Coach cal
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What a crock of bologna. I bet Cal wrote that article about himself. Who the heck is Mrs. Tyler Thompson? And why is she standing with NCAA trophies? Perhaps Cal’s wife?
This is a recruiting ploy. It’s there so they can spread it to dumb recruits who believe this junk. No D1 coach in America is going to back down to Cal, and if he gets in someone’s face Cal is getting pummeled.
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I thought this comment was funny, “Guess Cal did not want Newman, Brown, Zimmerman etc. from this class since he gets who he wants. Already losing guys for next year to dUKe as well but now I know why, Cal just did not want them…….”
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@drgnslayr “This is a recruiting ploy. It’s there so they can spread it to dumb recruits who believe this junk. No D1 coach in America is going to back down to Cal, and if he gets in someone’s face Cal is getting pummeled.” You nailed the board slayr…
How could horse s%#t like this even be on someone’s worry list?
Only so called writer I can think of that would put out worse copy than Parrish is Dennis Dodd at cbs & he is a flippin misery guy, who probably didn’t even graduate. But I have heard rumblings he spent considerable time keeping house in the Boone County jail…& liked it so much he’s now considering changing his legal name to DENISE DODD !
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Gary Parrish has been telling that story for while now and like a fish tale …it gets better every time he tells it. No doubt that most coaches from elite programs can swoop in and take a player that has been courted by a smaller program but most seem to follow some sort of unspoken code as they all know each other, in some cases very well. There is a reason why I call Calipari the squid, other than the name likeness, i.e Calamari, he has a number of long, slimy arms all over and when in trouble he squirts ink to cover the mess…
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Coach Cal is in our heads.
I don’t want him in my head.
I want KU to replace our misery with final fours and championships. When we do that then we’re not worried about some sleaze ball whom the media fawns over.
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@wissoxfan83 The only head cal is in is …!
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Say what you want about Calipari, he’s a heck of a college basketball coach.
His record at Kentucky is outright incredible. He’s won 83% of his games. Four Final Fours in six years. UK has been the team to beat every single year he has been there. Nobody else can make a claim like that over a period that long since the UCLA dynasty under Wooden. You know a team has been extremely successful when they are only a top 10 or 15 team and everybody calls it a down year. And even with that, I consider Cal the best tournament coach in the country, so come March, he will probably be a factor if his team is healthy.
I’m not saying KU should copy Cal, but there are things to be learned. Cal is probably the most flexible coach in the country as far as coaching based on the unique talents of his players, rather than trying to run a specific system. Everybody used to talk about the Dribble Drive Motion, but Cal put that system in so that he could recruit Derrick Rose. He wasn’t running that before that time. He learned the system to take advantage of Rose’s specific skillset. The fact that he followed that by having Tyreke Evans and John Wall didn’t hurt. But you also notice that they weren’t running the DDM when he had Anthony Davis, or Julius Randle, or last year with Karl Anthony Towns. They pounded the ball inside for those guys. Cal tailors his system every year to take advantage of his best players, whether that’s a PG (Rose, Wall), a PF (Randle, Towns), or a once in a generation big man (Davis).
What could KU have been if they shaped their system around Andrew Wiggins, or Kelly Oubre, or Cliff Alexander, rather than trying to make those guys conform to a system? Not saying that Self isn’t a great coach, because he is, but I do think he left a little on the table the last couple of years by not tailoring his system to the talent he had.
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@justanotherfan yeah he can coach to his recruits strengths but to me there is so muchmore to being a great coach, or salesman, or doctor, or whomever then w’s & l’s, or sales, or successful surgeries. There is an ingredient of integrity & honesty & professionalism to achieving a pinnacle of anything in life that cal just seems to be missing anywhere & everywhere he’s ever been. X & O’s maybe he’s top ten, but I’ll describe the analogy of lets say a doctor who saves the world from cancer, OK? He’s done such a magnificent job in his professional career but at night he goes home then beats his wife & kids, or cheats on his taxes, or treats his neighbors like a p#*%k -He has NO BEING- Yes he has knowledge but not the ability to transcend or assimilate that knowledge into his personal life. Or maybe he is only nice to those he likes & hateful to others, which is contrary to most all religious or philosophical teachings, yada, yada.
A thousands of years old Chinese proverb simply states: “Knowledge without being means nothing…” Many are of the opinion that cal is precisely just that, at least on some level. JMO
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@globaljaybird
I would 100% agree that if someone goes home at night and beats their wife and kids, or does other evil things, that they are a scumbag. That is why I said Calipari is a heck of a basketball coach. I don’t know enough of his personal life to say that he is anything more than that.
I think Rick Pitino is a heck of a coach, too. He cheated on his wife. That is a mark against his personal integrity and makes me view him differently as a man, but that doesn’t make him a lesser coach.
When I judge sports figures, I judge them on their sports skills separately from their personal lives because I don’t know them personally. Was Brett Favre a great QB. Sure. Was it horrible that he allegedly texted lewd pictures to a female reporter? Of course. That makes me view Brett Favre the man differently, but not Brett Favre the QB.
I don’t know what most of these guys do when they go home at night. Some are probably outstanding, upstanding people. Others are probably not. Until it hits the media, we don’t know. Some may just be better at keeping their dirt safely tucked away.
I don’t have as much beef with Cal as most on this site because he said one of the most honest things a college coach can say when he said “he can stay here in school and help provide for my family, or go to the draft and provide for his own.” I haven’t heard many coaches be that open about the financial incentive for having players stay or go and that statement made me respect Cal when it comes to the interests of the players that he ultimately ends up coaching.
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@justanotherfan As always, I enjoy your quality perspective on yet another popular topic. I try not to judge anyone at all but am just as guilty as the next guy in that fault. And true. many not just on this site, have a real boner for cal. To me it is more about the deceit & trash that has followed him from town to town throughout his journey & fall guys are always spaced in between so that no dots are ever connected directly to him. His pat line is always “goo goo, I know nothing.” which I honestly find difficult to believe. Hey, everyone has skeletons if they’ve lived a long life & that doesn’t mean they are totally bad people because they do. Is cal a good coach? Yeah. Would I want him to marry my sister? Not sure about that. Does he do charitable and philanthropic deeds along his way? Of course. I just have to temper my enthusiasm for those deeds with a grain of salt because of his well documented past, like you say, for, like your example of comparison to Brett Farve. I also take into regard that charitable foundations are ultimately a tax shelter for many who desire it, & we’ve absolutely no way to envision or conceive what’s really in a man’s heart. Only our maker knows that, so I am always of the premise of giving a guy the benefit of the doubt. However people do usually follow specific patterns of behavior & that said, If I were a conscientious parent of a young man recruited by cal or his associates, I really would be skeptical of trusting someone with as many tainted victories on his resume as cal has accumulated through the decades.
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@globaljaybird nobody says it better!
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@Crimsonorblue22 Thanks for the flattery but so many on this site do.
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@wissoxfan83
“Coach Cal is in our heads.”
He’s in my derriere and in my stool (approx 2 times a day).
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@globaljaybird
I don’t know if Cal beats his wife and kids… or if he ever deliberately broke NCAA recruiting rules by giving recruits Presidential Rolexs… or whatever.
I dislike Cal for the side he shows everyone. He quite possibly may be the best college recruiter of all times. But his methods have turned D1 ball into a circus. Using recruiting tools like Drake and his nonsense chatter about being connected in the league. Any D1 coach with a NBA caliber player is connected in the league. NBA scouts come a knocking. And garbage like the link above. Pure nonsense. It is playing down to the dumbing down of our youth, in this case, our young athletes.
College coaches should treat recruits like young men, not like small children, even if their mentality is of small children. These kids coming to Kentucky are months away from being in the league, and the league is no place for small children. Bogus agents, gold diggers, shyster investment brokers… These kids all have huge targets on their backs and they need to start acting like adults from HS on. Recruiting a kid and selling him on Drake is not the way to help that kid face the reality that is only a few months away.
Just watching him coach makes me puke from all orifices. The way he animates like he is talking to 5 year old children makes me sick to my stomach. It must come as quite a shock to these kids to face adulthood days after being treated like a little kid.
I don’t buy the concept that he is a great coach. He is a great recruiter, just a part of coaching. I’m not convinced that any of his teams could beat another team with the same talent but WITHOUT a coach! Just deciding for themselves who plays. There is a reason why he doesn’t receive respect as a coach from within his peers, even though he has won a ton of games.
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@drgnslayr SWISH!!!
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@justanotherfan Case in point, the best 3 point shooting team we have ever had under Coach Self and he doesnt take advantage of it.
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Maybe this guy can help rid u of coach cal!
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Yikes! How about a strong sedative first?!
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The squid always makes sure that he has…plausible deniability…he should be a politician, he would fit right in.
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@drgnslayr Well said. Cal has embraced the aspects of the current 1AD system that other coaches seem to find distasteful at best: the runners, hangers-on, rap stars, etc.
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Cal will learn life after stack soon.
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The day that happens… he is finished. Let’s see him develop talent. Take 3 and 4-star players and build them into lottery picks.
Not gonna happen.
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We have already seen Cal coach with less than top flight talent. Lest we all forget, his UMass teams were pretty middling talent, and his Memphis teams were more or less the same, with a couple outliers (Rose, Dajuan Wagner, Shawne Williams, Darius Washington, Tyreke Evans).
Let’s look at his guys from Memphis
Antonio Burks went from being an invited walk-on to a second round NBA draft pick.
Rodney Carney wasn’t a high recruit out of high school, but was drafted 16th overall.
Joey Dorsey was basically unranked. He became a second round pick.
Chris Douglas-Roberts was the No. 75 ranked player in the country in his class. He also became a second round pick.
Robert Dozier was also unranked. He also became a second round pick.
That’s five guys that weren’t big time recruits that went on to be drafted in the NBA. Burks was a walk on! That says development to me.
That 2006-07 Memphis team was probably his best work as a coach. He had no big time recruits (Douglas-Roberts was the highest recruited player), but working with a pretty strong core of four year guys (Antonio Anderson, Jeremy Hunt, Doneal Mack, Joey Dorsey, Robert Dozier, Willie Kemp and Andre Allen all played 4 years at Memphis, while CDR left after his junior season) Cal went 33-4 and advanced to the Elite Eight. Look at that list of names again. That’s no stack. That’s not even a partial stack. That’s just a regular college basketball team that happened to be really good. That basic core was the foundation of the team that went to the Final the next season.
Or we can dive deep into history and look at his pre Camby UMass teams. Some names - Lou Roe, Dana Dingle, Tony Barbee, Derek Kellogg - that’s not a stack. That’s just a regular team.
Cal has been good in the past with average talent. He’s been incredible with top notch talent.
Ask this question - is there another Coach in the country that could have produced the results Cal has over the last 6 years given the talent that Cal has had? That would require 5 Elite 8’s, 4 Final Fours, a title and another title game appearance, all while dealing with the expectations that people expect you to be at least that good? I’m going to say no. Cal has met amazingly high expectations with the talent he has had.
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@justanotherfan There is the first round NIT loss as well. Lots of coaches could have produced that.
I’m not saying that year carries more weight than a successful year, but it shouldn’t be ignored.
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@justanotherfan Meh. The stuff about turning lower ranked guys into 2nd round picks isn’t all that impressive to me. Getting drafted in the 2nd round basically just means that you’re one of the top 30 seniors in the country. The kids leaving early typically do so because they are a projected 1st rounder. There isn’t much of a difference outside of the top 30 kids in each class, so the guy ranked 75 is not really much better than the guy ranked 35 so it isn’t uncommon for a guy in that range to end up drafted in the 2nd round after 4 years of college ball in a major conference.
I think the better question is how many coaches out there would have won MORE than 1 championship the past 6 years with the teams he has had. My opinion is that he drastically has underachieved. He has basically had the #1 recruiting class almost every year, if not #1 then #2, and just one NC. Also, how many other coaches could have done better than a 1st round exit from the NIT tournament with the team Cal had that year? The answer is too many to count.
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Boy if Cal has underachieved then Self has drastically underachieved. It’s a crapshoot every year if your going by NCAA championships. To his defense he has made 4 Final 4’s is the last 6 years which is an amazing thing to accomplish.
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Someone says Cal can’t win with lower ranked guys. I post information showing that he has already done that at two other stops. Someone questions if he can turn low ranked players into NBA players. I post proof that he has done that.
And yet it’s meh to you.
As I have said on this site many times, I am a basketball fan (NBA first, college second) that likes to look at the whole picture, not just my favorite teams. The whole picture says that John Calipari is one of the best coaches in the country (easily top 5, likely top 3) and it isn’t just because he gets the best players. He won at UMass without top players, then got Camby and went to the Final Four. He won at Memphis without top players, then got Rose and went to the title game. He is basically in the Final Four every year at UK with top players (one Elite Eight loss, one complete flameout).
You say that many coaches could have bettered Cal’s first round NIT exit. That’s probably true. Many coaches probably could have done better than his low water mark with that team.
However, how many coaches go 35-3 with the Wall-Cousins group? How many can get the Brandon Knight squad to the FInal Four? How many win rings with the Davis group? How many take the Julius Randle group to the title game? How many get back to the Final Four and darn near run the table with last year’s group?
I bet there are 10-15 coaches that could replicate the results of any one of those seasons with those teams. I bet there are 5-7 coaches that could replicate the results of 2 or 3 of those seasons.
I doubt there is anyone that could have done all of that other than Calipari, Billy Donovan and maybe Coach K. The rest of the college coaching world is too inflexible to take three completely different groups to E8, F4, Title (like Cal did in 2010, 2011, 2012), completely collapse in 2013, then go to back to back F4’s again immediately afterwards.
KU has had a top 20 draft pick in each of the last 3 years on the wing. We have a single Sweet 16 to show for it. How many coaches have at least a couple Sweet 16’s in that stretch with that talent?
KU had Rush, Chalmers, Wright, etc in 2006 and lost in the round of 64. How many coaches could get to at least the round of 32 with that talent?
KU had two lottery picks in 2010. Lost in the second round.
KU had three guys drafted in 2011, including 2 in the lottery. Lost in the Elite Eight.
That means that 2010 team had four NBA players, plus Sherron Collins on it. That squad lost to Northern Iowa? Really? How many coaches could get to the Sweet 16 or better with that group?
The 2014 team had Andrew Wiggins on it, and couldn’t beat a Stanford team that did not have a PG on the roster.
Let me repeat that
The 2014 team had Andrew Wiggins on it, and couldn’t beat a Stanford team that did not have a PG on the roster.
I have said this before, and I will say it again. If Cal has talent, you can’t bet against him. You cannot say that about any other coach in Division 1 mens basketball.
Every coach has at least one season on their resume that’s just a real clunker. Very few coaches can bookend their clunker season with a pair of Final Four’s on either side.
Cal wins. He gets talent, he goes to the Final Four. That’s his history. That sums up his resume.
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Good response… and I stand corrected. Not sure how much of that he developed or was just, once again, a great recruiter by having an eye for talent. The only one of those guys I really recall was CDR. He never seemed to have an all-around game, but was a great scorer.
Cal may be a better coach than he projects. But there is no denying the rejection from his peers. I don’t believe they rank him anywhere near the top in Xs and Os.
I think I would ask UK fans if they think Cal has underachieved. Last year’s team was taller than most NBA teams, and he had plenty of experience, too, with the majority of his stack returning. I watched several of their games last year and they always looked flat. Definitely didn’t look like a fun team to play on. I would say Cal underachieved last year and I’m pretty sure most of the Big Blue Nation feels the same.
The only year of KU basketball I can ever remember where we didn’t win a NC and the fans were satisfied and felt like we overachieved was 2012. Finishing runner-up to a stack and without a single McDs AA.
I want to see Cal do that. Today. Not years ago when he wouldn’t have to play a stack. Today. We were edged out by a stack in 2012. It took a stack to beat us.
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UK should have won it last year with the team they had but thats the beauty of the tournament. KU should have won it in other years but one game is all it takes. I always wondered if the pressure to stay undefeated especially as they got to the Final 4 just was too much. If they had lost just 1 game it would have taken all that pressure off them. But one game UK didn’t get the lucky stick and bam its over. I’m certainly not saying they should have blatantly lost a game because they will still go down in history as one of the best regular season teams ever. Their league also didn’t do them any favors after they dismantled everyone in the non-con.
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@justanotherfan Dude, your drinkin too much Kentucky Cool-aid. Quit it.
Coach Self could match those stats with that roster, with his eyes closed.
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@justanotherfan Dude! The '14 Wigs / Embiid had two super green point guards! And started 3 freshmen! Meanwhile Stanford’s team were all upperclassmen.
Again, quit drinking the Kentucky Cool-aid. You are giving us all the impression that you are trolling as a closet Kentucky fan.
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@Lulufulu Cal has had inexperienced swell and still produces. You can’t deny that when Cal has talent, freshman or not, he gets the job done, something Self rarely does even with very talented teams. The reason is inflexibility. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be changing in the near future.
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@justanotherfan Yes its meh to me. I’m not sure what your agenda is here other than trying to get sore knees.
You said: “Someone says Cal can’t win with lower ranked guys. I post information showing that he has already done that at two other stops.” Win what? I’m not sure what you are saying. He didn’t win any championships at those schools (besides the NIT), his best season at UMASS was a Final 4 which was subsequently vacated. At Memphis his best season was a loss in the championship game but oh yeah, that season was vacated too. So take away the seasons that were vacated and his best result was the elite 8. Meh.
You said: “Someone questions if he can turn low ranked players into NBA players. I post proof that he has done that.” Actually, drgnslayr asked for evidence of him taking a 3 or 4 star player and building them into lottery picks which you subsequently posted evidence of guys getting drafted in the second round. Second round is not a lottery pick. So to my knowledge he hasn’t done that. Still meh.
You then proceed to fire off a bunch of comparisons to KU/Self which I did not mention anywhere in my response to you. My point was that I believe that many other coaches would have been able to do more with the players that Cal has started (not ended thru development) each season with. To use an analogy, if all the college coaches were in a big poker game, Cal starts each hand (aka season) with a full house. One would think he would win more times with the hand he was dealt than he actually does and I believe that many other coaches could do better than him with his starting hand. Since you seem intent on pulling KU into the discussion, I’d say Self normally starts off with a three of a kind type hand, and yes, I think he has generally underachieved lately with that too.
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@DinarHawk Agreed on the lack of flexibility point for Coach Self. Here’s to hoping he learned some of that and retained it from Korea.
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Not trolling at all. If you look through all my comments, you will see that I complain all the time that Self is inflexible with his schemes. That is my #1 criticism of him as coach. He does not adapt to his personnel and I think that has cost us a chance to win at least one national title (2010, when KU had as much talent as perhaps any year) and another bizarre flameout in 2014 when he should have pressed the heck out of a team with no PG.
Self won’t press his match up advantages, which drives me bonkers, especially because when guys get going, he doesn’t just keep going to them unless its in the post. The Oklahoma game at AFH this year is a perfect example. Oubre started that game out either 5-7 or 5-8, including like 4 threes. KU opened the second half by going into the post 4 straight possessions. Oubre went something like 8 minutes without attempting a shot at one point. I sat on my couch dumbfounded. Here’s one of the best college coaches in the country and he’s letting one of his three best players go without a shot for a basketball eternity even though:
- that guy is scorching hot
and
- his team is blowing a big lead
Things were thrown that night.
But I watch Cal and he goes to the hot hand over and over again. Against ND in the Elite Eight, ND tried to guard Towns with smaller guys and UK went to Towns on literally every single possession for at least six minutes in the second half. The only reason they stopped going to him was because they took him out to get a breather. Once he came back in, they went right back to him.
When have we ever seen Self look another coach in the eye and basically say “your guy can’t cover my guy, and until you change the matchup that’s where we are going?” I say never, which is how lesser teams can stay with KU. You eliminate inferior players by isolating them and then exploiting the matchup until either the matchup changes or you have overwhelming success.
KU has the benefit of being able to land some of the best talent in the country. As a result, someone has a huge matchup advantage every night for KU. You shouldn’t go to that advantage when you’re down 10 late in the game. That should be the gameplan.
All the X’s and O’s in the world don’t mean a thing if I’ve got vintage Michael Jordan and you’re guarding him with vintage Michael J. Fox. A good coach identifies that advantage and exploits it - repeatedly. I don’t need to draw a bunch of stuff on a board. I need to but utter five simple words
“Get the ball to Michael”
Cal has his shortcomings, part of which is that he is sometimes too willing to change and make adjustments rather than playing to his team’s strengths. I think at times he looks to let his talent take over instead of exploiting one matchup or playing to a specific strength.
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@justanotherfan Excellent analysis. Self should have two or three more final fours and possibly another title. He would rather lose early in the tournament playing his system then to change it to fit his personnel and possibly advance.
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@Crimsonorblue22 He’s simply a low class guy, imo. You would NEVER hear Coach Self talking that way, even if it was true. The Squid teaches his players to act like punks. That arrogant smirk on Randle’s face - the absolute smear by one of the Bobsey twins against Kaminsky after the Badgers kicked their ass … That’s what they learned from the Squid. How to be arrogant.
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“When have we ever seen Self look another coach in the eye and basically say “your guy can’t cover my guy, and until you change the matchup that’s where we are going?” I say never, which is how lesser teams can stay with KU. You eliminate inferior players by isolating them and then exploiting the matchup until either the matchup changes or you have overwhelming success.”
Gosh dang it… good job!
I do think when we used to run the hi/lo with a decent back-to-the-basket scorer, we sort of tried that. I said… sort of.
Maybe Cal’s sour NBA experience still left him with something most (or all) college coaches lack… the philosophy that winning is everything. College coaches have a philosophy built on educating young players. That (almost always) gets in the way of having a philosophy of just going for the wins. I’ve said for quite some time now that there is a basic philosophic difference between college coaches and NBA coaches… this is it.
On a scale, I put Self pretty close to the “college coaches philosophy” end. He always wants to teach, teach, teach. Yes… he has gone away from that for brief moments. When we had Wigs… he just cleared out for him and told everyone to get out of his way. In the league, you might see the same example but the star player would shoot double or so what Wiggins shot at KU. Self typically teaches “team basketball” and he expects to look at a stat sheet and see a bunch of assists every game and the scoring spread around. ALL NBA coaches want to just see one stat: Win! They could care less if one guy scored 100% of their points all season, as long as they are crowned NBA Champions. It just doesn’t work that way in D1.
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Cal may be a better coach than he projects. But there is no denying the rejection from his peers. I don’t believe they rank him anywhere near the top in Xs and Os.
Every ranking I have seen from analysts to reporters and from scouts to coaches universally have Cal in the top 5 and most in the top 3. I don’t like Cal but I have grudgingly admit that he can flat out coach…it is not the coaching but the other “stuff” that comes with the coaching that turns people off. Let’s not forget that Cal got his coaching start at KU under Ted Owens and Larry Brown.
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@drgnslayr I see what you’re saying, but over the years many posters have said the opposite: Self gives too few development minutes early in the season because he wants to win each game, or at least stay in his comfort zone.
Cliff Alexander is the exception not the rule: a player who was “educated” by sitting, even when his 80% effort was more productive than the 99% effort of the guys he watched. Self usually plays the guy he knows he will win with, while educating in practice.
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Calipari voted the 16th best “X’s and O’s” coach by his peers - and this writeup is from Cal’s “girlfriend”, Mrs. Tyler Thompson!
I thought this writeup was interesting…
Critical Coaches: Who is perceived to be the biggest cheater in the sport?
Who would have funked it? Cal got more than a third of the votes.
I’m talking about who scores the points. We typically look good on paper. A zillion assists and well-distributed scoring. That doesn’t always guarantee wins. I think we usually don’t focus on a player having a hot night and taking over. If we find a weakness in a defense we don’t usually continue to attack that one point, unless it is back-to-the-basket scoring close to the rim. NBA ball feels very different. And you’ll see coaches calling a timeout because one guy on the other team scored 3 baskets in a row. They have to change things up to stop him immediately or the other team will continue to take those points.
But then… the NBA is full of top notch, experienced players that are also capable of scoring every time. Maybe it isn’t all about the coaches. The players have something to do with it, too.
I agree with you on Self not giving enough developmental minutes. But a college season is less than half as long as a NBA season. Minutes are in short supply.
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If we find a weakness in a defense we don’t usually continue to attack that one point, unless it is back-to-the-basket scoring close to the rim. NBA ball feels very different. And you’ll see coaches calling a timeout because one guy on the other team scored 3 baskets in a row. They have to change things up to stop him immediately or the other team will continue to take those points.
This is brilliant and what I have been trying to say for a while. However, I think some players are capable of scoring against certain matchups very consistently in college. I also think it prevents a team from maybe leaving a one dimensional player on the floor against you.
Let’s think back (painful as it is) to that Northern Iowa loss. Ali Fa-whatever killed us in that game. He had a spectacular game. Played 31 minutes, hit 4 threes and just generally burned us every time we tried to do something. UNI played some zone, but they played quite a bit of man. So who was Ali covering? For most of the day, it was either Henry or Taylor because they knew he couldn’t handle Sherron. So please tell me why Tyshawn attempted 6 shots and five of them were threes? Ali had zero fouls in that game. ZERO. This guy played 31 minutes, killed us on the other end and at no point did we attack him on the defensive end? Really?
Ali deserves credit for playing as well as he did, but there’s no way we should have let him stay on the court. Make them decide if he’s worth playing 31 minutes for his offense while acting as a traffic cone on the other end. Don’t let them hide a guy that could (and did) end up costing you the game. Punish him. Again, Henry and Taylor took a combined 12 shots (12!) and of those 12, nine were threes. That’s not testing the suspect defense. That’s letting them off the hook.
Tyshawn and Xavier couldn’t have gotten into the paint at least a few times instead of firing threes? And if they did, doesn’t that shift the outcome of that game, either by forcing Ali to the bench in favor of a better defender (and lesser offensive player) or by conceding some buckets for KU to keep their offense going. We lost by 2. If we can cost them a couple offensive possessions because Ali plays 25 minutes instead of 31, or Ali plays 31 but gives up a couple more good offensive possessions for us, we win that game (and maybe that clears the way for a title because that squad was loaded).
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I totally agree!
I know college guys are young… but they’ve been playing their entire lives (except for a few guys like JoJo), and they should know how to execute. Sure college ball is harder than HS… but these guys have been stepping up their game constantly as they age.
I think it all starts for these guys in practice sessions. If they are slacking off, does a coach rip them a new one?
When we call a time-out because our defense has collapsed, do the guys come out of the time-out with more vigor and know more what to do?
I’m just not sure of the culture around these kids today. Back in my day, a player knew every game in D1 was part of his legacy. A legacy he would be consumed with in his memory forever. A legacy that everyone around him will remind him about it for the rest of his life. A legacy where you hope you can be proud of your accomplishments down the road, especially when you raise a family and mentor children. Is this all gone? Do most D1 players think about this stuff today? I’m not going to say “no” but I’m not going to say “yes” either.
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I made a commitment to stop talking about UK awhile ago. I have tried to stay away from this one but I can’t hold it in any longer.
For the love of everything that is holy, lets stop being the little brother of UK!
It’s like Duke and Kentucky are going at it for dominance and we sit on the sidelines saying “Hey! Look at us too!”
The original post about Cal was alright. We can see his arrogance and poke fun. Great. But why should it reflect KU when UK does well or vise versa?
UK is on a great run and Cal has made the right coaching moves, and we turn it into a pissing contest on how well Self would have done with that talent. Would he have achieved greater? Or would he have underachieved because he is to rigid? WHO CARES! Their success doesn’t take away from ours, and their failures doesn’t add to our season.
KU wins the world games and we reek of jealousy when one of the first comments is about UK. And when UK made it to another final four, we complain of our situation in light of UK.
Remember how little and dumb Missouri sounded when their season magically became better after KU got bounced early in the tournament? Like it added wins to their season total? That is what we are beginning to sound like.
We have all been frustrated every year since 2012. But for heavens sake, we are a blue blood program, the second most winningest program, and are constantly a 1 or 2 seed in the tournament. We should not accept early exists from the tournament, but not because UK has been successful. But because we are Kansas and we don’t need to compare ourselves to anyone.
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This is 3 year old story based on an informal (off-the-record) poll by Jeff Goodman, ESPN Insider.
Every other ranking has (had) Donovan as top 3 and this one has him as #8?
I believe a dislike for or bias against Cal has him that low on that particular poll; if the coaches would have to identify themselves, there is noway he comes out #16. Just my opinion.
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great post!
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@justanotherfan Exactly. Self’s teams (specifically in '10 and '11) have a tendency to freeze up in the tournament and appear lackadaisical. Calipari seems to have them focused for the tournament, and does a better job of that than Self. I don’t mean to compare the two, but sometimes it is good to evaluate how others are achieving success in order to better ourselves.
