TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY HORNED FROGS
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Sure, we can lose tonight. The difference between the 2013 team and TCU was greater than the difference between this TCU team and this KU team. Every game in conference can be lost. And really, any game can … we lost to Oral Roberts at home a number of years ago.
The 2013 team had just come off losing to OSU at home. After the OSU loss, Self had his infamous meltdown where he threw EJ under the bus. The “we don’t have a point guard.” And "we were definitely a better team with (EJ) sitting next to us … " It was really bad stuff. I listened live to it on the radio and was astonished by what I heard. The tone was even worse than the content. I had never, and have never, heard Self like that…
That tenor continued after the TCU game with the also infamous “Topeka YMCA” comments and “the worst team to ever play at Kansas” stuff. Not Self’s best moments. My opinion is now, and was then, that the TCU loss was the direct result of how the loss to OSU was mishandled.
KU then lost at OU following TCU, but played much better. EJ said, “Right now we’re trying to figure that out,” Johnson said. "You can’t ask a man who just got knocked out to count to 10. You can’t think straight right away. There’s so much going on in your head. Right now we’re just focused on getting our focus back. That’s what we’re focused on, getting our focus back.”
The 2013 loss to TCU was simply a rough patch. A loss that never should have happened. An anomaly.
Here’s what Self said about the league race after the OU loss: “We’ve been behind a game in the league race going into the last seven-eight games of the season before,” Self said. “We were never quite as good as our record, but we are better than what we have played here this past week. Does it surprise me we are in a dogfight? Not at all. This talk people had that the whole deal is who is going to finish second? I never had that feeling at all. We are going to have to play our best ball to have a chance to win it. Every game is lose-able on the road especially when you have Baylor, Oklahoma State and Iowa State left.”
He got the ship righted pretty quickly. And we know how that turned out.
We ain’t losin’ to TCU tonight, or KSU Saturday, or ISU Monday. 3-0 in 6 days. Book it.
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You also told us to book the Temple game. Did we have a point guard? - No. Should Self have said what he said to the public? - No. Sometimes we blame his honesty. I read recently that Frank goes into Self’s office almost everyday to sit and talk about strategies and everything else. Frank is not only a point guard, he is an extension of the coach on the court. Everyone listens to Frank. If you watch him between plays and during free throws, he is talking, talking and serious, serious. We didn’t have a point guard then or an extension of Coach on the court. Now we do and his back up, though all smiles, has 20+ assist and 1 turnover. I felt like coach did during the YMCA, our Coach sometimes just says what’s on his mind.
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Topeka YMCA never recovered from beating us. They haven’t been heard from since. It must have gone to their heads.
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@wrwlumpy Im gonna go out on a real skinny limb here and say KU gets beat by 2 tonight. *Im only half serious.
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@Lulufulu Which half of you is serious?? We get beat by the two points or are you going out on a skinny limb?
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@Kip_McSmithers Naaaah, Im totally playing around.
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I like our chances for two reasons… and I’m not even going to get into how we played at Texas and the development of our players.
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In close games we finish well.
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In close games TCU finishes poorly. I still don’t know how they blew that game at WVU.
Those two factors alone give me all the optimism I need without even digging further.
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Awesome lumpy!
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OK Jesse I agree with you this time. - Ken Pom says Big 12 the best by far.
http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/determining_the_best_conference
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@drgnslayr Personally I didn’t think TCU fouled the guy on that lay up at the end there. Or at least from the camera angles I caught it wasn’t worth sending him to the line for.
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@Kip_McSmithers Agreed
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I also agree…
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Interesting analysis by Ken Pomeroy. I found it puzzling that he uses the expression:
"That matches national perception a little bit better."
when tweaking his projections; however, he does not use this logic on his team rankings, many of which are way, way off the “national perception.”
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I agree… but they should have had the game already won.
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Reminds me of when Hank Stram tackled the Ref after the game. That was the Ben Davidson Cheap shot game.
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@JayHawkFanToo Kenpom is bordering on fraud, imo. I started noticing lots of inconsistencies over the past two years in his “rankings” that couldn’t be explained, so i started tracking his team movements. I have concluded he will move any team up after they win, The key word is after they win. I think Kenpom cooks the books, so to speak. His “results” tell us nothing - the way he manipulated moving up UCONN and Kentucky would make a pretzelmaker proud last year. If we keep winning, our defensive ratings will magically improve, even if our defense doesn’t.
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I have been posting periodically big inconsistencies in his ratings that are impossible to explain away with numbers. He seem to like OU and Wichita State, among others, and KU cannot catch a break… His number are at odds with the majority of the other computerized ratings as well.
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@JayHawkFanToo He’s a book cooker. He has as much sway as a dart board to me.
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ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BASKETBALL?
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@wrwlumpy After we moved down here my wife who is a RN was working as a temp while waiting for something full time. She came home one morning and asked me, “you ever hear of Hank Stram?” I said yeah, he was head coach for Kansas City and New Orleans. She said she took care of him that night and he was a character. He had a very nice place here in Covington, LA, all fenced with an S monogram on the gate. Guess his wife still lives there.
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@brooksmd cool story!
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@wrwlumpy said:
predict that this will be an ugly road win
Nice prediction! Doesn’t get much uglier than that and still a get a W
