Biggest unknown...
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In my opinion, the PG battle is the biggest and most important unknown.
I’ll suggest that the Greene vs. Oubre battle is a big one and is not yet decided, as is Svi battle for relevance. But the PG battle rules.
And listen to us … Point Guard. Not combo guard. Not lead guard. Not small scoring guard. But good ole fashioned, handle the ball, run the offense, be the coach on the court, Point Guard. Graham has been sold to us as a point guard. Mason is a point guard. CF proved he can play point guard. Forget the combo guard fiction.
The winner is Mason. National folks believed that we didn’t have a point guard last season. What we had was a guy who was thrown into the fire and was developing. He was kind of ready for prime time. He realized very quickly that you can drive and throw up crap in D-1.
But here’s were Mason was dead-solid – ball handling. The dude was reliable. He didn’t yack in tough spots, he was able to control the ball with confidence, and he was able to do so with the ball in front of him. As the season progressed, his drives became more under control and his three point shot became more sure. Progress. Development. Further, his defense was not poor. He gave effort all the time. He took defense seriously.
If Graham comes in and is better, great. We’ll all be happy. But remember, Graham hasn’t played D-1 ball yet. And he’s a freshman. Trying to run coach Self’s system. And he’s trying to beat out two guys who have experience under fire. Tough task. Again, if he does, that proves something. But I think we’ve got our guy.
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“And listen to us … Point Guard. Not combo guard. Not lead guard. Not small scoring guard. But good ole fashioned, handle the ball, run the offense, be the coach on the court, Point Guard. Graham has been sold to us as a point guard. Mason is a point guard. CF proved he can play point guard. Forget the combo guard fiction.” …SWISH !!
Also: Graham trying to beat out 2 guys that have taken some substantial lumps in Self ball-I gotta see it to believe it. And frankly, I’d hate to see that happen to those guys. Might open the door for someone to leave before Jan 1. I’d damn sure hate to loose Conner. IMO he can be a huge game changer or more so, as Forte at OSU. That kid is like a Ninja with a blade in the night-deadly.
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We have a big pile of quality guards.
But one thing stands out to me.
Mason is the only guy who is dedicated totally to one position… PG. I can’t see him coming in as a 2. Not sure about Graham, but I’m guessing he could see some time as a 2.
That sticks out at me. It tells me that Frank just has to focus on being a play maker. Every once in a while, knock down a perimeter shot.
I think it will be tough for anyone to take that spot away from him.
Sometimes less is more. In this case, Frank focuses 100% of his energy on being a play maker. Hard to imagine him losing out the starting spot at point.
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Painful read you posted. Painful because it is true.
We’ll be challenged in the post this year.
Because of that reason, I think the answer is for us to put more pressure on the perimeter. Make it tough for everyone to feed their post bigs. Also… if we can penetrate we should be able to draw fouls on their bigs.
Teams like UCONN prove that size can be overcome by aggressive guard play. We should take a page out of their book and see where it leads us.
One thing is for sure… we can’t maintain the old guard mindset that our bigs will save their poor defense. I’m really sick of watching KU stink at perimeter d. It is the biggest reason why we rarely get to use all that athleticism on the court, like for run outs, because we don’t get steals.
It sure would be nice to be a team that took care of the ball this year, and also played aggressive and stole more balls than they give up. We better figure out some way of winning the possession battle because I’m not counting on us doing it on the boards this year.
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@jaybate-1.0 That 1 every-game MUA could be Frank Mason. With control and experience and picking his ways to break down the opponent, he could be the biggest factor. There is a reason(s) Tharpe was shown the door. Biggest one was the headless team that got beat by Stanford. There woulda been a PG competition including Tharpe if it werent for the KU-embarrassing selfie he did. That iced it, easy decision by Self to pull Naa’s plug. And, maybe it was time to flex the “who’s boss” muscle, and Self just did. There will be no shortage of hustle & effort this year. BigCliff and Oubre arent soft either.
This will be a team to be reckoned with, simply because it knows where the performance bar is set. They learned thru their own failures last season.
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@HighEliteMajor Your earlier point about we need a PG is so true. Someone who can efficiently run the offense. The issue is that Self simply cannot stop himself from plucking guards who can also score. He likes to build a dangerous team from every position.
To put it in a way Ive never put it: “combo” guards are forever conflicted about scoring themselves vs. setting up their teammates. Some are better than others at changing gears between the 2 roles of scorer vs distributivePG. Some remain conflicted throughout their careers (Sherron, Tyshawn). And EJ was “not” a PG, as Self so infamously said. Even during his final half of his senior season, Tyshawn clearly still saw himself as a scorer, to wit all those 3att he took in the Madness, only hitting 1 I believe…
Self likely yearning for an A.Miles/RussRob type of distributive PG. Pendulum has definitely swung back to that need.
What was Shabazz Napier?
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I agree with you 100%. Who wins the PG battle will probably determine the team’s direction and at this time it looks like Mason.
The Oubre-Greenm battle is a net wiin-win since they both can end up being valuable contributors. Svi is a multi-talented (although still raw) player that can play PG, SG or SF although I see him playing mostly the 2 or 3 and I don’t expect him to contribute heavily his first year, and if he does, it is just icing on the cake.
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Although we think we have a talented group of bigs, in reality we have only two bigs, both 6’-8" with experience and don’t have the true center/rim defender we have grown accustomed to. Our bigs could end up being a solid group or just a serviceable bunch; let’s hope is the first.
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RussRob came to KU as a scorer and was very frustrated initially because his role was to distribute the ball rather than score and came very close to transferring. Once he embraced his job, he became one of the steadier PGs ever at KU and a critical part of the '08 Title team. He is perhaps the most overlooked/underrated player I can remember and not a lot of fans really understand how good the team was because of him.
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The rotation that KU had in 2008 with RussRob and Sherron was what I was imagining for this year… But it’s a bit different. I see CF much more like Russ (capable of shooting and passing) and FM more like Sherron (driving to make contortionist-like layups and occasionally taking 3s).
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The RussRob-Mario combination with Sherron coming off the bench was as good a back court as we have had.
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I’m not so much worried about our size disadvantage because Alexander is an elite player. Texas is a concern because that have two guys with size that are very good to elite players, but among the others, they either have very talented undersized guys or they have big guys that aren’t necessarily long on talent. Some stiff that happens to be 6-10 doesn’t worry me because Cliff is strong enough and athletic enough to handle that.
PG is a much bigger concern because the size difference will matter there since none of our PGs are elite talents. Not to say they aren’t good, but Marcus Foster, for example, is every bit as good as Frank Mason or Conner Frankamp. Because there isn’t a huge talent difference, the size will factor in. That’s the unknown we have to worry about, because we either need Graham to be very good right away, or we need Mason/Frankamp to be much improved over last season because somebody has to play 25 minutes a game, and with those kind of minutes, flaws will be exposed. Remember, we felt good about Tharpe when we saw him as a backup, but all of his warts showed when he had to play a lot of minutes.
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Based on what I have seen up to know, Marcus Foster is a much better PG than Mason or Frankamp. He is arguably the best guard in the conference. If not for Wiggins, Foster would have been the Conference freshman of the year last season.
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I think all would agree that Foster is a much different type of player … he only had 2.5 assists per game. And more to the point, about 1/3 less assists per minute played than Mason did last season. But Foster showed he was the real deal.
And @justanotherfan made a great point: “Remember, we felt good about Tharpe when we saw him as a backup, but all of his warts showed when he had to play a lot of minutes.” ---- that is an excellent reminder.
But I remain a bit giddy about Mason.
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Would you trade Mason for Foster?
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The origin of the universe?
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The Big Bang Theory?
Now back to basketball. Do you think Foster is the best guard in the Conference? If not him, who?
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I am excited about Mason (and Frankamp) as well. I am just guarded because with Mason, some of his decision making on drives wasn’t good last year. That could be small sample size, or that can be a tendency that will lead to him turning the ball over constantly this year. His size also means that he may have trouble against traps, which I am sure we will see this year after how we handled them last season.
With Frankamp, I am worried about his defense. In short spurts, he has been okay, but over long stretches, he will have to stand up on his own because rolling the help his way early won’t work if he’s playing 23+ minutes per game. I am also worried about the possibility that he gets into foul trouble if he can’t keep quicker guys in front of him.
Those concerns can’t be answered until I see them play heavy minutes against good teams. I think they can do it, but check back in December to see how I really feel.
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@JayHawkFanToo I have high hopes for Mason and think that the dynamic might change this season, but on the current evidence, if I’m put on the spot, yes, done deal.
@justanotherfan - The key is the angle of the curve, is it going up, or down. Mason’s was going up at the end of last season and he clearly had become better at not driving the ball into bad situations. The beautiful thing here is that we have three options – I’m quite sure one will pan out. If Graham is Tyler Ennis, this will all be moot.
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At times last season, Mason regressed to his HS level of confidence where he was a volume shooter and scorer, and he would take a long three at the beginning of the possession with no one in position to rebound. Let’s hope his decision making has improved in the off-season, and much like RussRob did, he can transition from scorer first-passer second to passer first scorer second which is what the team really need from him.
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I think the bottom line on a guard, irrespective of the fact he scored a lot in h.s., or thinks he can score…is what is his court awareness & playmaking ability/decision-making??
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Agreed. However the attributes you mentioned can be compromised if he maintains the “score first” attitude; if I remember correctly RussRob indicated that much in Beyond the Phog.
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@JayHawkFanToo Yep, exactly. I met RussRob, and got to talk to him a bit (back in 2007), and I consider '08 to be Self’s best team. Its been well chronicled, but Russell had to make a HUGE decision after his frosh season, when Self asked him to become distributor insyead of scorer. He was a top30 recruit who had a 20+ppg scoring avg in h.s., a 6’1, 200lb tough kid who idolized Jarrett Jack, and himself almost comitted to GaTech. He knew shelving his own offense, likely would cost him a chance at the nba, & perhaps he was right. The days of Jacque Vaughn in the nba are long gone, as PGs are expected to score.
Of course, after a year or two out of college, RussRob can bomb away from nba-range (he showed it at a summer camp game 2 yrs ago, where along with Billy Thomas, those 2 demolished the then-current ku lineup). But his nba window likely closed, as there’s always someone younger/better. Last I heard, Russell was earning $400k/yr overseas as a tough, all-around star.
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Your post is sad… made sadder because it is probably true. RussRob did make huge sacrifices at Kansas that could have cost him from getting the needed big time attention players need out of college when going to the league. It is so hard to make it work after that. There are few NBA coaches and head office people that have the guts to gamble on guys who don’t come in with the big hype or are fresh.
It is the same issue in corporate America. Stay out of the corporate loop for a few years then try to get back in. Good luck!
The decision-makers feel they risk their own necks when going outside their small, safe loop (hype players… or in corporate… currently employed candidates). They may be right, too. A sad conclusion to this post.
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Sad within the context… but let’s step back and recognize that he’s getting paid 400k/year and a lot of expenses are covered as well. He will be able to earn at that level for maybe a decade. But he also has a degree. He can attempt to shift from player to staff, administration or some other area and continue to earn, albeit, not at the same level, but he could have a great nest egg by then.
He didn’t hit the jackpot by NBA standards. But he’s earning at an Senior Executive level in the corporate world, and most of us would consider ourselves pretty successful if --after years of climbing the corporate ladder --we had even one year of earning 400k.
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The point is sad, as @drgnslayr says, if Russell Robinson was in a position to become Jarrett Jack or Kyle Lowry, probably the two best comps for him as an NBA player.
Robinson isn’t quite as big as Jack, who has always been a physical load even though he isn’t as athletic as some of the other top PGs like Westbrook and Rose, or as keen a floor game as Chris Paul.
Jack never averaged less than 4.5 assists per game while at Ga. Tech. Add in the fact that he’s 6-3 and improved his 3pt shooting tremendously over his career (28% as a freshman to 41% as a junior) and you can see why he jumped up as an NBA prospect. He was tremendously efficient, particularly as he matured. I don’t think he’s a good comparison for RussRob because of the size and shooting, and the fact that Jack was a better overall player from day one than RussRob was.
Lowry is the better comparison. Both he and Robinson are around 6-0 tall. Lowry was not a good perimeter shooter in college. He attempted 40 3’s total in his college career. He didn’t do much that set him apart from Robinson, but he left Villanova after his sophomore year. I think the difference was that while Robinson was seen as peaking as a backup, Lowry was seen as a potential starter by most NBA teams. RussRob has done well for himself, in my opinion. As a backup in the NBA, he wouldn’t make much more than he’s making now in Europe, and he wouldn’t have as much stability because backup PGs are always on the move.
