Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?



  • Ok I realize this might be the most bizarre statement I’ve made in a while - -my be the MOST BIZARRE one I have EVER made here , But I’m thinking maybe just maybe we have a Shot at Baylor Saturday I think we played them decent there - I dunno just thinking aomething telling me in my gut I think we can play with them in the Phog , our last game of the regular Season - -I’m tellin ya I just think we might be able to hang with them - - I’m I just nuts - -be very careful how you answer that lol. - - ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY



  • Not so faaaaaast… With the right seeding, this team can get to the Elite 8.



  • KU up to a 4 seed today in latest ESPN Bracketology



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 I don’t know how old you are, but please don’t put “Sweet 16” limits on this team. I remember in the stone ages, we went into the NCAA’s with ELEVEN losses and won the National Championship.

    Yeah, I know - we don’t have a Danny Manning, but we have some good players who haven’t reached max potential either. I hope nobody counts us out until we’re out.

    If Baylor hands us our asses in a few days you can torch this post.



  • I won’t put an absolute ceiling on us because you never know if the bracket will absolutely fall apart in front of you, especially this year. I think we’re probably the 10th-15th best team in the country though with Bryce back. The last stretch here will tell us for sure.



  • @nuleafjhawk said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @Texas-Hawk-10 I don’t know how old you are, but please don’t put “Sweet 16” limits on this team. I remember in the stone ages, we went into the NCAA’s with ELEVEN losses and won the National Championship.

    Yeah, I know - we don’t have a Danny Manning, but we have some good players who haven’t reached max potential either. I hope nobody counts us out until we’re out.

    If Baylor hands us our asses in a few days you can torch this post.

    This team is currently 1-6 in road/neutral court games against at-large caliber teams. There’s very little evidence at this point this team is capable of beating good teams away from AFH. KU is 7th in scoring in the Big 12 play this year. This team just doesn’t have the tools to make a deep run without a lot of stuff happening beyond their control.

    If KU could somehow beat Texas tonight, that would be much more important to me than beating Baylor because this team has to figure out how to beat good teams away from AFH if they want any chance to make a run.



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 And at the same time, we’ve beaten 6 ranked teams. All I’m saying is it’s Kansas and anything can happen.



  • @nuleafjhawk said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @Texas-Hawk-10 And at the same time, we’ve beaten 6 ranked teams. All I’m saying is it’s Kansas and anything can happen.

    And all but 1 of those wins has come inside Allen Fieldhouse, unless you’re counting the Kentucky game which doesn’t mean much since UK isn’t an at large team this year.

    To have success in the NCAA tournament, KU has to prove they can beat good teams away from Allen Fieldhouse and they haven’t done that this year. KU being 1-6 away from home against at-large caliber teams is not an encouraging sign that this team is built to win on March. Those 7 teams being Gonzaga (L), Texas Tech (W), Oklahoma St. (L), Baylor (L), Oklahoma (L), Tennessee (L), and West Virginia (L). 6 of those 7 teams are the caliber of team KU would face in the 2nd round or Sweet 16 with everyone in that group but Oklahoma St. being projected a 6 seed or better.

    KU is an extremely offensively challenged team with the only away win coming against similarly offensively challenged Texas Tech by a single point in a game neither team reached 60 points. That’s also the only game of the 7 in which KU didn’t give up at least 75 points.

    At this point, I just don’t see enough evidence that this team is good enough to beat a lot of the projected 3-6 seed teams that would be a likely second round match up, let alone good enough to beat the projected 1 and 2 seed teams that would be a Sweet 16 match up.



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 Ahhh, you’re probably right. I’ve just been trying to take the glass half full stance lately. (Says the guy who turns the game over to Mr Robot when we get down by 8 points)

    Still, I think in a neutral stadium and with Bill Self as a coach, we have a pretty good chance of making some opposing teams and fans cringe.



  • We’re missing the “Big Game Atmosphere” pressure on the home conference teams this year (our away games). I’ve always thought that game-of-the-season atmosphere when KU comes to town actually helps KU more than Tech/Baylor/OU/Texas etc. Especially later in the season when those top teams know they can still blow a conference championship.



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 - I had a very filling breakfast of crow this morning. That’s what I get for getting my hopes up. We suck.

    So - McCormack is in the game and we’re almost dead even. A bucket up or down. McCormack rides the pine and we DESTROY Texas. Fourteen up for most of the first half.

    Light Bulb !! Hey, Hall of Fame Coach - let’s put McCormack back in and watch him personally lose the game for us. Missed dunks, stepping on the out of bounds line, bobbled passes. Self HAD to realize that, in this game, we were better off without him.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    Dave did tie the game to go to overtime.

    However this was Classic Dave last night, underperforming on the big stage against good competition. He has yet in his career to prove otherwise



  • @BeddieKU23 Well, you can say that every basket of every game is important. But he was AWFUL in this game. He should not have been in there. I believe the first half showed that.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    He was awful, I will not defend how he played last night. For all the bad (Missed Dunk, missed Free Throw’s, Turnovers, Dumb-Headed Fouls), Self still played through him in the 2nd half and Overtime. That was Bill’s stubbornness shining. He had 2 of his 5 starters playing below par and yet the offense ran through them a majority of the game. It was a “how to lose the game” clinic



  • @BeddieKU23 It was a “how to lose the game” clinic for the record books. Textbook. I’ve found that stubbornness is rarely a good answer for anything.



  • @nuleafjhawk Actually, I think that game proved your point. The game went to overtime and could have gone either way. We only made 57% of 21 free throw attempts. One more free throw in regulation and we would have won.

    “All I’m saying is it’s Kansas and anything can happen.” It’s very true. For better or worse!



  • That said, I was more upset after the game last night than I have been all season. I had become numb to losing, especially after January. But last night’s first half was the most fun I’ve had watching basketball since COVID hit, especially from about 12 minutes to about 4 minutes. Kind of woke me up, and then made the loss that much harder to take. At least it’s nice to feel something again!



  • @nuleafjhawk said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @Texas-Hawk-10 - I had a very filling breakfast of crow this morning. That’s what I get for getting my hopes up. We suck.

    So - McCormack is in the game and we’re almost dead even. A bucket up or down. McCormack rides the pine and we DESTROY Texas. Fourteen up for most of the first half.

    Light Bulb !! Hey, Hall of Fame Coach - let’s put McCormack back in and watch him personally lose the game for us. Missed dunks, stepping on the out of bounds line, bobbled passes. Self HAD to realize that, in this game, we were better off without him.

    Sorry, but McCormack did not personally lose the game for KU last night. McCormack did not lose the ball out of bounds with a chance to take the lead. McCormack did not shoot 2-12 from the field like Garrett did, or even 5-15 like Wilson did. It also ignores that most of KU’s run in the 1st half came when Jericho Sims was on the bench with 2 fouls opening up the paint for Bryce Thompson. It also ignores that Thompson barely played in the 2nd half and OT despite what he did in the 1st half.

    McCormack was definitely a factor in KU losing (his lack of rebounding more than anything else), but to say he was personally responsible for losing is just flat out ignorant to the fact that KU as a team only scored 23 points in the 2nd half last night and only shot 57% from the FT line while missing 9 FT’s including multiple front ends of 1 and 1’s. It also ignores that Marcus Garrett shot 2-12 or that Ochai Agbaji wasn’t even bothering trying to get to the rim.

    There is plenty of blame to go around for last night that does not involve David McCormack.



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 the game was lost mostly by Bill and Marcus imo. Dave wasnt good but he wasn’t the worst part.



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 I know. But it’s like every argument in the history of mankind. If I like Pepsi - I’m an asshole because you like Coke. (Not you and me personally, just saying) Ford vs Chevy (and throw Dodge in there too).

    What about Wilt? I say G.O.A.T. - younger folks might pick LeBron or MJ or whomever. And we’re probably all right in our own minds.

    So it doesn’t matter if I say D-Mac should be on the bench or not. It’s just my personal feeling. Not always. But in that game, we were better without him.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    It was predictable though that Dave would play in the 2nd half/OT even if he wasn’t helping much. We built the lead in the first half without him and then Texas adjusted and in turn KU lost all momentum by missing shots/bonehead turnovers and failing to contain dribble penetration on defense. There’s 1/2 plays from Dave that stick out as game changing for why they lost.

    The biggest surprise to me was seeing Thompson not get rewarded for his first half play. Self must not completely trust him yet against a team like Texas. He should have trusted him but he didn’t. He went with his vet’s and paid the price



  • @BeddieKU23 not trying to argue here, just trying to get deeper into the debate. Are you kind of implying that Self isn’t a flow of the game kinda coach? A serious question, for the sake of debate.



  • @Marco

    Normally he is and normally those players get rewarded for their play. Thompson didn’t start the 2nd half or even come into the game until around the 12/13 minute mark of the 2nd half. He was one of the 5 best players on the court but wasn’t rewarded for it.

    In the first half when Dave picked up 2 fouls, Mitch came in and showed why he plays a limited back up role. When Self went with Wilson at the 5, KU’s 4 guard + Wilson attack not only started scoring but really stymied Texas on defense. The 2nd half Dave picked up his 3rd foul within 2 minutes of the half starting and Texas adjusted their offense to attack the basket. Dave had really established himself as KU’s best player the past month or so but against Texas he reverted right back to the same issues that have plagued him for 3 years here. That missed point blank dunk/failed tip in sequence. Ugh.



  • @BeddieKU23 Self obviously is a pretty good coach. But can you imagine what his record would look like with just a little less stubbornness?



  • @nuleafjhawk There’s a big difference between saying someone should be on the bench and saying “watch him personally lose the game” like you said.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    It’s all apart of who he is and I’m fine with it. Sometimes its frustrating but overall I wouldn’t change a thing



  • @Texas-Hawk-10 Sometimes they hype gets the best of me. And I tend to use HYPErbole a bit too much. Like a bajillion times too much. See?



  • @BeddieKU23 , @Texas-Hawk-10 - I need to back up a little. I tend to watch the games detaching the personality from the player. I know David is a great kid. Very intelligent, very articulate. When I say things like I did, I know what I mean, but I don’t think about how it sounds to others. I was just very frustrated with the things he was/wasn’t doing. I will try to make things less personal and critical.



  • @nuleafjhawk

    No worries, David from everything I’ve ever seen is a great kid and he means well. There was a recent interview done about Dave where coach Self said that he is a perfectionist at things which can cause some of his growing pains. Kid has gone through a huge body transformation from when he weighed over 300 pounds in High School. He has the drive to be good and that is something to applaud in him.

    But I agree the things he did against Texas that were negative are maddening. I’m guilty as heck at reacting to that in the moment



  • @BeddieKU23 said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @nuleafjhawk

    No worries, David from everything I’ve ever seen is a great kid and he means well. There was a recent interview done about Dave where coach Self said that he is a perfectionist at things which can cause some of his growing pains. Kid has gone through a huge body transformation from when he weighed over 300 pounds in High School. He has the drive to be good and that is something to applaud in him.

    But I agree the things he did against Texas that were negative are maddening. I’m guilty as heck at reacting to that in the moment

    I have been too hard on Dave on numerous occasions, but am glad that we have him. Imagine what our record wouldve been without him this season.



  • @Marco said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @BeddieKU23 said in Rankings , Agree or Disagree ?:

    @nuleafjhawk

    No worries, David from everything I’ve ever seen is a great kid and he means well. There was a recent interview done about Dave where coach Self said that he is a perfectionist at things which can cause some of his growing pains. Kid has gone through a huge body transformation from when he weighed over 300 pounds in High School. He has the drive to be good and that is something to applaud in him.

    But I agree the things he did against Texas that were negative are maddening. I’m guilty as heck at reacting to that in the moment

    I have been too hard on Dave on numerous occasions, but am glad that we have him. Imagine what our record wouldve been without him this season.

    Yepp he has grown into an important piece and next year could be something special for him if he continues to improve


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