Diallo- First Impression



  • @Statmachine said:

    My problem with letting Traylor play and taking minutes from Cheick is that its quite possible Cheick falls out of the NBA lotto and makes it nearly impossible to recruit talented BIGS.

    Let’s not forget it was one game. The first game Diallo was available to play. It was a non conference at that.

    Why show your cards at this point of the season?

    Let Baylor and to some extent Kentucky guess what the line up will be, who will start who will play and how? Sometimes you just keep those things close to the vest as a coach.

    If Diallo plays 20-28 mins throughout conference play and can duplicate last nights play for that time frame he will be a lotto pick.

    If he fouls a lot and hurts his own minutes that’s not on Self or Traylor but I’m sure they will get the blame for it due to their love affair.



  • Did people see the first half last night with Traylor on the bench? Self praised Jamari for his energy because when he wasn’t in the game in the first half, the TEAM looked awful! I thought if anything this game proved why Jamari DOES deserve playing time. His rebounding has greatly improved this year and he is up to over 5 a game in about 19 minutes a game (That’s 10 over 40 minutes for those of you who like to do that).

    Hunter played big minutes in the first half and did what? Yes his second half was better after the team got rolling with Traylor on the court. Energy is something that can’t be overlooked but will rarely show up in a box score and Mickelson didn’t have it when he was given the reins. Hunter is a good player. Don’t get me wrong on that. He showed he can have a positive impact on the game with his length defensively. Plus he had easily the best straight up post move and 1 we’ve seen this year with his drop step spin to the basket. He has earned some minutes for sure. But can anyone say the team played well with him on the floor in the first half?



  • In the TraylorDebate, I’d simply reiterate my point from a few days ago: love his hustle and energy, and if we know Self, his main pleasure from Jamari were the 6 rbds. But the main point is Jamari is a narrow net positive. He cant have 2 or 3 turnovers, then his value is neutralized.

    Diallo, we see the immediate impact in 13 min, he gets 13pts. The biggest peril for Diallo is foul trouble. If he played another 2min, he may have fouled out.

    One thing we know about Diallo: when the stage is big, and even against top-tier competition such as in the McDAA game, he shines (actually being named the MVP of that all star “game”). The flip side, is that with actual in-season refereeing in real games, and against BigXII coaches and against savvy veteran players like Gathers, Spangler, McKay…it remains to be seen what an actual coach comes up with to slow down Diallo. But…we hope Diallo is much improved in a month. We will need him vs KY.

    Now honestly, these kids got to know from intense practice scrimmages: if you are a plateaued-talent senior like Lucas or Traylor, and you are getting dusted by high-talent frosh in practice–> then why on earth would you expect to keep your mpg? This happens across all sports, as most kids realized the Univ of KS wants W’s more than any allegiance to some senior-gets-the-mpg notion. My point is that IF Diallo is actually better than Lucas (yes) and Traylor (yes), then he rightly should get some of their mpg.



  • @Statmachine

    I highly doubt his stock will fall at all. Even if he was ineligible and went pro he still would have been drafted on potential alone.

    If your an NBA GM or scout and you saw that debut your excited about his future. The short jumper, the rim protection, the footwork on the made runner in the lane and foul, the hustle, the rebounding, the outlet passes. He’s got lots to work on but his talent will help him overcome a lot of weaknesses that people perceive him to have. With only Simmons looking like a standout big so far he’s clearly got a chance to go Top 10.



  • I know it was a weak opponent and might not even play out this way if CD leaves after this year, but how good will that lineup be, that Self ended the game with, next year (forgetting the mop up guys)? Frank, Graham, Vick, CD and Bragg looked like a future elite starting 5 at some point. A lot of length and athleticism w that unit. They could be very fun to watch next year if CD sticks around. Svi also fit in nicely w the younger guys. IMO, we should play the hell out of the younger, experimental units these next few games. We know what we get from the older guys, let’s see what the kids can develop into. We might need that length and athleticism in crunch time at some point this season.



  • His stock aint fallin. Everybody in America saw the 13pts in 13min. And that’s the “raw” version of Diallo.



  • @BeddieKU23 I noticed the LL wasn’t out here mostly because we didn’t have a slew of offensive penalties. I know Hunter had the one push off but it seems like LL has one or two every game and we give the ball back to the other team because of an unnecessary offensive foul.



  • I’d also like for Jayhawk Nation to recognize something about Self and KU bigs. Danny or no Danny, Self still gets bigmen. Bragg + Diallo. Cliff. Perry. All McDAAs. Then, as @HighEliteMajor so accurately describes them: the “insurance policy” guys like Lucas or Traylor–who I like to refer to as ‘developmental track’ guys, akin to Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun, etc. Then there are the 'tweeners like Morris Twins, TRob., who have talent and athleticism, but take a year or two to become reliable.

    Watch the current young bigs develop, no Danny M. Danny made great contributions, but I think most Jayhawk fans know good polished post moves when they see it, and my point is so does Bill Self, Norm Roberts, and the other highly regarded coaches we have. My point here is about keeping faith: Danny Manning is long gone, but bigs keep coming to KU, and the KU machine keeps moving along.



  • …dealing with mild-mannered Perry Ellis caused Fred Hoiberg to throw a chair (during a timeout in the BigXII conf championship tournament 2yrs ago). Seeing KU load up with Bragg + Diallo, and having a senior Ellis playing better than ever…caused Hoiberg to throw in the towel. 🙂



  • @ralster Bragg is so good and we aren’t really even talking about him! He, along with Traylor, were the guys to really go out and get offensive rebounds to get us rolling in the second half.



  • Wow, what a blast it was to watch that game last night. Its been a while since I enjoyed watching a game that much. My comments/reactions:

    1. Finally, we won the opening tip off! As long as Mari is still taking them, he should make that a focus of his to win that for us every game.
    2. First half was blah. Team was flat but you could tell that Self’s rotation wasn’t focused on trying to push us to a lead. It was more of an attempt to get deeper into the bench early in the game while it was still close.
    3. Traylor: I agree with most on here that he has improved this year and he shows flashes. My opinion is that he is at his best when he is fresh, he seems to get tired quick and that’s when he gets lazy and his game falls off. So I am ok with him in the game for 2 minutes and then after that I’m ready for the others.
    4. I hope HCBS keeps working a deep rotation and does not feel like he has to trim it down come conference play. Keep using the bench, keep pushing the tempo. I am so excited to see how fast KU plays, it reminds me so much of the 2008 team out there. There are so many players that can be the high scorer on any given night, its too hard to stop everyone. Also, beating the other team down the court for a layup after a made basket is absolutely tremendous. If they keep that pace up I think there is a great chance that we hang another banner this year.
    5. Seems the press has been abandoned for now. Would like to see it employed but as long as they keep the pace at full throttle on offense running the break we can win without it.
    6. CD was exactly what I expected. He showed flashes of greatness. He also showed flashes of inexperience/rawness. I think coach needs to get him as many minutes as possible in December and get him some experience before conference play. At this moment, I think Bragg is the better player for KU in a close game scenario. I would rather have Bragg on the court than CD. As @benshawks08 posted above, nobody is really talking about him much but he has been tremendous too.
    7. Vick has a bright future. The guy has big time hops and can defend well. He showed he can score well too at the WUG. If he gets enough work in December and gets familiar with the systems, etc., I could easily see him being a key to a win a few times this year if Frank or Devante get into early foul trouble and we need him to step up.


  • @Statmachine Chieck undoubtedly WILL PLAY a lot of minutes if he can keep himself on the floor & fouling under control. Traylor will see his minutes reduced slightly, but the biggest losers may be LL & Mick…it all depends on Chiecks ability to stay outta foul trouble. However conf is all about attrition so a deep roster in the frontcourt will ultimately be very valuable. Injuries begin to pile up at some point, so how this all shakes out is really anyones guess.



  • Last night was (or should have been) the beginning of the end as far as double figure minutes for Traylor and Lucas. They have represented KU well during their time in Lawrence. They have been great Jayhawks and I will be happy for both when they start and give their speeches on senior night in a couple of months. They both deserve that and should be applauded for it.

    But from a pure basketball standpoint, last night made it quite obvious that the rotation should be Diallo and Ellis starting up front, with Bragg off the bench and Mickelson picking up some minutes as well. On the perimeter, it should be the current starters plus Svi and either Vick or Greene, depending on if we need offense or defense. That’s the rotation that our talent dictates. At this point, I think we even should go Vick over Greene because Vick provides another potential ball handler.

    There were so many moments last night where it was clear that our best four bigs are Ellis, Diallo, Bragg and Mickelson. Diallo’s chase down block in the second half comes to mind. There aren’t many college bigs that can make that play. Seeing him play last night, Diallo confirmed my suspicions - he raises the ceiling on this team.

    It also made it clear that Bragg is at worst our third best big. He’s already likely our best passing big man and may be the best overall ball handler once he gets a bit more confident in his skills. Perry will continue to be steady and I think the fact that he can be a contributor instead of the star is really helping him. Perry can get you 12-15 a night and, if at the end of the day we are talking about Selden, Mason and Diallo, I think that helps Perry even more because he doesn’t have the burden of making every play when he ends up in a bad matchup.

    It’s also clear that Mickelson is absolutely deserving of that last big rotation spot. His shot blocking and offensive skills make him the easy choice. He can do everything Lucas can, at Lucas’ size, but slightly better. I feel bad that Landen is going to lose his spot while he is injured, but I can’t see a path for him to get back in the rotation now that Diallo is available.

    I think Greene is in the same position in his competition with Svi and Vick. Getting suspended is always dumb, but getting suspended when you are competing with a couple of guys that can play is really dumb.

    Self has to walk a careful line here, because basketball is the easiest sport to see who should be playing. Self can praise Jamari all he wants, but its abundantly clear that Bragg and Diallo are better at basketball than Jamari is. And if that’s clear to us as fans, I can be pretty sure that’s clear to the players in practice. It’s not like Diallo and Bragg don’t give effort. If that was the case, I would be all for keeping Jamari in the rotation to keep the effort high. But Diallo gives great effort. Bragg actually probably needs to pace himself a bit more so he isn’t rushing offensively.



  • @justanotherfan Great post! I like every point you made.

    The biggest difference between Jamari Traylor and Landen Lucas: Traylor is by far the better athlete. Lucas can be a got-fouls-to-give “banger”. Hunter is simply more nimble-footed than Lucas also. Foot speed is a commodity in most sports, and you cannot coach that. Nor does it seem that Huditioning changes it much.

    Hunter Mickelson was a top50 recruit, and you can tell. Lucas was not in the top100, and you can tell. Traylor is an Xfactor, depending on the opposition’s roster. I DO hold in the highest esteem the fact that Traylor throws his body around like Mason and Selden. We need that! I would easily bestow the J.Haase “FloorBurns” award to Jamari Traylor. He has upheld that KU tradition!



  • @HighEliteMajor I’m not as sure about Izzo. Davis comes off the bench and he is pretty talented and touted.



  • @JRyman As mentioned, I didn’t see the game. And I just pulled the stats from some site this morning when I couldn’t sleep, I obviously got his stats wrong, my bad.

    Also, I’m a big Self fan, and happy to have him here. If he says Traylor was the best guy, who am I to disagree. It’s just there’s been a lot of talk around Traylors play lately and when I saw the stats (either incomplete or I misread them completely) it made me scratch my head and hope someone who did watch the game would fill me in. HCBS, and heck just about everybody on these boards knows more about basketball than I do.

    My first post of the season and I hosed it up pretty good! Think I’ll go back to just reading now…



  • @Jyhwk_InTigrtwn Don’t stop posting now!! Heck it can only get better. I mean does anyone wrote “the old man and the sea” their first time out? NO.

    So keep reading keep posting and have fun.



  • @ralster

    Sasha and Darnell were both ESPN top 100 kids. I’m not big on comparing them to Lucas and Traylor.

    But you have to admit, the GROWTH of our bigs has slowed down considerably since Danny left.



  • @mihawk Fully agree. Darnell was a stud his senior year. The starter on a National Title team. Kaun was really key off the bench. That was what made that team so special. There were really no holes. Great guards. Great wings. Great post and tons of depth.

    If Landen ever comes close to being as good as Darnell or Sasha I will be more than thrilled.



  • Comments from Perry Elli after the game (from kuathletics.com)

    On the change of tempo on the second half:

    "Jamari (Traylor) came out and made some plays at the beginning of the half to set the intensity defensively and got the rest of us going."

    It looks like the players appreciate Traylor more than some posters do…just sayin’



  • @Jyhwk_InTigrtwn What @JRyman said … keep posting.



  • @HighEliteMajor I’ve never told anyone to stop posting. Just to try and not be such a negative Nancy about what they say over and over and over again.



  • @ZIG

    I totally agree that this was the most intriguing lineup:

    Mason-Graham-Vick-Bragg-Diallo

    They even replaced one of Graham and Mason with Svi.

    1. This is our most athletic lineup.
    2. We can balance Vick’s lack of offense with Svi. But we also have Bragg and Diallo, also offensive improvements over our the usual 4 and 5 combination.
    3. Our bigs will no longer be blocked into oblivion
    4. This is very close to our best defensive lineup

    I agree that it’s time to see what we have here.



  • @betterfireE I was most intrigued by Graham-Selden-Svi-Diallo-Mickelson. The length of that lineup is crazy. They were altering and pressuring everything! To me this was the all-disruption team for KU.

    But FM-DG-LV-CB-CD could be the all-futures! Though don’t know how long we will hold on to all of them.



  • @JRyman You misunderstood. I was reiterating what you said, saying “what @JRyman said” – you had said “Don’t stop posting now”, and I agreed.

    But I will try not to be a negative Nancy, nonetheless.



  • @HighEliteMajor Ahhh OK no worries. All a good

    Rock chalk





  • @benshawks08

    I too, loved this lineup! Got heighth and length on guys and shot and passing lane disruption bigtime.



  • @BeddieKU23 Oh yah, I jumped out of my seat when Diallo had that tomahawk jam…with the other hand on his head. Play of the game right there. I agree. With him out there, KU is a different team from a speed and energy standpoint. He is a little raw offensively still but I believe he will be ready for the big prime time match up with Kensucky at AFH on Jan 30th!

    Anyone know if there will be celebrities at that game? Seems like we havent seen my most favorite Ms Wilde for some time and Ashley Judd likes to travel with her blue kitties.



  • @JayHawkFanToo Clearly perry doenst understand basketball or team play. Hasnt he taken a hard look at jamari’s stats ??

    Perry needs to log on to this site to really learn about the strengths and weaknesses of his coach and teammates. Sad really

    🙂



  • @Bosthawk

    Good one…you almost had me going… 🙂 🙂 🙂



  • Channel-surfing tonight, I see Jim Boeheim on the sidelines for Syracuse. The same Jim Boeheim that the NCAA suspended a bunch of games.

    So let me get this right…according to the NCAA he’s innocent until proven guilty, so he gets to coach while his case is “pending.”

    Meanwhile, according to the same NCAA, Diallo was guilty till proven innocent. (Or at least until HCBS and Zenger raised holy hell in the media.)

    Where’s the consistency in all this ?

    .



  • Don’t forget Rick Pitino who is currently being investigated as well!



  • @benshawks08 Poetic justice that they both lost tonite !



  • @JayHawkFanToo Perry didn’t say that, self did. Guess I’m wrong, sorry. I watched post game and heard self praise Mari, didn’t hear Perry say that. LJW says he did, so I’m probably wrong.



  • @nwhawkfan He is suspended from 9 ACC games. That is actually more important than 9 games at the beginning of the season. Of course that may not be important if he isn’t interested in winning the conference championship. He is also having 108 of his wins removed from his record. His case is no longer pending. His punishment has been upheld.



  • @sfbahawk New article on ESPN says that the 9 game ban can start immediately and does not need to wait until ACC.



  • @Crimsonorblue22

    Here is the link to the KU AD web site with the recap of the game and interviews from players; scroll down to see the comments from several players.



  • @JayHawkFanToo I saw that. I did hear Self say that about Mari.



  • @Crimsonorblue22

    I guess his teammates agree with coach that Jamari does bring something valuable.that cannot be quantified or characterized with number and/or statistics.



  • @JayHawkFanToo I love the Traylor defenses. He brings something “that cannot be quantified or characterized with number and/or statistics.” Can’t argue with that. But then you had to add the word “valuable.”



  • @JayHawkFanToo The poor, deluded guys. I attribute this to a 15 minute session after each practice where Bill Self beats Jamari’s abilities into their heads. Brainwashing at the highest level. What the heck do high level D1 players really know about the game.



  • @HighEliteMajor

    …well…his coach and teammates seem to think he does bring something “valuable” albeit no–quantifiable, I believe the term is “intangibles” and most teams in all sports have players like this, not that uncommon really. Look at players like Hinrich and Collison, to name two Jayhawks, if you look at their numbers you wonder why they are even playing but their teams see the “intangibles” they bring to the table and pay them big money to deliver.



  • HCBS MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS THIS GUY WHEN IT COMES TO TRAYLOR!



  • OR THIS



  • @BeddieKU23

    “Did anyone watch the game and think this is Joel 2.0?? I got that feeling watching his variety of highlights.”

    I’m thinking he is more like a TRob as a sophomore.

    He is definitely more developed than a freshman TRob. But… those two seem to compare closer together. TRob had a great motor… but I think Cheick’s motor is even revved higher!

    Cheick is a bit raw, but he isn’t as raw as many like to claim he is. He hit a baby jumper on the baseline. No one too raw can do that.

    His potential window is limitless. With his work ethic and hustle I expect to see him become a totally different player by March.

    “It is clear to see that he changes this team in so many positive ways”

    Bingo! It isn’t just his play. He is going to inspire the rest of our guys to hustle more. I was glad to read that Wayne is very connected to Cheick. Wayne is a guy that needs to focus in on something to keep him inspired. If Cheick and Wayne can feed energy off of each other all year long… we are in for a LONG RUN in March!



  • @HighEliteMajor Amen to that brother. Start Diallo now while we have a few practice games in front of us. Or at the very least, the very absolute least, give him starters minutes. 20+



  • @BeddieKU23 Gathers might be the best post guy in the big 12 this year.



  • @HighEliteMajor

    “I love the Traylor defenses. He brings something “that cannot be quantified or characterized with number and/or statistics.” Can’t argue with that. But then you had to add the word “valuable.””

    Ha…

    I’m thinking the main “non-quantifiable” asset Jamari brings is his hustle (that is usually wasted because of poor basketball IQ). His hustle perhaps helps other guys stay motivated.

    How will that work out moving forward when Cheick brings triple the hustle Jamari brings and 10x the results?

    Will the other players still even notice Jamari’s effort?



  • @mihawk Christian Moody MD. He is really cool. I met him at KUMC, when i still worked there, a few years ago.


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