let's check reality shall we?



  • OK in reality we won. However if we really want to face reality and I don’t think this will come as a stunner to anyone , BUT this is the third game in a row where we got our ass handed to us on a platter on the boards.

    As we all know or should know in reality a team that shoots 24 three’s in a half - -is living on very borrowed time, very limited time , - - -that can not continue to happen. - - We may be able to get away with the lesser teams of this league like last night but even that as we saw was really a struggle. - - We play like this against West Virginia , Oklahoma , Texas Tech , at their place - - it will be ugly , really ugly. with unavoidable loss’s being the result. - Then to a lesser extent there is the ?Chance of even K-State & Oklahoma state on their floor also unless something changes and we all know what that is.

    Bottom line is in reality if w don’t get some help on the boards were screwed , oh sure we will end up with a good enough record to make the NCAA but umm we not going any where with the way things are with this team right now. - -We got beat by 10 on the boards last night and Iowa State by far is not that big of a club. Like Coach said last night in his post game if it hadn’t been for Malik & Vick rebounding last night we would of been screwed.

    I know there will be some of you thinking I’m just being negative - -umm NO - -it is called the real world. it is what it is , and unless we get Billy or DeSousa then were in real trouble, but we all know that right?

    Doke took 5 shots last night - - -FIVE. - -Iowa State had no answer for him, - -no one could match his physicality , not even close -thing was did we try to find Doke? - -Nope we came down pretty simple run a little weave and jack up a three - that is not gonna cut it on down the line -like has been stated numerous times right now at this point our offense is either a jacked up three - -or a dunk. - -We have GOT TO get Billy and Silvio -go back to coach’s offense he prefers 2in - -three out , that’s not to say we just run away from the three - just it makes other teams have to play more honest trying to guard us with two bigs.

    On a better note was good to see Malik break out , hopefully this get him going we need him. - Hopefully we will have some better news by the time we play K-State. - - ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • Dors anyone else feel like we are overusing the weave?



  • Fightsongwriter said:

    Dors anyone else feel like we are overusing the weave?

    Can’t stand it. Self must love it though for us to run it so often



  • The weave gives me tremors.



  • @BeddieKU23 @BShark It seems to have become our base offense. I think we need to mix it up more and run sets where the big fella can get touches. He is not a black hole…he will kick it back out.



  • Have u noticed how teams are hedging really high on the weave? They are cheating high and the guards need to fake high and go straight to the bucket.



  • Fightsongwriter said:

    Dors anyone else feel like we are overusing the weave?

    It has become a very predictable offense to defend, hell back off just a bit - -let us go thru the weave and then when were ready to do something towards the rim tighten D - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • I notice a lot of teams do it





  • @Crimsonorblue22

    Agreed. The weave is now probably the most imitated innovation by Self. It’s increasingly his biggest impact on the game.

    @et al

    The weave forces switches that trigger mismatches AND it keeps play in the area of the floor where we have most athletic advantage. Further, it gets us driving at their post man BEFORE the defense can collapse and help.

    We have to keep the action away from Doke to keep him from fouling from fighting to stay on spots for entry passes. The weave does that.

    Self seems like he is running lots of other stuff too.

    The only thing he is avoiding is double post action for obvious reasons.

    We saw more weave last game, because Self was trying to play through Malik and the weave fosters Malik’s strength—driving.



  • @Fightsongwriter I wish a few of them on our team would use it in their hair.



  • @jaybate-1.0 I don’t think Bill came up with the weave, maybe he re-popularized it? We ran a weave offense in hs in the 90s. It sucked back then too. It only works if you have an aggressive guard that can take advantage of a mismatch on a switch. KUs guards are not aggressive like Mason was last year, so I don’t see the weave being a viable option at this point.



  • had to laugh last night, was scrolling channels , ran across the Mizzery/Georgia game - -at that point it was 1st half - -it was really sad, like two minutes to go in the 1st half and it was 20-16 Georgia , lol - - The announcers were all over these guys really laying it on both teams for how bad they were playing and shooting the ball.

    One says this is like a rock fight but can’t be because nobody is hitting anything - - lmao - -I thought WOW loved it. - -at that point Georgia was shooting 32 % & Missouri 23 % for the half - had to laugh when he said that, one time down the announcer said what was that - - a player dribbles the ball in a circle underneath the basket and then just throws up a prayer - -really good laughs - -love to be entertained . - - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • @Jayballer54 preview of Mondays game? Lol



  • cragarhawk said:

    @Jayballer54 preview of Mondays game? Lol

    oh crap I hope not lol. - - -ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • @dylans

    The Harlem Globe Trotters have been running the weave forever.



  • @dylans

    Back when I read a lot about early basketball, I read some where that the weave was run as far back as early pro basketball around 1900. If I recall correctly, 100, an old poster on the web site that this site descended from, indicated that Phog Allen had experimented with a weave some and run it some back in the 1920s even. Another early version of the weave was claimed to have been pioneered by the Harlem Globetrotters. The weave is kind of a generic word for players running cross court at one another from both sides of the court, one with the ball, and one approaching for a toss, or pass, or hand off. But it is important to understand that there are many ways to crisscross and in my opinion each of these ways of running the weave is what really constitutes a particular coaches invention and not the criss crossing and tossing itself. I suspect that there has been criss crossing and tossing the ball likely dating back to the very early days of the game.

    The reasons for early origins of the weave may not be apparent to today’s fans. In the days of layups it was a way to keep getting closer to the basket. But as the two hand set shot evolve was particularly helpful in getting two hand set shooters loose for a horizontal, sliding two hand set shot that would not be blocked back in the day. My dad, who played high school and a little college ball in the mid to late 1930s showed me the shot with the sideways slide many times. Still the weave kind of receded with the rise of early fast break basketball pioneered by Ward Lambert as far back as the 1920s, but really pioneered back when Wooden played for Purdue in the 1930s and likely by a coach at Wisconsin even earlier. The more contemporary conception of the fast break filling two or three lanes and going appears to track to John McClendon’s innovations shortly after he left KU as an unpaid assistant and protege of James Naismith, if I recall correctly.

    But it was supposedly Henry Iba that pioneered a fully systematized weave that was used as both an attack offense to get a shot AND as a stalling offense in the 1930s. It was Iba that used it to overcome opponents like KU with more talent than OSU (then called Oklahoma A&M) had. It was Iba that used it to slow down the pace of a game and reduce the number of possessions. It was Iba that refused even open shots until a shooter was completely open very near the basket. The Iba weave would repeat getting closer and closer to the iron until finally some one got a lay up, or the ball was brought back out front and the weave reset and run again. I saw the Iba weave in the early 1960s, long after it had gone out of fashion elsewhere and Iba was called an anachronism, when OSU played in the Big Eight Christmas Tournaments. It was the most boring, frustrating, offense I have ever seen before or since. But Iba was keeping games close with inferior players and hanging on to win it at the end long after everyone had begun to mimic Wooden’s running game, or Dean Smith’s multiple offense, both of which emerged by the early 1960s, or Knights motion offense, and Eddie Sutton’s/Jack Hartman’s/Don Haskins’ 3-2 high-low emerged by the late 1960s.

    After Iba retired, the Iba weave seemed to disappear pretty much in my recollection until Bill Self rethought it and frankly adapted it to enable the athleticism of contemporary players to shake free for a basket at a crucial moment the season before the 2008 ring team. Maybe others here will remember Self running it before that, but that is my earliest recollection of Self developing it.

    Whenever he started running it, Self’s weave differs markedly from the Iba weave I recall. The Iba weave was much more cross court-oriented with each weave nearing the basket in much smaller increments. The Iba weave was VERY deliberate, repeated many interactions, and as I said just kept repeating until it got within a few feet of the rim.

    About the only thing Self retained from the Iba weave was players crossing and transferring possession.

    Self devised the weave to be run out of the 3-2 high low initially and so he really never weaved with more than three players in the beginning that I recall. The Iba weave almost always involved four players as far as I can recall for I am recalling the Iba weave from 1962 at least, and Iba supposedly did not even invent the 3-2 High Low until the 1964 Summer Olympics. The Iba weave I recall weaved with 4 players with a post man. Alas I cannot recall what the post man’s role was.

    Also, the angle of the crossing is much “steeper” in the Self weave, than the Iba weave. Players are running out and curving around and then crossing often at near 45 degree angles of approach to the paint and the basket as they take their tosses. This I believe is why Self called his play the scissor’s play rather than the weave early on. The players are cutting across each others paths instead of weaving. If you can find footage of the Iba weave you will likely notice the distinction I am making almost immediately. Self’s weave more closely approximates what the Harlem Globe Trotters ran at times than what Iba ran, but don’t hold me to that. Someone needs to go back and research this. And Self has elaborated it for a 4-1 set and included four players in the play more recently. And Self has been kind of subtlety dorking with where the tossing takes place. Early on much of the tossing occurred out in the middle of the floor. But now we also see the scissor/weave transfers occurring out on the wings AND in center floor. This scissors offense is much more complicated that it was back in 2008 for sure. We even see some screens in the lanes setting up the freeing of the players to start the scissors on a wing sometimes. Sometimes, I think if it were not for Self being able to dork around and keep adding bells and whistles to the entry into the scissors offense, Self might get too bored and go to the NBA. 🙂

    Finally, Self’s version of the weave has something I don’t recall at all in the Iba weave. Self’s scissors play is run two different ways. One way the crossing players cross under each other and toss the ball to the player penetrating closer to the basket. The other variation is the player pitches the ball to a player cutting over the top. Sometimes the weave takes the ball farther from the basket and sets up a long jump shot. Other times it takes it closer and sets up a slashing drive into the paint. Here again, I think the Trotters did this some, but Okie State did not. But remember that the Trotters were weaving for comic effects and for chances to do schticks. Self has adapted this action for real.

    Because of the differences cited above, I really think Self deserves to be called the inventor of the modern Scissors Play rather than the resuscitator of the weave. He seems to have borrowed some from Iba and some from the Trotters.

    In some critical ways Self’s play is NOT a weave at all.

    Now, what needs more research is whether or not someone else pioneered the scissors play itself before Self.

    Iba had an assistant at OSU that left and adapted Iba’s slow down game to a much faster pace at either Oklahoma, or Oklahoma City University. I recall the man’s name to be Doyle Parrock. I have long viewed Parrock as likely the missing half-step, developmental link between Iba’s game and Haskins/Sutton/Hartman’s version of Iba Ball. I do not think Parrock succeeded as a head coach and so returned to be Iba’s assistant to near the end, of Iba’s career, again, if I recall correctly. I have often wondered if Parrock maybe developed some version of the scissors play from the Iba weave and maybe that’s where Self got the idea. Its just a hunch. I have no evidence of it.

    What someone really needs to do is ASK Self about this issue?

    He could clear it up instantly and definitively.

    He is so knowledgeable he would probably contradict 2/3s of what I have laid out above. But that’s okay. What is important is that we get it down from the master for the record how Self did it–where it came from, when and why?

    Self is an amazing guy. What he is doing to and for the game needs to be recorded and understood.

    Rock Chalk!



  • @JayHawkFanToo Yeah, my coach was an unoriginal sucker, I didn’t mean to imply he was the originator. We would run the weave and morph it into the motion offense that Roy ran at KU. He told us to watch KU play because that was our offense run correctly. Lol.



  • @dylans

    I did not take it that way, I only meant to indicate that the weave has been around for a long time and Coach Self is really not the originator.



  • @dylans

    I’m saying the weave appears ancient.

    But I’m saying Coach Self appears to be the originator of the scissor play that can spool inward OR spool outward, until some one can remember an earlier coach running it that way.

    Ready, set research!


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