Red Pill or Blue Pill?
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@HighEliteMajor Nothing magical about getting beat by Bob Morriss in the NIT either.
Stuff happens. Like I said before, injury, luck (good or bad) whatever.
If you want to bathe in the majesty of Uconn or Kentucky, go right ahead.
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@HighEliteMajor Yes I’d have to have the replacement. It would be different if we weren’t at least “treading water”. If we were not recruiting as we should be able to. If we were not making the tournament regularly. If we had a “lack of institutional control”. Basically, if things were going bad like they did for Howland at UCLA. But we have none of that. Our only gripe is our desire to have a higher rate of success in the NCAA tournament. The question is a little ridiculous given that we are two years removed from the national title game. But I would at least entertain the idea if someone could present a case for another candidate with a low risk-high reward profile, because as much as I think Self is a great coach, if someone can do better I would say make the change.
I still come back to the problem I have with our fans thinking we are entitled to more. “We are Kansas basketball”. Or, as @KULA said “It’s Kansas that makes the coaches great, not the other way around.” We have 3 National titles, and one of them was won by Bill Self in his 11 year tenure. The NCAA tournament began in 1939. That’s 75 years of tournaments, and we’ve won 3 of them. That’s a clip of one every 25 years for our program. That’s how great Kansas has made its coaches for the past 75 years. What level of success does anyone think we had prior to Bill Self that they think he hasn’t delivered on since his arrival?
Is it wrong to want more? To want the program elevated? To enviously look at UConn and say “why isn’t that us?” Not at all. I certainly do. But don’t delude yourselves with “we are Kansas.” When anyone wants to evaluate our program and talks about taking off the crimson & blue colored glasses, I would advise them to do the same and start with this basic fact: Kansas is a great program with wonderful tradition. But that tradition doesn’t really include that which we are so hungry for - increased tournament success. If you want us to build upon that and have greater success, fine. Me too! But please stop acting as if we’ve “fallen off”.
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I’m probably a blue pill guy anyway. After all, I have said more than once on this board that around the country, most teams don’t remember who wins the conference, other than the conference their favorite team is in. For example, most of us won’t remember who won the ACC this year once next season gets going. Most probably don’t remember who won the Big 10 last year, or who won the Pac-12 the year before. Conference titles are nice, but they don’t really resonate nationally because the grind of the conference schedule is regionally focused.
So here’s the real question - is it effective in this state of college basketball to coach an elite major school with a system that takes 2-3 years to master? If, as some have argued, Bill Self’s system is so complex as to take 2-3 years to master, is that really practical knowing that the top talent won’t be in school for more than 2 years most of the time?
For example, even if Wiggins and Embiid returned, is there anyone that believes they would stay past next season? You simply cannot assume that you will have the best players for more than 2 years.
It seems to me that Calipari has understood this better than basically anyone. I think Tom Izzo is a genius, but even he has struggled with the fact that in order to have top notch talent, he can’t expect to have those guys around for four full seasons. Coach K has started to embrace this as well, although the results have not followed yet.
I think the new reality of college basketball is that teams are going to have to adapt year to year based on the talent on hand more so than relying on a system. If you have an Andrew Wiggins one year, you have to capitalize on his unique gifts. If, the next year, you have a different type of player (a Cliff Alexander, for example) you should adapt to take advantage of that. Lacking a true high talent PG? Maybe you let your wing players initiate the offense. The new reality of college basketball is that you can’t just hope your system wins it for you - the talent is very spread out, to where if you don’t maximize the use of the elite guys, you’re no better off than a team with lesser talent.
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I’m not a particularly good loser. In fact, it’s been said that I’m a POOR loser. I take great pride in that.
However, the fact that Kansas doesn’t win the National Championship every year is not enough to make me bail on them.
If we’re going to base greatness on how many NC’s a team has, then it’s UCLA. Hands down. End of discussion. Next, as jaybate 1.0 would say.
Take a random poll of people across the country and ask them to choose the 5 greatest programs of all time. Here’s the answer you’ll get the majority of the time:
In no particular order: Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina and Indiana. Go ahead - take the poll.
Why? Because they have consistently been winners. Over a long, long period of time they have been known as winners. They win a lot of games. They win conference championships. They have history. They make movies about them. They send players to the NBA. Their names are synonymous with winning.
Yes, I want to win more National Championships. In my heart, 10 losses in a season is unacceptable. But, it’s basketball. We attract many top athletes here and when things click, we are unstoppable. They didn’t click this year. Do we send Bill Self packing? (as if we could). Probably not a great idea. He’s won a few games. We could do worse than having Bill Self for our coach.
Take a few minutes and compare stats between Calipari and Self. On paper, they’re the same person. Their records are practically identical. Self has lost one more tournament game than Calipari. They’ve both won one National Championship.
“Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.” John Steinbeck
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@nuleafjhawk Now I think you’re taking this personally …
@icthawkfan316 - “But please stop acting as if we’ve ‘fallen off’.”
So, we must ascend then. One title every 25 years being the status quo.
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So here’s the real question - is it effective in this state of college basketball to coach an elite major school with a system that takes 2-3 years to master?
@justanotherfan Well, consider that 3 of the 4 schools that made the Final 4 this year were comprised of non-OAD players. The one exception is Kentucky, who put together perhaps the greatest recruiting class ever, and they’ve needed clutch 3 pointers to win their last 3 games. They very well may win it all, but that type of class isn’t going to be available very often, and certainly not available to more than one school every so often (Duke’s class next year features 5 ESPN top 20 players). Last year’s Final 4 (Louisville, Wichita St., Michigan, Syracuse) did not feature OAD talent. 2012 had a Kentucky team full of OADs win the title, but KU, Ohio St., & Louisville didn’t have OADs on their roster.
So I think the likely answer isn’t to change the system, but rather the players. HEM & others have advocated not going after kids that are presumed OADs. Perhaps that is part of the answer to HEM’s question “is there a cure for what ails us in March?” The alternative that we see is to be able to build Kentucky-esque recruiting classes. That seems to be the only formula that succeeds without having 2-4 year guys, and I wouldn’t think it wise for anyone else to count on being able to do that on a consistent basis.
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@HighEliteMajor Lol - I am!! I just told you I’m a poor loser. And we just lost ten times!!
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I can think of a parallel on the fire Bill Self question.
Doug Collins coached the Bulls to the conference finals in 1989 where they lost to Detroit. Each year he coached the team they got progressively better. This of course coincided with the maturation of Scotty and Michael.
After the conference championship series he was fired. Of course they hired Phil, you know the rest of the story.
As a raised and reared Chicagoan I was shocked. I had only seen the Bulls as a pitiful team, giving away tickets, nothing going good. And now they’re consistently making the playoffs. This is great, and you fire the coach?
Now it may be a weak comparison, but it may not be.
I’m not a believer in firing Bill Self. He’s had us in two championship games in 6 years. But he is going to have his mettle challenged in the changing landscape of college basketball.
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I agree, but here’s the thing - Calipari is a constant. The other teams change from year to year.
Going back to 2006 (the beginning of the OAD era), here are the coaches that have been to the Elite 8, along with the number of Elite 8’s (72 total).
Those with one fleeting appearance - Anderson, Brady, Capel, Dixon, Huggins, Kent, Larranaga, G. Marshall, F. Martin, McKillop, A. Miller, Ollie, Pearl, Ryan, Smart, Thompson III, B. Williams. That’s 17 right there for the guys that have one trip.
Two trips - Barnes (yes, Rick Barnes), Beilein, Boeheim, Drew (yes, Scott Drew), Krzyzewski, Brad Stephens, Wright.
Three trips - Calhoun, Howland, Izzo, Matta, Sean Miller
Four trips - Rick Pitino and Bill Self
Five trips - Roy Williams
Six trips - Billy Donovan
Seven trips - John Calipari
Simply put, he’s always there. In the last 9 years, since the OAD rule has really taken off, Calipari has always been around in the E8. 7 trips in 9 seasons is quite good. Coach K and Jim Boeheim (two great coaches) have as many trips as Rick Barnes and Scott Drew.
Calipari has done it year after year after year at two different schools regardless of who stayed, who left and who everybody else got. The only other coach with that level of consistency is Billy Donovan, although Calipari can match him with titles tonight.
If it takes 2-3 years to incubate your system, about the best you can do is what Self, Williams, Pitino and Izzo have done. You can get to 3-5 E8’s in 9 years. But if you want to be there year after year after year, I think you have to have a system that can be captured quickly so that you can maximize your available talent every single year.
Isn’t that what we want anyway - to have the best possible team every year?
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I was fortunate enough to have the very best coach during my youth. I absolutely put him on the level of Wooden. Maybe better. My coach went 10 years of basketball coaching without suffering a loss. Believe it or not. He didn’t lose a game until he got stuck with me and the band of gypsies that were with me. He eventually even made us winners.
He had only one magic gift that counted more than all the tactical skills, practice skills and game coaching of any of the coaches in this conversation. He couldn’t recruit like Calipari, he couldn’t develop like Self, and he couldn’t game coach like Izzo.
But what he did know how to do was mentor players. That’s why after tonight’s game, I’ll phone him up still… he’s approaching 80 years of age. He has players calling him every week from all over the globe.
If you want to find an issue with Self, look no further than the sex photo Naadir posted online. No player can do that who has total respect for his coach. I would have rather castrated myself than humiliate myself in front of my mentor. This should explain where the problem is.
My coach got his start from coaching boys at a boys’ farm. He took all the troubled kids, and within a short time he not only had them playing excellent basketball, he had them doing everything they could to turn their lives around because it would kill them to dissatisfy their coach. I was in the same boat. I was a troubled kid until I met this man and to this day I continue to thank him for turning my life around. And though his health is not good, he made a long travel to come visit me last fall after the birth of my son. He said he wanted to be the first coach to recruit him.
We all seem to think that winning a few games in March makes these guys great. It has nothing to do with greatness.
We can all question coaching philosophies and what not. But what makes a coach great is his ability to mentor players and create a following of believers. Start there and build confidence. Build confidence and grow self-worth. Grow self-worth and develop a work ethic. Develop a work ethic and learn a philosophy. Learn a philosophy and master execution. Master execution and never lose. Never lose and always win!
Now you have a great coach.
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@JRyman I’ve read most of these posts. I’m not real sure about any pills. But I read this piece and agree with some of it, but the poster to this article is really bitter. His assessment of Withey is wrong. I’m not sure about his BMac assessment, but can say with some certainty that he’s wrong. But I do get the overall gist of this scathing article. Bill Self is inconsistent and not sure at all what the hell he’s doing when it matters most.
I love Self and want him around for a very long time. But, who can you get to take his place? I think the responses are correct, KU fans want a bit too much when compared to some other great coaches. I don’t question Self’s inability or failure to win another NC, but I just question his coaching decisions more and more each game. He’s tight lipped and will not say a damn thing about off-court issues. He’ll never say a word of anything impacting his players or program, and maybe rightly so, but it would at least give some people pause. If we look at this season’s ending performance against Stanford, there’s a lot of questions Self will never answer. I wonder what take aways he learned from the Stanford game? Doesn’t matter, he’s the head coach and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Self may be a bit arrogant at times and seems to forget some things about his coaching. Maybe he’s been going through some personal crap, but we’ll never know.
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@drgnslayr Good story. Sounds like you were quite lucky to have this guy as your coach. I’m curious as to why I was tagged in it. Not that I don’t appreciate your post, just wondering what in particular I might have written that made you think of me.
As to the sex photo of Naadir, I don’t know that it’s an important distinction to you or not, but from what I gathered on twitter he wasn’t the one that posted it. It originated from someone else’s account. No idea how it got out so I don’t want to defend or criticize him more than he deserves. Could have been the girl sent it to someone, who sent it to someone, and on & on until someone decided to post it online. Or Naadir could have been sending it to his buddies who did the same thing. We don’t know. What we know is he was naked with a woman and took a “selfie”. I don’t know that him doing that, in and of itself, speaks at all to Self or Naadir’s level of respect towards him. These are 18-22 year old kids treated like Gods in the college towns that they play and are living in the digital age. This could spiral into a whole other discussion on whether these kids have to know what they’re getting into when they come to a place like Kansas and they must hold themselves above reproach. I think those are judgments I’m not comfortable making.
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From our paper yesterday:
http://theadvocate.com/sports/pelicans/8827998-123/jeff-witheys-growth-has-pleased
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@konkeyDong Examples on changes have been posted many times but you either failed to read or acknowledge.
Implement variety of zone defenses, 1-3-1, 2-3, triangle and 2. Teach them to the players, practice on a regular basis and execute on game day. Keep teams off balance, mix and match your d
Implement more pressing. It was a pity that we had such a talented, athletic and deep team but Self did not press more. He did it on couple of occasions against WV and Stanford but by that time both games were out of reach.
Create more drive and dish in your Offense, stop doing the same weave over and over again.
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I was just posting and it looked like most the conversations were with you. Hope you didn’t mind!
These kids have to be smarter than that. And hey… if they are old enough to make millions and millions (at least some) then they should learn to handle their stuff. The part that made it worse for me was the fact that it was a selfie.
He should have known this stuff would get loose. Maybe he was a trophy lay, or whatever… but he was the captain of this team.
Captain Selfie!
This youth thing of letting them off the hook all the time is starting to be a crutch for them. We all did things we weren’t proud of when we were young… but I never did anything that brazen that could hurt a bunch of people.
But… to be honest… I might have done something that would have hurt people (even quite a bit worse) had I not been mentored.
That is why I posted my story. Before being mentored I bet I was a much bigger problem to people around me than Naadir is.
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I am so thankful that during my college years we did not have digital cameras or cell phone or internet. I could have been in a lot of trouble…along with just about every body I knew. So, I will not pass judgement on Tharpe, I just wish he would be more careful and more aware of the potential consequences.
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@drgnslayr Hey, it couldn’t hurt recruiting. Maybe it’ll help us land that elite point guard everyone’s been talking about.
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So congrats to UConn for keeping Kentucky from a ninth National Championship, but that only means UConn has officially eclipsed Kansas as a blue blood national power. I am thankful that closing song montage spared us any reference to another Kansas upset and only highlighted Wiggs, which he deserved for his season. I was afraid that the crying Kansas kid was going to become an indelible fixture in 'One Shining Moment." One the other hand, our absence in that montage only emphasizes our growing irrelevance in the National Title conversation.
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We would need to get better looking girls; the one with Tharpe was not particularly attractive.
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“We had our chances to win,” Calipari said. “We’re missing shots, we’re missing free throws. We just didn’t have enough.”
Is he making excuses?
Is he lying?
I’d he using coach speak?
Is he covering up his short comings?
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@drgnslayr could probably say a lot, but you were very fortunate to have a mentor, you know a lot our players come here w/out one, or even a father. I hate what Tharpe did, cringe to think if that happened to a kid of mine! But, we don’t know the whole story, and frankly it’s not our business. I too did some dumb stuff, so thankful none of that was put out there for all to see! To look at this and think that Self is not close to the kids. Remember when the KU family rallied around TRob? FOE became a theme for our kids. Look at our academic success, the great support group that has surrounded our team. Cole came back to graduate, Ben is coming back this summer. These are all the success stories that I see from Bill Self. I guarantee as long as there are college kids, there will be slip ups, but if we’re going to put that on Self put the success stories on him too!
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I heard a comedian say this once, “I want to run for The President of the United States. That way all those media guys can find out what I did in college when I blacked out all those times.”
I too could say that
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@konkeyDong I’ll stick my nose in here, even tho you directed your request for specific changes at HEM. After all, this has been a sore point of mine since long before I started posting on any boards.
I think it starts with overall coaching style. I’ve heard a lot of good young coaches say they don’t want their demeanor affect their kids. It filters down from the top. When a coach is tight, the kids are tight. Roy was as guilty of this as anyone (Reference the 03 title game when Nick went 5/12 from the line and Kirk passed on several open 3’s) but Bill’s got it bad too. I remember a late season game when Naadir screwed up and Bill yelled at him for the entire timeout. Great. How does that help the team on the next play?
Bill intimidates his players with his quick hook. Ever notice that teams that upset us are free and easy with threes, while our guys are never sure if they should launch one? Like they’ve always got one eye on the bench? I’ll stand by my assertion that Bill’s early career treatment of EJ instilled a fear of failure in him that influenced him to pass on the biggest shot of his career.
Which brings me to a specific point, which you asked for–Bill doesn’t make the three pointer a part of his offense. Teams with good three points shooters run plays to get them open. When’s the last time you saw a Jayhawk run off a screen to get an open three?
And we should have been a GREAT three point shooting team this year. With Conner and Brannen and Naadir and Wayne and both Andrews, we should have been throwing down a dozen threes a game. But Bill just doesn’t make it part of his offense.
And that brings me to Bill’s refusal to use regular season minutes to develop bench guys for the tournament. This baffles me, because he did it with Cole masterfully in the Championship season. It was part of the regular rotation–Cole would come in for 4 minutes at the 12 minute mark of each half. And we all remember how that paid off in the Final Four.
I fully expected the same treatment for EJ and Jeff, but somewhere along the line, Bill lost his stomach for freshman/sophomore mistakes, even though he routinely enjoyed 20 pt leads in those two seasons. And by tournament time, he was too tight to trust his bench players, essentially choking his rotation down to six players against UNI, even though it was commonly remarked that our second five could be a Top 20 team that year. Imagine how another 3pt shooter or 7ft shot blocker might have influenced the 10 & 11 games. AndI sure would’ve liked to see Brannen and Conner and Andrew White get more time to develop during the regular season. But by tourney time, Bill didn’t have enough confidence to get them into the game. A couple more timely threes might’ve helped against Stanford.
As to specific changes, well, we should be a pressing team. We routinely enjoy an athletic advantage, but we never press that advantage. With waves of superior athletes over the course of a game, a good press will crush a less talented team. Bill’s excuse that a good team will beat a press for easy baskets doesn’t hold water. If that’s the case, how come we never beat a press for easy baskets? Why weren’t we pressing Stanford, without a real point guard, the whole game? Major coaching fail, Bill.
In terms of offense, well, Bill’s offense just sucks. All the way back to Big Dub, when he was required to just muscle for position, without ever a play or pick to get him open. It’s so predictable and scout-able. A Big’s gonna set a pick for a guard at the top of the key. Guess what? The D switches and, PLAY OVER. Remember Sherron at the end of the MIch. State game? Bill’s instructions were, “Go get it.” Great. No play–just one on five. And then there’s the lame weave out top when we get desperate. I haven’t seen that play get a bucket since Tyshawn left.
And then there’s this year and Bill’s continued insistence on running the offense thru the post. Not a terrible idea with JoJo, but still–YOU’VE GOT THE BEST WINGMAN TO COME INTO THE GAME IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS!!! Draw up some plays to get him the ball moving toward the basket! In a late season game, Bill exhorted Andrew, “It’s time to go! Now! Now!”
Great. How do I use that, Coach? How about drawing up a play for me? How about someone setting a pick for me?
I can’t believe commentators called Andrew a no-show against Stanford cuz he only took six shots. What kind of offensive sets only produce six shots for the best player in the country. Actually, probably only produced a couple shots for him, cuz I didn’t see much in Bill’s offense to get him open–he pretty much had to get his own. What’s he supposed to do, launch 25 footers, drive one on five against a zone. Greg Anthony called it pretty easily–get Andrew into the middle of the zone and let him go to work there. Nooo, we’re gonna run our offense thru Tarik Black.
With Bill’s ineptitude against the zone, I can’t believe anyone e would NOT zone us. Unless you’re one of those small schools we play early and it’s kinda in the contract, like, “We wanna work on our man to man offense, get it?” i.e. Don’t play zone.
Anyway, there’s a few concrete suggestions, along with pull-my-hair-out ranting.
- Use your athletic advantage and press.
- Run your offense thru your best player–don’t make your best player adapt to your offense.
- Hire an assistant who knows how to run a zone offense. 3b. Don’t be afraid to play some zone. Cal almost stole the game tonight by switching to the zone.
- Make the 3pt shot part of your offense.
- Oh yeah, I almost forgot. RUN WITH YOUR SUPERIOR ATHLETES!!! Don’t slow the game down with your Okie hokie pokie offense and let overmatched opponents catch their breath. Bill’s teams don’t even know HOW to run a fast break. More often than not, they screw it up.
Let’s see, anything else…
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My first post here, I have been reading threads since about October. I love the red pill/blue pill analogy. Here’s why I am a red pill guy: I expect championships. Why? Because of the exact reason people say I shouldn’t. 30 win seasons and 10 consecutive conference championships are the building block of a championship team. Not the reason to be satisfied. Why do I keep reading that those are reasons I should be satisfied or find consolation? Those “accolades” are the precursor to underachieving when a program has this kind of sustained regular season success and disappointing early outs in the only tournament that matters in college basketball. When “blue pill” folks use UK, UNC’s and UConn’s down years as a point that regular season failure is somehow the tradeoff we’d rather not have I say, exactly. KU doesn’t have down years, in the regular season. We don’t miss the tournament. We always win our conference. We should have more than one championship in the last 25 years. If I was fan of a school that did not have “blue blood” recruiting power and be considered an elite coaching destination job I would absolutely be excited about a conference championship or an Elite Eight run. I don’t have these expectations simply because I am a passionate fan. I wouldn’t have the same expectations if I lived in Iowa and Iowa State was my school. Most of these Tournament loses have been extremely disappointing to me. Not just because at the end of the game we had the lower score, it’s because we had the ability to make it to the end. Every year (besides 08 obviously) I feel like I have this prodigal child that aces his tests all year and then fails the final exam. Am I not supposed to be upset? Do I pat him on the head and say well you failed the big one but you did great on all the quizzes. You did enough to get a B but the final prevented you from that A. When Wiggins signed with KU I wasn’t excited because we were going to possibly win another BIG XII championship. My expectations shot up to National championship level. Not out in the round of 32. Same with Xavier, same with Julian.
During the tournament I saw a graphic that was sobering and made me rethink KU’s “elite” status(for the first time in my life). This elite status I believe was the biggest point to the red or blue question. I had always considered KU elite until I saw this: Since 1990 KU was one of five schools with 10 or more Elite Eight appearances. The other four schools are definitely on my “elite” program list. UK- 13 with 3 NC’s, UNC- 12 with 3 NC’s, Duke- 10 with 4 NC’s UConn- 10 with 3 now 4 NC’s and KU- 10 with 1 NC. All four other schools had at least 3.
Now, I haven’t made any “basketball” points in this post. That will come later. I’m merely addressing my feelings about why I feel like a red pill guy. One word, “underachieving”. This underachievement is exactly why it’s okay to call out Bill Self too. Our regular season success is also exactly why I judge our over all success and national program status on National Championships.
That Is All
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@That Is All Good point. It’s almost like our 25 year tournament appearance streak is an embarrassment because of the lack of National Championships it’s produced
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It is embarrassing, right? With 24 losses, KU is the biggest tournament loser in the past 25 years.
25 straight tournaments
10 elite eights
6 final fours
4 finals
1 championship
724 W - 145 L (.833 overall since 1989-90 )
No real down years. No NCAA penalties. Two class-act HOF coaches. New branches growing off the Jayhawk coaching tree. Lots of successful graduates and some decent NBA players.
Fire Bill and retroactive fire O’l Roy and let’s have a few 15-loss NIT seasons to improve that NCAA tournament loss record!
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@DanR nice post!
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@konkeyDong Examples on changes have been posted many times but you either failed to read or acknowledge.
Implement variety of zone defenses, 1-3-1, 2-3, triangle and 2. Teach them to the players, practice on a regular basis and execute on game day. Keep teams off balance, mix and match your d
Implement more pressing. It was a pity that we had such a talented, athletic and deep team but Self did not press more. He did it on couple of occasions against WV and Stanford but by that time both games were out of reach.
Create more drive and dish in your Offense, stop doing the same weave over and over again.
@AsadZ I haven’t ignored anything. People have suggested changes. I’ve debated. But what posts like this do is fail to answer the question of why changes are better. Why if a system is winning about 29.5 games a year does it need to be changed? How do you spend more time implementing a variety of zones without losing value in your man-to-man D? Why is mixing up your D strategically superior to excelling at man to man? How do you create more drive and dish when players either don’t touch the paint, or when they do, they don’t dish? How do you explain the disconnect between the ability of previous teams to succeed in this system if the system itself is the problem? If Self really has no clue how to attack a zone, why could his teams from 2006-2013 beat zone teams regularly? If UConn has a secret that distinguishes their system from that of all other previous champions in recent years, what is it?
It’s too easy and shallow to say, ‘oh, if you only did XYZ, everything would be perfect’. That’s my whole point. It’s not enough to claim that the path not taken is automatically better. You have to show your work, so to speak. I’m not interested in 'if only’s. That’s the gauntlet being thrown down. Every change you make comes with its own set of risks and rewards. There are weaknesses in all strategies and opportunity costs in all choices. Address them and show me for real why it’s better. Show me that you can use that criterion in a predictive manner that shows why Team A is going to beat Team B. That’s what I’m asking.
I’m not at all against criticizing Self. He clearly did not develop a well rounded team with the talent at his disposal. It was a rickety juggernaut that fell to pieces the moment the lynchpin was removed.And no matter how you slice it, he flat out failed with Naadir Tharpe. Tharpe can’t run Self’s system to save his life. But that’s the stuff that happens around the game. I just find that a lot of the time the criticism is based on assumptions with no real facts to back them up. How, when you watch a game, do you know that a coach failed to give his players the proper preparation vs the players failing to stick to game plan? No coach can greatly improve the product that he’s put on the floor from the sidelines. He can run some plays and try to make things happen, but the results of those decisions is ultimately in the hands of the players. I don’t claim to have any mystical ability to know what I can’t know (what happens in practices, what is actually being said in TOs or in the locker room at half time, etc), but a lot of people around here seem to think they do. I also think a lot of posters are way too willing to accept what sportscasters tell them went wrong in a loss without any skepticism or thoughtfulness. For instance, you yourself had said that we didn’t start pressing until the Stanford game was out of reach. That’s flatly not true. We were pressing for nearly 10 minutes of the second half when we were down by 7 points. How is that out of reach? Others latched on to the ‘no true point guard’ comment and said that the game plan should have been to press the whole time. That might be true, but Stanford started getting by the press after about 6 minutes of it. If it was only effective for that long, why would it have been better to do it the whole game? I’m not unconvinced by this kind of stuff because I can never be satisfied, but because I think this kind of Monday Morning quarterbacking amounts to finger pointing. It doesn’t give any insight, nor does it offer any real relief.
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During the tournament I saw a graphic that was sobering and made me rethink KU’s “elite” status(for the first time in my life). This elite status I believe was the biggest point to the red or blue question. I had always considered KU elite until I saw this: Since 1990 KU was one of five schools with 10 or more Elite Eight appearances. The other four schools are definitely on my “elite” program list. UK- 13 with 3 NC’s, UNC- 12 with 3 NC’s, Duke- 10 with 4 NC’s UConn- 10 with 3 now 4 NC’s and KU- 10 with 1 NC. All four other schools had at least 3.
@That Is All
That’s a fair point, but why lay all of that underachievement at Self’s feet? During most of that time Roy was head coach. He capped both ends of his KU career with good tournament runs but had just as many early exit years (whether or not they were upsets) as Self, without any of the glory. I think he’s the bigger part of the reason why KU is short about 2 titles.
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@konkeyDong Agreed. A number of those are Roy’s issues and not Bill’s. All KU losses at the end of the day.
I watched every minute of last nights game and I was very very impressed with UCONN and their ability to hold UK at arms length from start to finish. Great coaching, clutch shooting, great defense and to me an extremely deserving team to cut down the nets.
Watching UK I had the opposite feeling. Just seeing Coach Cal upsets me. I know that his post season record at UMASS, Memphis and now Kentucky is incredible but the guy is dirty and arrogant and after a loss (like last night) full of excuses. I know there has been a lot of Self bashing going on since the Stanford loss but I am 100% serious in saying that I would rather lose early with Bill than cheer for a team with Cal at the helm all the way to the finals.
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That point of sharing the graphic was my feeling about KU’s elite status over all. Roy is very much a part of that. Right now Self is running the ship so he gets to be under the microscope for now. I think Self should absolutely get the get the glory for 08. We needed that. He made it happen. His recruits, his coaching. In my opinion he “overachieved” in 12. Ironically, going into that season I had told myself I was not going to judge for any lack of accomplishment because the talent didn’t appear to be stellar and I didn’t have faith it T Taylor. That was a great year and I was “satisfied” when it was all said and done.
Like I originally stated though. It’s about underachievement, and disappointment. 08 and 12 can’t make me forget 06, 07, 09, 10, 11, 13, and 14. I didn’t include 05 because they were Roy’s guys, but NC talent and experience none the less. Not necessarily, embarrassment, like @KULA suggests (even though I identify with almost every point he made in the post prior to mine). As far as my criticism of self. They seem to be the same year to year. Starting with turnovers. Unforced especially. I kept hearing a lot of excuses this year about the young team. But I saw the same issues I have seen when EJ, TT, or SC were running the team. Common thread seems to be the lack of a true PG. I don’t think its coincidence that we won the NC in 08 when we had 2 outstanding PG’s sharing duties in RR and MC. Sure those guys were vets at that point in time but all of Self’s PG’s since 08 had made it to their senior year and Tharpe is a junior. I am excited about the potential of CF and FM running the show together.
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" How, when you watch a game, do you know that a coach failed to give his players the proper preparation vs the players failing to stick to game plan?"
Because when its a recurring problem that spans teams comprised of different plyers it leads back to the coach who is the common denominator.
I also agree that KU is Short about two maybe three. Were not going to win them all of course.
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" How, when you watch a game, do you know that a coach failed to give his players the proper preparation vs the players failing to stick to game plan?"
Because when its a recurring problem that spans teams comprised of different plyers it leads back to the coach who is the common denominator.
But when that same coach wins 83% of the time and coaches a program that in the previous 10 seasons has more NCAA tournament game wins (not titles, mind you) than any other program (and is only bested by Calipari in terms of individual coaches), I have a hard time believing he’s not giving his players the tools they need to succeed on a regular basis. After all, in that span, with teams comprised of different players, they seem to be able to win at a very high and consistent clip. I don’t think that a coach that doesn’t teach well can accomplish that over such a large number of games. Surely you aren’t suggesting that there’s no variance in basketball games, right? And surely you recognize that regardless of system, there’s going to be delta’s that you can’t cover, right?
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@konkeyDong perfect!
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@That Is All winning is a recurring theme w/KU, so does that reflect on the coach too?
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"But when that same coach wins 83% of the time and coaches a program that in the previous 10 seasons has more NCAA tournament game wins (not titles, mind you) than any other program (and is only bested by Calipari in terms of individual coaches), I have a hard time believing he’s not giving his players the tools they need to succeed on a regular basis. "
However… I believe we (Kansas) have the current record for NCAA appearances (current streak). So isn’t part of that the fact that we play well before the tournament (like league play) and we’ve been to the tourney all 10 seasons when others’ haven’t?
I’d like to see someone like Jesse “crunch a bunch” of NCAA tournament numbers to give more credence to anyone’s claim.
From your claim, it sounds like we are very successful in March… but what it feels like, is we are not. Feelings can be wrong, no question.
Some kind of statistical regressions and other crunches could probably make us all feel better.
Jesse… you out there?
UPDATE -
I just caught this from @DanR :
This is helpful for totality… but I don’t think any teams below us has made as many appearances. So we get a few extra points by having good, consistent seasons BEFORE March.
I think I’d like to see an average of all our tournaments over the past 10 years… how far do we get, on average?
Are we at the top on that category?
And if teams don’t make the tournament, that doesn’t count… it’s just an average of advancement for teams that make it. That is one way to strictly look at March Madness performance. Should be more accurate than the article I linked to.
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This post is deleted!
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“Surely you aren’t suggesting that there’s no variance in basketball games, right? And surely you recognize that regardless of system, there’s going to be delta’s that you can’t cover, right?”
Variance and Delta is exactly what I am suggesting. That coaching and player preparedness is how to deal with the variance. I was just making a suggestion to answer the question you posed. If you take every single game in a vacuum you cant determine whether the player’s don’t execute the game plan or what the coach has instilled in to their basketball IQ. But when you back away and look at trends you look for the common denominator. I think one of Self’s coaching chinks in the armor does happen to be player preparedness. In my opinion it is exhibited by a trend of turnovers. Let me ask you a question. Do you feel I am off base by my turnover trend observation?
83% winning record is phenomenal. that 83% is also what makes the early outs so much more painful. I agree with @Crimsonorblue22 that this winning is a recurring theme that does reflect on the coach as well. Unfortunately its not the only recurring theme.
This isn’t a fire Bill Self rant. Or a Bill self is not a good coach rant. It is to me, a what can he do to get over the hump? Obviously he is on the cusp with such an outstanding win loss percentage. its about realizing his potential and becoming one of the greatest instead of a great.
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And if teams don’t make the tournament, that doesn’t count… it’s just an average of advancement for teams that make it. That is one way to strictly look at March Madness performance. Should be more accurate than the article I linked to.
Why would it “not count” if team didn’t even make the tournament? That’s a complete failure of a season, a huge black mark on an elite program, and it should count more against any program more than losing in the first or second round. It’s hard for KU fans to comprehend this, but GETTING to the tournament is actually not that easy. Calipari has only managed to do it four times in a row. Seven, if you don’t count his vacated season at Memphis. To do it 25 times in a row is almost unheard of. In fact, we’re only the second team to do it.
It’s ridiculous to have to find ways to justify how consistently good KU has been over the past 25 years. I know great programs measure their success in losses, not wins, (and we’ve had some tough losses), but KU is currently 2 years’ shy of the longest NCAA tournament streak ever.
You Red Pill people feeling any better yet?
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@DanR called, OverDose
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Variance and Delta is exactly what I am suggesting. That coaching and player preparedness is how to deal with the variance. I was just making a suggestion to answer the question you posed. If you take every single game in a vacuum you cant determine whether the player’s don’t execute the game plan or what the coach has instilled in to their basketball IQ. But when you back away and look at trends you look for the common denominator.
@That Is All
I understand where you’re coming from. I’m certainly not trying to attack you. I’m trying to get at the answer. I agree that coaching covers variance to some degree, but you know it can’t cover up everything. As for delta, that’s being attacked where you’re weak. I don’t think any coach can cover all of his weaknesses either. At some point, all NCAA title winners are more lucky than good, whether it was in their original seeding, upsets in their brackets, or simply outperforming their average play (put all three together and that cover’s Larry Brown’s title).
So what does that say, then? Some tournament losses/upsets (by any team, not just ours) are the result of poor game planning. But they’re also the result of dumb luck or bad match ups. Sometimes you can make changes as a coach to cover up weaknesses on the floor, but other times, you have too much sunk cost into a way of doing things that you simply have to accept your weaknesses and hope your strengths can overcome them. I’ve described that as ‘leaning in’. @itchawkfan316 and I went back and forth quite a bit on that subject. In the pursuit of that knowledge, how can we learn to tell the difference? What are the signs? What is the meaningful data in that regard? ‘Same coach’ is a start, but the same coach that wins a lot of games both in the regular season and in the dance (and a title and runner up to boot), so how do we square the circle?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Self doesn’t have embarrassing losses on his resume. But there are a lot of coaches that do, so we have to dig deeper. One thought I’ve had might simply be that Self doesn’t so much underachieve in the tournament as he ‘overachieves’ in the regular season. What I mean by that is because the NCAA relies on RPI to seed the tournament rather than a more predictive efficiency-based metric, there’s room to game the system so that you appear to be a stronger team than you are. Consider KU spent the majority of the season on top of the RPI for playing a ridiculously tough schedule despite racking up a lot losses to good teams. The Big 12 finished on top of the RPI in the regular season, despite having no really great teams (everyone was out after the Sweet 16). RPI over-rewards for playing good, but not great teams, and over-punishes for playing bad teams. KU beat a lot of good teams, but no great teams, as well. So one explanation for why we’ve lost to bad teams is because we’ve managed to maintain the appearance of not having down years without the benefit of being challenged for position throughout the regular season. I’m not saying by any means that that’s a definitive explanation for the data, I’m just throwing out a potential way of making sense of it.
It could truly be that Self just doesn’t do good prep for the tournament and has been lucky to have the successes he’s had, but I think consistency undermines that argument. If that is true, though, what do you fix? What are the data points beyond the simple fact of losses because losses aren’t a predictive feature. We can’t learn much from the raw fact that Team A lost to Team B. Those are the kinds of ideas I want to explore.
As for the specific question of turnovers, I don’t deny that this team turned the ball over too much, as did last year’s team, and the team before that, etc etc. Actually this years team averaged about the same # of to’s as the title team and the runner up team of Self’s tenure. The two highest TOs per game teams were 04-05 and 05-06, but Self’s teams have consistently been in the bottom 3rd for TOs per game. So that could have something to do with preparedness in general, but that could also have to inexperience in a pass-heavy system or over-reliance on ‘combo’ guards (scoring point guards, rather than pass-first guards). The trick to making an actual point about turnovers is to find the tempo-free TO rate and compare it to past champions (and FF participants) and see if there’s anything there. I know I won’t get to that tonite, but I’ll see if I can sometime this week. So we might be on to something, though.
@DanR is correct. Would a teacher just leave a homework assignment that you didn’t do off your average for a class? Would an employer pay your wages for days you didn’t show up to work? Is a (hypothetical) team that made the tournament one year in the past 10 and went 3-1 really better than KU because of their 75% win rate in the dance? Or if every season where we’ve lost to a significantly lower seeded team (more than one seed difference), would you feel better if we’d failed to go dancing instead? It certainly doesn’t/wouldn’t ‘feel’ that way to me.
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Will Obamacare be covering either one of these pills or will it be strictly out of pocket?
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Will Obamacare be covering either one of these pills or will it be strictly out of pocket?
Given that tournament losses are birth control around my house, I think they’ll have to cover it.
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@konkeyDong I don’t feel attacked at all and didn’t mean to come across that way.
I don’t believe I would subscribe to the overachieving theory simply because of the recruiting talent and Self’s ability to “reload” year after year. I do understand your point that the system can be a set up to a false sense of security entering the NCAA Tournament or a seed that can cause an unfavorable matchup. I also agree that Bill Self is not the only coach to suffer embarrassing losses. Just look at Coach K in the last few Tournaments.
I do like your “leaning in” theory as well. I just think that when the problem is not taking care of the ball, whether its sloppy passing on the perimeter, tightening up when being pressured or not pulling up on a break when you don’t have numbers the point swings are just too much to overcome. Also those weakness are also the type that are most vulnerable to the high seed upset. The teams that usually don’t have the talent of a KU usually are the ones to press, scrap for loose balls and out hustle. Frustrate and take advantage of mentally unprepared teams. Mix that with a three point specialist and an upset is born. What is the data, turnover ratio is where I’d start. I will have to dig for that. But its not always the amount. Its the timing. Its the momentum killer. That falls into the basketball IQ category. Almost an intangible that you can only glean from watching the game. Something raw data cant tell the story. Understanding the possession and coveting the ball cant always be judged by stats. Taking a bad shot is also considered a turnover by some which is not in the stat book. To me that was the biggest deficiency of Collins, Taylor and EJ. Tharpe was so bad how can not having him mentally prepared by his junior year not be a hit on the staff. The thing about the other three PG’s I just mentioned was they could score, and singlehandedly win a game by scoring. So much that the momentum killing was either over looked or just plain forgiven. I can deal with that from any position except the PG. Personally, I wish Self would get a PG who cant score but has mad IQ, and facilitate the other 4 McDonalds all americans on the courts scoring. I realize that was just hyperbole but not far from really. I think that is the answer to your question of what do you fix. I think you devote more time in practice to teaching IQ. Situations. Understanding the “down and distance” if you will. Now, obviously I have no idea what Self coaches, how he coaches or how much time is devoted to what. This is just my assessment on watching the games year after year.
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All I see some of you doing is trying to get to a “root” cause for tournament losses explained away in some simplistic fashion. My whole point is it is a complex analysis when you take each single team, and its issues in a given season…like 06 or 07, or 09, 10, 11. Or how about 2012, when we simply lost the final game. Why did the overall No.1 Jayhawks in 2011 (MorrisHawks) show up and NOT be able to defend to their season-long FG% defensive numbers? Why were they unable to shoot 3s to their season long 3%? I actually dont want to give too much credit to Shaka Smart, other than he got our guys out of what we do…My bigger issue is with our own players, especially the seniors + juniors that made up 2011 squad.
Now considering the 2013 team: I saw too many flaws in season-long stats to think we would instantly change who we were, when it mattered the most, and on top of losing our most dynamic player (Embiid).
Self does change his system, as we had a very dumbed-down offense, just because of all the newbies trying to execute it.
People forget the 08champs had over 55plays in the halfcourt sets, that made them capable of absolutely demolishing any zone-D thrown at them. Why did we struggle against zones this year? Guys not on the same page, frosh inconsistencies, and the failure of Tharpe cannot be overlooked.
Bottom line: Blame Self, if you want…but I cannot get away from the poor execution and inexperience I saw out there in 2013. I dont think OADs are our solution–they automatically “cap” our playbook. Too many frosh cause a miscarriage or dilution of Self’s principles…until we are just another above average team with a bigname on our chest, but can be beaten a variety of waays (length, physicality, zones). It used to be that none of those things bothered our more experienced teams. My brain doesnt let me make it so simple as to just ‘blame Self’. That feels like an analytical cop-out.
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@KULA Just a note to you that I really like your post. You took the time to make your case, I think more on this thread than I’ve ever seen before…and I thought it a great read, as well as very compelling food for thought. I think it would be awesome if Self saw this whole thread and picked up on the critique-vibe. KU fans watch a lot of basketball, different styles, and different coaches. I do agree with a lot of what you say, for sure. I also like Self’s stuff, if executed competently (like the 08 guys did the best).
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@DanR Good summary. While I would like to have more tournament success, I still remember growing up, listening to games from 1975-1982 and those years felt like forever because that was 5th grade to my junior year in high school. KU was not a factor nationally. KU was not on TV. Ever.
Larry and Danny really brought about the silver age of basketball at Kansas, and it hasn’t ended yet. I’d say 1983 was a transition year, and then it really got started in 1984-1985 and only had the blip in 1989 for the Askew infraction.
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@ralster Thanks–appreciate it! I enjoy reading your posts too.
