Next Mission: Take Norman...Leave No Prisoners
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Bad Ball is a work in progress.
Our players are unquestionably the best at it in D1.
No one else, except Huggie and WVU are even trying to play it, though their approach is quite different.
But we are still developing our ability to play it.
And we have likely lost Perry, our Stretch 4, for the game.
Therefore the march to Myitkyina continues on a narrow jungle trail that passes through a hostile village called Norman.
Play Bad Ball and take no prisoners.
The Marauders rest for nothing.
The Marauders play to win every game this season.
The basics of BAD BALL, which I outlined in another post, do not require a stretch 4.
They require shrinking impact space of your opponent.
To do that we have to attack Hield. We have to attack on offense and defense.
We have to attack their bigs.
We can play this game against anyone, with anyone.
The interesting thing about the OU matchup will be to see if Lon Kruger, usually a quick study, has his guys playing Bad Ball already?
It is a road game, meaning a favorable whistle is unlikely, against an Okie Baller team that we no longer matchup with very well, because of injuries and suspensions.
We just shot 0-fer from trey, so we are sure to come out with trey guns blazing, right?
No, I believe we will try five minutes of BAD BALL first.
I believe we will wait a bit to explore trey balling.
The real question is: what will Self decide to take away from OU?
This I cannot say yet.
But it is important to go down and beat OU with BAD BALL without Perry.
Doing this would be the biggest confidence boost of all.
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“But it is important to go down and beat OU with BAD BALL without Perry.”
I agree!
Our strategy is:
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Shoot BAD BALL from trey - We still need to dog the trey. Shoot it, but make sure it stumbles. Bring Brannen in and out all game. Tell him to shoot the trey, but don’t run any perimeter offense and make him develop his own shot, like off the dribble. That will guarantee he goes something like 0-6. Tell Wayne to shoot a few treys when he is heavily guarded. Just tell him to elevate over the top. And sometimes Frank throw up a 38-footer with 2 seconds left on the shot clock.
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Let OU push out a lead - Don’t panic because we are expecting the OU lead through 3/4s of the game. But make them earn it. They get a lead because our offense totally sucks, not because their offense is running well (this is the key). Just don’t let them get ahead by more than 20 with 10 minutes left in the game.
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Scrutinize all our guys - Through the 30 minutes of BAD BALL Self needs to pull out every guy at least 10 times and bark at them while they take a seat at the end of the bench. Surely he can find problems with all our guys… like… low hustle.
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Flip at the 10-minute mark - With 10 minutes left in the game, call timeout. Self needs to bark out the Pavlovian hypnosis trigger word which activates our troops to suddenly go out there and kick some butt. Feed the ball to Jamari, Hunter or Landen and have them drive it to the hole. Hopefully Kelly can drive it, too, if he hasn’t fouled out. Maybe even Wayne drive, but this time, pull up for the mid range shot.
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Hit our foul shots - Make sure we are prepared to shoot a lot of free throws this game.
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@drgnslayr heart pounder, again?
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Not this time because we know what is coming. Kick back and enjoy watching all those Okies get hustled by another Okie.
If anything, take a page out of the Riverboat Gambler and call your bookie at the 1o-minute mark of the second half and make him give you fantastic odds on a comeback.
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@jaybate-1.0 Agreed. But also, our guys have to be rested and healed up a bit before Madness time. Maybe Coach tosses the coin on this game and saves to goods for later this month?
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@Crimsonorblue22 I’m with you! Was hoping Self would rest Mason & Selden for the March run, and walk away from OU and B12 - so I can give my heart some rest. But competitive Self & players are likely to go for OU’s throat as JB predicts. Oh, no ~ Watching them play will give me white hair!
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Coach Self could play the starters for just a little bit and then play the backups the bulk of the time. I am sure the Conference would likely have an issue with it and OU would feel slighted as well.
