Dave… Dave Dave Dave… where we see Chai and CB enter this season with more confidence… Dave starts out with less. Why? Maybe he can’t hurdle over the expectations? We definitely expect a lot from our bigs at Kansas. When you look up in the rafters and see the word “Manning” and “Chamberlain” you know you better bring game. I can’t recall now, if it was in the Dayton or the Iona game… Dave took a small shove and he tipped onto his back heels. He almost went over exactly like what happens when cows are tipped in those prank rural videos. I’ve never seen a big struggle so hard with his feet. Makes me think he should have a medical exam looking for some level of neuropathy. Not trying to be funny here.
KJ… I wish these guys showed up with a USB link directly into their brain. Wouldn’t it be great to just plug KJ into Self? And then network all the players so they know how to play with each other. His athleticism is nuts and we could sure use it around the basket!
Joseph… I like this guy! He has that lateral “X-axis” ability.
Self mentioned how hard it is to sub in so many players. His comments there were spot on. How do you do it without mass subs at the same time? When you do that, you impact rhythm. I remember some of Calipari’s old teams… where he had 5 go in at a time. It does seem to make sense using an approach like that. You have to have these guys practice together on the same side of the ball so they can build some chemistry. At a certain point, depth becomes a curse! I think a little of this will go away later on in the season as this group spends more time practicing.
+/- minutes stat… This tool is probably overused and very misleading. Just look at Jalen’s +/- in the Iona game. -4 in 12 minutes. I don’t recall how he was subbed. Was he put in for very short gaps… say… 2 minutes at a time? And if he was put in with other bench players… how do you assess his contribution in that -4 result? I think this stat may be more accurate later in the season if computed collectively over all games. This reminds me of my days playing high school football. We needed a third-string quarterback. No one stepped forward, so I did. I was a defensive back. I had speed and minimal quarterback skills. I thought it would be fun handling the ball every down. So… eventually I made it out there in a real game. My offensive line was atrocious! Every play the defensive line was in my backfield about the same time I was! Even though I sucked at QB it wasn’t fair to judge me based on what I had to work with. Boo hoo! lol
