Mitch Lightfoot, is this a good thing or bad thing
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@DoubleDD said:
My point? If HCBS recruited this kid, then as fans lets be happy to have him. After all having BS as HC is what allows us to hang with those other programs.
I would have to disagree with this.
KU has never gone more than 8 years without a conference title (that happened from 1978 to 1986). Since the NCAA tournament modern era (after 1979) KU hasn’t gone more than five years between Sweet 16 appearances (1981 to 1986).
KU has almost literally never been bad. Since Phog Allen took over in 1907, KU has reeled off win after win after win.
I know I am critical of KU, and critical of Bill Self, but KU hangs with the other programs because you can look through the last 110 years of program history and you will struggle to find a “down” period. There are some disappointing seasons here and there, but no true “down” period.
I don’t want to act as if being good is a KU birthright. It takes work. But KU is good year after year. We can hang. We have hung for more than a century. I see no reason why that would change.
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Good point about talent evaluation. I’m certainly no guru but I would like to think for all the years I’ve been a fan of this program and watching high school talent more than ever that I can at least have a semi intelligent opinion on kids. Like Lightfoot, my concerns have nothing to do with his ranking, but more to do with the lack of competition he’s played & lack of physical attributes needed for next year. He cannot be the single egg we get in this class in the post. I don’t believe he will be the only guy we possibly get either.
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well got to say to @ just another, I am afraid have to disagree on a point, and that is to say we have never went through a down period isn’t exactly true, I was around when Ted had some rough times not really very good just mediocre teams didn’t have problem getting a ticket at times for a spell, don’t get me wrong we didn’t stink but Ted was catching some heat use to be a theory he could recruit but couldn’t coach back in the old BIG 8 days I suffered though some of those years we were not even close to the power we are now, so to say we didn’t go through any down spells is not really correct
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Then you should also have a problem with Carlton Bragg since he played in one of the lower HS basketball division in Ohio…but he had that East Coast exposure that Lightfoot did not. School Divisions are based on school sizes and not the level of competition; although statistically one could argue that the bigger schools could have the better talent, but then, a lot of the smaller prep schools/basketball factories play in lower divisions as well or in no division at all. As far as AAU, TTBOMK, there is only one top division and different zones and he played decent competition in the Arizona/West Coast regions. The camps he attended are by invitation only and you have to be top 100 to attend; once he got the exposure, a lot of big programs came calling and he started the recruiting process again. After watching quite bit of video from him, I am of the opinion that he will be a pleasant surprise. While he is listed as PF, he really played Center in HS but a lot of the scouts think that he can easily switch to SF since he has decent outside shot. I believe you are underestimating Lightfoot
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@BeddieKU23 I hear ya, and of course I have been watching kids play ball for a long time…but what I failed to say was that I think Self watches kids, and mentally is able to “plug” their attributes and mentality into his plays that are in his head. He may have an idea of what type of PG can actually feed the type of bigs he has on the team already. The complimentary pieces concept that only a coach’s direct perspective can offer, and I think Self is “better” than most other Div.1 coaches in that aspect.
You can say he was “wrong” about Selby, and the fact that he was NOT another Sherron, but one that was too headstrong and not even coachable. Ive talked to people who knew Selby in highschool and on the AAU circuit–> cant tell him what to do. He’d run different plays than what the coach called. He did that at KU, too. Maybe Self thought he could reel him in a bit, but that didn’t happen. Once Selby got physically healthy post-KU, he was a force, but alas, his problem was squarely between the ears…Its the reason he is toiling away in China now, or wherever.
Finding the right “fit” is so important. All these guys can jump out the gym (except Lucas and T.Self, poor chaps…). Man, I’d love to hear Self’s candid comments on a prospect in question.
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I don’t think adding Lightfoot will impact recruiting elite bigs. He doesn’t have a high ranking or big rep in that world (beyond his local area). He could be a plus if he can actually develop into more than his current rank is.
I’m sure this has a certain amount of risk. There is always a gamble. I just know we need more than Lightfoot from this recruiting class if we want to put a competitive team on the floor.
We should be bringing in a couple of top elite bigs. They will be supported by the best and most-experienced guards in the country! That has to count big! With the right bigs, we can compete for a NC next year because of all the experienced talent we have. We should be recruiting on that. Kentucky and most other schools, won’t have that. It is a crap shoot every year at Kentucky because they replace the majority of PT minutes every year. Big gamble. Not a gamble next year at Kansas.
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Lightfoot is up to #99 as per the ESPN rankings. With the KU bump and a good senior H S season and the additional exposure that he will get now that he is on the radar of the press, it is conceivable that he could finish in the top 50.
BTW, Thon Maker is still available and apparently much improved and beefier than last season; is KU still interested? Is Maker going to skip college and go directly to the pros?.
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@justanotherfan I have to agree with jayballer…I lived through some of those down years too.
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I don’t really know how good Lightfoot is. I trust Self. If he thinks he can play here…good enough for me.
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@Hawk8086 Blind trust. What a wonderful thing.
Tharpe, Thomas, Traylor, Lucas, Adams, Appleton, Peters, Anderson, Frankamp, Giles, Alexander, Doyle, White, Wesley, Lindsay, Selby, Mickelson, Case, Galindo, Downs.
While there have been far more hits than misses, I wouldn’t bet your mortgage payment on it.
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I don’t think Bragg is a valid comparison although I get your point. Bragg has played at the top level of AAU for years, although his high school isn’t the top level, he played plenty of top level kids over the years. Just plug his name into youtube & he’s played a lot of good players in HS. His talent as well is also undeniable which really explains everything.
Lightfoot has spent most of his life as a low level recruit. I don’t doubt he’s improved or he was simply missed on the recruiting front because he was a New Mexico recruit early in the process. After opening up, he became desirable to programs & recruiting services noticed & watched him closer than they may have ever. It’s probably to his talent that he’s now become a sought after recruit by KU AZ Utah & others. He sounds like a high character kid that Self covets.
If he does pick KU, then I’m hoping he will prove me wrong. The facts seem to point that he’s got a long ways to go to proving that. We really wouldn’t know what we are getting until he was here. Maybe he has a great Sr year and gets more notice.
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I love your insight, especially since you’ve been able to be near Self and experience him first hand. Your thoughts on Self and what he looks for in recruits are probably close to the truth. He’s not always right, because the fact of the matter is he’s not able to mold everyone into a minnie version of himself.
He’s missed reaching the top talent and the lower rated players in the past. I think he recruits any top rated players regardless of backround unless he ethically can’t stick with him. Sometimes doing your homework on kids will not be enough to see the flaws some kids have maturing (Selby, Cliff) among others. I think Thon Maker is a situation where they left him alone due to red flags & the uncertainty in his situation. There’s a good reason most schools left his sweepstakes. So that’s definitely a situation Self has probably taken the caution flag out for and gone in another direction.
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@BeddieKU23 Bragg had a really good hs coach. A d-1 coach told me that most of the kids we recruit have been taught very little and they start so very far behind. I think a good example would be Cliff.
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@HighEliteMajor Some of the guys you mentioned…Traylor, Lucas come to mind…are good to have on the team. If a player doesn’t play up to expectations…he can become a role player, or transfer. My point was not that he would become a star…but if Self feels that he has a chance to be a good player, or at least is good enough to offer a scholarship to…I trust he is doing the right thing.
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Exactly, his coach has been highly thought of & according to Self has helped Bragg adjust well. Korea couldn’t have hurt him either, it was almost like the ice-breaker for him. Bragg got to play against men, not just 18 year old kids in the same boat. Especially with the Diallo situation unlikely to be positive for us, Bragg’s development is probably the biggest thing KU needs.
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He seems to play hard and looks like a guy I’d love to hate if he was on an opponent’s team.
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@Hawk8086 Ok … but really, do you ever want Lucas or Traylor playing for a Kansas team?
They’re both below what our standards should be - to be an elite program.
Both were signed when our other options signed elsewhere (Lucas after Tarc went to AZ) and Traylor during the spring of 2011 fiasco. Both were forced signings to fill roster spots.
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Yea but how many of those kids where recruited over? It’s not so much Lightfoot is the man as it is we need some players. I believe we will have quite the turnover after this year.
I’m sure even yourself would be against filling every hole with a OAD? Well the reality is the Lightfoots of the world can be hits, misses or just recruited over.
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I am not sure what you mean by top level of AAU. As far as aI know there are U14 and U10 programs but basically anyone older than 15 plays at the same level, just different regions. So Bragg and Lightfoot played at the same AAU level just different regions. Yes. I understand that some of the regions. such Chicago, New York, LA, Washington DC are stronger, but Bragg played in Ohio which is not necessarily at the top of the list.
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“He seems to play hard and looks like a guy I’d love to hate if he was on an opponent’s team.”
Good comment. He’s the guy that we usually play against in March and lose.
Sounds like we better get used to the idea of him being a Jayhawk. We’ll know in a couple of days, but it will not be a surprise to anyone if he picks Kansas.
Everyone has their first impressions. He’ll be given a chance to prove himself. I hope he has a high basketball IQ. We can build muscle on him and improve a bunch of his skills. But it seems hardest to improve basketball IQ. Jamari is our biggest example of that. Crazy athleticism and largely wasted because he doesn’t know how to apply his athleticism to the game. He’s built right to own the boards, but can hardly snare a rebound… the game just doesn’t “click” for him.
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@DoubleDD You are exactly right. We need to fill a roster, and we need bodies and insurance. I just suggest that is to fill roster spots 10 or 11- 13, roughly.
I have no problem with Lightfoot as the third big in this class, if we have two top 50ish guys ahead of him. Guys like Traylor and Lucas are fine on our roster as insurance. As the 5th and 6th big. No quibble there. My emphasis is on playing.
I don’t want guys like Lucas and Traylor having to play if they prove that they play at a talent level commensurate with their ranking (Lucas unranked, Traylor 132). Haven’t both of them been exactly what their ranking told us they would be?
Look, neither can score back to the basket. Both are liabilities. We commiserate about losing Cliff and Embiid, or Cliff underachieving, as a reason why we didn’t advance further last season or the one before season. That means, by consequence, that playing other guys in lieu of Cliff and Embiid cost us – and it did. Lucas and Traylor. We know they did.
How much has playing Lucas and Traylor cost this team? We can see some of it as a partial excuse for our 2nd round losses. We couldn’t do what Self wanted to do (and Self didn’t adjust to what we had).
I’m usually against filling any hole with an OAD if it can be avoided.
I hold to my position that we can get guys outside OAD range, but in the high talent area (roughly top 60ish/or proven transfers). And sure, we’ll get some lower than that. If we have an OAD here and there, or guys say outside the top 100 occupying rosters spots 10 and lower, that seems reasonable.
Lightfoot? Sure, welcome aboard. But if we don’t snag two high talent bigs to fill our needs, then we’ve underachieved in recruiting.
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You made two points that I couldn’t agree with more.
- If we don’t snag 2 high talent bigs to fill our needs, then we’ve underachieved in recruiting.
Yea if Lightfoot is the elk we recruit for bigs in this class, then @jaybate-1.0 will be doing cart wheels of his prediction that bad ball is here to stay at KU.
- And Self didn’t adjust to what we had.
Sadly this maybe the chink in the HCBS armor, and keeps him from becoming legendary. Lucas and Traylor are good kids and play hard but I’m afraid HCBS is trying to use them in ways I’m not sure they can. Especially Traylor. These kids aren’t stars they are good role players. They should never be the focal point of the offense, as they we’re forced to be last year in HCBS determination to pound the ball inside.
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I agree.
But really I think our biggest issue concerns player development. We took a definite hit when we lost Manning.
Just look at Jamari. He is a 5th-year senior. 4 years of elite D1 behind him and you know he is going to continue to make bad freshman mistakes again, in his 5th year! That is inexcusable! If the kid can graduate from a university, he surely can pick up more of the game of basketball.
I can’t count the times he has made monstrous mistakes that cost us. Half the time you will see him look down afterwards or towards the bench, and he will hit himself on the side of the head. He knows he made a bonehead mistake and he is trying to beat it into his own head to remember and learn.
You can count on him doing the same thing this year. What a pity. Not only for Kansas basketball but also for Jamari!
If he had developed his basketball IQ (and a few more tools) we wouldn’t be having this conversation because we know we can develop 3-star level players to play with the big boys, at least by their junior year! Jamari is a stud on physicality… 5 years of D1 should have rounded out his game and polished him up to be a gem by now. And he certainly has had plenty of PT for experience!
Like I mentioned in a previous post… it is about time we clean house on assistant coaches. Bring in some youth that has the energy, knowledge, drive and focus to improve our recruiting and also our player development.
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Given the constraints put on Self by the PetroShoeCo-Agent complex, and especially with @drgnslayr 's recently linked insights about Nike, William Wesley, Leon Rose and CAA, I suspect the approach you are describing is pretty close to what Self is pursuing.
The problem is the complexity of the process creates a lot of variation in observable positive recruiting outcomes and obscures the drivers of a lot of the failures to sign players.
It is increasingly apparent that there are the following tiers of recruits.
OADs
5 stars
4 stars
the rest
Assume Self wants to do exactly what you suggest. Each of these four categories cascades effect and feed back on the other three. My hunch that what Self actually recruits is the end result of trying to do what you seek subject to a lot of variance.
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I believe Bad Ball will remain an arrow in our quiver, but not the main one…UNLESS Bragg and Diallo can provide no B2B scoring, and none of the returning bigs can do so either.
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is it possible for us to play the tough D required in BAD BALL but upgrade our offense slightly to just be respectable?
Seems that we need to make a goal to play a new kind of basketball -
GOOD BALL / BAD BALL
Dr. Jekyll /Mr. Hyde
“Good Cop / Bad Cop”
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@HighEliteMajor I agree with your posts that have always said…rankings matter. Yes…we need high ranked guys to achieve a NC…or even B12 Championships. Recruit too many 100 or 100 + guys and we will not be happy. Traylor and Lucas are role players. Traylor was one that Self would have led us to believe had a higher ceiling than he achieved. I don’t think he (or us) ever expected Lucas to be more than a role player. I know I didn’t anyway. Yes… there is room for Lightfoot, but we need one or two higher ranked guys to go along with him or this will not be a good recruiting year. I think most of us are in agreement on that.
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A broad change of assistants is not something I have contemplated.
You raise some interesting points.
But I am not sure I can walk down this path with you, which is a change, as I usually get and go along with you when you open my eyes to another way.
I agree that player development (aka coaching’em up) has to be a strength of the staff, because lack of KU connection to the reputed Nike/Wesley/Rose/CAA complex means Self will not be able to overwhelm opponents with too much talent for the foreseeable future. Developing 4 and 5 star talent, and finding 3 star talent that can be developed–these are likely going to be the coins of the winning realm. Plugging an OAD or two into that “developed” core will be another strength needed.
I begin to diverge with the assumption that our current assistant coaches are to be considered responsible for Jamari’s slow development. Jamari has been a tough row to hoe for our assistants and would have been for others as well. He is arguably the least talented big Self has ever tried to use in a front court rotation in Self’s KU tenure. Danny never had to coach a rotation player as short on skills and physical attributes as Traylor is. I am not sure Jamari would have been better under Danny.
Roberts seems to have done okay with those bigs that have possessed legitimate D1 talent.
Another variable effecting Roberts: since Snacks got in trouble, Snacks has apparently been marginalized from recruiting; that has likely had a ripple effect of making Roberts recruit even more and work even less with the bigs than usual; and that may be responsible for some of the deficiencies in the bigs we saw in Korea.
Roberts arguably did a great job with Embiid.
Roberts arguably has done a so-s0 job with Ellis, but that has to do with Self insisting on Ellis being a stretch 4, rather than play the 3 as he would have at other schools. Roberts and Ellis should not be blamed for what Self wants Ellis to be in college.
I feel like our perimeter guys are well coached.
I think our stifled recruiting tracks to the shoe embargo, not the age of Kurtis and Norm.
And I think Self has gotten younger with Snacks, Fred and now Aaron.
So: I think he has this covered.
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***"Seems that we need to make a goal to play a new kind of basketball -
GOOD BALL / BAD BALL
Dr. Jekyll /Mr. Hyde
“Good Cop / Bad Cop”
–@drgnslayr ***
You are probably exactly correct about where this could, should and will go.
Self is a genius.
In short order he has discovered two major innovations in my opinion.
First, last season Self discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, a very startling potential in the game of basketball with Bad Ball. It was something others like Ryan at UW had begun moving toward. Others had long nibbled around the edges of it over the years within many offensive schemes. Frankly, Dean Smith’s four corners offense, which started as a stall, but then became a situational offense, is the forerunner of it in a kinder gentler age of basketball. Bad Ball is in principle Dean Smith’s Four Corners in the Age of XTReme Muscle. What Self the genius seemed to add to it was to systematize the idea of collapsing the space between offense and defense GENERALLY. Self took what Dean’s point guards did in the four corners, which was to collapse the space between the ball handler and the defender and generalized it to every position on the floor, and then pretty much did the same on the defensive end, too!!! It was an insanely counter intuitive thing to do, but it worked brilliantly. Geniuses often let genies out of bottles that others wish would not have been released. Generals dearly wish that the brainiacs at Los Alamos had not figured out the atom bomb, because it obsoleted so much of what was venerated about warfare. Generals also wish special ops had not taken over so much of modern warfare, because so much of special ops is just dirty, low down cheating and criminal in traditional military terms. There is not much glory and honor in special ops. You can’t even brag about most of it. You can’t be hailed a conquering hero. You are a hit and run bunch operating in the shadows and using every horrific mode of counter terrorism to win with you can. Where is the glory in that!!! But Atom bombs got loose and triggered limited warfare and Special ops proved the best way to fight limited warfare up to a point, and after that you used conventional forces not to win, but to muck up a country to the point no one could use it. It was a cascade that lead to really ugly business. I think of Bad Ball like that. You can pretend it didn’t happen. You can try to clean it up. You can have the team start wearing black berets. You can hire some PR firm to write the Ballad of the Bad Ball Berets. But bottom line its dirty business that has gotten out of the genies bottle.
And it only helps a little knowing Dean evolved the Four Corners out of the Carolina Passing Game which was Henry Iba’s High Low Offense with some Bruce Drake Oklahoma Shuffle and Frank McGuire improvisations and some old Phog Allen routines sewn onto it making a quilt of many colors, but all High Low underneath.
Bottom line, Bad Ball is ugly, not graceful.
Second, this past summer Self discovered (or at least put on display for the first time) something in Korea that I think is going to take even longer to understand than Bad Ball. Board Rats, including me, were too busy being delighted by the change from Bad Ball to whatever it was we witnessed remotely over in Korea, to understand just what the hell we were seeing. But I am here to tell you that what you saw in Korea was not an accident. It was not unplanned. It had Self’s own weird spin on it as surely as Bad Ball did, too.
Let’s just cut to the chase and call what we saw in Korea “Good Ball,” shall we?
I’m frankly not able to decipher what Self did to the game of basketball in Korea.
But I have a hunch it was profound and I have a hunch we will find its roots in something some other coach of substance had done in the past. And whomever did it, they are probably not likely to have fallen too far from the Iba-Smith-Eddie-Larry tree.
I have a hunch it may be something that Doyle Parrock tried at Oklahoma City University that has been lost to posterity, except a few Okie Ball geeks like Self. Or it could be Paul Westhead. Or it could be something Jerry Tarkanian screwed around with for a time. Self mentioned Tarkanian in a positive light a few times last season, so we can reasonably guess that something Tark used to do has been catching his fancy.
Self has no choice but to improvise.
The Embargo forces him to do so.
The interesting thing is that Self is at about exactly the age the Wooden was at, when he too realized he had to improvise or die. Wooden came up with the final couple of pieces of the UCLA way–one of which was the 2-2-`1 zone press Jerry Norman brought him–to begin winning rings.
Bad Ball was one improvisation.
Good Ball was one improvisation.
Only a genius who can also be methodical about working on his non linear discoveries and improvisations can have a clue right now about where this may be heading.
All I can say after watching Self a lot of years is that he likes the idea of BOTH-ness in what ever he does a lot of.
Right now Bad Ball and Good Ball seem mutually exclusive paths.
But Self signaled where he wants to go in the last game of the WUGs.
After playing a lot of Good Ball, he shifted gears briefly and played Bad Ball.
It didn’t appear to work very well.
But a lot of things that geniuses do don’t look great in development at times, and then they suddenly blossom into unexpectedly great things.
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate-1.0 So, should we expect him to give the team a bit more free range to “play” this season?
I read one of his quotes from Media day about micromanaging coaches, how they all do it. But, he seemed to hint that he might let his guys play more on their own. With the rule changes, maybe he will have to.
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Not sure how that plays out. Interesting that Self is preparing the fans with the idea that there will be a lot of FTs and fouls this season. In theory (and likelihood) if that happens then teams with a deep bench will benefit most. One more reason why we need to clear Diallo. And hard to say how our perimeter depth will hold out. Matters a lot on player development.
I see it like he may start out giving the guys a longer leash, then if foul trouble occurs he will tighten it up quickly and have an excuse to run things the way he is used to, including with a quick hook on some players, typically freshmen and sophomores.
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My hunch is:
Play for the quick 3 (Good Ball), as in Korea for the first 10 seconds of the clock. Try to take a quick 3 after crossing mid court. If not open pass into post for quick kick out. If no 3pta, shift into Bad Ball the last 20 seconds of the clock.
To do this will leave more decisions about when and where to shoot, and when to shift from good to bad in mid possession to the players.
The object is to maximize long 3ptas and short 3ptas (Bad Ball drive with a FT). Kiss the mid range 2pta good bye.
Bad Ball Defense will be alternated with conventional Self Defense.
The idea will be to keep them disrupted and unable to get comfortable on both ends.
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@jaybate-1.0 Remember, “bad ball” as it was last season, was largely the perpetual weave. The death of the high-low.
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On January 17th of last year, Kansas suffered its first conference loss and it was to ISU at ISU. I don’t know if you remember that game (sure you do)… but ISU got lots of cheap, easy run outs by beating our guys back on their end of the court.
I think that also played a part in Self later turning to BAD BALL.
For me… a big part of BAD BALL is having the guys PRIORITIZE their defense over their offense. Towards the end of the year, we didn’t see many teams out-running us and getting run outs. Self had his guys focused on defense more than offense. Their minds on the offensive side of the ball were focused a lot on getting back on defense quickly instead of executing good offense.
The dynamics of basketball are truly amazing. Talk about shifts in momentum. When a team can’t execute their half court offense the other team often then focuses harder on getting run outs. One thing teams have to do is make sure they get back, especially if their offense isn’t executing well.
But if your offense is executing well and can’t be stopped, the ball isn’t rebounded for a quick outlet and the defense knows it needs to focus more on stopping the scoring, and less on getting out quick on a run out. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way, and teams get good at executing run outs after a basket is scored. Not often. It is usually more about how the offensive team reacts after a basket… if they are celebrating or staying focused and running back on d. Guards usually finish on the run outs, so a lot depends on our guards position and movement after the ball changes hands to the other team. Sometimes teams use fast bigs to get out and can impact the game in many ways, like making the other teams’ bigs not focus as hard on the offensive glass, or possibly hitting the offensive glass harder. The dynamics are unique to the situation and teams need to try different things to impact the game. I’ve always thought we don’t take advantage of this knowledge and strategy enough, but I’m not a coach so I guess there are reasons for that.
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Here’s how I see the potiental Lightfoot signing. Better to sign the 99th ranked guy now and continue to court the elite bigs, than to let him go and end up with Lucas and Anderson. No elite big man will be scared away by a 6’6"(judging by above “highlight” video) marginally athletic Mitch.
I’d love to sign a under-ranked 4 year player with no pressure to go pro, but pressure to learn Bill’s system and make everyone else better…
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Strange as it is, Henry Iba evolved the the high-low offense from his single post weave offense, which was an offense he ran from a single post offense (single low when he had a big man, single high when he had a short post man) for many years, as did many others before and during Iba’s time.
The idea of the original high low was to create an offensive formation that one could use perimeter and inside-out ball movement without a weave to create impact space, or from the same formation run the weave. Iba’s thinking was apparently that when you had little time to teach a team an offense, as at the Olympics, the team would just be taught the passing offense and not the weave, which required more practice and timing. Iba apparently thought the passing offense and the weave were perfectly complementary, originating out of the same formation and that doing so gave a defense a recognition problem to contend with. Another part of the innovation was that the offense enabled greater specialization of tasks inside versus outside. Offenses like Bruce Drake’s Oklahoma Shuffle that grew to dominate the game by the early 1960s shuffled four players through all the positions on the floor except for the post man, who remained in the post and simply moved high and low. But this meant that a big forward, what we today call a 4, who was in the offense precisely to rebound and stick back the misses of the perimeter players and the post man, was frequently outside the paint. The High Low was created in part to relieve the big forward from having to run all over the floor, i.e., be a stretch 4, and just let him work the paint, along with the post an, and leave the perimeter to perimeter players. One irony today is of course that the stretch 4 is in Self’s opinion now the toughest to guard in college basketball. So: though Self runs the high low for many of the same reasons Iba created it, he strives to find the Stretch 4 that is not just a high post man but an attacker from all over the floor as he roams looking for opportunities.
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Have you seen the videos on Lightfoot? He has some very great dunks and rebounds and all evaluations I have seen consider him to be an “elite athlete” with a high level motor athlete. This is what Fraschilla said about him:
“If Mitch were to have a Sam Dekker college career, I think he would be very happy with that,” Fraschilla said. “Sam is a little bigger, Mitch might be a little more explosive, but I think being compared to Dekker is just a testament to what people think about Mitch.
"I told him to continue to work on his ball handling and his ability to play away from the basket so he doesn’t get locked into one spot. I think at the college level he’s going to be a small forward; his athleticism is off the charts.”
I would like to see where you got the information that he is “marginally athletic.”
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“I would like to see where you got the information that he is “marginally athletic.””
I’m not going to insinuate that anyone is “racist”… however… it seems like there exists a bias concerning perception of athleticism between white and black basketball players. I think many assume white players are not elite athletes. I’m not pointing fingers in this forum, but can wave a general finger throughout the sport and definitely include many sports media professionals. You don’t hear the phrase “exceptional athlete” used very often today for white basketball players. And there are many white players that are exceptional athletes.
I think this is something we can take advantage of, and perhaps we are doing so if we sign Lightfoot! He does appear to have very good hops and can definitely get up and down the court quickly. From watching tape on Lightfoot, he appears to be under-appreciated and his ranking is too low. But… we’ve all been wrong before when watching highlight footage. I will save my judgment until I see him in a Jayhawk uniform and running down the court. My guess is that he is under ranked and will climb once he signs with us (if he does). He looks like a solid grab as long as we continue to go after high ranked post players and sign (hopefully) two of those!
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@JayHawkFanToo Mitch Lightfoot is nowhere near as good as Sam Dekker. Dekker was Rivals 13th ranked player in 2012, and left after his junior year. Mitch Lightfoot might have similarities to Dekker’s game, but his skills are either inferior or nowhere near as refined as Dekker’s.
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Fair enough but…
First, I did not compare Lightfoot to Dekker, a couple of college basketball analysts did; you would think they have more information than we do since that is their day time job. Second, Dekker was the top HS player in Wisconsin and he had the East Coast exposure that Lightfoot does not have and the ranking was after his senior year. Lightfoot is the top ranked player in Arizona and now that he has been noticed by the national media and with exposure resulting from signing with a high profile program, I believe that by the end of the season he will be at least top 50. Just my opinion and I could be wrong…
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I know exactly what you are saying and I agree. I believe that Lightfoot will surprise a lot of people.; I understand he has a great motor and attitude and I believe he would do great at KU.
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I don’t want to be hypocritical… so I will mention that I fight off that same bias.
From what I see… Mitch looks to be very athletic and will not be hindered by his athletic level in D1. I’m sure he could stand to be “Hudyized”… but most recruits need strengthening to be competitive in D1. Time to lose the baby fat and step into manhood!
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He is now listed at 6’-8", 210 lbs. If he is going to switch to SF, he is close to his optimal weight; however, if he plays PF he need to gain at least 10-15 lbs.
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It seems like the talk is to keep him at the SF. Since he is quick, better he stay on the large size of a SF instead of being on the small size of a PF. He has a long ways to go size and strength wise to play elite level D1 at the PF.
Seems we could use some depth at the SF slot when looking ahead. By the time he can be really ready to contribute Wayne will be gone (maybe even this year) and BG in two years. Svi will probably be gone then, too.
If his play advances… he is a guy we can utilize as a big 3 or a small 4. Nice to have those options.
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If he can develop into a Chase Budinger type player I would be very pleased.
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Yes… I can see that relative connection more than Sam Dekker.
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@JayHawkFanToo Yes, the fact that he’s white and doesn’t have super “cut” arms does lower people’s expectations of athleticism or general skill level. But as cases like Brady Morningstar show, you can’t be too quick to judge based on looks. Especially when they’re still in high school. If you get a chance google Marc Gasol in high school…
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PHOF!!!
Let players be seen for what they and their body morphologies and heads and hearts and work ethics let them do on the sacred wood.
Independent of stereotypes.
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@JayHawkFanToo said:
however, if he plays PF he need to gain at least 10-15 lbs.
Don’t tell Kevin Young that.
But KY was something of an anomaly, so I don’t dispute the weight estimate you suggest.
My point is only that smart coaches recognize and play the anomalies.
Self recognized that Frank Mason was an anomaly that could play.
Long neck.
Long trunk.
Short effective height.
But out the roof fast twitch muscle and speed and toughness and shooting touch.
He has to play even though he doesn’t look at all like he should excel in D1.
Don’t judge the book by the cover. Read it.
The player that might normally need to add 10-15 lbs. might have been read by Self and might be quite well suited to the position at a lighter weight.
Self has an extraordinarily keen sense of players abilities beyond morphological norms.
I still stubbornly insist that Perry Ellis’ is ridiculously too small, with ridiculously too small hands, to be playing the 4. But Self has found a way to win two conference titles with mister mini-mite at the 4.
Perry has as much time not passing the eye test at the 4, as Brady Morningstar did at the 3, and Kevin Young did at the 4.
One of the great joys I get watching Self coach is his frequent successful defiance of eye tests.
I hate eye tests, even though I can “see” some occasional utility to them.
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Agree with most of what you say on the defensive end.
But it appeared to me that KU worked exceptionally hard for half a season developing BAD BALL. They had break a lot of habits of trying to expand the impact space to get open and, instead, learn to shrink the impact space constantly to shoe while covered in order to draw the fouls. This was completely counter intuitive for Self offensive play the previous seasons. It was our difficulty in breaking these habits that made us look so bad so often, while learning to do it. Then late in the season as we began to habituate BAD BALL, our injuries compounded and those injuries kept us looking worse than we would have otherwise.
Shrinking impact space systematically all over the floor on offense; that was the essence of BAD BALL and what finally distinguished it from Bo Ryan Ball from whence it appears to have sprung in Self’s fertile mind.
To understand the degree of impact Bad Ball had on D1 last season, you have to recall that Fred beat us the first time playing his brand of ball that you describe so well.
By the second meeting, Fred played BAD BALL for a full half.
Think about that!
Bad Ball was such a potent solution to the officiating constraint by then driving play down the stretch of the season that Fred abandoned a successful approach and embraced Bad Ball to try to beat an injury depleted KU team!
Self may never go back to BAD BALL to the extent he did, unless another rash of injuries compells him to, but he will never be able to completely walk away from it. It is too potent a weapon situationally to jettison it. Especially with the players he has back this season. Unless Diallo and Bragg become money b2b, how can Self possibly NOT play some BAD BALL?
