Jan 18 Post Game Roundup: KU vs OSU
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Great discussion. As DinarHawk points out, we knew they would press, but we didnt execute as well as we could have.
One point to consider, especially if we think that every opponent should press us since we are bad at it, as shown in various games (especially at FL), is that “pressing defense” may not be in our opponents arsenals. To do it right, must practice it, or else opponent will break it quickly and expose you. I think for most non-pressing teams (like KU also is), using a press defense is a “junk” or gimmick defense.
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Monday Night Baylor will be hungry for a victory. They will not eat with us. Don’t you think Wiggs goes for 24-10-8. Ellis gets back to basics, rebounds!
On the times in the game that Black and Traylor are in , I just sit and smile at how strong is our bench. For one am becoming more and more of a Selden fan, give him the green light, he will be our Shady for this year Final Four, secret but not secret if that makes sense.
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@eleehehe PHOF photo. I LOVED it. Even my wife KSU gal laughed out load.
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@Blown Good to know you are not bad luck!
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@DinarHawk: Self expected pressing but it’s clear Ford set him up with the junk presses in the first half, then totally fooled him with the 2-2-1 second half. The first half junk presses were some of the most cockeyed I ever saw. And meant to give Self and staff the wrong press to talk about at Hal time; then WHAM! Open in a well drilled 2-2-1 and sustain till KU cracked from trying to run a press break technique for the wrong press. Ford was brilliant. No way was Self copping to getting tricked. He just smoothed it over it saying with out specificity that they knew they would press. Each zone requires guys to start in different spots and break to different seams to break it. You are trying to get to the seams, then break guys to the next open space based on where the zone will deform next. 1-2-1-1 is a game of drAwing point and wing to the ball and passing behind the wing and quickly pivoting to breakers down the sideline before the second one can block the passing Lane. It unfolds down the sideline. KU HAD PREPPED FOR THAT AND DID OK THE FIRST HALF. The 2-2-1 surprised them and they never once got the ball into hole between the 2-2, so they never deformed the zone so and got to hit breaks at the point of deformation on the back two so the anchor never had to commit away from the iron so no easy baskets were had. Passing over the top of a 2-2-1 is roulette. Bounce passes are the coin of the realm. Self got snookered.
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@HighEliteMajor Ok. Did we employ one strategy against the press? Sure. But you’re trying to set up a false dilemma here. You don’t need more than one strategy to break a press any more than you need separate toasters for white and wheat bread, you just need to be able to execute the strategy. That isn’t to say there’s no room for variation, but that’s tactics, not strategy. I don’t disagree with your break down of the course of events as it’s described. It’s the same stuff I was going over. But what you’re identifying as passivity is actually naivete. You identify where OSU was successful with the press, but neglect to mention specifically why.
The steals happened when guys made mistakes. Failure to execute isn’t the same thing as failure to plan, nor the same thing as failure of strategy. When Tharpe picks up the ball before he’s drawn trap defenders, then gets picked, it’s not because the strategy failed. He picked up the ball too soon. That’s not part of the strategy. The other guys either didn’t see this or didn’t react in time and there’s a TO. Selden throwing the sideline pass to Embiid when he isn’t looking is more on Embiid than Selden and again, not part of the strategy. Selden was impatient. Embiid was in the right general area, but didn’t have his head up. Wigs not recognizing and attacking into defenders with numbers after breaking the press is a classic freshman mistake and not part of the strategy. Again, patience, recognition. Those are things he’s struggled with throughout the year, and he was especially bad about in this game.
Experience makes the difference here. These issues go away as players get more reps. You also mention the PGs not attacking with the drive, but that’s not true. There were a couple of times where Mason or Tharpe made a great drive over the half court line only to find out that their outlet(s) didn’t advance with them and they wound up in a bad situation until a cutter could recognize and save the play. That’s execution. And it’s clear that lob passing back and forth in the back court wasn’t the ONLY thing being done. In fact, Selden doesn’t often throw lobs. He line drives. The rainbow passes tend to originate with Tharpe and Mason and are largely a product of practicality more so than anything else. At 5’10" or 5’11" each, they’re the shortest guys on the court. If they’re going to pass over a trap set by 6’2" and 6’3"+ guards, that’s how they have to throw. And lob passing itself isn’t inherently passive either. Forcing the defense to shift is aggressive. Driving the ball towards the trap, springing it, then passing out, even lob passing, is part of a strategy. It’s attacking.
Mixing up the general strategy (passing over the press), however, is irrelevant. When KU executed, they were successful as evidenced by the times they were able to get easy buckets, and even the times they simply set up and ran the half court offense. It isn’t merely luck. It’s what’s supposed to happen. So no, I can’t swallow any notion that this is generally poor strategy on Self’s part unless you can come up with something more convincing. Now, that’s not to say I’m not open to some of your criticism. Particularly, I strongly agree with #6. The easiest way to break a press is to get the ball moving before the D can get set up and KU was entirely too lax with getting the ball inbound when they should have known the press was coming. On #5, I’m not sure this team has the length to skip pass, but it’s doable. #4 is irrelevant if you simply execute with the 2 guard front. Draw a trap and there’s always someone open. That’s about as fundamental as it gets. #3 I flat out dispute as true, and I likewise would put a Benjamin down that if you call into Hawktalk this week and ask if Tharpe and Mason have the green light to drive against the press, Self would give you a resounding yes and tell you that’s something that they work on.
As for the first two (don’t know why I went reverse order, but here we are), these would be nice wrinkles to add. In fact, I’d even add to #1 that it could be advantageous to put Embiid in the 3 position of the press break especially when Wigs is in, but I have a different argument for you altogether for these. I’ve talked a lot about lack of experience, but really that phrase means two things. KU is the 5th youngest team in the country so it’s fair to say, they don’t have a lot of experience playing at the college level. Even Tharpe, the most veteran guy on the team, averaged sub 20 minutes per game in the year prior. So yeah, guys are getting thrown into a lot of situations that are unfamiliar. But you’re incredulous, and rightly so, that these kids wouldn’t be familiar with attacking a 2-2-1 press. Given that most of them (save Embiid and Traylor) have been playing competitive ball for more than half their lives, I’d be a fool to disagree with that assessment. Still, as a team, they’ve only been playing together a couple of months and they still make mistakes that show exactly that. The very first TO Selden had in the 2nd half wasn’t because of the press. It was the very first possession, in fact, where Perry was posted with great position, Selden had the passing angle, recognized, and fired the ball to Perry. It’s difficult to tell from the camera angle if Selden threw the ball out of reach or if Ellis didn’t go after it quickly enough, but what should have been as easy a finish at the rim as you can get became a horrible mistake. Now I doubt you’d try to argue to me that posting and feeding with a lead pass from the wing is bad or passive strategy, but this is essentially what you’re telling me about Self’s press break and again, I’m forced to disagree without a more compelling argument.
I’ve digressed quite a bit here, so back to my broader point. These guys haven’t played together a ton and likewise, Self hasn’t had a ton of time to cram everything in. Admittedly, our press break strategy is the simplest and most straightforward implementation of a press break you can get, but I still disagree that it’s in any way passive. It would be nice to add these wrinkles (points 1 and 2), but, as we’ve seen, the guys still haven’t mastered the basic implementation of the strategy (draw the trap, reverse the ball, look for easy outlets, repeat), so I’m not sure how practical it is to try and add screening and cutting on to the existing plan unless and until they look comfortable in the first place. The lack of execution that I’ve been stressing doesn’t exist because these kids haven’t seen this stuff before. It doesn’t exist because they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. It exists because they haven’t run this stuff together so much that it’s become second nature. Now, you can argue that that’s what practice is for, but there’s two problems there: practice is no substitute for game time, and there’s an opportunity cost for focusing on one area over another. Would you rather work shoring up our 3pt shooting (we’re averaging 40% now in Big 12 play) or work on the press break? What about defensive rotations that were so loose through the nonconf schedule? You’ve seen the same improvement I have there, haven’t you? So while I don’t disagree that he press break is lagging, I think that’s a matter of necessity more than anything else. There simply isn’t enough time in the year to cover all of the warts on a team. That’s why freshmen (as in multiple) led title teams have been the exception (2012), not the rule (pretty much the rest of NCAA history). So will we likely see more of the press as conf play continues? Sure, but that’s to our benefit, not our detriment. Even if we pick up a loss or two because of it, getting the reps will make the team better at execution, and those passive mistakes that are making your head ache now will be fewer and further between. Trust.
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@DinarHawk Don’t let that point convince you. Self said that prior to the SDSU game that they knew SDSU would trap the post. And he then admitted on Hawk Talk that they should have prepared better for that.
@konkeyDong We’ll just have to agree to disagree here. You seem to think mixing up strategy is “irrelevant.” I cannot disagree more. Defenses adjust to what they see. Variations keep them a step slow.
You seem to think that that the guys not executing has little to do with proper preparation. I’m curious as to how you explain the points Self has admitted to regarding not preparing? And don’t you think it’s reasonable that our guys, with their relative inexperience at the D-1 level, were under- prepared?
And I don’t “trust.” I watched us lose to Michigan when our guys were not instructed to foul. I hear coach Self yesterday say that we haven’t worked on fouling in such a situation.
I’ve coached a lot of basketball, and this isn’t rocket science. Press break needs to be aggressive, and varied. Quite frankly, the bigger guys are, the easier it is to break because they can pass the ball further. We did the same thing, and did it poorly. As a result, our 17 point lead turned to 5. In the tourney, that spells disaster – see Michigan.
Thanks for the excellent discussion.
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@Wishawk you’re a good man, wish.
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why are my anxiety valleys and peaks so much less when I watch the game in person, versus watching it on television and enduring the commercial breaks?
@Blown Because you were in the Cathedral.
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@Blown: you experience less anxiety in AFH than on the Tube for the following reasons:
a) TV is designed to condition you with paradox, then pain and pleasure stimuli, followed by a consume suggestion, whereas AFH, while an environment now highly designed to make you contribute to fan noise is not designed to paradox you, and deliver you pain and pleasure stimuli with a consume suggestion;
b) you are participating in and editing your experience, rather than having it parsed up and fed to you in bytes beyond your control;
c) you are renewed by renewing a connection with an aspect of your own legacy that you recall fondly–direct, bodily participation in the living myth of KU basketball (i.e., the pilgrimage effect); and
d) rekindling of the long dormant mating search; i.e., the visceral search for flesh and blood, imperfect, but truly nubile babes and occassionally finely kept women of experience populated in unusually high densities that you could actually chat up if the spirit moved you, if you were to follow them out to the concourse at half time;
There are other reasons, but they pale in comparison.
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@jaybate 1.0 Jaybate, I love your new icon (I think that’s the right term). Please explain it. Is it a glass of champagne to toast KU Buckets, or the Holy Grail of an NCAA Championship, perhaps? It is much easier for me to click on “Users” and find your recent posts. I probably could do that more easily by become a “Follower” but I haven’t figured that one out yet.
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@eleehehe oh man that was priceless!
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@HighEliteMajor @Konkeydong, You guys waxing basketball philosophic and discussing rules and strategy is very informative for us mere learners of the game. I love it, even though I don’t quite understand half of it yet. But, I’m slowly starting to pick up more and more between you guys and Jaybate.
I would like to make a point of my own here, just a simple observation. As similar as that game was to the infamous Michigan game last year, We Won. We won with a young and still a bit green inside team. Granted it was on our home court and not a neutral Tourney site. Last years mega experienced yet not quite so talented and athletic team would have lost this game also, I think. EJ would have turned it over a dozen times instead of the 6 that Tharpe had. Which so far this year has been a rarity for him. We haven’t had a PG with this good of asst/to ratio since Russ, Chalmers, Collins.
I absolutely trust our boys to learn from this and improve upon it. If they don’t, we might as well call for Bill’s resignation. Remember, this is a marathon. We don’t have to win out from here, Id prefer not to in fact. I hope during the rest of our conference, we see the2 2 1 press a few more times so our guys can get comfortable with breaking it down, and also so that I can get to know what I am looking at when it happens. Id bet money that Okie state runs it again when we play them on March 1. I hope we can go there and stuff it down their throats by then.
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First of all… I have often thought that some posters are too sensitive about comments / opinions made by the TV commentators and just can’t handle the truth. I try to be as objective as I can, but I think Gottlieb was obvious in his bias against KU and it came off as unprofessional. What did Embiid do to earn the T? Just his language? I couldn’t tell from the TV coverage.
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@wissoxfan83 Thanks buddy. Still trying to figure out exactly how this site works, but can’t beat the familiar faces!
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@icthawkfan316 you’re back! Love it. Post, post, post.
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@tubertigertank, it is rare when I get a warm and friendly post from an alias that ties potatoes (tubers), tigers (MU potential) and heavy WWII German armor (tiger tank) together.:-)
I will try to answer your question. Other folks can skip this response, since I’ve told it before a few times over the years. I used to use a photo for an avatar. HEM recently dredged one up off the internet either identical, or very much like it, thinking I seemed digitally misaligned without it.
It was reputedly from Lucas/Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie. It was reputedly that movie’s version of the The Holy Grail that Indie and his father found at the end of the movie. It was tarnished and blood stained. I liked that. I picked it many years ago as a symbol of KU being the place that the true spirit of the game of college basketball–played the right way, coached the right way, recruited the right way–was being preserved and protected. The idea was to remind myself and others that the Jayhawk faithful ought to act as the guardians of college basketball the way the knight of grail legend stands guard dutifully and humbly, in an out of the way place protecting the actual holy grail of legend. It occurred to me to pick that image, because it seemed a time when the game was getting ever rougher, corrupt recruiting seemed to be on the rise, TV and gaming seemed to be wagging the dog of basketball, and all manner of business dynamics were stressing the deep virtues of game IMHO.
As I often do, I tried to be somewhat playful with the idea at times. At one point I wrote about the basketball grail being located in a tomb under the center jump circle under Naismith Court and under Allen Field House. I wrote about hoping that one of my favorite posters, someone with the alias of 100, an alias that had reputedly died after years of posting and passing on his rare insights about the early days of basketball at KU, and about the game today, had taken over guarding the grail under center court. I wrote that I hoped when I finally die to get a chance to guard the grail with 100. And probably other things. So that explains how I came to be associated with what I call a “basketball grail” for an avatar, or what you called an icon.
Being that I am a rather strange combination of liking not to change things like an avatar for years at a time, plus a person that then likes to change for intuitive reasons, some time in the last year, or so, there was a situation at a prior site where in the avatars seemed to disappear for a time. This caused me to think about a new avatar. I like to paint with both analog and digitally, and so I cobbled up an impression of a grail that I liked and, if I recall correctly, used it briefly. Then I decided to step away from posting for quite awhile for a constellation of personal reasons, not the least having been health, and so I promptly misplaced both previous avatars. For awhile after returning to posting here at KUBuckets, I did not use an avatar. But then HEM, a self confessed button pusher (i.e., a coach :-)), posed a jpeg very similar to the old grail I used to use, and I suddenly felt like a party pooper not using an avatar. So: I suddenly felt like doing something fresh for reasons that always elude me, because I know on many levels that photo HEM snagged for me off the net better conveys my intentions. But as I get older, and the finiteness of life becomes more real, I am more inclined to do something original than something good.
So: I dashed off the avatar you have remarked on and there you have it. It is a golden goblet, compressed in a reference to the continuing top down pressures on the game. Alas, it is rather closer to a martini glass than the traditional glass, though that was not an intended allusion, though I confess it might have been on a subconscious level.
It is a bright yellow-gold to be both golden like the grail legend and yellow like the Jayhawk’s beak. It brims with crimson blood instead of being empty, as is the religious grail for my grail signifies not the holy spirit (which I believe in and mean no disrespect to) but rather the blood, sweat and sacrifice that have gone into making KU basketball great and keeping it great. The crimson blood also is meant to suggest that guarding the basketball grail is not always fun and trendy. Sometimes one is perceived as being hopelessly naive and behind the times, the way sinners and the secular scoff at the old knight that wastes his life away guarding what seems to them an empty goblet. And the blood spills over a bit to remind that no guardians can be perfect in their vigilance. That they can make mistakes and must be ready to admit error and get better whenever needed. The blue background of course is the KU blue of imagination. So:there you have the probably tedious story of jaybate’s avatar.
Rock Chalk!
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@ParisHawk Thanks for making me feel welcome. I hibernate during much of the off-season, then came back to kusports.com and it took me awhile to figure out where everyone was, then I still resisted and held out over there for awhile, but it’s just not the same without the old gang! Good to see you around here as well my friend.
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@icthawkfan316 We lack the steady trickle of lurkers here that lead to a lot of beat the gopher workouts. We also have slow periods, but also no imbecility. I am rather less of presence here, and something of a Johnny Come Lately due to some health issues, so slayr and HEM carry the mail most of the time. Approx and bskeet make the site run. A lot of good aliases contribute in smaller bytes and some that used to write less are writing more. Community size ramped quickly to 200 and then grew slowly to a current 266. No one beats up on anyone here. Fight club posting is planet. Very collegial. Look forward to reading your stuff.
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@jaybate 1.0 @HighEliteMajor @drgnslayr
Jaybate - that all sounds great. I guess the only thing that is giving me trouble navigating is that the posting seems to be all over the place. On kusports.com, we all usually gravitated towards the daily Bedore article. That was the main forum. For example, I posted something today thinking I would get responses (I posed a question to posters), but I think the thread went stale and the majority of the conversation went elsewhere. I do like the notifications here, and being able to follow our favorites.
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What browser are you using? I have all kinds of issues with the latest MS IE. I now keep KU Buckets open in Firefox and seems to work a lot better.
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@icthawkfan316 Approx and skeet have been trying some different ways of aggregating links to news stories and links to threads started by our members. Your post may have gotten lost in that shuffle. I may have had one get lost too. They are trying to find a method of aggregation that keeps the manual load off them, since their roles are entirely voluntary, and something that keeps the home page as clean and quick to access as possible. The home page was getting clogged with looooooooog lists of posts, so, most recently, he and skeet decided to try gathering headlines in one clump, and thread starting posts by users in another clump day by day.
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Headlines (each day’s date): this link is where approx, skeet and we aliases place links to off-site news stories thought to be of interest (e.g., KUSports.com, CJOnline, KC and Wichita papers, and occasionally links to recruiting sites and national portals like ESPN);
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Our Daily Threads (each day’s date): this link lists threads community members start.
I usually check the headlines and daily bread links once or twice a day, and the rest of the time just go straight to the RECENT link on the top menu. I am also slowly staring to use the UNREAD link on the top menu a bit more.
We are making this thing up as we go. Try to remember that where as the commercial sites are using full time staff to “design” and create as much page information density as possible, we are doing the opposite. We are always trying to find elegant, low site maintenance ways to keep Approx and skeet as uninvolved as possible, within the constraint of the node bb/github open source community platform. And we are trying to follow the Google aesthetic model (not their surveillance model) that the less clutter the better. Hence the white background and limited palate of colors and graphics. Nested commentary is not supported by the folks at node bb/github without extra support, so that is why nested comments as you are used to on KUSports.com does not appear. UNREAD links is the work around. You can drag and drop an image into the commentary window with ease, however. Elegance is always a tug of war between over simplification and dullness vs. over complexity and tedium. As usual, others know more than I. I frankly am still learning it a bit.
My guess is your post got swept into a category
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@jaybate 1.0 Thanks for the thought-provoking answer on your avatar. It means so much more with the creator’s explanation.
“Tuber” (I tend to get a spare tire around my waist), “Tiger,” and “Tank” have been nicknames my brothers and friends have given me in the past. Over the past 5 years the tube has been deflated quite a bit, thankfully.
“Tiger” has nothing to do with those nasty black/yellow polecats to the East. I still despise them, but not as intensely as when they regularly got so close to our noses several times a year.
I’ve been a Jayhawk fan since I moved to KC in 1982. My daughter got her undergraduate degree and Masters in international business from KU about 13 years ago. She was a national merit finalist and got a free ride all the way–actually made money! She has a wonderful career going in the US State Dept.
I love this board, but find I have to check a few more places to make sure I’m not missing great information from favorite posters.
My greatest sorrow these days is KU Athletic Director’s decision to deprive me and my Jayhawk fan wife from watching 6 games a year on my new big screen TV. I’ve resorted to hitting the bars (which she can’t do because of health issues). I talked to a Surewest customer service rep yesterday who said he doesn’t think Surewest will be able to carry all games next year either.
I share your highest respect for HCBS. I told my wife KU ought to hire Bill Self long before anyone ever mentioned his name as a candidate for the job.
Keep up the great posts. You amaze me with your knowledge of basketball, the military, engineering, design, and so many other subjects. If it wasn’t so overused, I’d call you a true Renaissance man.
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@jaybate 1.0 @approxinfinity
Thank you both for explaining some things to me. I hope in my confusion I didn’t come off as complaining. Furthest thing from it. I think the site is an awesome idea and I applaud those that are making it happen on their own time.
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I share you feelings about our Athletic Director. Last time I talked to Surewest, now called Consolidated Communications, they indicated that they were in talks with Metro Sports, but the clear implication was that since they got the KU programming, the cost had gone up considerably making it almost prohibitively expensive for the other carriers, and clearly hoping that complaints from thousands a of fans would force other providers to carry Metro Sports.
Unlike the Adidas contract that pays a boat load of money, provides equipment to all school teams, and does not require fans to buy or wear Adidas gear in order to watch games, the Metro Sports contract does not pay any money to KU Athletics but provides sports programming “valued” at $2M, and in the process, has left a huge number of Jayhawk fan unable to watch many basketball and football games, so a dozen people around the country can watch the women’s rowing team?
Some day, when all the real details of this arrangement are revealed, people are going to lose their jobs.
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@jaybate 1.0 thanks for the explanation of the Grail. That was a good read. (Plus, my son and I are huge fans of that Indy movie.)
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@tubertigertank, and thank you for explaining your very entertaining alias. Every man goes through a tube phase. Bully for you for shrinking yours! You probably can’t get any sleep at all because of how handsome you are to your beloved.
And I respect you so much for getting your daughter through school and into the State Dept. She must lead a fascinating life serving our country. It is an awesomely positive reflection on the work you put in for her.
The situation with the AD and the TV contract is frustrating. The only justification for it is that KU probably has some regulatory obligations to the minor sports that included getting them some broadcast time. Paying cash to broadcast them might have been prohibitively expensive. Also, Zenger perhaps felt the need to pinch pennies after KU had to go to the alumni trough to shed Gill, then hire Weis, then raise cash to renovate the football stadium AND build the new apartment building for the athletes. It could have been as simple as he just did not want to go to the alumni AGAIN with so many other bigger projects requiring bigger funding and donations. Zenger has spent big to restructure Self’s contract again, too. So maybe Sheahon had to look for a way to meet the possible regulatory obligation to the minor sports that did not mean shelling out a bunch of cash. He looked around the shelf and knew he couldn’t get anything in trade for KU football, and the only thing he had to trade was some KU broadcasts. Maybe he figured people would stream the blacked out basketball games online.
But if Zenger did it just to cut a corner, when he didn’t need to, well, then IMHO he made a bad choice. There are other ways to grow the minor sports. Go to the alumni of the minor sports and get them to make contributions.
Hard to say until more scoop on cui bono surfaces, I reckon.
