We Just Got Schooled By Harvard
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Seldens foul trouble hurt
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@nuleafjhawk Say it again- - -by a not very good, but on this day, we made them look very very good. couldn’t agree more, just no focus on this game at all. Very frustrating game to watch, Thank God Frank played a decent game, Perry what the heck is going on with Perry? yet I guess if you have to, you can say we won.
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A few comments:
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Diallo Suspension Continues: This game was a complete waste of potential minutes for Diallo’s development. A complete waste. This was a perfect situation to get Diallo 20 minutes. Someone please explain to me why he should only play 7 minutes? Diallo came in the game at appx. the 13:00 minute mark and we were up 13-12. He left at appx. 8:00 and we were up 30-16. I cannot emphasize this enough. Diallo sits 5 games. He’s suspended. Self suspended him for another game. Seven minutes vs. Harvard? #FreeDiallo. I’m wondered, did Cliff every play just 7 minutes in any game last season? I looked. Cliff never played less than 10 minutes in a game until he played 6 minutes vs. West Virginia on February 16.
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Bragg: See Diallo. Much of the time Diallo was in during the first half, Bragg was in with him. We played better. We were better with Diallo and Bragg in – as I recall – we smoked their zone defense. I guess that Carlton Bragg, a high skill player, just can’t hang against Harvard. I get it.
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Lucas – The Sloth: Who is our slowest player getting up and down the court? Right, Landen Lucas. Self, for whatever reason, decided to go with Lucas as our big minutes guy today inside. I wonder if it is because he does better sealing on a three quarter deny? I wouldn’t doubt it. Low talent, low production. He did a fine job on the boards, but virtually no scoring, no blocked shots. He is what he is. I would note that Mickelson and Diallo each had more blocks in their combined 9 minutes than Lucas had in his 24. Lucas provides zero rim protection. Here we go again. Good grief. If you’re Harvard, do you fear Lucas or Ellis more? If you’re Harvard, and Bragg or Diallo are in the game with Ellis, what do you think then? If I’m Harvard, I’m content to slack off Lucas and help hard with Ellis. As Self said in his statements on Brannen Greene yesterday, "it’s not that complicated. PLAY THE BEST PLAYER.
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Playing Fast - Our Team Identity, Right?: So why would we rely on Lucas when one of our top two team assets is playing fast? At times, we slowed to a crawl. We cannot rely solely on the three. But playing fast AND shooting the three fits this team to a “T”. Our team identity is playing fast. Pushing the pace. Harvard beat US down the court off a made basket. Meanwhile, we watch the ball bounce around after a made basket. We have to push the pace, and push the pace some more. All the time.
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Ellis At The Rim: This is why we can’t rely on a feed the post game. The pedestrian bigs of Harvard harassed Ellis enough that he, again, couldn’t score reliably inside. But Self didn’t help him. Self didn’t have a competent scoring option in the game with Ellis. For my money, Bragg or Diallo is going to give Ellis much “cover.”
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Second Half: We never saw the Bragg/Diallo combo (Even after they looked great together in the second half), and I barely recall seeing Bragg at all. When I see Ellis unable to score inside and Lucas, who is just not a good player – together for literally the entire second half – well, we’re going to struggle to beat Harvard.
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Three Point Shooting: Kansas shot 42.7% from three point range. Great shooting. What let us down was 1) not playing at a high pace, and 2) our inability to score inside. But … and a big “But” … we only shot 14 three pointers. Perry Ellis, who couldn’t score inside, shot zero three pointers (that’s “0”) – and he shoots 44% for the season by the way. The logic is obviously lacking. “Best” or near best shooting team Self has ever had, and we shoot 14 three pointers. That is asinine. When you can’t score at the rim, and you know you can’t, you have to focus on plan B.
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The Script: This is the script as to why we play close games, and why we are threatened by vastly inferior teams many times. Not inferior teams, but vastly inferior teams.
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Consider This: Consider this – Landen Lucas and “_____” played a combined 34 minutes. Neither will ever sniff the NBA. Diallo and Bragg, both sure fire NBA players, played a combined 16 minutes. Lucas and “_____” played over double their minutes. Is there anyone on this planet that can state a case for that? Unreal. Add in Mickelson, it’s 34 minutes to 18.
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Think Of It This Way: Do you think we beat Harvard playing just Diallo, Bragg, and Mickelson in the post? Just those three. If one gets fouled up, we play small. Do we beat Harvard? And do we beat Harvard by more than six points? I’d take that bet any day.
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"______": If “_____” was our best player against Loyola, how does he just play 10 minutes today? I mean, how does our coach play the player that was our “best player” in the prior game only 10 minutes? To quote one of my favorite posters, “just sayin”. Worth a chuckle.
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Free Throw Shooting: Let’s say we make 18 - 25 instead of 13-25. That’s over 70%. My analysis does not change one bit. Ignore the free throw shooting when assessing this game. The important assessment here is how we played the game. The free throw shooting today is irrelevant to the discussion. @nuleafjhawk is right, we shot it poorly. However, this should not have been a game irrespective of the free throw shooing. if we win by five more points, making five more free throws, it’s the same discussion.
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Zone Offense: The best part of this game was our zone offense. Last season, we seemed very stagnant at times. Not today. This is something that bears watching as the season moves forward. In the first half, our zone offense really looked dynamic.
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Home run HEM.
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@HighEliteMajor Also, I liked that mid first Self went with the press and the lead ballooned to 16. But no press the entire second half and it was a nailbiter.
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Man was the team tired. Frank played well because he had an entire seasons worth of experience playing tired. Frank and Devonte even said they were tired. So did Self. This game might have more to do with practice the week before than decisions in game.
This behest problem on d was rebounding. Tough to run when you can’t get the ball. Diallo/Bragg combined for 4 rebounds. Lucas had 8. Diallo couldn’t even get the ball to the rim before it got swatted away. He’s probably never been tired before. Conditioning will improve and so will the freshman.
Bring on holy cross!
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@HighEliteMajor I think he intended to play both the young guys more as evidenced in the first half. But when they closed the gap and then ultimately made it a close game., he did what he has always done…play the experienced guys. You make valid points…but he ain’t t changing, my friend.
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@HighEliteMajor To your point, he could have put the young guys in after 5 mins it he 2nd half. Maybe they would have extended the lead instead of losing it? If not, he still would have had time to put the experienceD guys back in. We’ll never know.
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@HighEliteMajor Great post and great read HEM, I posted about Lucas in the game thread, because I just can’t understand why HCBS can’t see what’s so obvious ? He has Mickelson who can do a little of everything as well as Lucas’s only strength rebounding.
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To me, this game very much mirrored the Michigan state game. We missed free throws, blew a huge lead and reverted to a slowed down cave man offense. The only difference was Harvard lacked the talent to hammer us and ultimately beat us. I do not want this to become a trend…
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@HighEliteMajor I agree for most of your post. But I was not impressed with Diallo at all when he was out there.
He looked liked Lucas trying to finish around the rim, had trouble passing, and was just in general out of control on offense.
On defense, he got pinned down so low in post that his wingspan couldn’t make up for it.
I am not down on Diallo in the slightest. It’s his second game and these games will come. But this game, I actually felt better with Lucas down low. He got some key boards and a big time bucket and the foul.
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@JhawkAlum But I think the point is that Dialo needs pt to improve, and he didn’t get much.
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@HighEliteMajor #7–this team needs to be shooting 25 three pointers a game.
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OMG… we won…oh the horror…
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@KUSTEVE We won World War II also, but it wasn’t pretty.
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@HighEliteMajor Solid analysis. I’d like to add one more point. Why did Vick did not play. I don’t recall seeing him on the court at all. With Selden on the bench he could have gotten some PT
A win is always a win but this one did not leave a good taste in the mouth. Its still early in the season and going forward I hope that coaching staff will take some lessons from this game.
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@Bwag HEMS second point says otherwise.
But let’s just say that is the case. Lucas did play well believe it or not. And Diallo was struggling. This kind of loss looks terrible come tournament time and could be the difference between a 1 or 2 seed.
It was better to grind out this win and let Diallo learn in anothe circumstance.
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@benshawks08 Agree they look tired, but there isn’t any excuse for that. This is a 10 deep roster, which should mean that we should be able to wear down other teams, not the other way around. But, that only works if you take advantage of that advantage. We played basically 7 guys yesterday.
This is the second or third game this year in which Frank and DG played 34+ minutes each. If this keeps up, they aren’t going to have any legs at the end of the year. We saw that with Frank last year - he was worn down and beat up by the end of the year. Unfathomable that Vick didn’t get in for at least a few minutes to give them a blow, esp. with Selden on the bench with foul trouble.
Again, Self tightened up and went to a very short bench in the second half, even though playing everyone is what got us the early big lead. Think about it - Harvard played 3 frosh more than 20 minutes each. Our 3 got 11, 9 and 0 minutes. Does Self have that little confidence in our guys that he thinks the Harvard first years are that much better?
Sure, Diallo looked very raw and Bragg wasn’t on his game, but the only way they are going to get better is with more playing time. And, if it isn’t going to come from playing the Harvard’s of the world, when is going to happen? There aren’t that many Loyola’s on the schedule.
The fact is that we’ve generally performed better in the first half of games when Self typically does play 9-10 guys. We’ve been beaten in the second half a handful of games when it is mostly the starters playing and we get into half court games.
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Since our FT shooting goes hot and cold… guess we should label it as “fool’s gold.”
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@drgnslayr ha-ha. Nice!
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Didn’t get to see the game. I was on the road. Listening to the radio of course. Didn’t sound good to me. But without eyes on it. I have very lil to say… I don’t think the film on that game is gonna scare the UK wildcats about coming to the phog at all
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@cragarhawk after seeing them play UCLA, they better be afraid!
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I would like to be a fly on the wall of practice this week.
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@KUSTEVE Yes, a horrible win indeed. Does this win really inspire much confidence? Does anyone feel that, as someone posted on another thread, Bill has “righted the ship” since the Michigan State loss?
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Ah come on. It’s going to take Coach a little while to fully embrace fools gold as a viable offense system. He’s been slowing down the game and pounding the ball inside for a very long time. In an essence this is all new to him.
I guess my biggest gripe about the Harvard game is Coach’s unyielding belief that the upper classman must play the majority of minutes in tough games.
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@DCHawker exactly. This team’s identity is to play fast all the time, no have a seven man rotation and play half court. If Self does this in March, it will be a very short tournament. We need to play our game.
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@KUinLA OMG …what shall we do?
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@JhawkAlum He had 5 points…
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@DCHawker Big 12 teams will push us much harder than Harvard. Lucas is not going to be the answer.
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@KUinLA The question is why did Bill freeze up and revert to form?
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@Bwag I doubt LL gets many minutes in a lot of games. It’s all about matchups, we needed a big body and he’s the only one that matches that description. Only big guy I can think of in conference is Ridley, that I can see LL being needed. Was harvards big guy a frosh? We r so very fortunate Fran jrs son was injured!
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@KUSTEVE said:
@KUinLA OMG …what shall we do?
Well, if this game is any indication, we shall probably watch another magnificent flameout in March, lol.
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@Bwag Because that’s what Bill does.
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Maybe you should switch your allegiance to winning program, like…MU? Then you will not have to endure magnificent flame-out after magnificent flame-out and you will be so happy when you actually have a magnificent flame-out in March because it would mean you actually made it to the dance; of course this would not happen very often so you will be OK…after all, you will always have UCLA out there in la-la land.
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@nuleafjhawk Schooled by another coach from the K Tree. Hmmm
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Time to bring back the down vote feature.
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@wissoxfan83 What KUinLA said is absolutely true. Johnny Dawkins did it a couple years ago, and Tommy Ammaker did it yesterday. Because Self is so used to doing what he did for years, this team might have another early exit.
But, there is a possibility that he finally sees the situation for what it is and stops trying to fight it and embrace it.
I am not negative or bashing Self. I am being hopeful that he will finally see it how we do. No more half court games.
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@DinarHawk Sorry dude, but it appears that we have a very emotionally fragile fan base right now. A lot of negativity which I understand a bit, but I’m just amazed that you all know better than the coach.
After Maui and Loyola this fan base was ecstatic, but it took one game to undo it.
LSU nearly just lost a national championship winning coach, and while Bill’s seat isn’t that hot, I can see it building to that, and I think that would be a shame.
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@wissoxfan83 I certainly can’t do anything about some who are bitching and moaning. All I am saying is that for years the problem has been a pace that is too slow and it is time to fix it. Don’t let the opponent control the pace.
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@Bwag No one is saying he was amazing. He was just better than anyone else.
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They have no comment when we win, unless it’s a close game. Then it’s the end of the world.
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There’s a lot of mouths to feed on these team and its clear its going to be impossible to give them all the right balance. Self cares about playing the guys he trusts and right now that number is 7 or 8 depending on if you count Greene.
You could argue that when Self has too much depth, what us fans see as the better player(s) and what he sees as the better player(s) are completely different. Maybe having depth isn’t good for him?
I believe he knows Bragg & Diallo are better players than Lucas or Jamari but until they show it he’s going to let them learn the Self way. Other than missed layups I couldn’t see why either of them didn’t get to play more. They played hard on defense and when they were in, the pace was great and they contributed to the lead on the court.
Where’s the ± for this game?
Besides the minutes fiasco, this team didn’t play that well. It was basically a continuation of the Loyola 1st half where we were content to let an over-matched team stay in it for a while. This team has a lot of growing to do still and most of it is still predicated on being a better defensive team. We’ve seen when they really want to guard that they can, but there’s too much of a slip in the consistency. We’ve seen offensively that when perimeter shots are made, the ball gets up and down the court and guys are unselfish that this team can beat anyone. But we’ve also seen at team that is struggling at the FT line, struggling to make the simplest shot- a layup and at times just runs offense with no purpose. Exactly how games like Saturday stay close…
