CONGRATS TO JEROD HASSE AND UAB
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The tree keeps growing strong. I still think that team would have won the crown that year had he not been wearing a cast while still playing.
Mr. Floor Burn.
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The Star had us matched up with them in a 2 vs. 15 seeding.
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@wrwlumpy Cool! I totally forgot that he was coaching there! Awesome.
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Someone can do better research, and correct me if I’m wrong, but how many tourney teams this year will have coaches with KU ties? Self, Brown, Williams, Turgeon, Haase?
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@hawkmoon2020 cal? Choke choke? Jankovitch(sp)
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@Crimsonorblue22 I was going to say Manning, but then remembered he didnt quite make it.
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Congrats Mr. Floor burns.
He played for one of my all time favorite KU teams-well up until the Arizona game.
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Thx for sharing this.
Haase could turn out to be Roy’s one potential long term influence on college basketball coaching, if he keeps getting a few breaks, and lands with the right shoe brand.
I have never understood why Roy’s assistants have had so little success in college ball. Roy is a terrific coach, but don’t tell anyone I said that until he retires and quits recruiting against us. I thought Steve Robinson would be a great one. It would be nice if Vaughn would come back and carry on his legacy in college. If Vaughn could land with a non elite major as a head coach (as Danny Manning has done), I suspect Vaughn could be the next in line to replace Roy. But Jacque’s got to get somewhere where he can build a winning resume, first. I understand board rats sentimental hopes that he comes to KU as an assistant, but that would be stupid for him to do after being an NBA head coach. He needs to land with a non-elite major, and turn it around into a winner the next five years and then be ready when Roy exits, or Bill exits. Its the only way he will get serious consideration at an elite program.
But back to Haase, whom I have always been fond of, too. Haase has the bonafides to step up to a non elite major very soon. It would be really great for him to take an Illinois over and jump, but I think Haase should carefully study Self’s career. Follow Okie Ballers if he can. Self following Kruger at Illinois was the smartest move BillSelf ever made. KU was a no brainer, because he was ready. But that Illinois move is what catapulted his career into being an irresistible hire for an elite major.
Kruger had built a strong foundation at Illinois. All Self had to do was keep the recruiter and add a few pieces.
By contrast, going to Illinois now would be a bad move for Vaughn today, because Groce has not created much of a foundation.
It is okay to rebuild a program from scratch once, but once you prove that ability once, always pick a high foundation next to prove you are adept at building the structure, as Self proved at Tulsa, and the super structure as Self added at Illinois.
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Groce got the job at Illinois by virtue of one good run to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA with Ohio University; he went to the NIT last year and is headed there this year as well. A flash in the pan. Next is Kevin Ollie, he won the NCAA Title with Jim Calhoun’s players last season and he did not even make it to the Tournament this year…another one hit wonder?
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Copy and paste on Groce.
Not sure what to make of Ollie yet, except that guys that can win a ring, even with somebody else’s players, know how to bench coach.
But coaching, as you and others have rightfully pointed out, involves so many other things than just bench coaching. It hardly seems fair to expect Kevin Ollie to have mastered all the long list of skills a top coach needs after only one season as a head coach at any level.
For example, the access to top players is shifting fast right now.
The rules have apparently changed recently, even if we cannot all agree on what the rules changes have been.
Something changed.
The great concentrations of OAD/TAD talent at fewer schools for short periods of time has lead to more programs having to figure out how to adapt with less, at least until they can figure out how to join the haves at the new level. Self and Pitino and Donovan and Izzo seem to have gotten shoved down a tier. Maybe Calhoun would have gotten caught in this shift and perhaps Ollie is now. Hard to say yet.
There have always been discrepancies in talent, but the concentrations that emerged at UK and Duke this season appear conspicuously unprecendented at least over the last 3 decades. For this fact, I am inclined to view randomness as a probable trigger of this phenomenon. If it were just a coincidence of a coach with charisma (Cal), or a coach’s longevity (Coach K), triggering a 10 draft choice roster, then over a period of 30 years, we should have seen this sort of anomaly occur before. I am ignoring Wooden’s concentration of talent 45 years ago, because so many argue that that had largely to do with Sam Gilbert buying players, and I am trying to leave that sort of hypothesizing to the authorities. I am just examining legal, or random possibilities. Big Shoe and Big Agency were not significant forces in college basketball 45 years ago. They are now, so they can be viewed as possible drivers. But they have been forces for some time, so why did they trigger the phenomenon now? Something did. Three things stand out a bit as points for inquiry. adidas has evidenced a strong desire to expand its presence in college and pro basketball apparel marketing. And Pitino has talked about agents and agent runners shaping talent distributions to some degree in an ill-defined way. And some have reputedly remarked on some willingness of in-state AAU coaches to steer talent away from Self, in a way vaguely reminiscent of that reputed to have occurred with Norm Roberts over his 8 or so years at St. John’s. But these are only scattered points for possible inquiry into possible explanation of the phenomenon, and not any where near sufficient to explain the phenomenon, even if confirmed. The most one can speculate is that it appears we are looking at various tips of a possibly legal ice berg. By this I mean actually legal; i.e., a constellation of legal drivers that have formed a large iceberg of dynamics only partially visible to the laymen viewing remotely, as we all are and do. To reiterate, I am not interested in exploring for any potentially illegal aspects; that would be the authorities’ jobs. I am just interested in keeping the discourse alive and searching.
We have all spent a lot of time commenting on possible causes of the redistribution of talent, but much less time commenting on the effects on the programs not getting the 9-10 OAD/TAD rosters.
Asymmetries of distribution of anything always trigger adaptations by those experiencing the declining share of distribution.
In a desert, if you can’t bring thirsting Los Angeles in a drought to the water, to borrow from Robert Towne’s Chinatown script, you adapt and bring the water to Los Angeles.
If the distribution of oil and gas are too heavily concentrated in the Middle East to avoid market shocks, and meddling of Mid East leaders standing on those reserves, you open up fields in East Africa and North America, and off the coast of Brazil, and eye ball the long denied oil rich waters off Korea, while at the same time knocking over the Middle East leaders standing on those reserves and put in some new lackeys. It also doesn’t hurt that doing so denies the Eurasian center point to ancienne nouveau riche like the Russian-India-China alliance either.
If USA has the high, middle and low frontiers over Iraq covered with high tech bang bang, when USA invades, then Iraqi terrorists (regardless of who may be paying them to do it and what kinds of costumes they may put on to pretend to be whoever they are pretending to be) resort to low tech IEDs, and for decades on end it appears.
Consequences, baby! Down stream turbulence from sticking the stick in the river. At times infinite variation within limits. Maybe even harboring some strange tendencies. But also some times just some completely unforeseen consequences that make everyone scratch their heads.
Viva complexity!
I suppose that is what we are witnessing with Self and Pitino at the first tier segmentation beyond the UK and Duke sticks stuck in the river of recruiting. Ah, what a cascade Eddie Lorenz started that was overlooked so long. Why doesn’t anyone ever comment that Eddie created his own butterfly effect? Scalar self similarity with a hint of irony? Or maybe they have and I missed it.
Anyway, at the next tier segmentation, butter flies, in rare cases, “flying” down hill, like certain less beautiful stuff, we have Fred trying some innovations the last few years sans even the piddling number of OADs Bill has, and now even copying BAD BALL from Self late this season, while Huggie goes another direction in cracked tooth country with pressing combined with a form of Bad Ball.
Oh, my! says George Takei (mispronounced).
No way! says George Takei (pronounced).
But I digress with George’s career resurgence as a metaphorical down stream effect of the short lived butterfly of Star Trek.
Another interesting thing of late was called to my admittedly challenged attention by @HighEliteMajor. If I recall correctly, HEM said: Coach K, who started the season with a reputed 9 OAD/TAD roster, but who has for reasons I do not adequately grasp, struggled some along the way (because I do not follow Dook closely enough), has adapted a 2-2-1 three quarter court zone press (note: conceptually near and dear to HEM’s and my hearts) to add to his sharply increased reliance on three point shooting. Coach K has relied heavily on trey balling a few times over the last 15 years, when he had the shooters, but that 2-2-1 seems quite unusual for him. Possibly a manifestation of downstream turbulence?
Perhaps some of Coach K’s reputedly deep roster has fallen short of expectations, say, maybe as Cliff Alexander has, and so he finds himself in effect a few players shy of UK’s young load performing adequately in a weak conference, and so is coming up with a tactic that he thinks will help him compensate for UK’s unique combination of depth AND key players with significant experience; that Coach K’s less long roster lacks at cornerstone spots!
My point here is simply that whatever the degree of fairness in the rules changes (formal, informal, or random) altering talent distributions asymmetrically, we are quickly witnessing counter strategies and tactics emerging at an accelerating rate.
What if we enter an adaptation runaway that turns around and bites the talent stacking on the butt, as unforeseen consequence?
I know, chaos and complexity theories are already so last century, but…
Maybe some old knowledge in this case can give us a little edge in speccing on what might lie below the water line.
Rock Chalk!!!
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@jaybate-1.0 Fascinating is the basketball tree of life. By the time Self hangs it up for KU, Manning, Haase and Vaughn could all be serious contenders for the job. Or at UNC with Roy’s replacement.
