Dec 26 Headlines: Bill Self says Tyler no snitch, but...
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####KUSports: Bill Self says Tyler no snitch, but…####
“There are advantages of having your son on the team,” Self added. “I do not expect Tyler to tell me anything going on with the guys. He cannot betray the locker room. What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room, or on the court. Same with Niko. They all handle that very well.
####KUSports: Top 10 gifts given to KU fans in 2013####
The lights came on around Thanksgiving (if not sooner) and will stay up for another couple of weeks, but after the usual build-up and anticipation, Christmas has come and gone.
Just like that, weeks worth of picking, purchasing and wrapping presents is now a thing of the past – at least for another 300-plus days
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“It’s one of the bad rules we have,” Self said. “If a kid is going to transfer, he should sit. Everybody sits across the board. Even in Tarik’s situation, he graduates in three years. If you want to go somewhere else and play, do so and allow the red-shirt (season) to happen. If you want to work on your masters, you get two years, which ensures the masters. I wish there was more an academic component to it.
I would take it one step further than Bill. If a coach leaves his school while still under contract he must sit out a year also. I don’t know why a student athlete should be punished for switching schools when the school can drop the scholarship at any time with no consequences. A coach can change schools with no transgressions following him i.e. Cal.
So why not hold the coaches to the same standards as the kids. They both have contracts and the coaches contract is worth considerably more than the students free ride. Why is the student the only one who is made to hold up his end of the contract?
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Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins Hangs out Backstage with Kanye West
Wiggins hangs out with Kanye West while home over the holidays.
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Jayhawks Still Big 12 Favorites Despite Slow Start
By R. Cory Smith (Bleacher Report) (Analyst) on December 23, 2013
The Kansas Jayhawks started the season with hopes of contending for another national championship during the Bill Self era. But after a few early season hiccups, the Jayhawks have looked like a team that is struggling to find its identity through the first 11 games.
Those early bumps in the road for elite teams like Kansas are just that and typically nothing more. With just two games remaining before starting the Big 12 slate against an Oklahoma team that has lost just one game all season to Michigan State, here are the ways Kansas can still turn the season around and win the Big 12 title for the 12th year in a row.
Getting Talent to Work Together
Kansas has the talent to win a Big 12 title. It also has the talent to win a national championship. But if said talent doesn’t mesh, winning at the highest level is next to impossible.
What Bill Self has done at Kansas is remarkable, but even he admitted that his teams for whatever reason tend to improve after December, according to Matt Tait of KUSports.com:
“We’ve always gotten better over Christmas. Last year was the one year we didn’t.”
In their last two wins, the Jayhawks have appeared to spread the ball around more and have scored more than 80 points against both Georgetown and New Mexico as a result. Against Georgetown, Kansas had four players—Joel Embiid, Andrew Wiggins, Naadir Tharpe and Tarik Black—post 10 or more points.
Even with Perry Ellis suffering a bruised nerve in his neck, Kansas’ other prolific scorers were able to carry the team. In fact, Embiid’s standout performance had Jay Bilas talking all sorts of nonsense on Twitter about the freshman:
Jay Bilas
@JayBilasIf stock is being sold in Joel Embiid’s future, I want to buy some. That kid is ridonkulously talented. Dare I say, upside?! 4:55 PM - 21 Dec 2013
472 Retweets 410 favorites
But playing as a team means more than just spreading around the points, it also leads to teams playing better defense. Against Georgetown, Kansas held the Hoyas to a .407 shooting percentage and forced them to shoot just 4-of-15 from three-point range (.267).
With consistency at the point guard position with Naadir Tharpe returning to form—Self said he needs him to be “the quarterback” of the team in Tait’s article—the Jayhawks might be able to get back to playing Self’s style of basketball.
For Kansas to get back to its old ways, it will also need to find a way to stop teams on the road.
Reversing Road Woes
Kansas has played just two actual road games early in the season and has lost both. The first loss to Colorado was shocking, but the Buffaloes have proven early in the season to be formidable foes for any team. The second came just three days later against a Florida team that now ranks 13th in the nation.
Needless to say, those are acceptable losses for a young team early in the season. But in order to turn around their season, the Jayhawks will need to learn quickly how to get road wins.
Kansas starts its Big 12 schedule with two early road games against the aforementioned Sooners and an Iowa State team that is currently ranked 14th in the country. Following the loss to the Gators, Self spoke about what his team needed to do to improve on the road to Mark Long of the Associated Press:
“We made a couple of shots and played pretty well the first four or five minutes. But we were awful after that. … That was not a good team playing there at all, and when things started to go bad, we didn’t do anything to stop it. That was frustrating.”
For the Jayhawks to heed their coaches’ advice, they will need to learn to not give up on the road. One of the biggest tendencies for young players is to take plays off, which is something experienced teams feast on.
If Kansas continues to allow teams to take over games on the road, it will get the same results and could be looking up at teams like Oklahoma State and Baylor at the end of the season.
I think everyone on the boards has said most of the same things this article lays out.
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Regarding “road woes,” there is a simple solution. Our guys are so green, just tell them all are games are at home and they wouldn’t know the difference.
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@RockChalkinTexas Did you pull that from their actual website or is that some goofs blog?? “Kansas can still turn the season around and win the Big 12 title for the 12th year in a row.” I hope this guy isn’t a KU fan.
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Never mind. I answered my own question. It’s just some hack with an English degree from NC State that pretty much copies/pastes from other articles, twitter feeds, and youtube videos and then adds a joining sentence or two to make it all his own. He isn’t really reporting anything and just makes some condensed jumble of actual current and reporting articles. If he’s getting paid for this I need to put in my application. And I’ll sub contract the work to my 4th grade son…
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@Kip_McSmithers I know I saw the glaring error in the “12th year in a row”. It came from the Bleacher Report.
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@Kip_McSmithers Bleacher Report is trying to sell advertising. They write articles with provocative titles that aren’t worth a plug nickel for content.
