KU/GEORGIA GAME CHAT

Winning ugly is still a win. What would we do w/o Frank?

Had my LAST radiation treatment today and looking forward to the 4-day holiday/weekend. Give thanks for all that you have as life can throw you some bad stuff from time to time.

Happy Rock Chalk Thanksgiving!

P.S. UT lost again to Tad Boyle’s team. Whah Whah Whah.

Stay strong.

@jaybate-1.0 said:

@kjayhawks

With Vick and Devonte in lingerie, and Frank sporting the de rigeur hyper extended elbow bandage, it was time for Josh to put some dinner on the table for his mates.

Yep ran a lot through Josh tonight. Hope to see even more of that. Good passer.

HawkChamp

@kjayhawks they are not skilled offensively. Rebounding and defense is where they excel - exactly what we need from our bigs

kjayhawks

@HawkChamp Exactly my friend how many easy put backs off of weaking rebounding did their bigs have ? Maten had 8 bye himself that lead to a lot of his points.

BShark

It’s so far past my bed time.

jaybate 1.0

@BeddieKU23

Self is probably about ready to start screaming the old Gregory Peck line from “The Snows of Kilamanjaro,” or whatever the old Hemingway book to movie was.

Stretcher bearers…STRETCHER BEARERS!!!

BShark

@jaybate-1.0 said:

@BeddieKU23

Self is probably about ready to start screaming the old Gregory Peck line from “The Snows of Kilamanjaro,” or whatever the old Hemingway book to movie was.

Stretcher bearers…STRETCHER BEARERS!!!

This made me laugh. Heh.

BeddieKU23

@kjayhawks

well Georgia had nothing else and he had one of those typical career nights we see 6-10 times a year

RockChalkinTexas

@jaybate-1.0 No freakin’ way jay. I took great delight in ribbing the radiation techs and staff and people in the waiting room about our Jayhawks beating UT Saturday. Once a Jayhawk, Always a Jayhawk!

BeddieKU23

@jaybate-1.0

Self was a genius for sticking with that zone defense. We might not have survived a M2M game

kjayhawks

@BeddieKU23 Yes I give the kid credit he played great, if he plays average they get embarrassed. I just think we made him look like Shawn Kemp lol

jaybate 1.0

@RockChalkinTexas

Tell the techs to keep the radiation off your sense of humor!!!

BeddieKU23

@kjayhawks

absolutely agree, we survived his Shawn Kemp night. They didn’t have an answer for Mason or Jackson who both left points on the floor

HawkChamp

@BeddieKU23 I was hoping we would have stuck with man to man. Got to be tougher and Georgia is not a top ten team

jaybate 1.0

@BeddieKU23

Sometimes genius is knowing when not to be too much of a genius.

That zone was one of those times.

kjayhawks

@BeddieKU23 Oh yeah our guards are pretty much at mid season form besides JJs FTs and some better 3 point shooting.

BeddieKU23

@HawkChamp

at least we know this team can play zone. having smalls in probably helps it be effective when your playing a team without 3 point threats.

I don’t think we would have survived the foul war had we stuck in M2M

RockChalkinTexas

Night All.

You are all in my prayers for a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

kjayhawks

Got out rebounded bye 4

Crimsonorblue22

@RockChalkinTexas gobble gobble

kjayhawks

@jaybate-1.0 I always have thought we should run more zone, people forget the triangle and 2 that got us to the title game in 2012

RockChalkinTexas

@Crimsonorblue22 I still need to gain back 10+ pounds. Was my birthday Sunday so made myself a choc. cake AND choc. cupcakes. I am going to eat lots of turkey and mashed taters. Hope you have a great day.

jaybate 1.0

Damn it was good to see President Obama hang medals on MJ and Kareem and Scully. I have to spend a lot of time defending Wilt from MJ and Kareem, but I want to take this moment and say I really have always loved and hugely admired both of those guys. And Kareem especially was an inspiration to me during his years at UCLA. Rock Chalk!

Crimsonorblue22

@RockChalkinTexas happy late bday! Keep the party going.

jaybate 1.0

@kjayhawks

I have spent a lot of years working at understanding the game through Self’s philosophic lens in order to try to learn his rationales for doing things.

I came from a time and a back ground that thought match-up zones and switching between m2m and various zones made a lot of strategic sense.

So: I fully identify with you notions that Self should play more zones more of the time.

But having said that, I want to tell you what I believe I have discovered about why Self and many other great coaches believe man2man is the smart way to play defense, if at all possible to play it well.

There are really two reasons.

The first reason is that when you play a zone defense, the offense always knows exactly where your players are going to be on the court. It is a tremendous edge to know exactly where each defender will be. It means you can attack away from their worst match up pretty much every time. It means you always know where there best defender will be and play away from him. Another thing is that you know you can always flood one cell of a zone, or compress it and expand it, or slice the seams of it, and I think Self hates giving an offense those edges.

The second thing is that it for a zone to be effectively played, everyone in the zone has to chop their feet all the time and they have to slide around the floor with the ball movement a much greater distance than do several of the players in a m2m defense. One of the unsung beauties of m2m defense is that only the guy on the ball, and one pass away really have to get down and play exhausting defense. The other two guys can actually rest some whenever they are two passes away. Over the course of a game, a m2m defense actually expends less of its energy budget than a zone team, at least a zone team playing truly good zone defense. This was an insight that was shared with me years ago with an old alias that reputedly died some years ago now. His alias was 100 and he was a tremendously knowledgeable basketball man who had actually grown up around the game back in the days of Phog Allen and had observed Allen closely for many, many years. He not only knew more about KU basketball since the 1930s than anyone else I ever met, including my own father, who knew a ton, he just flat out understood many aspects of the game like zone versus man to man. I will never forget one season when KU played MU under Mike Anderson and MU just ran KU ragged with Andersons full court pressing. The old alias named “100” pointed out exactly what Self had done wrong and how he should attack the Missouri press the next meeting and Self did exactly what he said he should do. It was one of the most impressive pieces of fan analysis and beating a professional coach to not only what went wrong, but what would work, that I can recall. And he did it again and again. The guy just knew his shizzle from baseline to baseline and sideline to sideline. He said that playing zone required certain kinds of athletes and they had to train in certain kinds of ways to really play zone at a high level. He always said Jim Boeheim coached the best zone defenses because he recruited players ideally suited to playing that way and he trained them relentlessly. He said Boeheim’s guys could play zone defense at a high level and be in such fabulous condition that they could switch over to m2m and not get tired. He said great zone defense actually took more energy than m2m. And he said that extra demand on the energy budget of players was one of the reasons Self preferred m2m. Self wanted to play the best defense he could, but also have the most gas left in the tank for the other end to score on offense. Thus Self came to the unwavering conclusion that if you recruit good m2m defenders and they could match up well on defense, then play m2m to the bitter end and then go down on offense and make big plays late in the game, when the other team was gassed from playing zone.

I know what I am saying runs contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom about man2man and zone. In my high school ball, it was always less taxing to play zone than man2man. But 100 said no high school coaches coach the play of zone at the level of intensity required in D1.

Anyway, because of all of the above, I am very fascinated to see Self finally coming out and zoning some. He’s clearly had some change in philosophy, but it will be interesting to see if it is just a case of showing some zone, or if he has really committed to playing zone at a high level and often.

@RockChalkinTexas Congrats on the b-day. You’re what 37 now? Here’s to many more. T-day followed by Christmas goodies for a month will take care of that 10 lbs and more if you’re not careful. Down here we have about a week or 2 after Christmas/NY’s and then the Mardi Gras King Cakes come out. My personal fav is the cream cheese & cherry filled ones. Happy Thanksgiving.

Lulufulu

Holy crap! I just saw the box score. Glad we won but…Where have all our Bigs gone!?! This doesnt bode well for the future.

ParisHawk

@jaybate-1.0 What makes you talk about 100 in the past tense? Have you actually heard some news? I have missed him for years.

wrwlumpy

@RockChalkinTexas You are in mine. (prayers) Kelly says hi.

kjayhawks

@jaybate-1.0 I agree, not saying we should run a zone all the time like Baylor, just run it a little more often with our length could be a good thing.

jaybate 1.0

@ParisHawk

I always believed 100 was probably in his late 80s, or even older, based on how far back he had first had knowledge of the game, especially Coach Allen. Frankly, based on what he knew, there was even a slim chance that he was a 100 years old, when he picked the alias.

For awhile after he stopped posting, I made no inferences about what had become of him. But the more time that passed, given even the minimum age range I suspected him to be, the more I have come to believe he either died, or slipped into infirmity severe enough that he could not communicate. I just believed he would find away to communicate around a little arthritis, or whatever.

I vaguely recall S omeone once posted something about thinking they had figured out who they believed he was and that he had died.

I was not particularly persuaded by that. I just figure the odds favor death, or infirmity, at the age I guessed him to be.

ParisHawk

@jaybate-1.0 OK thanks. I still miss him.

wissox

I never fell asleep during a KU game until last night. I woke up, wondered why they were talking about football during the KU game, looked at my laptop, you were all speaking about the game. Did we win? Smiley face.

jaybate 1.0

@ParisHawk

Yes, me too.