@Lulufulu85, a lot of our past expectations are tending to put Self in a box.
If the team were to try to defend the way the past teams have, when XTReme Muscle Ball was allowed, the entire rotation would probably be fouled out by the ten minute mark of the first half. We would not like that.
On the other hand, if Self adjusts his defensive play to fit the foul calling, we say they are not defending as well as they used to.
I suspect Self has, as usual, made a pretty good trade-off between offense and defense, given the way the game is now called.
I know KU is not as high in the KENPOM rankings defensively as some teams are, but it is so far hard to argue with Self’s approach, given his initially green team, and his W&L statement in the conference.
KU’s KENPOP ratings would like be significantly higher, if he were simply to sand bag for 30 mpg and play his starters 40 mpg, as he has done much of his last two lean depth seasons.
But Self is playing his bench, especially his bigs, to keep the fouls off his starters and keep them fresh, for the second half, when opposing teams’ bigs are tending to be fouled up, and/or gassed.
I believe the defense is probably better than it looks right now. One of the things that makes Self Defense look special is when Self tells them to turn on the high pressure defense. Self has not been telling them to do that since one or two of the pre conference games, apparently, because the competition has not been of a sufficiently high quality to force him to do so. He has been able to win by trying to keep the defensive pressure within the envelope of the developing green wood and relying mostly on numbers to gain late game advantage in fouling and energy budget among his bigs.
But there will come an opponent, sooner or later, that will be good enough to provoke Self into surprising that opponent with KU turning on the hyper pressure. They haven’t shown it much, so opponents don’t have much tape to study. It will be a big surprise when they uncork it.
