See you guys next season
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Fellow bored rats…it appears the sun is coming up today…albeit reluctantly!
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It’s cloudy in Lawrence, Vail. No sunshine… yet.
Honestly, losing didn’t really bother me that much. Going into the tournament KU was just like about 60 other teams, hoping for a miracle run. It wasn’t a solid team. I feel bad for Tarik Black, but that’s about it.
The highlight of the season was the second game of the year, beating Duke. By the time we got back from the Bahamas, the cracks were exposed, and it was obvious to me that unless the team averaged 85 points, then they would lose a bunch of games. Florida was the low point in how bad the young team could be. Losing the game and Embiid at Okie State was the probably the lowest point overall.
Watching Embiid develop during conference play was the highlight of the season, along with the Black-Traylor punch coming off the bench. The rest of the players rarely seemed to enjoy themselves.
All in all, a rather forgettable season.
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@DanR “The rest of the players rarely seemed to enjoy themselves.”
That about sums it up for me. And it was a very forgettable season.
I begrudgingly watched the Wichita State game. If we had played with half the energy and enthusiasm that they had, we would have won every game by 25.
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I think it was Bill Simmons that once wrote that season ending losses often expose the great flaws of a team and encapsulate them into one game.
This team’s flaws were well known:
- Shaky point guard play
- Too many turnovers
- Inability to score against a zone
- Lack of strong interior defense without Embiid on the floor
- Lack of aggression offensively from wing players (Wiggins and Selden)
Every single one of those things came to roost during yesterday’s game. I knew with 12 minutes left in the game that there were likely only 12 minutes left in the season. The tough thing is that many of those problems are going to still exist next season unless there are some significant changes in either strategy, skill or personnel.
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@JayHawkFanToo and @konkeyDong - Remember, missed shots don’t just occur because a player misfires. It’s because they are contested. That’s part of scheme.
It’s why Self harps on opposing field goal percentage. What are we contesting? How do we create a low shooting percentage?
How many open looks did we get vs. Stanford down low or anywhere?
It’s more complex than, “we missed shots.”
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This is a test. Choose one and only one as the answer:
Maybe we lost because of Bill Self’s stubbornness.
Maybe we lost because of a whole bunch of freshmen on the roster.
Maybe we lost because we didn’t have a valid point guard.
Maybe we lost because, well, we lost 9 other times so maybe we aren’t really that good.
Maybe we lost because we lost our starting center who, had the injury never happened, would have at least five more games experience and we’d be all hoping he sticks around instead of being the top draft pick.
Maybe we lost because Wiggins isn’t as good as advertised, nor is Selden and even maybe, Perry.
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@wissoxfan83 “one and only one”.
That’s what you told me to choose as the answer, right?
Seriously, I would guess “valid point guard”, since that is a factor in every other possible answer except for Embiid’s injury.
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@wissoxfan83 I’ll play along.
Maybe we lost because, well, we lost 9 other times so maybe we aren’t really that good.
(We lost nine other times becuase of Bill Self’s stubbornness, and because we had a whole bunch of freshmen on the roster, and we didn’t have a valid point guard, and we lost our starting center and because Wiggins isn’t as good as advertised, nor is Selden. I think Perry is however. )
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@DanR first losing bothers me. Second, I went to most of the home games and I saw the players having a lot of fun! Hopefully some of you saw that too. One of my favorite moments is the bench video after Tarik’s dunk over big Ridley! My friends and family enjoyed the team and I wouldn’t trade one of them. I would like to add Releford to the team.
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Essentially every close shot other than a backdoor cut and an alley-oop is normally contested and our bigs have consistently been able to convert at a good clip, particularly Jamari. Yesterday, Traylor, Ellis and Wiggins managed to shoot 21%, where in most any other game they would have shot at least twice that percentage and probably even higher. I had recorded the game and re-watched portions of it (until I got sick and erased it) and I was shocked at how many shots inside were missed. The shots missed were not any more or any less contested than they have been all season. Can you recall a single game during the season where these 3 played combined for percentage that low?
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@nuleafjhawk I concur 100%. That is what I loved about Wichita State this year. They played with the same passion every single game regardless of the opponent. I understand Jaybate’s theory about amping up and playing flat, but what I don’t understand is why we can’t ever seem to string even two games in a row with high energy level.
And we were like this last year too when we probably had the oldest starting five in the country.
So in back to back years, we proved that we couldn’t win with experience and we couldn’t win with talent. Experienced talent doesn’t happen anymore in college basketball, so where do we go from here?
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@JayHawkFanToo and @konkeyDong - Remember, missed shots don’t just occur because a player misfires. It’s because they are contested. That’s part of scheme.
It’s why Self harps on opposing field goal percentage. What are we contesting? How do we create a low shooting percentage?
How many open looks did we get vs. Stanford down low or anywhere?
It’s more complex than, “we missed shots.”
I agree that it’s more complex than “we missed shots”, however, in a game that you lost by 3 points and can easily go back and point to 3 or more misses at the rim that weren’t contested and someone did just misfire, it’s hard to argue that simply missing shots didn’t contribute to the loss. It did. It is what it is. The game basically comes down to Perry not finishing an easy lob in the first half because he mishandled the pass, and Wiggins driving in for an uncontested layup from the wing and missing because he put the ball on the glass at a bad angle rather than throwing down when he could (and how many time did we see him do that this year?). It also didn’t help that there were another 3 or so unforced TOs early.
Stanford, to their credit, got in our players heads and made them contest themselves, but that’s something that, ultimately, is in the hands of Perry, and Wigs, and Traylor, etc. Self can yell. He can tell them to be aggressive. He can get after them to go up strong, but the horses have to decide to drink the water at some point. As always, there are adjustments that could have been made and things that could have been tried, but there’s also no guarantee that the path not taken was the road to victory. I don’t mean to be fatalistic, but playing this game is exactly what I was afraid we’d see without Joel Embiid on the floor, and it’s why I started the thread asking if we got the most difficult draw for us. It may simply be the case that, given JoJo’s injury, our draw, and the limitations of a freshmen team, there wasn’t a realistic way to win this one. I don’t claim that as an absolute, but I think statistically we’d lose this match up more often than not without Embiid on the floor regardless of acute tactics.
If we do blame Self for anything or everything, blame him for the thing that mattered most, which is recruiting a PG that can’t defend nor deliver consistently good play. Do you remember last year when we were all watching EJ be ineffectual on the offensive end and wondering why Self didn’t play Tharpe more? No here we are, having spent a season watching Tharpe be ineffectual on the defensive end, and this time not surrounded by a team of top notch defenders to hide his weaknesses, and we’re clambering for yet another change. Frankamp can be the answer. Mason too. But Tharpe clearly isn’t it. I hope Self takes advantage of the senior transfer rule again and spends his spring searching for the next Deandre Kane, but we’ll see. Either way, Tharpe needs to return to the bench for the foreseeable future, and a general needs to be put on the floor.
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I really think Marshall is hungrier than Self. I don’t know that I would say that before '08.
It just seems that Bill is too busy with many things, and the hunger that got him the trophy in '08 isn’t quite there anymore. I think he has more hunger for B12 titles, and seeing how long his streak can stay alive.
It can drive you crazy… going for the gold in March. Because no matter what you do it is still a tough thing to win, because you need more than skill and determination… you need plenty of luck. Just ask Iowa State right now. Let’s see how they go without Niang next weekend.
B12 titles play out over a couple of months and involve consistency and strategy (and luck, too).
That guy down in Wichita is one hungry dude, and it shows with his teams. He has a chip on his shoulder and he recruits kids with chips. The university has a chip, too. We haven’t heard the last of them. They will be back next year in the tourney… and the year after…
Players play to the attitudes and drives of their coaches.
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@drgnslayr What if Davidson made that last shot in '08? What if Derek Rose made that free throw in regulation?
How would we view Self without that title? It’s funny how a single bounce of the ball has life altering implications.
I think Self needs to find that hunger and get his teams play with passion 90% of the time. The lack of energy is a common theme in all of Self’s teams of the last several years, including the '08 team during several games that year. We seem to come out flat and then try to climb out of a hole for the majority of the game.
Even the 2012 team that made it to the finals, played exceptional defense in the last 5 minutes of the game to win 4 of the 6 games they played that tournament. It could have easily ended in the 2nd round too.
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@konkeyDong When you blame missed shots in the face of misfires in strategy and scheme, you fall prey to an argument that can be made any time, any where, about any coach. Essentially any coach is immune because his players have to execute.
Mickey Mouse could be coaching, and if players don’t make shots, they aren’t going to win.
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@HighEliteMajor True, but it cuts both ways. Even Phil Jackson loses when his team doesn’t make shots. One can’t solve the other. Both things have to come together at some point. It can never be all Self’s fault nor all the fault of the players, but at the end of the day, each member of the team is responsible for doing his part.
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@konkeyDong Completely 100% agree. Can never say “all.” But there are some decisions that have more impact than others.
I just don’t look at “fault” based on wins and losses. You can screw a lot of things up and your team still win, and vice versa – you can provide your players the best opportunity, and talent and execution fail.
Good example was the game at Texas Tech. We won, but we should never have been in that position. Coach Self permitted Tech to control the pace of the game. He let Tubby Smith dictate how that game was going to be played. But we won. Not Self’s best moment.
Contrast that to our loss at K-State this season. I could not think of one critical item in that loss.
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@HighEliteMajor I agree that strategy was a big issue and was part of the reason we missed so many inside shots. We saw the same thing when we played SDSU. Our players were intimidated and tentative. Our shorter (other than Embiid) big guys were trying to score over taller longer armed guys without success. When it’s tougher to go inside on a team you need to mix it up. The commentators were all over the attacking the middle of the zone concept. HEM, I would like to hear your comments on 2 issues:
- Does Self leave too much up to the players and expect them to “make plays” without telling them how to do it. I say this based on history as well as the sideline reporters saying that Self kept telling AW and Perry to be aggressive…no mention of any strategy.
- The Elephant in the Room with our coach…and I think he is great overall…don’t get me wrong… is how tight we play in the tournament. I think that contributed to our loss just like all (or at least most) of our early tournament losses. I was at the Davidson game in 08 and we played tight as a drum in that game…that’s why it was so close. I recall that Curry had kind of an average shooting night. Thoughts anyone?
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I should add that it appears that our freshmen, for the most part play very tentative…more so than freshmen on other teams. I have attributed that to the concept above of just asking them to “make plays”.
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@Hawk8086 No empirical evidence other than my own gut, but I actually think Roy’s KU teams were tighter in the tournament, especially in the first couple of rounds. Survive and advance rather than destroy and advance.
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@Hawk8086 you really think Self throws the ball out at practice and says “make plays”? Have you heard Wiggins in interviews talk how much he’s learned or how he had no idea how hard college ball was?
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@Crimsonorblue22 Of course, you are exaggerating. I think the players look tentative and unsure way too often.
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@Hawk8086-Can’t have an answer without being the fly on the wall so that lets most of us out. But it’s a fact our bigs were adjusting their shots because of Stanfords size, & I don’t recall seeing us get so many shots blocked in one other game all year.
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@globaljaybird We did get our stuff tossed in the first Texas game, and I think the SDSU game. But this was up there too.
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@DanR Coach Roy is 24-0 in first round NCAA games. He has never lost in the first round. Pretty amazing, I think.
@Hawk8086 - on your first comment, I think coach Self is actually an extremely detail oriented coach. He strikes me as a micro-manager. A guy that is intensely a teacher of the game, and the detail of the game. I think he is a system guy, over a strategy guy. Meaning, he is the type of coach the believes in what he does, and game by game strategy takes a back seat to that. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t strategize – he just trusts his system, both offensively and defensively. I do think that is quite apparent. He is not unique in that regard.
On the second item, I personally don’t think that he makes the team tight. His system permits opposing coaches to control tempo. That’s my opinion. Just look at the blue print laid out by Tubby Smith. If we are not putting the ball in the hoop, we are susceptible in low possession games because we do nothing to increase pace and possessions, or change the dynamic. We value possessions, and work the shot clock. There is a thinner margin of error. And this year, we rarely got out on the break.
All just my opinion, of course.
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@approxinfinity-I missed the game from Austin but you’re right, SDSU put the wood to them at AFH. That one I did watch but not the rewind. Am not in the habit of re-viewing losses. No punishment glutton here-LOL.
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@HighEliteMajor-That is amazing about ole’ Roy. On the second item, you nailed it exactly. Bill’s system does permit the opposition to control tempo-then again, if it’s like Tubby at TT, we play right into his hand & aid & abet. No alternative strategy to increase possessions other than stops or steals, which we all agree were far too few. Plus you’re correct again, we had no business winning that game. Embid muffed the pass & Wigs was just in the right spot for the garbage.
