4 OUT Small Ball
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Vick is not really a PG so Newman would be the logical replacement. Having said a that, Garret was the Texas Gatorade POY as PG and I will guess that as the season progresses, he will become the backup PG.
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@JayHawkFanToo it seems like a lot of folks on ku sites don’t think he is a point guard, yet he played point guard in high school lol.
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A few random thoughts…
@HighEliteMajor emojis can at times be quite subjective and depend on the mood of the writer at the time. The cat can be seen as Garret being the cat’s meow or the cat that ate the canary and is very pleased with himself.
What is the deal with these new hairdos? I just don’t get it, but then many people did not get the long hair in the 60s and 70s either.
Talking about looks…Devonté does not look like a baby anymore and Vick looks so much older, he has an NBA-ready face now.
Newman is indeed an enigma. Not enough handles to be a PG and perhaps not enough height or shooting touch to be a SG, can we call him a tweener guard? No doubt he is talented but right now he seems to be talent looking for a role?
In case some of you did not know, Preston was late for curfew and had to park his car in an illegal zone and the be next day he had to go and move it and in the process missed a class. He now knows that two wrongs don’t make a righ; in reality, the second call attention and makes the first look even worse.
If KU and UK play their game the way both teams played the first half Friday, KU wins going away and the squid cries like a little girl…just an expression @Crimsonorblue22, no offense to women or little girls intended.
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@JayHawkFanToo I do hate that, or throw like a girl etc.
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Vick looks more likely to back up the point than Malik.
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Until Preston reveals a light on upstairs, KU must dread a team with two good bigs.
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@jaybate-1-0 And who would the second be?
Mitch should be a 3. Billy (please be a hero!) Preston must “Get Back” to where he once belonged. His apparent flakiness is All the more need for Desousa to get cleared. Bill is Santa if he orchestrates this Christmas present for the KU faithful.
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@Fightsongwriter Nice Preston/Beatles reference. Here, here…
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@JayHawkFanToo around here I’ve seen a lot more little boys crying in public than little girls. This expression does seem invalid.
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4 years for mr Garrett is music to my ears… he fits the mold of many of my fav players ( K Young, T Releford, JamTray), he seems to want to play D and rebound and set picks and just be a disrupter. As a pure fan, These four years types really help balance out the oft disappointing hardly-knew-ye OADs. I got my ticket, and boarded the Garrett Bus early
(Cat emoji for keeping with the thread theme )
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Crimsonorblue22 said:
@JayHawkFanToo I do hate that, or throw like a girl etc.
If you’re talking about my wife that means deadly acurate and hard. If you’re talking about my sister that means everyone 180 degrees in front of her is on notice.
So what does it mean?
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@Bosthawk Gotta love Garrett. Dudes gonna be a multiple year stud. The kind of player you think of when you fondly remember KU hoops 10-20-30 years down the road. Unfortunately the Xavier Henry’s of the world fade away…
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@approxinfinity @Crimsonorblue22
It is just an old expression that uses hyperbole to convey a meaning and as such, should not be taken literally. I did include a caveat in my post.
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““He didn’t score the second half and he dominated the game,” Self said of Graham.”
I hope to hear that more often this year. Sure… I like seeing Devonte hang some points in the book, but what we really need is a floor general from the point. Self’s comment holds true; Devonte dominated without scoring the second half.
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@JayHawkFanToo Cal will be crying like a little baby.
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Ah, looks like various sensitivities have been aroused, not matter how irrational.
I’ve never thrown like a girl. Thankfully.
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@KUSTEVE In defense of all the defenseless little babies I am deeply offended by that comment
Get back Kusteve-a (and Loretta)!
But what about the Billy Don’t be a Hero reference ? That was the first rock song I remember really digging as a pre-teener.
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@dylans JJ’s
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@Fightsongwriter And as he started to go, she said Billy keep your head lowwwww…
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Loved Devonte at PG so far. My only question, and it’s not really fair to compare against BIFM, is I can’t count the times when there was a lid on the basket for everyone else, and Frank just put his head down, drove to the basket again and again and kept his team in the game, sometimes being the only scorer for minutes on end. Can Devonte show up every game and every game be ready, should shots not be falling for everyone else, score points to get us through those lean minutes?
But overall, once again, this team looks really good. We are so spoiled with how we well reload every year. I like being spoiled.
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Nice post. We are certainly spoiled.
It will be interesting to see how we get offense when things break down. Mason was great at creating offense in those situations as you said.
Graham however might be exactly what this team needs as a more natural pg option. 12 assists in the opener. He’s a gifted passer. His vision might open opportunities for easier baskets when a play breaks down instead of relying on the many heroics that Mason gave us last season.
I wonder if there was a chart of Mason ISO’s and how often he either scored or got to the FT line when this team needed buckets. Graham might be just as effective as a better passer with the ability to get into the lane and dump it off to Doke? or an open shooter for a 3 pointer. We’ll see how this evolves but Game 1 we certainly saw Devonte controlling the game without being a major option on offense. That’s maybe the big upside to having Devonte over Frank this season. We’ll see.
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I’ve been impressed with Self’s growth in basketball over the past few years. Not having enough post depth has also been a blessing because it forced Bill to go with “small ball.” It just wasn’t enough to have a team full of trey shooters (back when we had B Greene) to convince him to focus on a 4-guard offense.
How many times have we heard Bill bark about tempo (in the past)? I recall he used to complain about our pace being too slow. Sometimes he mentioned “the ball sticking” while other times it was “walking the ball up the court” or “not aggressive enough.”
The 4-guard offense is an instant cure for a slow pace.
Now Bill has another tool in his chest. The 4-guard offense is definitely well-polished and sitting in his tool chest.
Imagine having to play against Kansas. What game will Kansas bring?
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3-2 - Three guards with two bigs. They might setup in a 3-2 structure, or it could be he just keeps his center in the low post and his other big anywhere from the FT line to playing out on the trey line, setting picks and taking shots from trey to mid-range.
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4-1 - Four guards with one big. Using a motion offense hybrid somewhere between dribble-drive and hi/lo, including shifts in tempo somewhere between it being run like a secondary break or slowed down to an aggressive form of a Princeton offense.
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4-1 - Four guards with one big. Using an aggressive hi/lo where almost every possession works through the post, either creating low post scoring or open trey opportunities.
I’m thinking a great extra tool is to have our 4 big able to nail the trey. This creates an easy scoring for our 4 to come out setting high ball screens for pick-and-pop opportunities. Get our opposition bigs away from the paint so our athletic guards, like Vick, can crash the boards!
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I’m not sure this team has a go to scorer/assassin. Lots of really good players on the team though.
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We’ll get more out of Newman, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him lead the team in scoring tonight for example. I’m really interested to see where he’s at after about 8-10 games because I think that’s when we will start seeing him assert himself more (if he hasn’t already by that point).
Vick looked real good in game 1 taking on more volume. If that outside shot blends in as well as his drives to the hoop he’s probably the best go-to option we have. Between Graham, Newman & Vick I see great potential going forward
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BShark said:
I’m not sure this team has a go to scorer/assassin. Lots of really good players on the team though.
Frankly, that might actually be a strength. Makes this team much harder to stop. If we had one guy or two that was the go-to person all the time, a team that can lockdown a player or two can be crippling to a team that functions like that.
