5:56 to go 1st half and Malik charges a Husky rather than dish to Svi
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This s#%<>€£ has to quit!!
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@jaybate-1-0 Now this we can agree on, hopefully Sam has improved because Newman needs to find the bench with his selfish play. I think he plays hard plays for himself more than the team. The trouble is Garrett has played like trash the last 3 games as well so it would be hard to start him too.
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While I don’t disagree with your description of Malik’s play so far, I want to enlarge the issue to a team chemistry problem, because that is something that could possibly be solved, whereas reducing this to Malik absolves the team and Malik from having to learn to play TOGETHER, and confronts us with the very unsolvable problem of benching him for Garrett, who appears not yet ready.
Something is going on with this team’s chemistry. It shows, whether the team is hitting on all cylinders, as it was against Syracuse, and sinking treys impressively, or when it is missing on most cylinders and unable to hit the broad side of a barn from trey, as against the Huskies.
Tonight, it was absolutely shocking to watch a Number 2 ranked, Bill Self coached team roll over and quit with 3-5 minutes left. It was HORRIBLE. And it wasn’t just Malik. It was Devonte. And Svi. Really, the only guys that remotely started fighting and kept fighting down the stretch were Azuibuke, who had been a big baby the first 30 minutes of the game (or been avoiding fouls, or both), and The Cobra. But The Cobra’s teammates, or Self, or some adjustment by Hopkins, just completely eliminated the Cobra from the game.
Now I know Frank Mason was Sergeant Rock and he often simply willed us past loss of poise by taking over down the stretch and driving for short treys and making long treys until he just flat broke the opponent before the opponent could exploit our wavering confidence. But…
I though Devonte Graham was a pretty resilient human being himself. I thought he had the right stuff too. But there was something wrong with Devonte. I’m not talking about him having an off shooting night. He was due for a horrid shooting game. And I saw him tweak something bad during the Syracuse game, so I’m pretty confident he was playing pretty injured tonight. But even shooting poorly and gimping, what shocked me was how he seemed unable, even unwilling, to rally his troops out on the floor. And his troops should have been willing to die for him out there, after the two 30 point games and minutes he has been playing. But they weren’t and it looked like during the last 5 minutes Devonte ran out of gas, and he also just got discouraged with his teammates not playing together, not loving each other, not trying to make each other better. This was a shock to me.
Self faces the usual predicament any coach faces with a team that is both young and short handed. He can’t wake starters up by sitting them.They have to play through their own malaises. Its very, very tough for young players to do this. The only stick Self has is letting them get the crap beaten out of them. Alas, I don’t think that is what he was trying to do tonight. I think he was trying to avoid them getting humiliated, but couldn’t find a way to do it.
Everything looks awful, when you shoot 25% from trey. Everything.
But…
Shooting poorly doesn’t mean you have to lose your poise and finally just quit!!!
This was a pivotal moment for this team. The loss is not crucial. But the loss of poise and fight was very dangerous for this young, short handed team.
Self is looking at a team of players that have never been in the toughening box.
They don’t know how to go out and win one laboring without their shots, when the opponent has some Blue Meanies inside.
Malik has NEVER been in the toughening box.
Neither has Azuibuke.
Neither have Garret, or Lightfoot.
Even Vick has not been in it.
Really only Devonte and Svi have been, and Svi barely enough to know it.
Self used to turn his players into hardened hombres over the course of a season.
Self used to be what they feared much more than opponents.
But Self used to have enough players on his rosters that had been through the toughening box and endured hard times to make them so that win, or lose, they did not quit.
Quitting is unforgivable in Self basketball.
Quitting stinks up a field house where brave men have made amazing things happen.
Quitting has been unthinkable since Self’s first season.
One can probably count on the fingers of one hand the times a Self team has quit.
One time was the Stanford game that Wiggins coasted in, when even Self appeared to just pull the plug and put that team out of its misery. But that was the last game of a fouled up season. That team fought their hearts out and appeared to love each other, despite the politics and issues of reconciling Embiid’s injury with Wiggins grand plan of reaching the L without injury.
Even the time the team lost to TCU and Self fumed and compared the loss to the Topeka YMCA days, the team did NOT quit. That team fell to the bottom of the bottom 1/3 of the performance curve. It played far worse than this team played tonight, but it did NOT quit.
This team quit tonight.
Its hard for me even to type the word quit.
I hate the word quit.
I hate anyone that quits.
I loath quitting.
There are players on the KU team that are not toughened up enough yet; that is something that can be fixed with work and harsh experience.
There are players that are being asked to do things that they probably cannot do very well. That’s okay, They can do the best they can.
There are players being asked to do roles that they never dreamed they would ever have to do; that’s okay, the difficult comes easy and the impossible takes a little longer.
But there cannot be any quitting.
Not by anyone.
Not any time.
This short handed team is waaaaaaay the hell out in harms way right now.
Losses we can take.
But any quitting and the ship sinks.
I have to believe this team needs a team meeting right now, but probably isn’t ready to appreciate the gravity of its predicament yet.
I believe that because of the early adversity that has hit this team, its younger and newer players are resentful of the roles they are being asked to play.
I believe the older players are not loving the younger players enough, and are too focused on this being “their” year.
They do not yet understand that they have only one chance in hell of finding their way through this season, which is going to get absolutely brutal very shortly.
They do not yet understand how much accumulated hatred and resentment has developed among opponents of KU over the last 13 years of winning 83% of their games and 13 straight titles and a ring and a runner up, and a bunch of Elite Eights.
They do not understand that their opponents not only want to beat them, they want to beat them to bloody pulps. They want to kick them while they are down. In the temple. Repeatedly.
This is not like going to some .500 program like Mississippi State, where no one cares a whit if you blow up and sink your team. Your team will get beaten; that’s all. You will lose some games, that’s all.
But at KU its different. Right now, coaches and players are going to burn that image of KU players quitting the last 5 minutes, of them losing their poise the last ten minutes, and they are going to start trying to clean KU’s clock, not just beat KU. There are a lot of hard headed, hard hearted coaches in the Big 12 that have had just about enough of eating Self’s and KU’s leavings.
This KU team is just about the unluckiest bunch of guys to ever walk in and suit up in Allen Field House, because they are about to receive 13 years of pay back in one season, if they don’t pull together, and reach down deep in themselves and start saying every moment how can I help my teammate be the flipping best he can be. Its not enough to just run the plays and make the pass to the numbers, so the coach doesn’t rag at you. There is no more room for feeling sorry for yourself because you thought you were going to be on a team destined to make a run, and now find yourself as a guard playing the 4 spot.
This is NOT war.
But what these young Jayhawks have just entered into has the makings of a perfect storm against them, if they don’t figure out how to reinvent themselves as the world’s closest team that ever overcame adversity to save themselves and join the ranks of the streak. The streak doesn’t matter a damn in and of itself. We fans will love these guys whether they win, or lose. But if they ever quit again, if they refuse to circle the wagons, and all the other cliche things that aren’t really cliche in a team sport, but necessary for safety and survival in as tough of a sport as D1 college basketball, where opponents are gunning for demolishing 13 straight years of holier than thou KU racking up titles,
These young men have to wake up.
Last season, Frank Mason had incredible toughness and seemed to understand just how huge the mountain was he had to climb without a full house. He pulled it off with a will of steal and unwavering commitment to make his mates better than they were.
This years team has to realize, not just that they are in much tougher straits, but that this is their chance to do something incredible, something that at this moment seems frankly impossible. They have to band together at a level that only Devonte and Svi have any experience of. Its a lot of guys to wise up. Its a lot of talented guys that know they are each good, but each guy knows that on this team he can’t take this team anywhere on his own. This team isn’t deep enough and good enough for everyone to just be himself.
Self is renowned for pulling out hat rabbits to get teams to the conference title.
But this team is going to have to pull out a hat rabbit of its own, before Self can even work his magic.
This team is going to have to learn to love each other and depend on each other to an extent that none of them have ever experienced before.
Rock Chalk!
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Graham pulled a Selden and the team followed suit.
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This team falls apart when Graham isn’t in the floor. Someone needs to be able to spell him.
Why couldn’t someone else slip into the spot on the key Vick was occupying? He is the most athletic and possibly Bill was toughening him up for down the road? I though Vick was not quiet aggressive enough. It might have been nice to insert Malik or even Graham there for a few series so Vick could see what was going on from the sidelines. I feel when Vick watches tape he’ll see points that were left on the floor.
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@dylans I wondered about DG in the middle a few plays to get him going. Garret seemed to panic when he was in the middle (freshmen jitters).
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This team needs Graham in March more than December. He’s logging too many minutes right now. We need a solution at the point that doesn’t involve Devonte playing 35 minutes a game.
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The team is shorthanded, no getting around this.
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@justanotherfan This why having another guard next week in Sam is important, I doubt he plays a ton or lights it up. But if he could give guys a good few minutes on the perimeter a rest it would be huge.
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Malik has not produced for sure. - Like you said seems at time just wild and totally out of control on drives and such - he has got to get this turned around - still waiting for him to bust out of this. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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@jayballer54 he will
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kjayhawks said:
@jaybate-1-0 Now this we can agree on, hopefully Sam has improved because Newman needs to find the bench with his selfish play. I think he plays hard plays for himself more than the team. The trouble is Garrett has played like trash the last 3 games as well so it would be hard to start him too.
This was one of the things that Newman got tagged with from earlier on, before he transferred. - People has said he was at times a ME guy =ME , ME, ME. - -Making playing decisions, even though they be stupid decisions, like charging down the court and like was said failing to dish off - but instead just go ahead charge ahead full steam and end up getting your shot blocked or just wildly thrown towards the hoop. His decisions cost us plenty during this game and they will continue to cost us.
As bad as it sounds even if things don’t change with him I don’t think you will see him replaced at any point as a starter during the Season. WHY? - -well myself I think that maybe that was a condition of him coming here from Coach. - -Coach says you come play for the year, you got a spot in the starting five, maybe Coach just living up to what he promised. - -GOD I hope that isn’t the case, but then again Self may be just trying to save face with Newman and his daddy, which is at the cost of the team.
But your right, they QUIT. - -they just flat Quit. - part maybe because of dead legs - if that’s the case then it’s going to be a long season. - -Right now we are missing a leader - -that Alpha , a guy that wants the ball in crunch time. Like give me the ball and get the hell out of my way, we don’t have that. - -Frank was that - But we can’t keep dwelling in the past, someone is going to have to step up. - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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I don’t believe Coach Self or any other coach would ever make an offer like this and keep it if the player is not performing. No way. It is more like…you will be given a chance to start and prove yourself and if you perform like we think you can, you will keep the starting position.
Malik has shown a selfish streak and if he does not stop he will find himself riding the pine.
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@jaybate-1-0 So did you note svi dropping the dime back to malik for the 3 on the break?
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Malik Newman? Nope. Easy answer. We got spread out, sped up, carved up and served by a quick and confident team that took our best shot in the beginning and then issued out a good old fashioned butt whipping. We lost the game. We are not full strength and hopefully we can get it together. This is the reason I enjoy the hell out of every win. Losing sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. Their guards got in the paint, attacked the basket and made layups. Our guards got in the paint for pull up jumpers. Great lesson learned and plenty of game tape to review. We will be okay. We always are! Malik Newman needs and deserves our support.
