Self: 3 trifectate best/Brannen best trey so far/Conner guards now/7 Perimeter guys won't play/Red Shirting Now Unspoken
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@jaybate-1.0 do you always have to be so… So weird!!!
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@jaybate-1.0 And is it coincidence that Self talks about playing with two, small playmaking guards more – after Self saw the last two national champions start small guards (Louisville - Siva/Smith; UConn - Napier/Boatright) all 6’1" and under?
I’m all in with the idea of playing small. I love it. But …
But, you can’t play Self ball and play small effectively (most of the time).
Playing small means you post up based on MUAs (match up advantages, for the uninitiated).
Playing small means you have to be open to playing zone.
Playing small means you have to ensure that shooters are on the floor.
Playing small means that you have to implement strategic use of a press.
Playing small means that you play outside in.
Playing small means you play faster, and faster means you have to tolerate more turnovers.
Is any of that a part of Self’s “system”?
It’s the anti-Self system.
Would I like Self to tweak his system?
Uh, yea … you could say that.
But there have been situations where moving outside of his “system” was really the only answer. Yet, Self kept choppin’ wood. We weren’t winning a national title last season with Embiid out, and playing “inside the box.” As result, we went quietly into the night.
Self saw Andrew White have a stellar game against Belmont as a “pick and pop” 4 – 15 points – in 2012-13. Never saw it again.
So why would Self do it now? I don’t think we’ll see Oubre/Selden at the four except for the briefest of stretches. We’ll remain (painfully) conventional.
The reason I think is the exact reason why Self won’t press. Self said in a recent press conference that the team needs an identity that will work against all opponents. So he doesn’t want to press (a gimmick in his mind) against some teams, and not others.
I think ultimately that’s why he doesn’t play small ( a gimmick) even when it might be the most logical approach.
Thus my preference that he play the guys that fit Self-ball. Let’s maximize Self’s system. Forget the other stuff.
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From you weird is the octessence of compliment.
Right wing politics are not politics at all but rather Topo Gigio blue fedoras made from George Balanchine’s prima ballerina tutu remnants.
Correct?
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Back fill here, please.
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And here, please.
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And, well, you know the drill.
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@jaybate-1.0 rat foreskins??? Ewww
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You have raised Self’s conservatism persuasively on a number of occasions. Even got me thinking seriously about it.
Now, after having studied the roster of his 32-5 Elite Eight Tulsa team in 1999-2000, wherein he played very, very small ball AND had 5 of his 6 man rotation hoisting treys, even when they weren’t great trey shooters, I want to get you to think about and try to explain what the difference is between the Self of 1999-2000 and the Self of 2014-2015. Is there a difference? Is he inflexible, brilliantly flexible, or moderately flexible?
Clearly, Self was willing once to play small ball when forced to by his talent. But he did more than play small ball with that Tulsa team. He turned it into a trey balling flying circus with an absolutely miniscule rotation. That was way outside the envelope of that time in college basketball. That was the time of XTReme Thug Ball Version 1.o. That was the time of the Wisconsin-Michigan State national championship slugfest in which both offense and defense were reduced to forearm shivers, plus blocking and tackling. Mateen “the meat cleaver” Cleeves was the poster boy PG of the era. And yet Self went 180 opposite the trend that season. He went with five trey ball triggering short and athletics that guarded their hearts out and became superb at 70 point take what they give us played up and under.
Then he went to Illinois and played a bunch of Lon Kruger’s residual muscle men, and tasted Ratso Izzo’s brass knuckle sandwiches and other forms of Big Ten maul ball, and really got queer for adapting the Iba hi-lo aka Dean’s and Larry’s Xcellent Adventure in the Carolina Passing Offense aka Eddie Ball into an XTReme Muscle hybrid. If you let us run a way from you we will. If you force us to muscle with you, we will. And so on.
Then he gets to KU and rides a short wide body post, a 4 on steroids, in Simien to the Elite Eight.
Then he gets serious about signing length, and gets catholic about the hi-lo basics: stretch the D with open look 40% trey shooters combined with a wide variety of long bigs.
The long bigs are where Self has been the most brazen in trying the outrageous IMHO. They range from two stretch 4s playing 4 and 5 in the Morri, to pairing an undersized rim protector in Mad Stork Cole and stretch 4 Marcus, to pairing a no offense footer rim protector Withey with an inverted pyramid fore arm smashing dunk machine in TRob, to pairing rim protector Withey with perhaps the greatest anomaly in the history of college basketball–6-7 180 power forward KY. And don’t forget that the ring team played a 6-8 power forward at center, a 6-9 shooting forward at power forward, and a 6-10 260 Ruskie back up center without knees that could neither rebound, nor score.
This constitutes perhaps the most extraordinary clinic in exploring the varied approaches to playing an offense I can recall. Maybe Wooden tried more variations on his high post, but even Wooden jump shifted when he had Jabbar and Walton to the low post offense.
Compare the variety of Self’s approaches within his hi-lo to the rote sameness of Cal’s teams within the dribble drive offense at Memphis and UK. Cal seems never to change a thing about how they play the dribble drive offense and the defenses never change either.
Compared to Cal, Self is like Picasso morphing into yet another virtuoso form of hi-lo every couple years. Talent seems to hugely dictate how Self plays his hi-lo, where as Cal lets the dribble drive dictate what his conveyor belt of Mickey Ds do. Ball screen, dribble drive, create. Ball screen, dribble drive, create. Throw it inside. Repeat.
Cal just keeps letting Nike feed him Mickey Ds and lining them up exactly the same way and, regardless of the heights of the players at the positions year to year, they run the same ball screen and dribble drive isolations without change year after year.
Self’s offenses have varied from into low block Simien turn and shoot, to mostly pick and role during Cole’s years. to stretch 4 and stretch 5 with trey ball wings out of the cradle endlessly stretching, to playing three short perimeter guys, to playing three long perimeter guys, to…well, you get the idea.
We’ve seen him run the stay-on-the-spots hi-lo and the slide-off-the-spots hi-lo. Now he is talking about staying on the lines high lo, which inplies the possibility of a veering off the lines hi-lo, too.
The only thing Self hasn’t varied much is relying on a half court defense, but even the way they have played half court defense has varied widely from XTReme Disruption in '08 to no disruption and just guarding the trey stripe and rim protection last season in order to win the FTA battle.
How do we square our sense of his conservatism, which, as I have said, you sometimes make persuasively, with all of this extraordinary variation within limits in his career?
Since adopting the dribble drive offense, Cal doesn’t vary at all. He’s like Old Faithful. Watch Derek Rose, then watch Marcus whatever his name was on the Davis ring team. The almost the identical dribble drive actions. From CDR to Kidd-Gilchrist. Not a speck of difference in the dribble drive offensive sets and actions they are running.
What exactly does Self’s conservatism mean, when he so dramatically morphs the hi-lo every season or two?
I keep coming back to extraordinary variation with limits to describe Self.
So: its apparently the limits that make you find him conservative.
Not sure if you find Cal as conservative as I do. Cal is progressive in recruiting alright, progressive perhaps to the point of never knowing what is being done wrong by alums in his behalf. But in terms scheming? That would be no. He adopted a new offense from a high school coach; that was fresh. But since then, the names change but what is done with the offense seems to stay the same.
And Self is very quick to steal from what works for others, at least from that which can be integrated into his hi-lo system in pieces.
And he also pioneers things, like let the other team set the tempo, that guys like Calhoun, with Ollie at his side assisting, essentially copy completely.
What UConn did the last few years under Calhoun and then Ollie last season really comes out of Self Ball. It appeared to me that LB had been coming to Self’s practices the last few years and then tutoring Ollie on what Self was doing a couple years back and passing it to Calhoun, as UNC assistant Larry Brown once learned the hi lo from Iba and passed it to Dean.
May be it is the limits of NOT going to full time, full court zone pressing that makes him seem conservative to us at times.
But there just was nothing conservative about the 2012 runner up team. It was sand bagging entire games for wins. What Tyshawn did was practically the prototype for what Shabazz and UConn did last season.
Part of me worries that Self is not passing an eye test for maverick thinkers in today’s media culture.
He is once conventionally WASP leading man handsome–classic square face structure, straight hair (plugged or not) and that mixture of handsome and a little goofy.
He speaks with an Okie accent.
He seems corporate jock/fraternity brother smooth.
No Meadow Lands mousse like Cal, or whatever he is wearing these days.
No ‘hood slangin’ like Ollie.
No slick omerta schtick like Ratso and Slick Rick.
No toos and pierced earrings.
No Tom Ford skinny suits.
No John Thompson 1.0 glasses, black suit, white shirt, black tie accidental allusions to the Nation of Islam and the honorable Elijah Muhammad.
No red neck Bob Knight golf sweaters with a fishing pole in the back of the pickup stuff.
No “I made it mamma” son of Polish immigrant and Army chic like K.
(Note: I admire all of these styles of all these coaches past and present for their stylish idiosyncracies.)
Do we have a basketball maverick and genius here in Self being obscured by the aging mayonaisse and wonder bread frat house look in the age of “whitey-gonna-be-a-minority-in-20-year” speak?
Or do we have a bonafide basketball conservative and sports fundamentalist inflexible?
Lay your thoughts down when you get a chance.
Slug it: getting to know our coach and our eye prescriptions.
We are sailing into harms way with a short fleet.
We need to know our admiral.
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What?
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Back fill.
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@jaybate-1.0 Sorry I haven’t been around this week to jump in on all your threads, but I have been reading and trying to keep up.
I think the scenario you have outlined here is right on. I feel like CF has been getting pushed with the recent comments from HCBS, and I think coach is putting out a lot of smoke screens with regards to talking up Graham and talking about moving Selden all over the court. My logic behind this is that, Mason and CF have been playing a lot on the court at the same time together in all the scrimmages this summer and late night. And quite honestly, from the bit of footage I’ve seen, they play well together. The team has a really nice pace to it when they are out there together.
CF will get his shot and Greene/Svi will be ready to go if he fails. Another thing he has going him is he can backup the 1 and 2, but if Graham can stretch the floor then that’s also an option. But this team will need the floor stretched as much as possible to help the small bigs inside. Another thing I’ve noticed from all the scrimmage footage is that CF seems to have a knack for staying in and getting long rebounds, as well as, knowing when to leak out to be ready for the outlet pass on short rebounds. We always seem to get burned on the long rebounds, and this year especially, every rebound will count.
As far as your other threads about Selden playing the 1 or 4, it seems to me that if HCBS wants to keep the OADs and TADs spigot open then he should play Selden at the 2 and let him sink or swim on his own. In other words, if Selden plays the 2 and can’t hit the 3 at 40%, then his draft stock is on him. If HCBS moves him all over the place and it hurts his draft stock then it’s on the coach, and may effect future recruiting. Personally, I think HCBS is very well hedged with the current roster to miss on a OAD 2 guard next year. I kind of hope he does because I want to see some of our depth get some pt.
Now the question of “can Selden be a good point guard?” Well, a wise man once told me that “as long as he can make the easy plays and stretch the spandex…”
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Robust take.
And I think you have hit on something important and rather inexcusably lacking in my analyses to date: REBOUNDING.
The litmus test for perimeter play should include an advanced degree in carom-ology given short bigs, just as you say.
Especially during stretches where our perimeter has mostly guys that are not 40% trey ballers, I would say your point takes on added gravity.
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I would not pay much attention to that mock draft; heck, most of the 2015 one and done have yet to decide where they will play and that will dictate go goes and who stays.
As far as Greene, he played so little that many of his turnovers are amplified (some of his passes to the bench were real boners) since we have so little to go by. You are right, Coach Self has made it clear that he is going back to the style that has been so successful for him and it starts with hard nose defense. The change in the foul rules last season wreaked havoc with Coach Self style of play, but one season and one off-season later to adapt, I will guess that KU will go back to being a top defensive team first.
“The team with a great defense coupled with a good offense will almost always defeat the team with a good defense and a great offense.” - Forrest Clare “Phog” Allen
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@JayHawkFanToo dang did I hate how the rule interpretations hurt us!
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@Crimsonorblue22 “do you always have to be so… So weird!!!”
Jaybate is like going to a chinese buffet - you fill your plate with items you like, and you pass over the “octopus surprise dish”. Rat foreskin smack talk is ‘octopus surprise’… lol.
BTW, the Crimson/Jaybate back and forth is the best on the board, imho.
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"@jaybate-1.0 I thought a better title to the post might have been, “Three point shooting is NOT for suckers.” But what do I know … "
This forum has definitely become a virtual locker room… and I’m loving every second of it!
What’s next, power push-ups?
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One comment has continued to ring through my head ever since it flowed from Self’s mouth:
“It will be hard to keep Devonte out of this lineup, especially as the year progresses.”
I’m guessing Self is talking about the PG position, but who knows… can Devonte swing on the perimeter?
Two key definitions about Devonte will propel him into big time minutes this year:
- Leadership Skills
- Playmaking Abilities
It would be great to add “Treyslayer” and “Solid Defender” to that list… but really the first 2 definitions will count the most to nail down serious PG minutes.
The player I worry about the most is Frank. He is extremely gifted and can really become a factor for x-axis basketball… but I just don’t know if I see Self ever putting him at the 2. Maybe he will sometimes run Devonte and Frank together but shift Devonte over to the 2…
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I just don’t see Mason playing any position other than PG, maybe Graham but not Mason.
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Interesting you bring up Mason … from Twitter, Seth Greenberg ,who was at KU’s practice yesterday: “Wouldn’t be shocked to see Frank Mason and Devonte Graham together. Mason has a little Allen Iverson in him.”
He also said that Svi is the “real deal”, is "going to be special’, and has “feel, skill, length, toughness, needs strength.”
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I can see that but I would think that Mason at 5’11" plays PG and Graham at 6’2" plays either SG or combo guard but I do not see it going the other way.
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“Mason has a little Allen Iverson in him.”
That is some major hype! Wigs didn’t even get that.
I’m curious about the defensive skills of our perimeter guys. Who will be up for some d?
@JayHawkFanToo - I’m almost certain Devonte would push over to the two. But what would be nice is to shove Frank over to the 2 on O and have him play PG on D. We may be treating our 1 and 2 about the same anyways… sort of like the 4 and 5… or should we just call them “left” and “right”?
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Coach Self is a creature of habit and while he might try different things, he will always fall back on whats is his bread and butter (Seth Greenberg notwithstanding) which is tough defense and the Hi-Lo on offense. I know that there has been a lot of talk of dramatic position changes, such as Selden paying anywhere from PG to PF, but other than using it as a gimmick, I just don’t see it being a permanent fixture.
The following quote seems particularly applicable…
** “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr **
“the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”, usually translated as **“the more things change, the more they stay the same,” **
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@drgnslayr No, Wigs didn’t get that-He got the comparison to Wilt which was about the most absurd thing ever, other than the amount of hype prior to arriving on campus & lacing up the Adidas.
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@globaljaybird
Ha… right… that was so absurd that I forgot about it!
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I hear you.
Last year Self changed quite a bit. We rarely ran the hi/lo. I recall about half the time we were trying to get the ball to Wigs and just left him alone to do whatever (drive and get fouled or lose the ball out of bounds). It didn’t seem to be an effective offense and definitely didn’t have the flow of his old hi/lo.
I’m expecting we will see some hi/lo this year, but also other things. A lot will depend on Perry and Cliff and how well they can execute the hi/lo. Perry seems like he would rather step out and hit the J. He’s studying all the tape from the twins and how they created diverse scoring options, especially Marcus.
Exploiting other teams via matchups shouldn’t be viewed as a gimmick… but I’m not sure that he won’t see it like that. I think Self paid close attention to ISU last year (and a bit from OSU) and it is giving him some ideas. Maybe… or maybe not!
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Jaybate writes, “7 perimeter guys won’t play/Redshirting now unspoken.” I suspect that by February Greene or Frankamp will have wished for the opportunity to have snatched the red singlet. Tho, most probably, none was offered. After the Wiggins and Embiid recruitment and subsequent lottery bonanza, Bill Self is fairly well set for specific spot recruitment, at least for the near future. No need to burn a fifth year scholly on sophomores who arrived a year ago with superior upside, but did not quite cut the first year mustard in crunch situations. Given TIME, both Greene and Frankamp will probably develop into essential gametime contributors for Jayhawk hoops. Spot duty this season will tell lots about their potential for a junior red shirt or third year major playing time. Unless injury to other potential key players dictates otherwise, I predict that each of them is yet at least a year away.
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@globaljaybird / @drgnslayr … ssshhhhh. @Crimsonorblue22 might be listening. I’m kidding …
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Long time, no read. Good to see you are back at the keyboard. Your notion that Greene and/or Frankamp might redshirt in later years is very interesting. I have always thought early red shirting was kind of arbitrary. Thanks for kicking out a side of the box for me, Coach.
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Hype means never having to say your forget.
God, I guess I am never going to get that stupid movie out of my memory banks.
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“octessence”??? You certainly mean quintessence, right?
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@JayHawkFanToo I was thinking HerbalEssence…
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No, no, bigger! The eighth essence, dude/dudette (note: I raise the gender thing, because someone else did and I did not want to be disrespectful), this is the age of hype. This is the labyrinth without the meaning of not a labyrinth. This is Borges without the meaning of Jorge Luis. We are entering the sign market become THE VOID as per little Baudrillard’s gnomish schtick. Operation Inherent Resolve is not, I repeat, not happening, as surely as Desert Storm did not happen and Baudrillard did not happen. Quintessence is so last century, so pre-poststructural. Octessence is the new quintessence. Just like googleplex blew up to Graham Number.
Inflate with the times, without recalling the base year index, or die.
Dramedy.
Tragicomic.
Realm-free.
Lady GaGa isn’t Dada.
But Dada is Lady Gaga.
T.S. Eliot Click.
Pinaud is the last constant.
Since 1816.
Can you dig it, baby?
Engineering toward Bethlehem, not slouching, or praying.
Log of e, Log of e,
Let it be, let it be,
Engineering words of wisdom
Let it be, Log of e…
And Nautilus was the first submarine to cross under the North Polar ice cap.
But its the arcs of the Sunflower that determine everything.
"I can dig it
You can dig it
He can dig it
She can dig it…
Can you dig it, baby?"
"No that is not it, at all
That is not what I meant, at all"
"We are all born mad.
Some remain that way."
But after Pinaud, then
It is basketball alone that counts
For each bounce by a boy
Or a girl
In an iced driveway
Or within a chainlink schoolyard
Is a tiny, subversive denial of
THE VOID
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Nice try. Wouldn’t be easier to admit you used a non-existent word by mistake instead of trying to justify the error and in the process compounding it?
To each his own as it were, not a big deal to me.
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Engineering explains a WHOLE lot.
Or does it?
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Back fill here.
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And here.
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And here.
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So predictable…
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And here.
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Back fill here too.
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And here.
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And be predictable while you do.
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Come on!
There’s reputedly a technique that is taught for how to respond to what I’m doing.
I’m serving you a lob!
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@jaybate-1.0 why did I click on that?
I’m grossed out, disappointed too!
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And here.
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And here.
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