Oubre Mystery: NO MYSTERY AT ALL
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“That is basically it and with this information we second guess, make wild conjectures and pretend we know more, not only about player management and development but even game strategy than (arguably) the most successful college basketball coach in the last decade. Pretty presumptuous on our part, wouldn’t you agree? We all do it and I do it myself, although I always try to give Coach Self the benefit of the doubt since, as shown above, he has a hell of a lot more information that I do.This is just my opinion and I am sure some fellow posters will tell me I am all wrong.”
That entire post you put up gives us all things to think about, and we are all making wild conjectures. That’s why coaches like to steer players away from forums like ours. We can make convincing arguments based on tiny bits of true facts… that doesn’t mean those arguments are sound, and they definitely aren’t based on the facts coaches are blessed with.
We all throw out our two cents… and that is what this forum is about. It’s pure fan-tasy.
But I think it is good to post what you posted, now and then, so posters stay grounded in the truth, which is… we are all making wild conjectures!
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@drgnslayr one really nice thing about most of us, we don’t bash our players. That’s a big deal to me! Another blog was talking so bad about Mari’s play, they were saying he needs to sit on the end of bench by Tyler Self, and worse. We see the bad stuff, were not stupid, but we always try to be positive.
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@JayHawkFanToo You make good points about how we guess about things. I wouldn’t call them all wild conjectures…but I get your point. As previously replied…that is part of the fun. One thing you pointed out that I have mentioned, and always think about is that we don’t see what goes on in practice. As an example, I assumed (again to your point) that Oubre had played well in practice prior to the UK game. We’ll never know for sure.
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I think we have to know the difference between “constructive criticism” and “bashing.”
I really like every guy on our team. I see potential in all our players. It isn’t fair for any of us to bash players. All our guys came to Kansas because they believed in Kansas, Self and crew. We should embrace that fact.
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Sorry I missed your q’s. There is a good chance everyone stays. Nike’s three stacks–UK and UA and Duke–seem to have the top 15 slots taken, so there is no branding advantarge to having adidas guys go early. As there was last year.
There are two big recruiting Q’s.
Who will the rim protector recruit be?
Who will the Fratello/Hill recruit be from Eurasia?
Zimmerman was Self’s goal for a footer.
Fratello/Hill brought Svi.
My hunch is that Hunter transfers to make room for Zimmerman.
And Brannen transfers to make room for a Fratello/Hill guy with lots of consonants.
Self and adidas seem headed toward rosters of 4 OAD/TADs and 2 Euros plus fillers.
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@jaybate-1.0 I wonder whether Hunter can transfer. He has already transferred once so his redshirt year is behind him.
If he transfers after his junior year, he won’t be able to play his senior year but his eligibility clock continues to tick, so he will never play.
I suppose he could play somewhere else next year if he graduates this spring, assuming that option is open to players who have already transferred once.
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@jaybate-1.0 Not sure on Hunter or what he will do. I feel bad but he obviously knew he was coming to “Big Man U” when he transferred and that playing time was not going to be free.
I can’t imagine Greene transfers. Am I the only person who day dreams about Greene as a 4 year player who goes down as one of KU’s most prolific 3 point shooters?!?! I know that the perimeter is loaded but he and Svi are the only 2 in the bunch who can really shoot.
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@HighEliteMajor Very interesting stats. Typically I think that Jeff Goodman is a buffoon but these are good stats to see.
My question when looking at these minutes and points is…do we think too highly of a kid who is ranked top 10 coming out of high school? What about top 20 or top 30? We tend to think that a top 10 kid is going to come in a dominate early or at least play huge minutes and have an impact. Is there really that big of a difference between the #10 player in high school and the #25? EJ was the #24 recruit in the country and I certainly don’t remember worrying this much about him waiting 2 years to play. The Morris Twins were top 30. T Rob was top 30. Hell, Jeff Withey was top 40 and it took him a very long time and multiple schools to figure it all out. All of these guys sat the bench for years and developed. Are we simply unwilling as fans to wait for Oubre to develop because he was not supposed to need developing? He was supposed to be NCAA ready from day one. I admit that his ranking has blurred my vision but it has also reminded me that these high school rankings are not a perfect science. They are helpful but the #10 guy is sometimes Kelly Oubre and the #120 guy is sometimes Trey Burke. You have to be patient with both.
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@jaybate - I am in 100% agreement on playing outside-in. In fact, Self said in an October press conference that he wants his team to develop an identity during the season that works in March (referencing why we don’t press during the regular season). It would thus seem that focusing on an outside-in game now, can give us our identity – and it is that identity that gives us our only hope of a national title this season. If Ellis could function vs. bigger post guys and score, I might think otherwise.
I would really like to see us shoot 20 threes each game (and of course, make at least 8 ). I just don’t see this team having the ultimate success (NC) unless we bury a high number of threes per game.
Regarding Hunter, You get 5 years to play 4. He burned the redshirt. He has already played in his 3rd season, in this his 4th year. However, if he graduates, I believe he could transfer like Tarik Black without penalty.
@joeloveshawks - I agree … expectations are high. But in the OAD era, that’s life. Self correctly says it’s not fair, but it’s the process he’s embraced. Even with Oubre’s historic non-contribution, he’s still on the lottery fringe in Chad Ford’s recent mock. Crazy.
Oubre seems like the perfect 2 year player. Thing is, we don’t know what he’ll think if he struggles for minutes here after one season. We don’t know his mindset, impatience, exasperation, etc. We can speculate. I do like that he seems to have a well grounded dad, at least from his initial comments when Oubre signed. But you never know how a dad changes his view if he thinks his son has been wronged. Add that to his role given other returning players.
The thing about Goodman’s report that struck me most is the names of the other players – most all had pretty productive careers, right?
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I think we all need to sit back and wait on Kelly.
He’ll come around and he’ll be a factor come B12 play. He may not have the outside touch Svi has (but who does?), but he has the physicality to go get rebounds, and also to probably d-up some in the paint… areas where Svi is weak.
Come B12 play, Self’s game shifts to possessions. He knows we have to win the battle for possessions. Rebounds, suddenly, become very very important.
And what about recruiting? Self just spoke about how if an elite player doesn’t get his minutes other recruiters can get nasty with their attitudes. He doesn’t want that. We don’t want to lose out on more 5-star recruits because Kelly sits on the bench. Self is hot on the trails of Jaylen Brown… we can’t easily land him if Kelly is still here or in the way of Brown’s minutes. I won’t go as far as saying Kelly will be in the draft, but I think Self has played this thinking either Kelly or Wayne will leave for the draft, making a spot open for Jaylen. I know Self is hot for Jaylen.
Kelly is being pushed now to step up to D1 and Self ball. I’m betting he’ll be a different player after Christmas, when they get a lot more practice time. He’s also adjusting to college academics. This all fits into the play for Jaylen. Kelly arrives to KU and a long ways from playing D1 basketball, and by March he becomes a gladiator. Anyone remember JoJo? I kind of recall him sitting for a while, too.
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I was at the first game last year. You could tell right away that Embiid was a special talent. There have only been two players I’ve seen play that I thought had a similiar ceiling Wiggins and Peirce.
As far as what HCBS is doing The longest active streaks in the polls Duke (140) and Kansas (108). Syracuse dropped out last week after being ranked in 80 consecutive polls.
Consistancy. Unfortunately this consistancy has elevated our expectations. I remember under the previous coach, years that being ranked uncertain. Winning a game in the tournament was a goal. Now it’s win it all or cry about it. I’m quite proud of what our guys accomplish on the court. If they finish 2nd this season it’ll go down as a championship in my mind, because no team is better than Kentucky. If UK looses it’s a fluke or because Calipari is the worst coach in America. That kind of talent should win NBA games.
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@drgnslayr Exactly … patience. Oubre could be a superstar.
Yea, Embiid sat quite a bit in the first game, but was big minutes after that. He just took some time to get in the starting lineup.
Wouldn’t you rather have Oubre back, than have Jaylen Brown? I would. No doubt. 100%.
The Jaylen Brown thing will push Greene out the door. Even if Oubre turns pro, I think Greene would be concerned for PT in his junior season (a year he should be starting). Bringing in a consensus top 3 pick in the 2016 draft would kind of do that, I think.
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Its a very good question. I didn’t know the answer, when I posted and still don’t.
I just figure where there’s a will there’s a way.
Hunter could always play a season in D-II without sitting. He might graduate early a la Tarik. He might just enjoy being a useful practice player and get his degree. He might have a lower back injury that changed his expectations from being a rotation player to being a bench warmer, until his back heals. Hard to say.
The only things we know are:
a.) he is long player NOT in the rotation on a team that desperately needs length;
b.) he is not from a recruiting hot bed, so the staff has no incentive to play him to reinforce long term recruiting connections; and
c.) he has conspicuously not succeeded in beefing up.
The failure to beef up, plus his inability to bend down on defense, suggests he has been fighting some kind of lower back issue that has prevented him from becoming Hudy-ized to the point that he is at least not part of the plan this season.
Recalling two things brings what has happened to Hunter into some focus.
First, Self said early when he laid the ground work for rationalizing why Hunter would not be playing that Hunter was really a long 4, not a 5. He could block shots but was not a strong rebounder.
Second, Embiid was once supposed to be the anchor of this team.
A healthy Hunter would have been a nice complement, if only in a 10-20mpg capacity to Embiid with trey gunners like AWIII and Conner on the wings. Embiid completely altered what could be used at other positions.
But Embiid left and Hunter’s back got stiff, and Hunter was not bulked up and so, even if healthy, he lacked the muscle to complement Perry.
Next season a footer is likely to appear. Maybe Zimmerman. Zimmerman, or someone like him, will need a muscular 4, not a long skinny 4 with a stiff back.
So: Hunter is odd man out, unless an injury, or a recruiting failure coupled with several jumps, or transfers occur.
Whether he leaves, or becomes a walk-on, or were forced back into the rotation by unforeseen circumstances, depends on what the recruiting cat drags in and who leaves, and who gets injured.
But then isn’t that the way it always is.
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@jaybate-1.0 said:
I have thought a good deal about moving Svi to 4 with Perry/Cliff at 5.
Selden and Greene at 2 and 3.
Mason at one.
If Selden could ever get his act together, and gun the trey, which Self seems to be hoping for late in the season, this lineup could be killer for stretches.
But bottom line, the team isn’t a very good trey shooting team, despite what Self says, and despite this little up tick in trey percentage.
To beat big teams, KU needs to shoot twice as many treys at it is shooting and when it does, its percentage is going to plummet.
Unless, Wayne learns to gun it, or Green learns to guard.
First time poster, long time message board addict, came over from TOS. Greetings!
I am concerned that Selden wasn’t brought in to be a shooter but since his explosiveness is either missing or was never really there, they’re making the best of it by working on his shot. Hopefully Oubre doesn’t fall into the same category. I was envisioning him as more of a Tyshawn type with a better shot and less prone to turnovers. Obviously, they don’t play the same position, but in terms of getting to the hoop, I was hoping we’d see that from either him or Wayne.
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@pimpjuice not sure what’s going on w/Wayne, but I feel strongly we will see Oubre breaking out like you thought! Hopefully before Christmas!
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If Hunter graduates this school year, he would not be graduating early; he is already a senior so he would be graduating on schedule albeit with one year of eligibility left which would allow him to play immediately at another school. Tarik graduated in 3 years so he did graduate early.
As far as bulking up…Hunter indicated that Anderson asked him to bulk up and his stats went down all across at the heavier weight. It is true that a bigger heft will allow you to occupy more real estate and give you and additional edge in rebounding; however, rebounding is all about position and that is an area where Mickelson is very deficient. While having length helps rebounding, being in the right place is a lot more important; look at Rajon Rondo, he is one of the shorter players in his team but he is the second rebounder at 7.7 rpg, second only to Sullinger who is at 8.5 rpg. BTW, I have likened Mason to Rondo in this regard. In short, bulking up did not help Mickelson get more rebounds and negatively affected the one good part of his game.
Mickelson is not a good rebounder, scorer or overall defensive player; what he does best is block shots and that was what his off-season conditioning was supposed to improve and it did, since he apparently gained 6 inches in his vertical jump. How much he plays depends on what Coach Self determines the team needs most; if it is blocking shots and protecting the rim then he will get playing time but apparently Coach Self feels that he needs more scoring and particularly rebounding. so Lucas gets the nod. In comparison, Aldrich and Withey were great rim protectors but they could also rebound, score and draw fouls, things that Mickelson does not do.
Link to Mickelson numbers.
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Welcome to you.
Self really likes Wayne Selden’s defensive game, with or without explosion; that is the conclusion I have come to.
Self played Selden with a bad knee last season; that apparently proved to Self that Selden was/is reliable steel one can build a defense on.
One lock down defender on the perimeter guaranties you a shot at winning in Self’s book, if you teach your other players to help inside and out. One lock down defender on the perimeter means you enter each game knowing you can neutralize the other team’s perimeter strength, or eliminate it. It means you get to focus everyone else on helping inside. It means you force the opponents lesser perimeter players to beat you, which they can rarely do.
Brandon Rush was the ultimate perimeter lock down.
That Mario Chalmers and RR were tremendous defenders made that '08 team perhaps the greatest college defense without a super center in the history of the game.
Travis Releford was a close second to BRush. And EJ with good knees would have been another.
So: even though KU needs to have two trey ballers on the floor to make a short team a champion, settling for lock down Selden guaranties Self a way to hang around and beat most teams other than UK, UA, Florida, and Texas.
Self appears pragmatic about such things. He will play for all the marbles if he has all the pieces, but he will simply play for most of the marbles if he only has most of the pieces.
Regarding Oubre and Selden and getting to the basket, it is increasingly clear that in today’s game, getting to the rim is an activity for slick ball handling guards, not high ceilinged wings.
Think about Andrew Wiggins. He was perhaps the most athletic freshman D1 has ever seen. He could and did get to the rim a few games. But once he proved he could do it at will, then the logical counter tactic was to beat the piss out of him and floor him. And once they started it at least appeared that his handlers did not want to see him get injured doing the get to the rim thing and so he did not retaliate and he did not tend to keep going to the rim once the other team committed to violence. This in turn encouraged other teams to use violence to keep him from going to the rim.
My hypothesis is: any game at all, against any opponent last season, Wigs could have gone to the rim for 40 points, maybe 60, if he could have been protected from injury. But he could not be protected. So he only did it once or twice to make sure the NBA GMs and coaches knew he could.
The irony is this: the more able a great wing player is able to get to the rim in D1, the more it forces opponents to hurt him, and the more this forces his handlers and shoecos to say don’t go to the rim.
So: we don’t really know if Selden can or can’t get to the rim, though it appears his knee injury has limited his explosiveness. And in the case of Oubre, he hasn’t got a trey, and he has similar monstrous athleticism to Wigs, but we can’t say if his foundation seems quite as high as Wigs was. But even if it were, and even if Selden had his explosiveness back, both guys would be such high draft choice projections that we can hypothesize that neither one’s handlers and shoecos would encourage them to go to the rim for more than a few games a season in the interest of minimizing injury risk.
This is a very long way of saying that they may not be going to the rim this season because of limitations, but I doubt we will ever see them go to the rim very much even if they are completely sound and properly foundationed in the future.
Notice that UK’s phenomenal talents take almost no risks. I just watched UA’s nearly as deeply stacked talents play and they took almost zero risks.
Once you are dealing with highly valuable players in D1, I hypothesize that a risk/return matrix is always functioning. The risks they take tend to have commensurate returns. Shooting Js and uncontested dunking is how you get through a D1 season without an injury on the offensive end. On the defensive end, short slides and straight up jumping when others are jumping are how you stay healthy. Long sliding, which is required for good defense, eventually creates wear and tear and injury to ligaments and tendons. And aerial ballet work, i.e., jumping way forward and way side to side, sharply increases risk of coming down wrong and injuring knees.
Frankly, I think the real reason teams press less and less, and why KU presses way less than a short team needs to, is because pressing risks injury.
My guess is that the powers that be have basically decided that consistent pressing with OADs/TADs is NOT okay. Pressing once in a great while, when behind, or to change tempo a few possessions each game is allowed.
Pressing with super athletes against lesser athletes is a no brainer, unless the word is out that you are not supposed to.
At least that is my hypothetical thinking on the subject so far.
Again, welcome to the board.
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A freshman is not producing after 6 games. This shouldn’t be news. Freshmen don’t produce. Kelly is a victim of a overhyped culture, enabled by the internet, that makes us all experts on what a kid is expected to do in college, and when he doesn’t we all wonder why.
I hope Kelly turns into a 4 year player and leads us to a championship his senior year. I doubt he’ll stay 4 years. The hype machine will either tell him he needs to go pro because he has that potential, or the machine will do, as it has done here, (see @HighEliteMajor above for the post from ESPN insider that shows Kelly is the worst of the heralded recruits) and ruin the kid because now he knows he’s a bust. None of the hype will tell him to be patient and learn to play the system and play the team game and stick around. I hope he figures it out anyways.
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“The Jaylen Brown thing will push Greene out the door. Even if Oubre turns pro, I think Greene would be concerned for PT in his junior season (a year he should be starting). Bringing in a consensus top 3 pick in the 2016 draft would kind of do that, I think.”
I think Self is going to have to take one from Calipari on this. How to manage too many talented players. It’s hard to say we don’t want Brown to come to Kansas… real hard.
I think one of Greene’s issues is his strength. He either isn’t very strong, or he just plays meek ball. As someone in here posted… the Sir Charles Barkley saying goes… “the meek may inherit the earth, but they won’t get the ball from me!”
Teams should take the feel of the coach. Self likes physicality. Greene’s lack of physicality has held him back in the Self system. I do think he’s been playing with more physicality this year. I hope he keeps that up! Perry definitely has.
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One thing a lot of folks are forgetting is that the moment a player enters the rotation, opposing coaches start scheming against his weaknesses and so those players always look good briefly and then appear ham strung for another few games while they learn how to escape the scheming.
Some players are fast at escaping the scheming and others are not.
Greene has just entered the rotation, once CF bailed out, and looked good enough after a couple games to begin to scheme to stop. So: Greene now looks suddenly awkward and dorky again. This too shall pass.
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Did someone say something about BMac? Find “Mclemore slam” on their videos here.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/BenMcLemore/status/540154889779703808/photos
Ben not only makes Jayhawks proud on the court, but he’s so involved w/charities.
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From this morning’s press conference • With KU’s non-conference schedule, there are numerous quality opponents. It is harder to get guys minutes if they’re figuring out who they are and if they can play. Self knows Oubre can play. He hasn’t had much of an opportunity to play through mistakes. He just needs to go and make something good happen for himself. … Not thinking too much is possible, because he has a good enough understanding. Self would rather a guy play with reckless abandon and screw up than play slower because he’s thinking too much. You can’t play to “not screw up.”
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Another Ben Mac story
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McLemore is finally starting to come alive; his defense has always been good and it is what has kept him in the starting lineup but his offense is now clicking and we are seeing the new and improved McLemore.
On the other hand, I understand that his tattoos tell a story but I can’t say I care or understand the allure of tattoos myself…to each his own, I guess…
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Hypothesis: there is a positive correlation between the number of tats/player and tatted players per team and how deep teams go in Madness.
