Bill's Evolution - The Athletic
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Really cool piece https://theathletic.com/1981510/2020/08/10/breaking-down-bill-selfs-4-game-and-why-the-kansas-coach-likes-the-offense
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@FarmerJayhawk Bill is crushing the other Big 12 coaches with rocks like Chester Copperpot.
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I swear I could hear certain heads exploding when I read the playbook guy’s praise for Bill’s offensive smarts–top 5 in D1!
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Can’t read the article… so I’m going to dream what it could be and what I hope it is.
I hope it is about Bill seeing the game through new eyes. The opportunity on offense is the ability to attack from 5 positions all over the floor instead of limiting by position. “Positionless basketball!” I’ve heard Bill talk about it before. This is college basketball. You won’t meet a team without defensive weakness from any of the 5 positions on the court. Take what the defense gives.
Does size matter? Not when there are liabilities in size. Not when you trade size for slowness, loss of handles, loss of shooting from the perimeter, loss of passing skills, loss of playmaking. Marcus Garrett may have been the most transitional player Kansas has ever had. He can guard 1 - 4 well. He’s a skinny kid, not that tall. And the game has shifted. The rules favor him. The rules have turned against big guys bullying their way to the rim. Bill must see this. He must imagine what a team full of guys with Marcus’ capabilities on defense could do especially with more offensive skills than Marcus.
It would be nice to end the days when we have a big guy on the perimeter catching the ball while having no capability to dribble in or shoot the ball from that distance… allowing his man to sag, allowing defenses to know what will happen next. Don’t get me wrong… I’d take another Doke. He wasn’t the norm in the post with his high efficiency of finishing.
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For sure basketball has moved away from a true post game. If your 4 and 5 can space the floor and shoot, defense becomes super difficult. Also it’s funny when I watch nba, post ups can be arm barred and pushed but if they barely slap a hand on a drive it’s a foul. So definitely rules are going against post up play. Lastly I think post up play has fallen off due to the lack of good hook shots from many young post players. If you can’t use either hand on a hook shot, back to the basket post ups are worthless. Doke’s dominance down low really showed last year but early in his career his post up game was so raw and not developed. We partly lost to Villanova In the final four bc he couldn’t punish them offensively inside to make them pay for going small, and we got killed bc he wasn’t as good at rotating out on shooters during that game. Hence wide open threes. This years doke would have made it hard on that Villanova team.
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@jayhawks2010 said in Bill's Evolution - The Athletic:
For sure basketball has moved away from a true post game. If your 4 and 5 can space the floor and shoot, defense becomes super difficult. Also it’s funny when I watch nba, post ups can be arm barred and pushed but if they barely slap a hand on a drive it’s a foul. So definitely rules are going against post up play. Lastly I think post up play has fallen off due to the lack of good hook shots from many young post players. If you can’t use either hand on a hook shot, back to the basket post ups are worthless. Doke’s dominance down low really showed last year but early in his career his post up game was so raw and not developed. We partly lost to Villanova In the final four bc he couldn’t punish them offensively inside to make them pay for going small, and we got killed bc he wasn’t as good at rotating out on shooters during that game. Hence wide open threes. This years doke would have made it hard on that Villanova team.
Doke was basically on one leg in that game too. Just a rotten matchup for us.
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I think that Doke has a great shot at going in the first round.
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I hope so! His improved mobility and defensive dominance last year I think really helped his draft status
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@drgnslayr said in Bill's Evolution - The Athletic:
Can’t read the article… so I’m going to dream what it could be and what I hope it is.
I hope it is about Bill seeing the game through new eyes. The opportunity on offense is the ability to attack from 5 positions all over the floor instead of limiting by position. “Positionless basketball!” I’ve heard Bill talk about it before. This is college basketball. You won’t meet a team without defensive weakness from any of the 5 positions on the court. Take what the defense gives.
Does size matter? Not when there are liabilities in size. Not when you trade size for slowness, loss of handles, loss of shooting from the perimeter, loss of passing skills, loss of playmaking. Marcus Garrett may have been the most transitional player Kansas has ever had. He can guard 1 - 4 well. He’s a skinny kid, not that tall. And the game has shifted. The rules favor him. The rules have turned against big guys bullying their way to the rim. Bill must see this. He must imagine what a team full of guys with Marcus’ capabilities on defense could do especially with more offensive skills than Marcus.
It would be nice to end the days when we have a big guy on the perimeter catching the ball while having no capability to dribble in or shoot the ball from that distance… allowing his man to sag, allowing defenses to know what will happen next. Don’t get me wrong… I’d take another Doke. He wasn’t the norm in the post with his high efficiency of finishing.
Here’s a section that makes that point, “Pyper views Self as one of the top five offensive tacticians in the sport, and he has been studying his playbook back to the high-low days when his father, also a high school coach, adopted many of Self’s three-out, two-in motion concepts. In recent years, Pyper’s interest has revolved around Self building his 4-game and continuing to add wrinkles that highlight the strengths of his players. The conversation eventually delved into the 2020-21 season. KU’s main concern is how to replace Udoka Azubuike, who fit perfectly in Self’s schemes on both ends of the floor. While Self embraced smaller lineups and made 4-game his primary offense the last few years, the principles have mostly remained the same. Creating angles and scoring opportunities for a post player is still a major focus, and featuring a center who can feast on those opportunities is important. “I think it’s the No. 1 thing,” Pyper says. “They put so much pressure on the defense with that post pin and that post-corner throw; it just opens up everything else by default even if they don’t get a post touch. It’s going to collapse and force the weakside help to take two extra steps in and that opens up everything at the Division I level. Everything.””
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Udoka worked his ass off. I still hate that we were robbed of his ncaat rampage.
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That at Baylor game
