The great Debate?
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Great point about having the double round robin.
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@DoubleDD I actually would say that since Bill Self has been the coach at Kansas, the SEC has been just as good as the Big 12 overall; and better by the ultimate measure – NCAA titles and Final Fours.
No way KU has this conference streak if another top 15 program is in the mix. It’s just the reality of competition. We don’t have any program other than Kansas in that range.
The conference streak is impressive regardless. But it has to be considered in light of the fact the obvious lack of quality of Big 12 programs in comparison to other conferences.
During Bill Self’s tenure, there isn’t another program in the Big 12 that even compares with the SEC #2 – Florida.
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It is true the ultimate prize is making a final 4 and winning the national championship. However I’m not in agreement with some of those metrics when comparing the strengths of conferences.
Does two teams make a conference great? I really don’t know, yet to so many it seems to. I guess if team y and team x have some success in the tournament then they play in a great conference?
Maybe I’m wrong but hasn’t the Big 12 won the Big12/SEC challenge every year?
I agree the Big 12 has for the most part stunk it up in the Tourney. Yet to say their the weakest conference because of it? I’m not sure I can wrap my arms around that one.
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I was reaching back to the Roy Williams years to point out that the Big 8/ Big 12 was stronger during that period than it has been during the Self period.
OU, Texas and Mizzou all had one seeds while Williams was at KU.
OU, Texas, and OSU all went to a Final Four while Williams was here.
OSU went to the FF in 2004. OU went in 2016. That means during the streak, only 1 Big 12 team (not counting KU, obviously) has gone to the Final Four.
No other Big 12 team has gotten a #1 seed during the streak.
The Big 12 is full of good teams, but not many great ones.
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Npoy 2003 TJ Ford before streak. During streak Durant, Griffin, Heild
Three NPOY Bill has overcome whole at KU. Roy overcame exactly zero NPOY in the big12.
5 NPOY from the big12 over the last 14 years is pretty salty!
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So…if Gonzaga decides to really load up on the imports, gets the best Canadian, Australian and Euro players and wins the NCAA 5 years in a row, would the WCC become the best and strongest conference? Just sayin’…
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Here are the top 2 NCAA seed teams during the streak:
2 - Oklahoma State 2005, Oklahoma 2009, Oklahoma 2016, K-State 2010, Texas 2006, Texas 2008, Missouri 2012 (7 total)
1 - None
Williams years
2 - Iowa State 2000, Iowa State 2001, Oklahoma State 1992, Oklahoma 2002 (4)
1 - Oklahoma 1989, Oklahoma 1990, Oklahoma 2003, Texas 2003, Missouri 1994 (5)
I would go on a limb and say the best team during the Streak (probably the 2009 Oklahoma squad that lost to eventual champ UNC) isn’t as good as either the 1989 or 2003 OU teams, the 2003 Texas team or possibly that '94 Mizzou team (undefeated in the Big 8 ).
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Yes, I think Duke would be duplicating what we’ve done. UNC has been up and down a little bit, heck, Roy didn’t win this league but 9 out of the 14 years he was in town.
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@DoubleDD did I miss something? - -who said the Big 12 is the weakest conference? - -are you talking of the 3? - - -not sure about that, I know and I’m just speaking on my own behalf - I sure don’t think we are the weakest - -I think we are stronger then the SEC. - -But the question pertaining to this thread was could Kentucky do what KU has done, and to I have to respond that I think they would have a chance, that doesn’t speak for the entire conference, the conference as a whole I think Ku - -Baylor - -Oklahoma - -West Virginia - -Iowa State - we are stronger then the SEC as a Conference, maybe not yrs back but in the present tense - -our teams would match with theirs I have no doubt. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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Lots of gray. No doubt, the Big 12 is weaker than the ACC and Big 10. No way we win 13 in a row in the SEC with UK and Florida. I doubt anyone disagrees there. No way we win 13 with Arizona, UCLA and Oregon in the Pac 12. Are they better? Not sure. How about the American?
In the American, there is UConn, WSU, and Cincinnati – all arguably better programs in the last five years than any other Big 12 team aside from Kansas. Arguably. UConn for sure is. The Big East? Butler, Nova, Creighton, G’town, Providence. Big 12 is probably better.
Am I not giving the Big 12 enough credit?
There is just too much history of big time NCAA tourney failure against the world of CBB to give the Big 12 any real credit as a conference as a whole.
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Don’t forget Michael Beasley, I seem to recall he was co-player of the year with Hansbrough and at the time KSU also had Walker and other good players.
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@HighEliteMajor Giving just the right amount of credit. When games matter, Big XII has been awful.
Non-con record doesn’t mean anything when other teams are prepping for the tournament. OSU taking UNC to the wire in November means nothing come March. TCU starting 18-0 going into conference play means nothing when all 18 games were against schools for the blind.
When teams cut their rotations and play their best basketball, Big XII has been getting beat. As simple as that.
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I posted on the weakness of the current B12 as a reality check on our future- not to run down our prolific conference winning streak, which is one of the most amazing streaks in the history of college basketball. It is simply an incredible achievement, and I am very proud of our coach, our players, and our program.
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@KUSTEVE Don’t you know by now that we have entered the era of forced absolutes, when subtlety is forbidden and seeing both sides of an issue is fatal?
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@mayjay You can’t see both sides but apparently it’s all right to see “many sides” - though who it’s fatal to is sadly another question.
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I’m not sure anybody would argue that the Big 12 is the strongest. Yet I have to question those that think a Duke, UNC, or UK could accomplish what KU has done in the Big 12. Weak or not. Winning a conference is an accomplishment, and when you win it 13 years in a row. Well that is one for the ages and record books.
I’m not trying to be mean or pick a fight. Yet some of you act is if it’s a no-brainer that Duke, UNC, or UK would do the same if they played in the Big 12? Yet didn’t UK miss the tournament one year. Hasn’t both Duke and UNC had some down years during KU’s streak?
I look to the old Big East when it was in it’s heyday. There was a team that dominated that conference for I think 3 years? Yet they never had any success in the tourney. Even though the foes they beat through out the year had way more success in the tourney. What was that school? Pitt.
Maybe I’m wrong I just don’t see how one can correlate a strong conference with how well it does in the tourney. I mean yes has it’s place in the discussion. Yet one KU fan here posted that teams in these tough conference aren’t worried about winning the conference as they are preparing for tourney play. So these games of matchups mean nothing. OK well if that’s the case how can we draw the conclusion that this or that conference is strong because they have a few teams do well in the tourney? After all they are preparing for the tourney and don’t put much importance on non-con games and conference games.
Another problem I have with the concept of tourney success deciding what a tough conference is. Well the tourney is largely based off matchups. Who here is going to stand up and argue that Duke doesn’t get the easiest paths to the final 4? Yes you still have to play those games and win. Yet it sure helps when the committee has your back. Lets not mention the seeding process of the NCAA committee is something less then to be desired. Come on we all know it and have seen it. There have been some good teams that could pushed down to a lower seed so the NCAA/CBS and get a must watch game. Plus the NCAA tournament is a OAD. One bad night and the season is over. The best team doesn’t always win. It doesn’t mean that team played in a weak conference.
Someone posted my argument was flawed. Yet I’m thinking if you solely base conference strength just off tourney success? Well I kind of think that is flawed too.
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@DoubleDD Pitt definitely made a FF in the Old Big East during their solid run.
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@DoubleDD It isn’t like we are basing our argument on one or two tournament showings. We are talking about the Big 12 for 13 seasons. We are talking about 50+ games. Plenty large enough of a sample size for things to even out.
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Did they make it to a final 4? I wasn’t sure about that. I know they had some early exits, and flirted with being the first #1 seed to lose in the tourney.
Maybe I should check my facts before I post?
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Am I missing something? Decided to some research and it shows Pitts last final four in 1941? Also it’s only final 4.
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@DoubleDD you’re right. I thought their elite 8 run was a FF run.
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@DoubleDD I would agree. I don’t think any other team in the country would have done what Bill Self has done if they were in our place in the Big 12. What Bill Self does in the regular season, and in getting the most from some lesser talented guys, is unmatched. That’s his clear strength.
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DoubleDD said:
Ok so let the arguement begin. Could UK, UNC, or Duke duplicate what KU has done these last 13 years? If UK, UNC, or Duke were in the Big 12 would they be on the cusp of setting the record for the most consecutive conference championships?
Duke, UNC, UK don’t care and that’s why they wouldn’t be able to replicate KUs streak. These programs have made it pretty clear- all they care about are championships and they make sure all their recruits know it also. Conf wins/streak is a nice to have, but, since Self is a steak guy, i use this analogy:
you go to a steak restaurant for the steak, not for the appetizers. Sure the appetizers help and the joint can have the best tasting appetizers consistently each and every day, but they will always (rightfully so) be judge on their steak.
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So you admit your Wildcats couldn’t duplicate KU’s dominance. in conference play?
Well thanks for at least understanding what my point is or was.
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195-41 in Conference play. That’s Bill Self’s record during the streak. Amazing.
Seems unlikely anyone could match that kind of consistent excellence during the regular season even with the teams mentioned in the OP. Self has replaced entire starting lineups before much like the other blue bloods. There has been some luck involved but mostly Self knows how to motivate these kids into passing on the baton to the next team. As much as Self is a great coach, the players have also took it upon themselves to not be the group that breaks the streak.
At this point I’m not sure how the fan-base would handle a down year or the possibility of not winning the conference. It’s been completely ingrained into our brains now. We get every Big-12 conference opponents best game on a consistent basis but yet we are still confident and cocky enough to know that a majority of those games KU is going to find a way to outscore the other team. The level to which KU has to play in order to stay on top cannot be underestimated even if we have superior talent in almost every game. Kudos to Self and the players for this crazy streak
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The only way Duke, UK, or UNC could have duplicated KU’s conference winning streak with the same quality and depth of talent that KU has had to make do with (no OAD 1s and 5s, and usually less than 3 OADs, often 1 or none, and sometimes no Mickey Ds at all), would be with Self. Self is the only coach today remotely good enough to do what he has done.
Now, if Self had been at Duke, UK, or UNC, and had dump trucks coming to town as Coach K, Cal and Roy have had, well, I think it would be quite likely that Self would have won at least 10 national championships and perhaps 13.
It is just not even close anymore.
Has Coach K, or Cal, or Roy gone to a National Finals without a Mickey D? No. Has Coach K, or Cal, or Roy won a ring without better material than Self had? No. Has Coach K, or Cal, or Roy been able to win as high of a percentage of games over the last decade with better material than Self has? No. Has Coach K, or Cal, or Roy, ever won a ring at a non EST program, as Self has done? No. It goes on and on.
Self is up here. | | | | | | | | | V
Coach K, Cal and Roy are down here. | | | | V Everyone else is down here.
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@jaybate-1.0 So if you want to place it that way then I guess it comes down to who the better recruiters are then right? – -Is it any of these Coach’s fault’s that they are able to pull these recruits to their Schools ? - -Didn’t Think so. - - Could they get these recruits due to location of the School? - -Pretty fair bet that it is. – Ya Coach is a hell of a coach - I wouldn’t trade him for anyone of these guys BUT the question was Could UK - Duke - -or NC duplicate what KU has done if they were in the Big 12.
Because considering the Schools that’s in our Conference and who these Schools are UK - -Duke - -NC it all comes down to the power of the Conference , this Conference OTHER then KU has had no consistency, if we did KU would have had a much bigger challenge to accomplish what they have accomplished. - -Other then a year here a year there the teams in this Conference are no shows in the tourney.
It’s not about who we have or who they have - -Again if we want to go that route then KU lags in getting prize recruits to Coach K - - coach Cal - -& Roy - -To say Coach Self is up here and they are down there is just over left field - - again just my opinion - which this is suppose to be about right? - -No wrong answers right? - - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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I jerked it right down the power alley and out of the park.
Coach K, Cal, and Roy would have been long forgotten had they not had the Dump Trucks for much of their entire careers.
Self is so much better coach than these guys it is not even close. I suspect each of them would admit. Bo Ryan is the only guy even close to Self the last ten years. I’m not positive Self could have coached some of Bo’s teams and beaten Bo coaching some of Self’s teams. Bo was a flipping genius that passed himself off as just another cheese head. And Bo, after all, was the guy Self stole drive ball from and put it on steroids to create BAD BALL. I would have to rate Bo and Bill about equal, because even though Self won at a much higher percentage, well, he was doing it at KU and Bo was doing his magic up in the cheddar tundra, where the great basketball legacy got truncated back in the 1940s in Mad Town until Bo was able to build on what Dick Bennett built the foundation of and do some just plain amazing things without dump trucks. Imagine Coach K trying to gut it out to stay above .500 with most of Bo’s teams!
But I don’t want you to think I don’t respect Coach K.
I think the first 20 years of Coach K’s career he was one of the all time great coaches with a great coaching foundation from Knight and a helioarc weld grade of fire in his belly. As long as he did what Knight told him and got some players, he was ferociously competitive and he apparently taught that Big Ten cheap-shot-em into the next century whenever you get ten down in order to stay in the game that he apparently learned from Knight at Army. He was very successful, because of his competitive intensity and his encyclopedic knowledge of the stuff Knight taught him. He probably should have won another two titles back in those days, but was struggling with Dean’s Dapper Dan-Sonny Vaccaro Proto-Dump Truck teams and the usual asymmetric whistle young coaches face. But from the moment Coach K first had to bail out of a season, because of his health problems and burn out back in the mid 1980s, or was the first time a little later, IMHO he’s never been up on the same edge since. He’s just been a sound coach willing to go to the wall with the cheap-shotting to stay in a game long enough for his superior roster talent to weigh in. I don’t know what happened to K back then. I never really understood it. He was really driven to beat Dean and maybe he just drove himself too hard. Whatever, ever since, when he had superior material, he won a lot, and when he didn’t, he just fell back to the pack until he could round up another bunch. Somewhere in there shoes appeared to became the biggest driver of his recruiting success and it never changed afterwards.The big problem with Coach K is that he is just not creative. Self has made more brilliant innovations that spread around the game of basketball and changed the way the entire profession coached than Coach K has in his entire career. Self is just the most incredibly adaptable coach in the country the last 10 years. He was running high-low when everyone here and everyone across the country was running other stuff. As soon as 2/3s of the country had copied him, he shifted gears and took small ball out through the roof. When everyone else was trying to control tempo like Wooden and Knight and Calhoun and then Calipari had taught them, Self was at a completely new level of the game letting the other team set the tempo. When half the country started letting the other team set the tempo, Self jump shifted into setting the tempo. For years Self was stretching defenses with the high low and perimeter passing to create impact space, while the rest of the coaches were getting wet about the Princeton, the Princeton on Steroids and other timing offenses. When every one jumped on his bandwagon and was going on about “spacing this” and “spacing that” Self started collapsing the spacing with Drive Ball, and then later with Bad Ball. And then when everyone copied that Self leaped in 4 out 1 in that a few others had pioneered and then before you know it he is playing 5 out at times. And I’m not even talking about all the defensive wizardry he has introduced. Hell, Self tells everyone what he is doing on the offense, but its the defense where he is secretive and they can’t figure out how to copy him. He was running junk defenses a full two seasons before anyone at this web sight even figured it out. He finally had to tell everyone. Hell, Self has tried and thrown away more terrific ideas than Coach K ever even thought about and couldn’t figure out how to try.
Don’t even get me started on Calipari. That guy has never had an original idea in his life. Everything you see is either LB, or that high school coach that came up with the Dribble Drive. Calipari has two secrets: WWW and Nike.
Roy? Roy did really well aping Dean’s “system” at KU, which was Iba’s 3-2 high low that Dean called the Carolina Passing offense, and taking the west half of the Dean-Sonny-Nike Tennis Shoe-Industrial complex feeder line. This was very much like Coach K aping Knight. But the thing about Roy was that the last two years at KU he (and probably Dean and Gutt) FINALLY figured out running systematically, rather than running to outrun and wear down another team. He finally worked out the math, so to speak. Spike the number of trips, take more high percentage shots on more trips, run the secondary break to get super high percentage shots, trap on the other end to give up an easy basket or two in exchange for a half dozen strips, and against a team that is trying to slow it down and run the stuff, your athleticism is going to weigh in over time, even when the opponent starts the rough stuff. It was a brilliant insight and lead to two fine years at KU and then a half dozen at UNC, before folks like Self exposed how to jump the passing lanes and funnel to the lane for help and, boom, the race horse is stuck in glue. Roy stumbled around trying to find another way to keep running, but without Dean and Gutt to help him come up with another hat rabbit, Roy bogged down for a few years at UNC. And then he got into that awful “Easy Class Gate” stuff that UNC maybe should have gotten a death penalty for, but didn’t, and low and behold, ol’ Roy starts running drive ball and the weave and aping Self pretty much the same way Calhoun did when he was in his flat lining days UConn trying to eek out another ring. Both Calhoun and ol 'Roy should have dedicated their last rings to the Master Hat Rabbiteer, Bill Self, and to their Shoe Companies.
Don’t get me wrong. Coach K, Cal and ol’Roy are hall of fame coaches. But they just couldn’t take Self’s players and beat if Self were coaching their players. Not in this basketball universe.
And, well, Self has shown he can beat Roy AND Cal, when they had equal, or better talent.
Self up here. | | | | | | V Coach K, Cal and Ol’Roy down here.
