Is This the Year for 5 Out When Udunka Is Chilling with Fouls?
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Basketball is moving down a path of finding the threshold at which too many playing outside and gunning trifectas is too much.
What if 4 out, 1 in were not there yet?
Better yet, what if 5 out were the sweet spot?
The assumption has been with Udunka Azuiwookie–the greatest footer prospect in the galaxy this season–that KU will return to the thrilling days of yesteryear in a galaxy far far away, when men were men and bigs were big.
Surely, KU will go big with Udunka, 10-20 minutes a game, or longer, when conditioning and foul-avoidance permit. Rim protection and rebounding and filling rattling picks never go out of style, regardless of space-time coordinates.
But Ukunka is likely to get fouled up some, and so there will be times, anywhere from 10-30 minutes, when the opponent is small enough in the paint that Self will want to get smaller and more mobile. Self, after all, likes to play it anyway they want. The man eats Both-checks for breakfast cereal.
So: Self has tried the 4 out 1 in offense and found a way to shag 30 Ws, a conference title, a high seed and a visit to the Elite Eight with his Four Guys from Tulsa Plus an OAD experimentation in searching for the three point sweet spot.
What about 5 out?
Self has a golden opportunity to fly his 2017 Millennium Jayhawk closer to the 3 Point Event horizon than ever before. Why? Because Master Self has got Billy Preston; that’s why. Billy Preston is a long cat in Self-vernacular. But its more than that. Preston is long like a Cheetah. The guy can shorten the floor. AND he can also get up and corner caroms just fine. And Preston is thought to have some range on his J and to be able to put the ball on the floor. AND like all agile big men, he dreams of playing guard.
Think of Preston as young Jedi Billy Rimwalker with a lot of force in him. But Master Self has to see if young Rimwalker can stay on the light side swinging between low blocks and outside stripes. The Yoda from Edmond, Oklahoma, has to be SURE, before he can commit to exploring the 3 point event horizon with young Rimwalker. If young Rimwalker were to be seduced by the basketball dark side from swinging inside and out before he were ready, well, the 2017 Millennium Jayhawk could easily falter, slip over the 3 point event horizon and the Millennium Falcon could disappear into a basketball black hole it would never emerge from as anything but infinitely compressed wookie fur balls emitted from a worm hole some where in another part of the universe, likely millions of light years from Allen Field House, or the March Carney.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
On the other hand, if young Rimwalker could swing inside and out and maintain his hold on the basketball force, well, 5 out for periods of time when Undunka is resting, or chilling form fouls, could be an incredible change of pace that almost no teams could cope with. With Rimwalker, the team could still rebound and contend at the rim some on defense, and so force teams to keep their bigs in even when Udunka sits. But here is the SWEET part: on the offensive end, KU could trigger treys from five outside spots, which would force the opponent to pull their bigs outside, or take them out all together and go small. And once this occurred, well, then, think of young Rimwalker, all 6-9 long and athletic inches of him, putting it on the floor and soaring for uncontested dunks.
AWESOME!!!
Feel the trey force, Bill!!!
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Honestly, I want to play traditional 3-2, not this other stuff. A balanced inside outside team is the hardest to beat in college. Yes, the nba is moving away from traditional centers, but the nba is different than college and size still rules here.
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@jaybate-1.0 What happened to the hi-lo? Did it go when Doko takes a blow, so we gotta shoot from down below? The 5 out…give me a few to wrap my head around the idea.
