Land Thieves Shooty Hoops
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@kuballin10 In my humble opinion, KU offense flows much better when Juan is PG.
My issue is with your statement on calling his play as awful. I think it is too harsh and not justified.
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You go to war with the army you got, not the army you wish you had. I don’t see the point in bashing Juan. He’s a good point guard that is not score first and we would be screwed if he got hit by a bus.
Beyond that, you can wish in one hand and poop in the other and see which one fills up first.
This is why Bill Self is a hall of famer. He works with what he has and doesn’t trash his players and look to next season. He always thinks theres a way to win it all with the current roster and he is always looking for it.
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@approxinfinity PHOF!
You make Bill Self sound like Prof Harold Hill: “I always think there’s a band, kid.”
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@mayjay said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@approxinfinity PHOF!
You make Bill Self sound like Prof Harold Hill: “I always think there’s a band, kid.”
Yes, put that in your double bell euphonium and smoke it.
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@AsadZ Bill has no other choice unless he’d let EJ play point which won’t happen.
So saying the offense flows better with Juan well yeah we have no clue how it flows without Juan.
Juan is the best pg on the team
For the offense to flow better Juan needs to shoot 4-5 threes a game. Our offense metrics with two All Americans is atrocious for a reason and it’s very easy to spot when watching the games.
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@approxinfinity Is it bashing to say a player who is one of the leaders of this team is underperforming?
He’s not playing well that’s evident.
Of course no coach gives up they work with what they have and adjust to try to win a title.
I’m saying the key is Juan and not the bench or some fifth starter stepping up. It’s been juan and always will be Juan that’s why the stat of when he scores like 12 or more we are darn near undefeated……he’s the key cog and his play is bad.
Did he practice the three all summer to then not shoot during games? Did he get slower on defense because he’s bad 1v1 defensively unlike the title game…go back and watch night and day different.
You guys can hem and haw about all these other people that need to step up (literally this board just says the bench and fifth because everyone else besides Juan has been a stud and as advertised this year).
Eventually you all will see the light that Juan has regressed but if he can start playing better we can make a serious run in March.
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@mayjay Wow, fighting fire with great American culture! I like it!!
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Originally I was calling for 40 points combined from Hunter and Kevin plus 20 points combined from KJ and Juan and with 15 points combined from the two guard and bench we would win about every game. Now we need 25 from KJ and Juan to win. With Hunter and Kev baby currently being Self’s top scoring duo ever we are actually lucky to just need 35 combined from KJ, Juan and the great unwashed. Furphy has already shown he will be aggressive in getting and taking his shots. Of course it will be a pick up the slack if one of the above has an off night. Yup.
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@kuballin10 all I hear is you complaining. Benching Juan is fan fiction. Nothing you are saying is compelling me to question anything I know about this team, and then you say “oh you’ll see”. What has EJ shown us that suggests he should start over Juan, and is that your proposed solution here? We are #3 in the country and comparable to other Bill Self teams in near every metric afaik. What exactly is your insightful solution here?
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@approxinfinity I’ve never said to bench Juan that’s crazy talk. He’s the starting pg.
I’ve said:
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shoot the 3 more and attack
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Play better on ball D
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shoot the frigging 3 he’s got a good shot
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Let EJ play point 5-7 minutes a game to spell Juan. He’s looked more comfortable with the ball in his hands
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@kuballin10 all of these things are reasonable, the questions they bring up though are:
Why doesnt he shoot the 3 more?
Im sure Self approves of the unguarded 3.
What are the consequences when he doesnt shoot it? Bench him? Are you sure EJ possesses enough of Juans abilities to make benching Juan in a dogfight an option? I dont think so. Is confidence an issue if you start benching him?
I just dont see EJ being anywhere close as effective as Juan at the 1, so you can see hes our dude, and theres a low threshold to where repeatedly complaining about the things he doesn’t do just has no actionable soluiton and sounds like complaining and dogging Juan. And prognostications of doom are annoying. Theres nothing else we can do until Elmarko grows and i trust Self to know when that is. He was right with Furphy and every other dude that has grown on this team. We dont get to see practice. Have some faith, however it goes.
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@kuballin10 I should qualify that.
VAGUE prognostications of doom are annoying.
But its not new to this board by any means.
I think we should talk about Big Dave.
I was one of the guys who did not hold my tongue when it came to saying “Big Dave Ain’t It” his senior season. We talked about Sweet 16 outs, etc.
I was wrong. Bill Self knew things I didn’t. Dave Mccormack lived his life and I observed it.
Of course, speculation is what we do. But, let’s be creative about it. Maybe there are wrinkles we haven’t discussed. Thats where a narrative like “Furphy gives Dajuan another shooter and makes his passfirst approach more comfortable in big games” is a more interesting narrative than “Dajuan needs to shoot!”
It’s like a kids soccer game where theres the one parent screaming “shoot it! shoot it! score score score!” when their kid has the ball. It’s 1-dimensional.
And I don’t want to single you out, so much as discuss the meta of how we talk about our our players.
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@kuballin10 said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@approxinfinity Is it bashing to say a player who is one of the leaders of this team is underperforming?
He’s not playing well that’s evident.
Of course no coach gives up they work with what they have and adjust to try to win a title.
I’m saying the key is Juan and not the bench or some fifth starter stepping up. It’s been juan and always will be Juan that’s why the stat of when he scores like 12 or more we are darn near undefeated……he’s the key cog and his play is bad.
Did he practice the three all summer to then not shoot during games? Did he get slower on defense because he’s bad 1v1 defensively unlike the title game…go back and watch night and day different.
You guys can hem and haw about all these other people that need to step up (literally this board just says the bench and fifth because everyone else besides Juan has been a stud and as advertised this year).
Eventually you all will see the light that Juan has regressed but if he can start playing better we can make a serious run in March.
If you watch the games that are played , then you would truly know. You say us people on this board Hem-Haw , dam man there is soooo much more to the value to the game of Basketball then just scoring, it is o multi faceted . If you were to pay attention instead of focusing so much on trying to degrade Juan you would know.- -The people on this board are by far not the only ones that have the same idea as we that are on this board that say how bad we have to have production from the bench, that we have to have that fifth player step up and not just be four core.
Analyst’s that follow the game, people that do this for a living , people who have played the game , been around the game, former College players themselves , do you not listen to what they are saying also. They say almost verbatim Seth Greenburg a former College Coach , Jay Bilas, Jay Williams, plus many , many others who I happen to think just maybe , maybe have a little mor insight about the game just maybe might be a little more in tune with what we need.- - They to the man say how they worry about our depth/bench- - how we need that fifth player. I think I would have a tendency to lean a little more on their words then yours.- Sure Juan maybe playing some worse, but even him playing at his peak is still pretty good, STILL league in assists at 7.1 that’s a pretty dam good assist ratio, 2nd on the team in Steals behind Kevin , and when he does get beat 9 times out of 10, he still recover and pokes the ball loose from behind.
You on the other hand just seem so infatuated on trying to down grade Juan, you just can’t seem to be able to comprehend that there is so much more to a PG then shooting and attacking - a LOT more, Juan is a defense/assist first type Pg. not sure if you have seen many of Juans assists, sure he could shoot or drive but umm he has no problem not doing that and passing of to a team mate who has a better shot. I dunno I think maybe I’ll stick with Bill’s Coaching his decisions more then your expertise opinion. I mean seems to be working for Bill & the team, you know Bill right ? - -The guy that was the Coach making decisions that help us to what 14 straight titles? The Hall of Fame Coach ? -The Coach of the year how many times ? - -ya that guy, I think he knows what he is doing with Juan. -The Guy that has only lost like 14 games in 20 years in the Phog, he must be doing something right, must be making right decisions - ya thanks I think I’ll continue to trust him.
Tell you what you can do though if your not happy with the way he is Coaching or how Juan is playing - - -you can go to his office and relay your dissatisfaction about Juan’s play and tell him your thoughts on what Juan so do and how you would play th team I’m sure he would be more then willing to listen to what you have to say that’s an idea , looking forward to hear how that turns out. Have a good day buddy it’s going to be all right.- - - ROCK CHALK
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Harris is going to leave here a Top 5 PG in the Self era, perhaps the best when his career is over (that’s still over a year away folks).
He’s a National Champion & if he can win another in the next 2 years, he will be in the history books among the rarest of company.
He’s won 83% of the games he’s started so far in his career. He’s got a shot to break the assists record here and will finish somewhere in the Top 10 in steals. He’s on track to score over 1,000 points in his career here, not too shabby for someone that’s a 4th/5th scoring option.
Above everything else that I’ve written here take a step back and realize what this kid has been through and appreciate how these young men can overcome such great adversity and make it into a positive. What an inspiration. It’s about more than the game. We have a coach that realizes it too.
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I like the healthy discourse here. We don’t all have to agree about everything and people need to state their opinions and everyone treat each other with a base level of respect. Often, our best posts come from disagreements.
I think many of us don’t feel like Juan is having his best year so far. It is possible for a reason or more that none of us know. All we can do is grade his play on the court.
Is there anyone in here that thinks he should shoot less? I’m in the “shoot more” category. More treys. More drives finishing either at the rim or mid-range floaters.
We’ve read where his teammates and coaches have deplored him to shoot more. I guess Juan needs to feel it before he takes more shots. Maybe we all need to encourage him to work on getting the feeling more!
I’m not going to tell Juan what to do. I’ll leave that up to Self. However, I will say sometimes I go nuts when I see Juan or other players turn the corner on their defender and have nice scoring space for a 15-ft jumper or open path to the rim, but they then throw it out to someone on the perimeter and we end up fighting hard for a good shot at the end of the shot clock. Those mid-range shots and rim finishes need to happen for many reasons… we leave points off the scoreboard and teams aren’t respecting our driving, so we have fewer wide-open trey shots because teams aren’t sagging in.
I have faith in Self to figure out our offensive struggles. We certainly looked sharp at OSU, though a big part of that was OSU played a horrible defensive game.
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@drgnslayr That’s all I’m asking is him to hunt his shot especially from 3 more. Defenders don’t even guard him at times unless he comes in the paint
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@BeddieKU23 He will have played 6 years so I think there’s a major asterisk by those records.
I’m not sure he’s even a top 10 pg under Self
Dotson Mason Graham Sherron Chalmers Tyshawn Miles Remy
All guys I’d take over Juan
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If I’m looking for points out of our PG I’m totally with you on taking all those previous PGs over Juan.
But I’m still on board with Self and his desire to have less points from our PG and have him be more the glue guy, assist leader, and defensive specialist.
Normally, Juan leads the team with assists. Not the case against OSU as Kevin far surpassed him. Kind of makes me wonder if it is easier for Kevin to get assists than Juan if he is our big scoring threat off the drive. Are teams double-teaming Kevin to try to limit his drives and then other guys are wide open and Kevin is good at passing out of double-teams to earn assists? That is a question for everyone because I don’t have that answer.
I do know when Juan is on his game, he’s a guy who creates offense for others. Seems like he is doing less of that, but maybe we need to look less at Juan and look more at how we are running our offense right now. Typically… our offense just doesn’t happen on it’s own. We are running plays or running schemes with several spinoff varieties that create offense. This is how we create spacing and also predictability on cuts (etc) so we should turn it over less because players are going to predictable places and it is all working well when our timing is on. Maybe this is more of a problem needing resolved by Self and crew.
I will say… many times in our half-court sets we have to work harder and push it to the limit on shot selection at the end of the shot clock. When we trend with this result we are bound to create more TOs and the guy looking worse through this is our “play guy”… Juan.
So when Juan isn’t creating assists… he can easily look to be having a bad game, especially if he has several TOs.
I will say this… he was our main “disruptor” against OSU. He was constantly knocking the ball free, getting a steal, or just making enough of a disruption to keep OSU from running any kind of flow. That is a valuable trait!
I am like you and I miss having a PG that puts up more points and is a continual threat to score. Guys like Mason were able to always create his own shot and that came in handy sooo often! On the other hand, one of my favorite Jayhawks, Sherron… was counted on constantly to score and we did not have a good offense and were not really a contender when he ran point.
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@kuballin10 by that standard the 2022 title should have an asterisk.
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@FarmerJayhawk Not at all. A one year team championship versus an entire individuals career in which he may shatter records guys did in 4 years with 6 years of opportunity….thats not even close to the same
Apples and oranges
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@kuballin10 by that same rule Remy never suits up for Kansas. So if we’re going to asterisk for the Covid years in some cases you have to do it for all of them. And Juan won’t have played for 6 years. Not sure where you’re getting that except your arse
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@drgnslayr Great post and I appreciate the discussion.
Juan was excellent last night on the defensive end. He constantly turned the other team over.
Where people see that Juan always sets up his teammates I fail to see. He runs the offense and throwing a lob into Hunter who’s pinned his man for a layup isn’t Juan “creating” much.
Juan doesn’t actually create much for others. He doesn’t drive the lane and drop a pass off for a dunk to a big or do what Elmarko did and kick it into the corner for a 3. He gets assists by just quickly rotating the ball in the offense but not really attacking.
He’s his best in the pick and roll where he waits for kj to roll and throws a dime bounce pass for the dunk.
Juan has got to shoot the 3 more and Self has been on him and clearly needs to keep on him. Furphy isn’t going for 15 a game but if he can average 10 and Juan 10 we will be a tough out.
Someone else said it on this board but Juan passing up Open shots to try and get a better shot often leads to a turnover. Self runs sets so guys have open shots and then when Juan passes on a corner 3 it is insane….shoot the ball u got a great jumper dude!
Juan doesn’t have to score 18-20 a game like Frank but man he needs to hit double figures every single game
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@FarmerJayhawk If you can’t distinguish between a guys career being 4 years holding a record and some guy playing 65-75 more games (6 years) and we celebrate breaking that record…I’m not sure how else you will ever grasp it. If Juan broke it in 4 years then heck yeah that shows it but doing it in 6 does nothing for Kansas or the record book and anyone with a brain gets that
Just like Mahomes breaking passing records of Peyton’s with 1 extra game. It doesn’t mean anything unless he did it in 16 games because the timeframe/schedule has changed.
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@kuballin10 ok, please name the 6 seasons Juan will have been eligible to play for Kansas.
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@FarmerJayhawk geez 5 my bad lol I’m an idiot there
Even at 5 and an extra 30-35 games to break a record that was set in a 4 year period. If that’s some guys “reasoning” for why he’s the best KU pg there is a failing to grasp the reality
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@kuballin10 said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@drgnslayr That’s all I’m asking is him to hunt his shot especially from 3 more. Defenders don’t even guard him at times unless he comes in the paint
I think part of it is he still has a really lengthy shot process, so he truly does need to be wide open or it will get swatted. I wish he would shoot more as well though.
It’s an undeniable statistical fact that he has regressed this year. The huge stylistic shift and heavy minute load could be a factor. I would love to see more of what we saw against OSU, 31 minutes a game. That would let him be able to play with more energy when he is in the game. 40 minutes a game Juan conserving energy has not been great.
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@FarmerJayhawk It’s like saying Frank gore leads the Niners all time rb’s in yards
Ain’t no one saying gore is the best Niners rb of all time or even close to Mccaffrey
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@kuballin10 said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@FarmerJayhawk geez 5 my bad lol I’m an idiot there
Even at 5 and an extra 30-35 games to break a record that was set in a 4 year period. If that’s some guys “reasoning” for why he’s the best KU pg there is a failing to grasp the reality
The covid situation is stupid but like he said it gave us Remy (who always wanted to be here) so we don’t have a title without it that year. Though we likely have one in 2020. It’s doing very dumb things to record books overall. Especially in football…
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@BShark We only saw that cause he got into foul trouble
Lo and behold we were fine without him but only because osu sucks. If it was close and he didn’t have foul trouble he’d played 35-38 like always
Defenders go under every screen with Juan…he can shoot 4-5 uncontested threes a game
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@kuballin10 I never said anything to that effect. But it will be eerie how similar Juan and Miles’s stats will end up being.
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@BShark said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@kuballin10 said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@FarmerJayhawk geez 5 my bad lol I’m an idiot there
Even at 5 and an extra 30-35 games to break a record that was set in a 4 year period. If that’s some guys “reasoning” for why he’s the best KU pg there is a failing to grasp the reality
The covid situation is stupid but like he said it gave us Remy (who always wanted to be here) so we don’t have a title without it that year. Though we likely have one in 2020. It’s doing very dumb things to record books overall. Especially in football…
Yep nobody is saying give Jason Bean an asterisk.
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@kuballin10 I know, but it’s what I’m hoping for. He can’t keep playing 40 minutes.
Things that won’t happen that I’d like to see also include Elmarko only subbing for Juan and Bill trusting Nick a little more (he’s been okay!).
At least we finally swapped to Furphy starting. I was worried that might take another week or two.
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@FarmerJayhawk said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@BShark said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@kuballin10 said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
@FarmerJayhawk geez 5 my bad lol I’m an idiot there
Even at 5 and an extra 30-35 games to break a record that was set in a 4 year period. If that’s some guys “reasoning” for why he’s the best KU pg there is a failing to grasp the reality
The covid situation is stupid but like he said it gave us Remy (who always wanted to be here) so we don’t have a title without it that year. Though we likely have one in 2020. It’s doing very dumb things to record books overall. Especially in football…
Yep nobody is saying give Jason Bean an asterisk.
Saved our season, literally.
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I’d love for Juan to be a scoring savant as well as his other great skills but it’s not productive to focus on it at this point. He’s not becoming the next Ochai/Jalen/Kev at this stage.
We do need his level of play to remain high. I don’t think he’s consistently played at a high level compared to past years but the season is still young. I think we are seeing signs of him getting there since Conference Play started. This lineup change with Furphy for Elmarko is already making a big difference in a small sample size. You put 4 scorers around Juan like he’s had in the past and good things will happen.
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Wild take: Juan is the focus of the offense next year and on Wooden Watch!
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You are right… Juan is best in those pick and roll lobs… we haven’t seen many of those lately, mostly because it’s been scouted so well by everyone. It’s probably the first thing they go over when preparing to play us.
I think he used to create more offense. And I’m not sure why he isn’t creating as much. Before Hunter played his first game with us he complimented Juan for being the guy he would team up most with… Juan setting him up.
We could build one helluva highlight reel of Juan creating offense… just not so much lately.
I think his new target should be Furph. That one play where Furph fed out to the perimeter then ran out to the perimeter for a catch and shoot was easily one of the best highlights from Stillwater.
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@approxinfinity said in Land Thieves Shooty Hoops:
Wild take: Juan is the focus of the offense next year and on Wooden Watch!
I will laugh so hard when he averages 19 and 7 a game. lol.
I think @BShark is right about the slow release. He tried to shoot vs UCF and got swatted.
I also find it contradictory that @kuballin10 says he doesn’t create for others but follows it up with an example of him moving the ball to get someone else an open shot, describes him completing a difficult post entry pass for an easy bucket, and then explains how he creates for others in the pick and roll. Those are all creating for others AND show an attacking mentality.
I didn’t watch all of the OSU game but do feel in the last few INCLUDING the loss to UCF Juan has been hunting his shot with a few floaters and drives trying to score.
And like it or not, Juan is a gamer. He rises to the occasion when he’s most needed. He single handedly flipped the script in several games on the way to and including the National Championship so he will forever have my respect as a baller. Is he a perfect point guard? No. But no one is.
This team has the tools to win 6 games in March and Juan is one of those tools. He’s not a swiss army knife, but he generally does what he’s needed to do pretty well.
These Hawks also have the potential to lose in the first or second round. While this is always true, this year especially, this team has some vaulted ceilings. They can look really pretty but are really far from the floor and can be a struggle heat in cool in extreme weather.
