Mythbusters: Bill Self, minutes, and March
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There are many people who believe that Bill Self has a history of stubbornly choosing to play less talented players over more talented players because they are “more experienced” or have “earned his trust”, even if these players Bill trusts are not as good as the younger more talented players. People believe this for any of the following reasons:
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They incorrectly interpret the player Bill Self has playing fewer minutes as being a better basketball player than the player Bill Self has playing more minutes. This is often due to the assumption that a player with more long-term potential is the better choice in any given moment. (example: jOSh SeLbY wAs bEtTeR tHan TyReL ReeD iN 2011)
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They make an unwarranted assumption that playing a talented but still developing player will make him develop at an unprecedented rate and make him reach or near his full potential by March. (example: Had Bill started Cheick Diallo over Landen Lucas, he would have developed at a historically quick rate, from an athletic but raw project into a star, all in-time for March Madness!)
There are many examples of why this is wrong. Darnell Jackson was a better player than Cole Aldrich in 2008, despite being less talented. Bill played Darnell over Cole all season. In 2020, future NBA starter and champion Christian Braun was on the roster, but so were older wings Marcus Garrett and Isaiah Moss. Bill started Garrett and Moss and had Braun come off the bench. Braun stuck around and developed into a star, but it took three years instead of three months. The results speak for themselves. Other examples would be Tyrel Reed playing over Josh Selby in 2011, Landen Lucas playing over Cheick Diallo in 2016 and Travis Releford playing over Andrew White III in 2013.
Contrary to popular belief, these were all correct decisions. Christian Braun’s freshman self would not have transformed into his junior self by starting over Marcus Garrett. Examples abound, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Some might argue, “well, it worked out those times, but choosing the more experienced player isn’t ALWAYS the right move. In some cases, Bill needs to go with the more talented player.”
Yes! That is absolutely correct. That is why Bill often DOES go with a younger and more talented player. The cases in which he does this are not random, but are the cases in which the younger and more talented player is better than the older and more experienced one.
In 2010 Brady Morningstar, a veteran starter from the previous year returned. Bill Self started freshman Xavier Henry over him.
In 2011, Self initially turned back to Morningstar, until Josh Selby became eligible after a suspension. After two games of kick-ass play by Selby, Self gave him Morningstar’s starting spot. Then Selby became injured, missed some time, and came back a different player. He could no longer score or defend, and he turned the ball over at a high rate. In this case, Self continued to start Morningstar. Hmmm, it seems as though Bill just starts the better player instead of stubbornly starting a favorite.
Other examples of Bill going with the newcomer over a veteran who had his trust are: Udoka Azubuike over Landen Lucas (until Doke’s injury), Josh Jackson over LaGerald Vick, Mario Chalmers +Brandon Rush + Russell Robinson over Jeff Hawkins.
Clearly, Bill does not refuse to play newer but less talented players over veterans. People who want to discredit Bill and his decisions just ignore the cases in which he does.
It is quite obvious, that Bill chooses to play the best players. Sometimes that is the veteran, sometimes its the young guy.
Having cleared up that misconception, I also want to clear up something else. Many people seem to think that choosing the wrong rotation players is the only possible cause of an early exit in March. They argue, in essence:
“Had Bill Self started player X over player Y, player X would have developed into a star rapidly and would have carried us to a successful run in March. While starting player Y may have been fine for us to have a great regular season, his deficiencies kicked-in in March Madness.”
When such people make this argument, they are either making one of the two mistakes listed earlier in this text, or they are making mistake number 3:
- They fail to account for the fact that bad luck, an uncharacteristically bad performance, injuries, or a choke job can result in an early exit in March.
For example, in 2011 and 2017 we choked. We did not have the toughness to handle the elite 8. We had more talent and better players on the court than VCU/Oregon, but we crumbled, bricking shots we normally make. The leap of faith that Josh Selby and Cheick Diallo, who were not good players prior to the tournament, would have shown up, kept us from choking, and been tournament heroes simply has no basis. There was certainly bad luck in these exits (VCU and Oregon both had career days from 3), but we still could have and probably would have won, had we played with poise.
In 2016 and 2023 I would argue that it was more bad luck than choking (although it was a little of both). In 2016, despite being the best team in the country and the number 1 overall seed, we were given the second-best team in the country and the only team that could beat us (Villanova) as our 2 seed. We played a close game, that could have gone either way, and they took the cake. In 2023, we were given an 8-seed that had underachieved all season and had top-10 talent. Plus, before facing them, our coach had to go to the hospital. These factors caused us to lose. Playing DaJuan (who had 12 points, 5 assists, and 2 steals) and KJ (who had 14 points) instead of Pettiford and Ejiofor did not cause us to lose that game.
As someone who tends to be suspicious of extremist beliefs, I think Bill is a good coach and do not want him to be fired. However, my one criticism of him is that he is bad at mentally preparing us for the NCAA tournament. We won it twice, which is great, but I think we would have won 4 or 5 titles under him had we consistently played as well in the tournament as we had in Big 12 play. There are, in my opinion, too many examples of us playing our worst game of the season in the elite 8 (or an earlier tournament round) for it to just be happenstance. We choke. A lot.
But that is really the only reasonable criticism one can make of Bill Self. The internet notion that he is too stubborn and gives favoritism to older players is objectively false.
Now, using my psychic powers, I will guess that all replies to this will fit into the following categories. I will reply to replies in order to classify each one. I can explain if requested to do so.
A. Agreement
B. Agreement in general but disagreement with a minor detail
C. Disagreement due to misinterpretation of who the best players in a given moment are
D. Disagreement due to the assumption that playing a talented but young player will develop at warp speed if given more playing time or a longer leash.
E. Disagreement due to the false belief that an early March exit is due to mismanaging player minutes.
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I am living a few miles from University of Arkansas and Coach Calipari. Ark is 0-4 in SEC and OMG the game has passed Coach Cal by and it was a mistake to hire him, a very costly mistake lol. My lovely wife is a fan so I watch most of the games and they play hard all the time on defense or they sit. She gets frustrated with the team and says she can’t take it and goes to another room. I come to bed and she asks well did they win? No but they played their asses off but couldn’t shoot. I will not call the Hogs!!
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Oof. Cell phone died and I lost my response.
I like what you did here. Good framework for this discussion.
Points I like to discuss:
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Probably in bucket C. Bill Self currently appears to be struggling more with the combination of players. In part due to defections and not being able to portal very well. Knowing the limitations of KJ, in particular, bringing in Hunter seems to ignoring the fact that they dont work together, and that should be easy to guess?
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A lot of your post is focused on development but that has been flipped on its head by the portal. I do appreciate the defense of Bills historical decisions. These arguments are valid for the era they occurred in. But can we really say we expect the same level of development in transfers?
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I suggest we have the same discussion pre and post portal era. The Lawson brothers were a headscratcher. KJ, and not recruiting over him, headscratcher. Recruiting Hunter and not retaining Zuby and/or Udeh, headscratcher.
We can only look to the [distant, in cbb years] past as evidence to be applied in the present so much, when things have changed so radically, and Self himself is on the back 9 of his storied career. Not the same situation and not the same man.
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@approxinfinity Good points! The portal does change things. But I think my point is that the idea that Bill is stubborn regarding who he plays still stands.
Now that the portal exists, the ideal approach (development over the long run) is more difficult. In order to make up for that we will have to hit in the portal and with oad more than we miss. But Bill will continue to have the same challenge of choosing which players to give minutes to. The evidence suggests he is good at this.
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@Jhawk69 great posts and have enjoyed your analysis even if I disagree with some of it. Need to double back to @Texas-Hawk-10 as the wsu loss traylor played 17 minutes but Perry was clearly the 4 man and scored 17 so I had that part wrong
I think your entire theory or discussion is proven wrong literally by Self’s loyalty to Juan and kj. He thinks kj effects a game as well as nba player ochai when kj will never do that (requires night in and night out stud offense and defense which he can’t do based on his offensive limitations and horrid defensive rebounding).
He also believes Juan is the best pure pg in America which means he can’t throw it in the ocean.
His loyalty to these two guys completely affects who we’ve been able to recruit via high school and the portal these last 3 years. These two were guaranteed starting spots no matter what. That is horrid talent evaluation.
That’s 100% proof he’s incorrectly evaluated these guys which is even more appalling as they’ve been in the progrum multiple years!!!
That then 100% backs up my take and @approxinfinity that there is without a doubt Self’s lack of confidence in more talented (but maybe not the best basketball player) players caused his teams to never reach their ceiling. Instead of elevating ALL players he’d only play the guys who did it “his way”. Well his way of winning rock fights 51-49 thinking that’s awesome isn’t ever maximizing talent and it is playing down to the competition which leads to early exits to lower level teams ie what we’ve seen 5/6 years……
His lack of talent evaluation after players are in his system has caused this.
Now impossible to prove when we all haven’t seen practices but man you catch glimpses of certain guys in games and think “if he wasn’t looking over his shoulder every play and got to play freely like these lower level players Self loves - I sure wonder how good this dude could actually be”
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@kuballin10 Thanks for the reply. Here’s my rebuttle: even if Bill is wrong about DaJuan and KJ, it still doesn’t mean that he is stubborn, as he has a long track record of picking the right guys, sometimes picking more talented young guys over veterans he likes and trusts, and sometimes not. It would just mean that DaJuan and KJ are exceptions to the rule.
But, I really don’t think Bill is giving minutes to DaJuan and KJ out of loyalty. Let’s look at the track record:
DaJuan
freshman season: Did not start. Played backup point guard.
sophomore season: Bill did not plan for DaJuan to start. He recruited Remy Martin. Remy Martin got injured. DaJuan started. When Remy came back they split minutes.
junior season: DaJuan started. Bobby Pettiford was his backup. DaJuan clearly deserved the start over Bobby Pettiford.
senior season: Bill Self brought in 5* recruit Elmarko Jackson. He tried to start them both together but Elmarko was not playing well and got benched. DaJuan ended up playing 38 minutes a game because Elmarko was borderline unplayable.
super-senior season: Bill brought in Diggy and Shak. DaJuan is much better than Diggy. I think he is also better than Shak (though I like Shak), plus Shak joined us late due to injury.
KJ:
freshman season: Barely played
sophomore season: Bill gave KJ, Udeh, and Ejiofor equal chances to win the job at the 5-spot for the first couple months of the season. Udeh and Ejiofor have both probably surpassed KJ as players now, but at the time KJ proved himself to be the best option. He started at the 5, and Udeh and Zuby backed him up.
junior season: Bill started KJ at the 4. We really didn’t have another player on the roster who had an argument to start over him. Parker Braun?? Start Elmarko and slide Furphy to the 4?? No thanks. I wish Udeh and Zuby would have stayed. But they didn’t. I think it’s because Bill chose Hunter over them. I think it has nothing to do with KJ.
senior season: Averaging about 28 ppg, which might be a little high but nothing excessive. I recall you saying you thought he deserved about 25 mpg, so the extra 3 is nothing to freak out about. You could argue that starting Flory or even Rylan at the 4 would be better, but it’s hard to fault starting KJ with how he has defended.
At the end of the day, there is no season in which you can say “Wow! Look at who is not getting minutes because of DaJuan/KJ!! This is clearly minute mismanagement!!”
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I’m not sure how you can watch the team with Dajuan off the court and think he is the problem.
I feel like the biggest issue for this team is a lot of the pieces don’t fit well together. Too many non-shooters but also Storr doesn’t make much sense on a roster with Zeke and Hunter.
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@BShark said in Mythbusters: Bill Self, minutes, and March:
I’m not sure how you can watch the team with Dajuan off the court and think he is the problem.
I feel like the biggest issue for this team is a lot of the pieces don’t fit well together. Too many non-shooters but also Storr doesn’t make much sense on a roster with Zeke and Hunter.
Juan in a vacuum isn’t the problem, but his weaknesses are magnified by the roster construction. There are a lot of good things Juan does that I think people take for granted.
I wish Rylan would play more minutes.
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@BShark said in Mythbusters: Bill Self, minutes, and March:
I’m not sure how you can watch the team with Dajuan off the court and think he is the problem.
I feel like the biggest issue for this team is a lot of the pieces don’t fit well together. Too many non-shooters but also Storr doesn’t make much sense on a roster with Zeke and Hunter.
Zeke and Hunter aren’t the issue with Storr’s game, it’s KJ. Storr is a driver and KJ not being a perimeter threat is what clogs the lane. Even though Hunter has sucked from 3 this year, teams still have to respect that Hunter can make that shot. We even saw it during the KSU game that Hunter and Storr’s games are compatible with each other on offense.
But, the overall roster composition this year is bad. There’s not a line up that’s a good balance between offense and defense. Harris, Moore, KJ, Flory, and whoever was a great defensive line up as we saw, but they struggled to score.
Harris, Mayo, Griffen, Storr, and Dickinson should be a great offensive line up, but it’s also a line up that can’t defend at all as we’ve seen when there’s only one good defender on the floor.
I’m much more optimistic that next season won’t see those issues with Jackson, Peterson, Flory, and whoever at the 3 and 4. I don’t think Tiller will play the 4 in college. I’d love to have Griffen back next season at the 3, but we’ll see what happens with him in the offseason. I’m good with Storr moving on to wherever because I don’t see him being a great fit with a really young team.
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@Jhawk69 I think your egregiously missing this statement: “His loyalty to these two guys completely affects who we’ve been able to recruit via high school and the portal these last 3 years. These two were guaranteed starting spots no matter what. That is horrid talent evaluation.”
Just comparing the roster options that year proves nothing besides Bill’s loyalty hurt his own roster construction which is his fault on talent evaluation. Trust me there was plenty of rumblings with potential options about the 1 and 4 being spoken for - there’s no way he’d land legit big names. Elmarko played ball for 2-3 years even as a 5 star he wasn’t going to be given the keys ahead of Juan.
Stud pg recruits along with transfers didn’t come here because of his loyalty for those 2 guys
Also - Remy never started for Harris….they both started together against MSU all the way through until his injury. Juan at the point and remy at the 2….which nullifies any argument that says but but remy came here and wasn’t scared - yeah he did and played the sg role when healthy then backup pg once Bill figured Wilson was deserving of huge minutes
Bill always started Juan even when Remy was healthy
Click on “stats” and it will show the starter’s each game
https://kuathletics.com/sports/mens-basketball/schedule/2021-22
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@BShark Because I’ve watched decades of KU pg’s and it’s painfully obvious what’s right in front of our eyes.
Love you mention non-shooters as the issue but leave out the guy you just defended even though he’s on that list.
Other teams coaches in public want him to shoot and mention that. They don’t guard him. His free throw % is brutal because he can’t attack. He’s literally a ball reversal guy and everyone but Bill can see it.
We make these excuses about pieces around him so he’s Alex smith he needs elite weapons and a perfect defense and he still can’t win a title unless Mahomes comes off the bench and plays the majority of the second half to save him in multiple games (remy)……
The excuses for him are comical. Yeah he’s the best option we have now but that’s also pretty poor given the level of pg play we are accustomed to.
When he’s not even a top 5 pg in his own league (last years stats he was that 6-7 range out of 14) but the coach is clamoring for how he’s just the best pg in American it is comical gaslighting
Bill doesn’t mention how much better the offense was instead it’s “we missed kj” - he’s the literal bias parent that can only see the situation one way and is unable to view it in a different light. It’s either black or white there is no other way to view it in Bill’s mind.
When we finish 3-4 in the big 12 and lose the rd 32/16 and he’s still enamored with kj and Juan I mean what else needs to be seen? Two straight years with no chance at a big 12 title or ncaa title but he gushes about them as if they are the best players to ever lace it up at Kansas.
How do you defend that?
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@kuballin10 DaJuan started those early games because of Jalen’s DUI suspension. Then Jalen replaced Remy because Remy was playing through an injury/missing time. When Remy got back to full health Bill didn’t want to tinker with our starting lineup anymore, but still gave Remy lots of pt.
With DaJuan on the roster we landed Remy (the top transfer portal pg of his season) and Elmarko Jackson (5* pg recruit). He didn’t hurt recruiting.
With KJ on the roster we landed Udeh, Ejiofor, AJ, Rylan, and Hunter. He didn’t hurt recruiting either.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 You were right defensively about this roster and the construction
I was wrong as I thought we’d play 4 guards and be better offensively and Bill would “figure it out” defensively.
He’d play his best offensive players and teach them how to defend.
Instead he rolls 2 bigs, mentions playing 3 at one time, plays his best defensive players and worst offensive guys. We never play 4 guards even though he said last year we needed “guards”. He got “guards” from other proven d1 programs then gets them here and decides they magically aren’t good enough and can’t play (that dog don’t hunt).
He plays to win in the 50’s thinking that’s his best chance when we will get beat 70’s to 50’s ala ISU game.
Great ncaa teams can score and then get a few stops when needed but they win 70’s and up.
He’s completely mishandled the roster this year.
Next year griffin won’t be here unless something drastic happens.
If he roles out Elmarko at pg (can’t shoot) and plays 2 bigs with the 4 man unable to shoot a jumper it will be the same crap as this year. Good defensively, more athletic but “uh uh we just labored to score tonight” - heard that for two decades and golly gee he’s never attempted to adjust his freaking offensive schemes or deep dive it.
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@KirkIsMyHinrich said in Mythbusters: Bill Self, minutes, and March:
@BShark said in Mythbusters: Bill Self, minutes, and March:
I’m not sure how you can watch the team with Dajuan off the court and think he is the problem.
I feel like the biggest issue for this team is a lot of the pieces don’t fit well together. Too many non-shooters but also Storr doesn’t make much sense on a roster with Zeke and Hunter.
Juan in a vacuum isn’t the problem, but his weaknesses are magnified by the roster construction. There are a lot of good things Juan does that I think people take for granted.
I wish Rylan would play more minutes.
I wish Rylan would earn more minutes.
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@Jhawk69 Yeah that’s not true either - did you bother even going through the games?
Wilson sat as you said first 3 games. Wilson was back and Juan and remy started in Orlando and all the way through Nevada Dec 29th - 8 total games when Jalen was back
Your memory on that one isn’t accurate at all
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@dylans So does Rylan….dudes kept a great attitude with the crap Self’s put him through. Treating starting upper classmen from final 4 teams like freshman ain’t the 2025 portal way
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@Jhawk69 Remy was sg as I’ve proven
Elmarko wasn’t taking his place Juan’s place as a frosh - zero clue how Elmarko proves ur point
Go look at those classes high school and portal wise
Rylan and Storr……mentioning those guys right now as “proof” kj didn’t hurt recruiting as you’ve watched this season transpire is an odd way to view it
Grant Nelson, Harrison Ingram……do some research or talk to the “in the know” guys here when it comes to Bill’s love for KJ keeping those better players (not just better nba prospects even though they are) from transferring here
It’s alright Oats has Nelson and Philon and sure appreciates it. Buddy was at practice the other day and said it’s been real tough with how they are playing but sec is a freaking gauntlet this year. At uk win should get them back on track.
Sears at the 1, Philon at the 1/2, Nelson at the 4 and big Cliff at the 5……id trade our 4 starters in those spots for bama’s in a heartbeat but no way in hell would Bill.
Bill’s talent evaluation and roster construction has been struggling lately since the portal. More misses than hits
