Tubby and Tech give KU the Big 12
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Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
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@JayHawkFanToo canât wait to dump them!
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âŚlike a purple headed step child?
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@JayHawkFanToo yep
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I would not count our chickens before they are hatched. There is a lot of basketball to play. It is highly unlikely we lose more than 1 at home but you never know. Every away game for KU is the biggest home game of the year for the other team. Today was a big win over UT and a huge loss for ISU but there is a lot of basketball to play including another head to head against ISU at AFH which will be tough.
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@joeloveshawks TCU! Donât ever forget! Nice thing about this team, we have a great bench!
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Iâve said all along⌠Kansas wins the Big 12 because no other team knows how.
All we have to do (moving forward) is win the games we are supposed to win (home games and TCU, TT away) and one more that we arenât supposed to win, like the purple kitties, one of the oklahomas or WVU away.
The rest of our league will implode.
ISU is completely over-rated. They rely on gimmicks for victories⌠like run outs. Their defense is marginal, they lack rebounding and size⌠and they lack bench. I still canât believe we lost to those clowns.
But, like others have said⌠there is a lot of basketball yet to be played. If we beat Texas at home they will prove to be our biggest ally moving forward because they should improve substantially over the next month and Iâm sure they will win some good games against some of our other foes.
Myles⌠Iâm not going to tell you âI told you soâ but⌠the rest of it will prove out in March. âyou should have chosenâŚâ
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I respectfully disagree on ISU. I believe it is a very good team that has been ranked all season long and arguably, the best shooting team in the conference; perhaps not a top 5 but maybe a borderline top 10 team. IMHO, ISU is one of the top 3 teams in the Big 12, the top rated conference. If you think they are over-rated, other than KU, would you say is better than ISU in the conference?
They are not only good and well coached but more importantly, they match up well with KU and gimmicks or not they beat KU in Ames and they are the one team that can beat KU in Lawrence as well.
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@wrwlumpy KU will absolutely protect its home court advantage this season. No one wins in the Phog this season! No one! Its our house! AFH.
We owe payback to ISU for the loss in Hilton and we will get it in spades!
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@Crimsonorblue22 YES! ! ! !
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@drgnslayr I for one am actually glad that Turner did not choose KU. After watching the game yesterday he is obviously a stud. He is a 7 footer who can play D, shoot 3âs, grab boards, etc. But the other thing I saw yesterday was Cliff, Perry and Jamari win the battle of the bigs vs. UT. If Myles goes to KU that is just another cook in the kitchen. He obviously takes away minutes from all 3 of those guys and we probably donât have the chemistry we have nowâŚPerry the smooth and calm veteran, Jamari the energy / floor burns guy, Cliff the âI will try to dunk everythingâ tough guy freshman. I think we are doing just fine without another superstar in there to take minutes away from a group that is really starting to come together.
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No longer are they the three little Bigs.
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@JayHawkFanToo I agree with slayer ⌠they arenât that good. I fear WVUâs high pressure game more than the Clones. If Iowa St played defense, it would be different. Fredâs offense has to be good because his defense is so bad. It will be a brutal game for the Clones in Lawrence.
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@KUSTEVE After watching WVU almost lose to TCU yesterday I am not quite as scared of themâŚor the fact that UT beat them by 20. WVU plays a style of D that could get them tons of TOâs and lead to a lot of easy points but it could also have the opposite effect. KU has the right guys to break that press and we should see a lot of dunks in our 2 games against WVU.
Well said about ISU. They live and die by the offense. That said, if they are clicking on offense and 3âs are falling they donât really have to play D. Very streaky team. I would still hate to see them in March.
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KU Athletics - great highlights
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@drgnslayr Your words are proving prophetic.
I agree with some of your points about ISU. I do think they rely on gimmicks, and are an extremely one-dimensional team that canât play defense. Itâs upsetting losing to them. But theyâre not overrated. Theyâre a good team. The thing is, theyâre an average team on the road. Texas Tech played pretty well, and ISU looked very content to let them shoot 3âs. How ironic.
Wins on the road against Texas and Baylor make them our best buddies now. And Texas can become a little closer to us with a win in Ames on Monday.
As for Turner. Turner didnât want to play in Selfâs system. Itâs not that he didnât fit, itâs that he wants to play on the perimeter. Whereas Self would say âMyles, youâre seven foot. Iâm putting you in the post.â What did Rick Barnes say after the game yesterday? âMyles needs to learn how to play in the post.â Barnes was willing to give Turner the Wiggins treatment, while Self was not going to let a seven-foot center with that skill set play shooting guard. But slayr, youâre right, this will all play out in March. If KU doesnât do anything in the tournament, the rest of this doesnât mean anything, and who cares where Turner chose to play his one year in college.
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@joeloveshawks WVU is running the same type of pressure that gave us fits last year. I want to see our team beat that defense- I think Frank and Devonte will make them pay dearly for pressing us. Still, we have shown this year if opposing teams can speed us up, our youth takes over, and we start playing too fast, making dumb turnovers, wild shots, etc. WVU will be perfect for our team to get ready for the tourney - we get two intense games against a high pressure defense.
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@MoonwalkMafia wiggins treatment? Coach let Wigs call the shots? Wasnât aware of that!
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@Crimsonorblue22 Yes. Bill let Wiggins put up stupid shots and make the mistakes that normally draws a hook. You werenât aware of that?
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@MoonwalkMafia nope! I thought you were comparing that to Barnes letting turner play outside. Didnât think wigs was calling the shots. I thought wigs was the most talented, humble, unselfish player weâve had. I loved the way he represented us then and how he still does now. I thought we were blessed to have him, Embiid and Tarik, really super guys! Jmo
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@Crimsonorblue22 - You said, âI thought wigs was the most talented, humble, unselfish player weâve had.â
The issue I have is with the term âthe mostâ â meaning in each category, you say Wiggins was better than any player ever at Kansas?
Really? Letâs assume you may have meant under coach Self to limit the scope.
I donât know how you define selfishness, but Andrew Wiggins was plainly a selfish player on the court. He wouldnât dive on the floor (the first time was in early February), he was many times lazy getting up and down the court, and when he got the ball, he was a black hole. Wiggins had enumerable opportunities to pass and create scoring for other players. Instead, he flailed away at the hoop. And most of the time, taking bad or guarded shots. All the guy did on offense was hunt his shot. In my book, he was the second most selfish player in the Self era, behind the king of selfish, Tyshawn Taylor.
Iâll grant you that he was humble. Iâll grant you that he was talented. I challenge the âmostâ comment. Regardless, the Wiggins we saw last season is not a player that I want on a Kansas basketball team.
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@HighEliteMajor I said, jmo.
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@Crimsonorblue22 Right, Iâm noting my disagreement with your opinion. I assume that you are posting your opinion for a reason.
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@HighEliteMajor and I disagree w/yours, as usual. Iâm glad you donât recruit for us.
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@joeloveshawks I agree about Turner. Why give the min to another guy that clearly wants to raise draft stock when we have a group of guys that are busting butt to get better & make the entire team successful? I think the Wigs experiment made Bill take a minor step back in the OAD sweepstakes. Good analogy from HEM-the âblack holeâ effect.
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@HighEliteMajor @Crimsonorblue22 Have to weigh in here. I wouldnât say that Wiggins was selfish. But I do agree with some of what HEM says. He did hunt his shot, but you canât be considered selfish for hunting your shot if coach is asking you to be the alpha and take more shots, can you? Or if you have 2 stiffs on the perimeter and maybe another guy or two in the post standing around watching you.
I donât know that selfish guys play lock down defense as freshman. Yeah he didnât get any Jamari Traylor floor burn awards, but the guy did a lot more to carry last yearâs team than anyone else. I know HEM doesnât care much about them, and I donât hold them in as high regard as a lot of fans, but we donât win the Big 12 last year without Wiggins.
I will always wonder what Wiggins could have been like on a team like this yearâs squad. With competent point guard play, or playing with a full compliment of back court talent. Which isnât to say Iâm pining for Wiggins on this yearâs squad. I just wonder if we might judge him differently if things were different last year.
And to the original point in which he was brought up, Wiggins wasnât âcalling the shotsâ last year. It is in no way comparable to Turner this year.
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@Crimsonorblue22 Perhaps instead of making snide remarks, why not defend your position. Why was Wiggins âthe mostâ?
For the most talented player ever at Kansas â all others be damned, of course â he sure as heck couldnât do much against the vaunted Stanford Cardinal. I recall you being of the position that coach Selfâs scheme was not the problem, so perhaps your boy Wiggins was? 1-6 shooting, four points, and of course, one assist. THE most talented player at Kansas. Ever. Wiggins checked out in the most important game.
And you donât even consider why I would not want him at Kansas. He doesnât play coach Selfâs brand of ball. He was the proverbial square peg in a round hole. He was not a fit at all. A high level of talent does not equate to a high level of team productivity. Self made much to do about losing two of the top three NBA picks, and how can you replace that? Quite easily, it appears. And I said that before the season started. Subtract soft, finesse guys. Add in guys that better fit the system. Perfect example â Did you see Oubre at the start of the OU game? You never saw Wiggins give half that effort or sacrifice the entire season.
Maybe the softest player ever at Kansas (at least in recent years among high minutes guys) â soft as a babyâs bottom.
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@icthawkfan316 I grant you the defensive point. How about I qualify my selfish remarks to the offensive end? That may be a better statement of what I intend. Tyshawn worked hard defensively, too.
And I do think we would have been a better team last season without Wiggins. Thought it might be true before last season, and I believe it now. When you have a guy that is the presumed focus, it changes the team dynamic. I canât prove it, of course.
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@icthawkfan316 As I was reading the posts, I was thinking what you postedâŚit was probably hard for Wiggins to be unselfish when Self was pushing him to be the Alpha Dog. In todayâs AAU, OAD environment, I can see why it would be hard to be both a team player and a starâŚsome guys do it, of course. I do think that Selfâs system is not ideal for the player who sees himself as a for sure OAD player. I would note that some of the top guys that have come here (Oubre, I think Alexander, and now Bragg) have said at some point that they are not necessarily OAD. That type of attitude probably fits Selfâs team better than some of the other guys.
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@HighEliteMajor Youâre showing your bias. He gets criticism for hunting his shot, then for taking only 6 shots against Stanford. SoâŚdid you want him to be selfish and hunt his shot against Stanford, or not?
I know your position was against signing Wiggins from the beginning. That it wasnât worth it unless he led us to a national title.
Hereâs what Iâd say - I get why you were against Wiggins. That by bringing him in we didnât have the minutes to play Greene and AW3, and as such we didnât develop Greene as much and it led to AW3 transferring. Fair enough. To that I would say that we werenât going to win a national championship with Greene & AW3 instead of Wiggins last year. Not with JoJo hurt. Not with Tharpe at PG. And because we had Wiggins and he left instead of having a solid platoon of Greene & AW3, we were able to sign Oubre. I know Oubre signed early (or declared, I forget if he had actually signed in the early period), but does he if we donât have Wiggins, who was all but guaranteed to be a OAD? I doubt it.
The other thing you say is that we would have been a better team last season without Wiggins. As you say we canât prove it so weâll never know for sure, but just looking at it: Tharpe was going to be Tharpe. Not sure he would have been significantly better. And honestly, Iâm glad he was as bad as he was. It allowed for him to exit, paving the way for Mason to be the starter this year and for Graham to come on board. And Selden - has he been any better this year without Wiggins around being the presumed focus? Not really, at least not to me. So I canât see the other 2 starting perimeter positions being all that much better. So then Iâm left to wonder if a combination of Greene & AW3 would have been a straight up upgrade over Wiggins. I donât think so, so I guess I canât see last yearâs team being better without him.
Iâm the last guy to say âeverything happens for a reasonâ, but Iâm pretty stoked about the make-up of this team, which might have been very different had Wiggins not been here.
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Regarding the Wiggins talk it is very hard to say that we did not benefit from him. Maybe last year he was not the Kevin Durant / Melo / Beasley we all thought he may be but he was a very good defender and of course lead the team in scoring.
But to me the above is secondary. He was the most coveted recruit in decades and we landed him. Now he is kicking butt in the NBA as a rookie and the fact that he went to KU will help recruiting for years to come. Oubre is here in large part because Bill said âYou can step in and be the next Andrew Wigginsâ. It says a ton. Coach Cal is of course known today as the best recruiter and I am sure he makes his own life easier by saying âYou could be the next John WallâŚD RoseâŚAnthony DavisâŚâ You can fill in the blank. Wiggins being at KU last year is about the residual effect. We are going to land good recruits based on him. At least that is what I see coming.
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@joeloveshawks Agreed on the residual benefits of bringing in Wiggins. Something Iâve mentioned on these boards before is that both Self and KU in general need someone in the NBA carrying the torch for the university. Paul Pierce has been the last and only star weâve had in the league for quite some time, and he canât play forever. Self has needed his own guy in the NBA to point to and say âlook at what this guy is doing in the league, and he played for me here at KU.â Nevermind that Wiggins was going to be in the NBA regardless; we didnât âdevelopâ him anymore than Calipari developes most of his OADs. But the perception is there at least. And the reality that he didnât hurt his stock after coming to play for Self. I think that is important after the Selby debacle (which wasnât Selfâs fault, but againâŚperception).
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@icthawkfan316 Hereâs my issue with Wiggins vs. Stanford. And itâs my biggest issue with Wiggins in general â one assist. Stanford schemed to stop Wiggins, lots of attention. My position on the Stanford game was that our scheme failed us, not Wiggins. But what Wiggins didnât do, what he never did, was make anyone else better. Every game, over and over, he would drive and refuse to dish to open guys.
I do think we could have won a national title without Wiggins. But I agree with you ⌠I think to win the national title without Wiggins, we would have likely needed a healthy Embiid. But who knows. Greene/White could have been a deadly combo. But as posted prior to the tourney, I think we could have won the national title with Wiggins and without Embiid IF we would have adjusted our style of play. Faster, more possessions â I spent too many paragraphs on it at the time.
And that hits on my opinion of Wiggins. I like Wiggins a lot as a player. Just not under coach Self. @Crimsonorblue22 said heâs glad Iâm not recruiting. If I was, I certainly would have recruited Wiggins. Itâs just that I wouldnât have used him in the same type of system. Tharpeâs softness, Ellisâ softness, Embiidâs finesse game, all could have been exploited. We see this season how our time responds better to a certain type of game. It really is that simple. Our system was not what Wiggins was built for. I think we all can agree on that.
Hereâs another belief that I have, and I think others have expressed this, including @drgnslayr. The entire dynamic of the team changes without Wiggins. Wiggins was the anointed one. He was the guy that got to shoot whenever, wherever. It seemed clear that there were âWiggins-rules.â We can look no further than his refusal to dive on the floor. Greene got sat earlier this season when he lamely bent over for the basketball (someone pointed that out here). Wiggins didnât get put on the bench when he loafed back on defense, which happened frequently in the first half of the season. I think guys, many times, looked around waiting for Wiggins to do something.
It is subjective, but I feel strongly that we would have been a better, more cohesive âteamâ without Wiggins. And that would have created better results with White/Greene manning the three spot, or with Mason, Tharpe, Selden in from time to time.
And youâre right, we might not get Oubre if we didnât have Wiggins. I may be the one in need of psychotropic medication, but if we still had Andrew White, Iâd be completely fine with that (even though I really like Oubre). And I donât think our record is different right now. We see what Greene brings to the table. White just got caught in a bad set of circumstances. The anointed one arrived, Greene was a class behind him, and Oubre inked. Whiteâs numbers were pretty darn good when he got the bench. And he got the bench for the same reason Svi has â circumstances. As we know, guys that sit can be just as good or better. Opportunity is a big deal.
But like you, I love the make-up of this team. Things do seem to fit real well.
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You think we would have been a better team offensively without Wiggins? Didnât he lead the team in scoring? Didnât he broke Danny Manningâs freshman scoring record? Only Embiid and Ellis (yes, that Ellis) averaged more rebound than Wiggins and only Tharpe, Selden and Mason (all of them primary ball distributors) averaged more assists than himâŚand you think that Coach Self is on drugs
âŚbut then, you also think that Ellis should be on the bench, so I (we) have to take your comments in context. 
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I still believe ISU is over-rated.
I tip my hat to the Mayor though. He gets every ounce of delivery out of the players he has⌠but this is NOT the quality of team they had last year, or even close. They have to count a lot more on Niang this year, and he looks just a bit slower after his injury.
The Mayor really is a fabulous coach. Iâd take him in a second. Imagine what he could do if he was bringing in top tier talent? The guy knows how to execute a plan with the talent pool of a mid-major. If he can ever recruit near our level⌠we are truly in trouble.
That is my bittersweet assessment of the Cyclones. Very fun team to watch, and a team capable of beating anyone⌠but they were exposed at TT. And praise to the players they do have.
In some odd ways, they remind me of Wichita State. They take from the same talent pool and play to their potential.
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Oh come on? Are you that bored that you would stir the pot over someone using the term âthe mostâ? What is this called?? Extremism.
How many times have you been watching a KU game or a highlights of a game and said to yourself or someone that is âthe bestâ play Iâve ever seen? Weâve âallâ done it.
However most likely itâs not the best play youâve ever seen or in this case why Wiggins isnât really âthe mostâ.
Itâs called living in the moment. Itâs hard to compare apples to oranges. Some were lucky enough to watch Wilt play, but what about those that didnât? Are they wrong to make a claim thatâs âthe bestâ player, or Thatâs the most talented player? As they are living in the moment, and imprinting their minds and their being with what they are seeing, and feeling. Which is the most talented and so on.
Just my two cents
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So, you are basing your entire opinion on Wiggins on the Stanford game? I sure would hate to be judged for the occasional bad day or two I have at the office and not for all the other outstanding ones. BTW, Wiggins did not cost KU the Stanford game, paint play did. These are the paint numbers
Stanford Game:
- Perry 3-10, 9 points, 8 rebounds. 2 fouls in 26 minutes
- Traylor 1-8, 3 points, 5 rebounds, 3 fouls in 25 minutes
- Black 6-8, 12 points, 5 rebounds, 5 fouls in 23 minutes
Combined 10-26 (38,4%), 24 points 18 rebounds in 74 minutes.
And most of those misses were what is commonly referred as âbunniesâ i.e. shots with a couple of feet of the basket. In comparison, these are the numbers for the previous game:
- Perry 6-11, 14 points, 13 rebounds, 2 fouls in 34 minutes
- Traylor 7-8, 17 points, 14 rebounds, 2 fouls in 22 minutes
- Black 6-8, 16 point, 6 rebounds, 3 fouls in 26 minutes
Combined 19-27 (70.4%), 47 points, 33 rebounds in 82 minutes.
Can you see where the problem was? KUâs bigs did not match up with Stanford height and bulk inside and once Tarik fouled out KU had no inside game. It did not make any difference how well Stanford played Wiggins, if KU bigs played anywhere near their season averages, this games is not even close; had they made just 2 of the many bunnies they missed, KU wins.
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Regarding the rest of the Big 12. Just win baby. Take care of business and then we donât need to cheer when one of our challengers absorbs another loss.
Regarding Wiggins, I barely think of him as a Jayhawk. I wish it were different, but with all of the obvious talent was an air of he doesnât care that much.
@drgnslayr Agree on Hoiberg. I like him more than any other coach in our league. I wonder if heâll get lured away to some more glamourous job someday? I hope not.
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@wissoxfan83
Congrats on a tough OT win at Michigan!
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I watched the Texas-WVU game and between Felix and Taylor they ripped Huggyâs full court press a new one, and after they broke the full court press, they had easy basket and the Texas bigs had a field day inside; Texas won by 27. Mason and Graham are even better than the Texas back-court and I donât see much of a problem with WVU if KU uses a similar game plan.
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I thought we just didnât come ready to play Stanford. We didnât bring the energy.
Had we brought the energy we brought yesterday, we would have shown more movement and we would have been able to open up Stanfordâs defense. And we can shoot over height if we play with speed (energy) because little guys can always create scoring space if there is enough floor space.
Lack of energy pretty much sinks us in probably ALL of our losses. It ends up reducing our scoring space. Crisp passing is not enough to open up scoring space. It takes crisp passes and fast legwork. Self often talks about the ball sticking⌠but is it the ball or our guys just not hustling with their feet?
There isnât a defense played where space canât be achieved. In zones, it is attacking the gaps and help create bigger gaps. In M2M it usually requires properly run screens.
This is a question for @Jesse-Newell :
Is there a tool that can take the video screen of a game and plot the motion of the offense? I bet if there is a way to do this, we can quickly discover that our floor speed relates to wins and losses.
We often clam up at tournament time. Most of the time we lose, you can already tell we might lose in the first few minutes because out guys look slow.
We looked fast yesterday! This has nothing to do with a team playing âsped upâ⌠that is a term for a team mentally speeding up and rushing their offense.
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@JayHawkFanToo Man, I like the way you think! I keep having flashbacks from games last yearâŚnamely, last yearâs Florida, Nova, Colorado, Eastern Kentucky gamesâŚetc, where the slightest on ball perimeter pressure made us fold up like a cheap pup tent last yearâŚ
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The back-court difference between last season and this season is HUGE!
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@JayHawkFanToo Ainât it sweet? I have not seen our offense percolate like that in yearsâŚthose drives in the middle with the Frank/Devonte dump off passes to Cliffie for the slam were like a work of art.
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I always say that basketball is all about match ups and unfortunately KU did not match up well with Stanford, in the same way that we donât match up well with ISUâŚand it is big problem, not only for KU, but for many other elite teams (ask Duke) in March as well.
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@KUSTEVE besides diving on lose balls, a sweet pass is a favorite of mine. Devonte had an exceptionally sweet pass to Cliff! Text book!
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I thought we just didnât come ready to play Stanford. We didnât bring the energy.
ButâŚdo you think Wiggins was the reason we lost the Stanford game? I certainly do not.
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@drgnslayr Thanks, we really didnât play that well except for Frank the Tank who ought to be the poster child for Kelly and Cliff and any others thinking of going pro. Frank said at the beginning of the season that the NBA is boring. âWho wants to go play in a half empty gym in Charlotte when you can play in packed houses in the big 10 and other placesâ is what he also said.
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âButâŚdo you think Wiggins was the reason we lost the Stanford game? I certainly do not.â
No⌠I put more emphasis on the way our team used Wigs as a crutch. We escaped from being a team and having Wigs on the team enabled the other guys to loaf. We were never a team⌠nothing like the feel for our current group, which definitely has team energy. All our current guys feel they are personally responsible for winning and losing.
Wigs did his best for the situation. He wasnât going to beat Stanford single-handed.
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@icthawkfan316 Excellent post on Andrew Wiggins. An excellent player for the Kansas Jayhawks that will payoff for years to come in recruiting. It appears he is on his way to a solid NBA Career. I am glad he spent a year at KU along the way.
