There was an alias once in Texas

And she was honest and good

She cheered her Jayhawks

With her husband with whom she stood

She and he rode the train of life

Across life’s bridges

And through life’s tunnels

Station to station they road

There was an alias once in Texas

And she was honest and good

She cheered her Jayhawks

With a man we understood

Loved her till death did they part

And loves her still

Beyond the Great Divide

Till once again they ride

There was an alias once in Texas

And she was honest and good

She cheered her Jayhawks

And flipped cancer the bird

She grieves now beyond grieving

Down where the Gleaner combines

Start their runs from Texas dawns

Crossing Kansas to the Canadian sun

There was an alias once in Texas

And she was honest and good

She cheered her Jayhawks

When her husband was gone

There is a harvest that awaits us all

But it came for her husband first

Would it had come for me so she could

Spend even one more day with him.

There was an alias once in Texas

And she was honest and good.

(R.I.P. Mike)

~Mason is the best small point guard KU has ever had. I am not saying he is better than Sherron, because Sherron was NOT a small point guard. Sherron was a brawny point guard that happened to be short. Frank Mason is truly a small point guard and he is absolutely incredible. His defensive anticipation is VERY good, and his ability to maneuver defenders until he get an angle on them, or drain a shot is unparalleled. And I am actually relieved when he switches off a guard to guard big forward, because I know he will do a better job on the big forward than our forwards will. Frank is just insanely good.He has gotten tot that rare level of play where he can control a game on an off shooting night. Only really great players can do that.

~Mason coming from beyond the baseline to steal the pass to a KSU player on the wing late in the game is one of the greatest defensive plays I have ever seen a KU guard make, even though he flubbed it on the other end.

-~Devonte has become the perfect hinge between Frank and Josh and Frank and Svi. Devonte actually makes the team better, when he does not score much. He will be a smashingly good point guard next season, but this season when he is not scoring a lot it means he is enabling everyone else and him playing that role is what makes KU able to beat a lot of teams that seem better on paper.

~Josh Jackson is single handedly redeeming the OAD player. Not since Anthony Walker of UK have we seen an OAD do so many things to help his team win. IMHO, Jackson has done the impossible already. He has become a Self Baller in less than one season. He still makes bad mistakes on defense, especially the occasional switch that puts one of our guards on a guy they just can’t cover, but, my god, it is magnificient to watch a potentially great perimeter player leave it on the floor for a season for the team against big forwards. It is everything I love about the “team” game of basketball. Josh is going to remember this season the rest of his life and remember it fondly. It was the year he really got play the game the way it was meant to be played. It was the year before he went to the pros and began trading on his insane athleticism the way the great players in the NBA must. He is making the game worth watching again just by being a team guy and not uncorking his gigaflop hops everywhere all the time. Its like watching Jordan at UNC. Its watching an extreme talent just play the game for the pure fun of it.

~Svi is still searching for his game. it will come next season. But its a testament to how good he is that he can help the team as much as he does, while he is still trying to find his game. The moment late in the game when Josh had taken the ball into the lane and got stopped and kicked out to Svi on a wing was pure basketball nirvana for me. A great player who has dialed his perimeter game down to become a garbage 4 much of the time, could easily have taken the ball up and been fouled, and gotten is two strokes, but instead, the great player playing a season for the love of the game alone, and redeeming the sport and all of us fans at the same time, looks to kick to an old point guard still searching for his wing game, stares at him as if to say here it comes, I BELIEVE IN YOU, teammate, here it comes from one kid from Detroit to one kid from Ukraine, here it comes, I’m kicking it to you in a rivalry game that means nothing to either of us, except that we know it means everything to our fans, here it comes right at the perfect height for you to catch, plant, go up, and drain. Here it comes, because this is how the game is the most fun to play. To believe in your teammates and to play it with them on the X axis, even if I could vector out of this silage dump on the Y-axis and get a feed on ESPN. Here it comes because we are teammates. Here it comes because where we’re from doesn’t matter and where wer’re going doesnt matter. What color we are doesn’t matter. What language we speak doesn’t matter. Here it comes because nothing matters but playing the greatest game ever invented the most fun way to play it with teammates. Here it comes!!! And Svi drained it on cue. And neither player even slowed down to make a big deal out of it. It was just pure fun in the moment.

~Landen? Everyone that has read me must know I have a special place in my heart for big men. I love them because they are the guys that noone truly understands. Big men have all been our height, when they were young, so they know us, but we have never been their height and so we don’t know them. We have to work to put ourselves in their giant shoes and we have to admit that even doing so, we still cannot really understand that big man territorial thing.We can only marvel at it. We can only watch them walk around like big flipping grizzlies, or bull gorillas, owning the joint. Its not that they don’t get challenged and some times bloodied. Its that they DO!!! They walk around owning the lane even when they are not in control of it. They keep walking around the little guys and don’t even have to say in a big deep Berry White mutherflipping voice intoning, “Play him tighter , really crowd him and I’ll pick the pencil neck up quicker the next time.” Landen didn’t have big numbers and he didn’t dominate the KSU players, but unlike in years gone by, when things went wrong, and Landen would start looking around all worried, this game when things did not go right, he just got all Barry White and into himself, and walked around reassuring the Darby O’Gills and the little people and kept owning the lane. “Daddy’s steady,” he seemed to say, especially after burn marks. Landen seemed to say, “Daddy may not always fix everything right the way Momma Self wants it, but Daddy ain’t goin’ nowhere. Yea, I know, I got to fix that door hinge so it swings the right way, but I’m here and i AM going to fix it. You little’uns just keep minding your Ps and Qs and you’ll see, things’ll work out.”

~Finally, much as I hate to I have to say three nice things about the silage engineers, I feel I must… Bruce Weber has been to an appearance consultant and they got rid of the helmet hair, and Bruce actually looks like a respectable D1 coach. Second, The KSU home uniforms are not bad. And third, they played well and gave us all we wanted. Congrats.

What a flipping GREAT win!!!

I am still luxuriating in it late this evening the same as I was 15 minutes afterwards.

Boeheim enters the ranks of coaches that have spent a second half completely unable to figure out how Self is not just winning, but making the opponent look inept.

Boeheim had his usual collection of arrogant longs that look like great basketball talents, but actually don’t know how to do anything but stand around in a zone and look like they are expending more energy whining about not getting calls and being made to look like basketball dorks, than guarding and running offensive sets.

The chief difference between this collection of Boeheim’s long-handled garden hoes in tennies and his others that can be annoyingly hard to beat was the absence of a great point guard. Jim Boeheim without a great point guard exposes what a pitifully unimaginative excuse for a basketball coach he truly is. I kick him when he’s up, so I’m sure as hell going to kick him when he is down. I learned years ago that Boeheim needs a kick in the nuts whenever possible, because when ever he has a 5-star scorer outside, preferably at point, his arrogant smugness is intolerable.

Here Coach Boeheim, let me put on my steel toed Danners with the scuff guard. There, they are on. And whack!!! One more swift kick to the nads for all the Fab Melos you’ve brought college basketball over the years.

Ahem.

Now about the game.

KU was lead by Devonte Graham’s 35 (?) poured down from some higher dimension I’ve never had the pleasure to have played on, and LaCobra Vick’s 20. Note that was Graham’s second 30 point outing and that Graham played the full Monty (40 minutes). There were stretches of the first half where he looked positively human, but he kept his team in the game, while the newbies discovered the irritating experience of patiently probing a 2-3 zone staffed with whining, cheap-shot artists. The newbie Jayhawks struggled with the simplicity of what had to be done to shred the de-legendary Syrxcuse zone. Let me nutshell it for you before returning to LaCobra.

Possession 1: throw the ball to the high post man standing on the mid point of the free throw line. He turns and looks down the lane, but pitches it to an open wing that trifectates. That was easy.

Possession 2: point drives right, passes through seam to low post right in a seam of the base line of the 2-3; low post right then pitches out to Svi in corner, Svi pots a triceratop. That was easy.

Possession 3: point passes to wing, wing reverses to point, point to back side wing, drive seam toward lane and lob to the Cobra (Vick) ranging sideline to sideline on the baseline. That was easy.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Till Boeheim whines. Then repeat some more.

That was easy.

That’s all there is to it. Nothing else. But as often happens to teams with newbies facing Boeheim’s zone the first time its just hard to break the habit of running the offense and doing a lot of die-doe moves Self has tried to install for the game to give Boeheim something slightly different to sleep through. Then about 8-10 minutes in with Self red enough to fry eggs on his neck, someone new, like Mitch Lightfoot gets the wrath of God treatment and Self looks down the bench for some familiar face that’s got some facial hair and knows the play book Some years its someone decent. In lean years, its just someone that Self would trust to take his daughter out on a date. They don’t have to be great. All they have to be able to do is walk and chew gum and find the mid point of the free throw stripe and stand their and call for the ball and catch it and not do something stupid with it. This year, that savior of Self was–drum roll please–Clay Young. Clay Young’s line score does not look like much, but he was a crucial to KU’s victory today as Cole Aldrich was in the semi final game against UNC in the magical year of our basketball lord 2008 AD. Clay Young allowed the team to discover just how little everyone had to do against the whining giants of the Empire State. Find the seams, make the shots. No French pastry. No complicated plays. Clay Young was glue personified today. Next time someone tells you glue doesn’t matter, or anyone can do glue, remember this game. There were a lot of guys with fast twitch muscle and serial stars after their recruiting rankings and there were bigger guys, and faster guys, and more skilled guys, and guys with better looking cars not even on the road trip to Miami, and NONE of these guys could give the Birds what they most needed at that moment: someone to just get to the spot, catch, pass. and do no harm. Someone that actually saw where the seams were to stand and to throw to. What Clay Young did was so simple it was contagious. Suddenly every Jayhawk seemed to go: aha! I get it now. And after Clay’s 9 minutes his job was done and he quietly retired to the bench and that was it for him for the night.

Now, let’s get back to starters.

The Cobra “only” played 37 minutes, but on an “off shooting night” still roamed the baseline endlessly leaping out of his wicker basket and stabbing his fangs into the orange rim for 20 points, while grabbing 8 rebounds, only one shy of the footer Doke the Buke. Oh, and when he finally got the hang of high posting, he got 7 assists, too. I still don’t think he really “understood” the high post, but he did it finally and KU pulled away.

Since The Cobra is my new nickname for Vick I should explain it. He is so named, because of his incredibly skinny legs that rise up to shoulders that flare out like a Cobra hood and gather in to an endlessly watching, sensing and menacing pair of eyes and because of this players tendency to kind of sway around not doing a lot for several seconds at a time before then striking with blinding quickness. The Cobra struck the Orange Boys repeatedly, injecting them with points and his unique venom each time.

Next Malik. Well, Malik just discovered what it feels like to suck on national television amongst some teammates having great games.Talk about getting his ego put in perspective. It will probably single handedly turn his season around. Malik disappeared. Invisible 5-star. His face showed his frustration. By the end he was demoralized. But you know what? Self forced him to own it and kept him in. And Malik kept fighting to do doing his job the best he could on a night that starkly dramatized the bottom one third of human performance Self talks about players having to deal with. But he will probably come back and go off like a roman candle next game.

Azuibuke did not have an impressive game, and got fouled up, BUT he still eeked out 6 points and 9 boards in prime time. If this is an off game for Doke, then he has come a long way. This was prime time and 6 points and 9 boards against a long bunch with its own footer, like Cuse, is not abject failure. Doke showed that he too can keep struggling and contribute, even when things aren’t breaking his way. This is something to carry forward. At the same time, Doke learned today just how tough it is to be a starter in D1 against a D1 Major. He has a lot of getting better to do.

Svi? Svi had a so-so night statistically, and got fouled up, but I likes the way he TOO struggled through adversity and played a kind of ugly game that he needs to be able to do. This was the kind of floor game I always hoped to see him play, when the going got tough against a big team. Svi was getting in there and mixing it up with the Syracuse bigs, as if he himself were a big. This is how Larry Bird used to do it on his off nights. He went inside and stuck it in their ears. Svi appears not to be a trash talker, like Bird, but he has developed his own version of the hard case look and ice-cold stare. My favorite play of all that he made was when he went up and stuffed their footer. He didn’t get credit for a block, but it was sweet nonetheless. Svi can really get up! He is not super quick-footed, but the guy has Tyrel Reed like spring. He has come a long way from the wild point guard to the stretch 4 trying to model Larry Bird. He’s not completely their but he can make it this season, if he doesn’t get discouraged. Remember Ty keeping his 41-inch vertical a secret all those years, while he tried to build up his foot speed strengthen his upper body? Self may have to ask Svi to use his springs the same way Self had to ask Tyrel to start using his. Svi was good for 11 points, 4 boards and 4 assists. Looks modest, but he really seemed a presence on the floor.

Which brings us to Mitch Lightfoot and Marcus Garrett. Um, these two proved not ready for prime time. Since the same thing happened against Kentucky, we have to call this a reliable indication of what their capabilities are right now. Both produced lines comparable to walk-on Clay Young. But where Clay Young, a 6-5 senior walk on, oozed constructive glue for 12 minutes, two scholarship players found themselves both unable to glue and unable to impact. Mitch and Marcus oozed goose eggs and fouls, same as Clay Young, but Clay Young made the team play better and they did not. Mitch Lightfoot could not even find a single rebound, which is something he ought to be able to do at his height. Garrett, to his credit, did grab a couple caroms. Mitch and Marcus flaming out was especially chastening for this team. Self might as well get Sosinski practicing. And if de Sousa can get admitted, we need him in a big way. Syracuse was long inside, but they weren’t good long, just long. Its a little concerning to think about bigs having to go up against a major with a big man rotation of truly good players.

But one of the things that made this such a sweet victory was that KU was playing small at all 5 positions for significant lengths of time against a very long Syracuse and our guys adapted and made it look like something they could live with. It was a superior effort by our shorties and it was a fine job of coaching by Self.

At the end of the day, Boeheim was clueless how a bunch of runts had taken his longs to the cleaners.

But KU did take them to the cleaners. KU made Syracuse look like a not very good team today. KU made them look bad in fact.

And that felt good.

Real good.

Bridges outweighs Vick by 40 pounds and has 2 inches on him, maybe three.

Spellman is a true 4. He’s got 40 pounds and 2 inches on Svi, a converted point guard.

They’ve got 6 three point shooters, we’ve got four if you count Garrett.

They go 8-9 deep.

We go 7 against a really good team.

They have all the classic pieces.

We’ve got duct tape and bailing wire.

They’ve got Nike.

We’ve got adidas.

They’ve got the refs.

We’ve got the shaft .

They’ve got the Pope and the College of Cardinals.

We’ve got Wayne Simien.

They’ve got the entire Fake Media.

We’ve got Holly.

But we’ve got the FIND-A-WAY-BOYS AND THE GREATEST COACH OF HIS GENERATION.

Our guys don’t even really come together until its hopeless.

Our guys don’t just eat adversity for breakfast, they pack it in MREs and eat hardy amidst dissaters and obstacles the would reduce Ernest Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary to dialing 911.

Our guys are the guys the United States Marine Corp are cheering for.

Our guys are the guys that go ashore and find a way when they get there.

If Vick and Svi have to, they will reduce this to hand to hand combat.

I have seen them in Morgantown, when there was no way. They won.

I have seen them in Texas Tech, when there was no way. They won.

I have seen them win three in three when there was no way. They won.

I have seen them when Bagley was certain to eat Svi alive and the refs tried to give Duke the game until even the refs got sick of Duke. They won.

These guys are going ashore tomorrow.

They are sharpening their Ka-Bars.

They are packing extra ammo.

They are meeting the enemy in what will soon be known as the Battle of the San Antonio River.

They have been through this many times.

Nova has never been through it this season.

This is our kind of combat.

See you on the other side.

JNewell has a story with this Bill Self comment on Perry Ellis:

“I just think there’s a little bit going on with him from a confidence standpoint, or maybe from a mental standpoint that maybe he’s rationalized that it’s OK to be the way I am because the team is doing well, and I don’t think it is,” Self said. “I think he’s got to be our go-to guy, and I don’t think he’s far off. I wouldn’t be surprised at him having a big game and a series of big games very soon.” http://cjonline.com/sports/2015-01-15/bill-self-perry-ellis-fraction-away-emerging-ku

I have been writing for two weeks that Coach Self has been letting Perry “labor,” while Self worked with getting other pieces of the Jayhawk engine firing at D1 levels of power.

Getting Oubre going took much longer than expected and even once he got going it took a few games to try to find the right role for him within the starting five.

Then Self took on Cliff, only to have Cliff, expected to be one of the really big pistons of this engine, reputedly get caught up in nagging injuries. Cliff seems to get what’s going on now, even if he can’t execute without fouling every game. Getting it is about all you can hope for right now.

Along the way: with the nagging injuries to The Big Red Dog, and Traylor having an indscretion with the law, then Self had thaw first Mickelson from the cryogenic tank; that did not go to Self’s satisfaction.

Re-enter and retool Traylor for a face to basket offensive contribution; that took a few games.

As Cliff’s fouling and injuries persisted, Self looked into the cryogenic tank and gave the order to keep Mickelson at absolute zero and to defrost Landen Lucas the last game. Lucas came in and didn’t do anything horrible, which is what you need when The Big Red Dog is hobbled, and Traylor is yo-yo-ing on you, and, well, you go to guy and most experienced big man, is laboring through your ignoring him and, well, having the kind of existential crisis you like to create for players in toughening boxes off the floor, only this time you decided, out of some expedient necessity to erect the toughening box ON THE FLOOR this time.

Yep, Perry Ellis now holds the distinction–hell, in the word of Bill Self, its a kind of high honor–of being the most recent KU player ever to “play through” the toughening box on the floor.

And so he has.

Perry has actually looked on the floor the way many noteworthy KU players sent to the end of the bench for toughing have looked. His facial expression is locked in a permanent confusion, His body motions are tight and awkward, All the things that he is normally good at he is no longer good at, or no longer allowed to do. It is a hellish place–Bill Self’s toughening box–but it never fails to toughen players.

Bill Self says he wouldn’t be surprised if Perry has a big game, or several very shortly. He says Perry is just a fraction away from being the player they had envisioned him to be.

Bill Self says these sorts of things often around the time players look like their personalities have been depatterned at Gitmo.

Bill Self says he is concerned about Perry’s body language, about the whole team’s body language.

Sure, Bill, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Bill Self has now introduced body language into the lexicon of player analysis.

Sure, Bill, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

This is like saying Steve McQueen’s body language didn’t look to good after Papillon had been in solitary confinement for a few years.

The clear translation is that Bill Self has decided that Perry has done enough time in the on floor toughening box and he is finally going to scheme some things that work for his best big man.

If one listens closely, one can hear an electric buzz and a barred door sliding open in front of a mobile toughening box with the words Perry Ellis stenciled on it.

Perry Ellis is going to come out of that contraption like a jack rabbit shot out of cannon aimed directly at the Hilton Coliseum.

Perry Ellis is going to go ape-flipping-shit crazy in Ames.

Do you recall the last Self man who fell to earth after a long stay in the hellish confines of Self’s forcing him out into the outer reaches of solar system of his discomfort zone?

That would be Elijah Johnson.

The man went off for 39 points.

The man was like a cross between a radioactive cheetah and a greyhound with tobasco sauce enema.

He was like an SR-71 black bird soaring up to 100,000 feet and then doing aerobatics in near space before powering in for a perfect landing.

He was transmogrification on steroids.

He was a man set free from a toughening box.

Only Perry Ellis has been through something remotely comparable to what EJ went through.

I am not saying Perry will hang 39 in Ames.

But I am saying that if I were Fred I would wear some fire retardant Nomex driving suit to coach in Saturday at 8PM because for the next 40 minutes of division one college basketball his going to see the world’s most stoic human being come flying by him like a low flying cruise missile in silks.

Go, Perry, go!!!

Welcome back to the world.

What the architect of sustained excellence against the odds looks like:

What Self is doing is the stuff of legends.

Think about all the coaches with medium and long stacks that either can’t keep up with him, or only exceed him for a season or two?

It is absolutely insane what he is doing with players like Mason, Devonte, Hunter, Landen, and Jamari that the other elite majors probably didn’t even recruit. What Self is doing is already verging on the greatest coaching job he has ever done.

If Self wins a ring with the talent on this team in the height of the age of medium and long stacks, it should probably go down as the greatest coaching job in college basketball history.

Self is doing it again. He is finding a team, while everyone else is looking for one. Finding is the act of creating a unity greater than the sum of the parts. Looking is the act of fitting pieces together that work the way they are supposed to. Artists find unities. Journeymen search for assemblies. Picasso said he found art, he did not look for it. Bill Self finds teams, he does not look for them.

Every player is a color for Bill Self. A roster is palette of colors. A rotation is the combination of colors he needs to paint a particular game. Each game is a composition. Each season is a new phase in his career.

There are recurring themes and form languages. Stops start offense. Sticking stops offense. Offense is inside out. Feeding bigs is crucial. Kicking out to open looks follows feeding bigs like day follows night. Making shots, not taking shots, is the goal. Shooting for three (a drive to the rim for two and a FT, or a trey, is almost always better than shooting for two. Players that can go get balls (rebounds, 50/50 balls, strips) are better than those that can’t. Help is not just help, it is helping the helper help. Beauty may walk a razor’s edge, but finding ways to win ugly on your off nights is the path to basketball salvation. Turnovers are resident evil. Getting better is a moral imperative. Playing out of position forces getting better. Not valuing what Self values is the equivalent of sticking your head in the muzzle of a howitzer as the lanyard is pulled. Characters are necessary to keep the drudgery of getting better from making everyone including Self quit from burnout. Being soft is worse than anything but not trying hard. Anyone can be coached up, if they supply the want to.

These are the techniques of the craft of Self’s coaching that can be known and articulated. In the hands of journeymen they are used to search for and assemble serviceable teams. But as I said at the start, Self doesn’t search for teams, he finds them.

When HEM writes Self has to settle on one of three candidates for Selden’s backup he is logically right. When slayr writes Self has to get a PG that is good on the X coordinate he is logically correct. When I say Self ultimately has to stop playing Tharpe and Mason together so much, I am logically correct.

But Self is finding a team, not solving logical problems. Self largely agrees with each of us that in the end our suggestions are where this team will probably end up, but the process of finding a team takes precedence.

Great painters find images lessers don’t.

Great coaches find teams lessers wouldn’t.

An ordinary coach would build this KU team around Andrew Wiggins. It appeared to many lesser minds at first that Self was doing just that. Certainly the hype artists of national media thought so.

But Self found a great “inside” team with two exceptional perimeter players instead of a Wiggins centered team. Self found a team capable or confronting other teams with a perfect tension between inside and outside. It is taking awhile to develop, but he found it before we did, as usual.

Self isn’t searching for his team. He has found it. They are going inside even if opponents do collapse on them. They are going to explode out of position on opponents inside and if that doesn’t get three the hard way, then they are going to kick out and crucify them with two athletic freaks on the perimeter making plays.

When Embiid was not so advanced, when Tarick was in a funk, when Jam Tray was not yet confident, it was not clear what team Self would find. But he kept dabbing their pigments on the hardwood canvas in different mixtures until he found the team, until he found a perfect tension. Now he is developing it.

How shall I put this in a sportsmanlike way?

In an ESPN box score I just looked at shortly after the KU-MSU game, it indicates the refs called 16 fouls on KU and 14 on MSU.

It looks pretty symmetric, doesn’t it?

Its highly improbable the jobs the referees did will ever be questioned by the talking heads in the media, nor will the NCAA leadership call for a review of the game’s officiating. How could they? The refs called 16 on KU and 14 on MSU. It looks so, so, so fair on paper.

But I suspect many, if not most, KU fans that watched what appeared to this KU fan to be one of the truly disgraceful refereeing spectacles, in what has become a frequent recurrence of disgraceful refereeing spectacles besmirching the first, or second, greatest spectacle in sport, would recognize a couple inconsistencies in the referee’s calls between an experienced, highly skilled basketball team (KU) and a green bunch of typically hard nosed MSU bruisers.

Fouls called on KU were mostly reaching fouls, being brutally charged into and being called ludicrously for a defensive foul, or just plain phantom fouls, like the one in which Josh Jackson was called for going over the back on a rebound in the second half, and the overhead camera showed unmistakably that there was NO contact at all.

Fouls called on MSU appeared anecdotally mostly ones where KU players were layed out on the floor, or suffered sudden changes in vector direction and momentum, after the contact, or close lined (Josh nearly getting beheaded on the sideline near mid court in the second half).

Of course, in every apparently egregiously asymmetrically whistled game, it appears to be the no-calls that really tell the story. No-calls appear to be how the refs really give one team the winning edge, and the other the short shrift. The actual asymmetric calls appear just to let the teams know which team is going to be favored. By comparison, it appears to be the no-calls that can keep inferior teams in games, and sometimes even allow them to upset opponents.

I think reciting the no calls, which might amount to as many as 4 per MSU possession during the first 30 minutes of the game would be kicking MSU when they are down and that is something no KU fan should ever do. MSU did not hire the refs. MSU did not ask for an asymmetric whistle. MSU just played the cards they were dealt. And a damned good set of calls and no calls it appeared to be.

If KU had not been so resilient, experienced, skilled, athletic, and poised, the outcome might have been different; that’s how much the refs appeared to mean to this game.

Without putting too fine a point on it, it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility that KU might have beaten MSU 130-50, if the refs would have appeared to have blown even a reasonably symmetric whistle for most of the game.

But the refs appeared to say “phooey!” on synmmetry.

It would be futile (and foolish) to speculate what might be the motivation of referees to call a game the way this one was called.

Suffice it to say that even my wife, who rarely watches a basketball game and is not a KU grad, or even a big time KU fan, said it was appalling how much the referees appeared to favor MSU for extended stretches.

The only further thought of yours truly worth noting has nothing to do with referees’ motivations, at all.

As a result of calling the game as the referees did, whatever their actual motivations may have been (and I do not speculate on that at all), it is a reasonable inference to draw that if the game had been called with more apparent symmetry that fans of MSU and of the Big Ten and of Eastern Time Zone basketball generally, would likely have quit watching sometime in the first half, because KU would have been too far ahead for MSU to have more than a remote chance of winning.

But again, I have not a single clue why the referees actually did call the game the way they did. It is a mystery to me. My best guess is that it is an utter coincidence that the way they called the game appeared to keep an EST and a Big Ten team in the game. They must have just been having a bad day.

Down the stretch, when KU’s athleticism and experience and skill were allowed to assert themselves for what really amounted to a very short part of the game, KU literally blew MSU out of the arena.

And except for FTs and some steals, KU didn’t really even play all that unusually well.

To be generous and respectful to Coach Izzo and his Spartans, they are a young team and have the makings of maturing into one of Coach Izzo’s frequently fine teams.

Alas, I regret to add I lack the same optimism about this team of referees improving similarly by next season.

Rock Chalk!!!

(Note: of course, all of the above is opining and speculation by a fan from a remote location. God only knows what was really going on. It may have been the most fairly called game in the last 100 years or so.)

Lane jumping, stripping, 53% trifectation, and massively outrebounding Purdue, plus 8 minutes of the best baketball ever played by a KU team equal a blow out of Big Ten Chump-ian Purdue.

Add a Vick 360 dunk and more strips than Gypsy Rose Lee and you have one of the greatest tournament blow out wins against a good team I can recall.

Every cylinder was firing perfectly and Self decided to Rev the engine to redline on game 1 of this weekend.

Self must have figured Oregon’s multiple defenses guaranty a low possession second game.

But Self did sub a lot vs. Purdue. Self got 23 minutes out of Coleby and Bragg and 24 min out of Vick!!! Thus Self cheated the high possession game with resting “some” legs.

No KU player played more than 35 minutes and Lucas only played 20, and Svi only 19 minutes.

Self was a magician yet again!

Self used little players to outrebound a much bigger team with two genuine studs on the blocks. How does KU +7 on the glass sound!!!

But it was the 53% trey shooting and the passing-lane-jumping, strip-them-silly (9 steals) defense that also forced 16 Purdue turnovers that stole the show and blew Purdue into more pieces than a boiler under too much pressure for 40 minutes!

One of the greatest KU performances ever!

1. Try to put Self’s .821 W&L statement out of your mind.

2. Forget that he has won 11 straight conference titles.

3. Hypnotize yourself and give yourself a suggestion that he did not win the ring in 2008.

4. Ask your Yogi to give you a mantra that goes “Self was not the winningest coach in college basketball for six seasons.”

5. Write a paper for a peer reviewed journal on game theory explaining how winning by 5 against Harvard leads to an equilibrium strategy dooming KU to mediocrity.

6. Blaspheme against the God of Basketball in order to be cast into basketball hell, so you can wear black leather KU basketball warmups and lead a cult of hell rising up against the naivety and coaching cluelessness of Bill Self regarding who can and cannot play and undermine his credibility to the point that his replacement by either Bruce Weber, or a coach sponsored by the Drake Group, becomes an inevitability.

7. Learn to love Rat Face.

8. Argue that the evidence is incontrovertible that playing players before they are psychologically and physically ready to play is one of the Ten Anti-Commandments that must be obeyed, or the new Coach Kthulu will end KU’s conference title string AND cause KU to be upset by UK in the first round of the NIT.

9. Drink an artisan cola, while munching Wolfgang Puck’s incredible new Corn Nuts Rockefeller at the Allen Field House Friends of Bilderberg Concession at the new kiosk next to the Phog Allen statue.

10. Embrace KU’s fabulous success and learn to love it.

Seriously now.

mayjay said:

@jaybate-1.0 Point of clarification for my edification: What do you mean by “reputedly”? I always thought it means something generally believed (“reputation”) but it seems that many of the things you describe as “reputedly” are not necessarily accepted as facts by many people. Sometimes it is a fact or a theory I have never heard before from anyone. I cannot tell if your use means you, yourself, believe it, or if you are saying someone believes it.

In either case, it often serves as an assumption underlying something contentious that generates lots of comments. Are we arguing about something, or nothing, that you are actually positing as a fact or theory?

—————

I am sorry. I don’t feel I know how to edify you in this situation.

But your post appears like you might be projecting maybe a little about contentiousness. Have you considered that possibility?

Also, have you considered not reading my posts at all? This is always an expedient option. If I understand your post correctly, if I were confronted with such an alias as you appear to characterize, my speculation is my inclination might be not to read such an alias and instead read others that I found more edifying and that I did not possibly appear to project my own contentiousness onto.

Either way, we can both look forward to the start of this coming season, since it appears increasingly unlikely with each clock tick that sanctions will befall our beloved program before the season starts, right?

Rock Chalk!

Svi is a player!!!

I just hope UKRAINE doesn’t get to politically or militarily hot in coming months.

Sooner or later each season Bill Self calls attention to the teams way of playing with a phrase like “that’s not who we are.”

Shortly after the team starts playing much closer to “who we are.”

Who will this year’s team be?

Inside out?

Outside in?

Half court grind?

Transition?

Lock down and rebound?

Play to win the disruption stat?

Pressure outside?

Pressure inside?

Or will Bill innovate something we haven’t seen?

Expectations seem to have been evolving over the off season.

Just taking the current pulse of board s now that it appears unlikely a regulatory catstrophe will manifest before Self rolls out the balls.

@KUSTEVE

The History Channel often reminds me of a quote by George Orwell.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984

So: Who controls the history channel?

HAPPY Friday!

Let there be basketball shortly.

Alien stories = the Deep State distracting again?

Alien stories appear part of a Tao of Destabilization.

Booga booga!!!

approxinfinity said:

@jaybate-1.0 today, the Alamodome; tomorrow, Beijing National Stadium!

There is a reason we are fitfully diversifying into electric cars and solar electricity generation, and climate change, which I affirm rather than deny, is not the crucial driver of the change.

The Straits of Malacca, the Shanghai Security Pact, the Trans Eurasian Super Corridors and the ability of the pact members to shut off our oil flow through the Straits of Malacca at any second drive the change—THAT drives why Teslas and the Chevy Bolt exist—probably the only reason.

America is a sitting duck energy wise until it has sufficient electric conversion to ride out it’s Mid East oil being cut off in the Straits of Malacca! It has to use coal to generate a big part of that electricity.

And USA will be a sitting duck till it either agrees to share global central bank ownership with the Pact members, or alternatively until USA/GB/Israel divide and conquer Russia and Iran first, and second contain China for half a century.

If we slide into nuclear war, however, it’s curtains for us all.

Happy Friday!

Kcmatt7 said:

Lol yea the only way to keep corruption out of it is to take all the money out of it.

—————

Only naives expect to take all the corruption out of ANYTHING. Complete elimination of corruption appears a silly notion for someone like you to even mention.

The realistic question seems to be: how soon can we expect authorities to get on with cleaning it up as much as is feasible?

Do you have any insight to share?

17 year olds are so very young.

Isn’t there something that can be done to curb the supply of temptation reputedly being offered them now?

Are college basketball authorities and adult America and so helplessly impotent that there is nothing to be done but put the onus on 17 year olds to clean up this money making system?

Something fittingly done would be better than nothing done, wouldn’t it?

Or have you grown hopeless about looking out for our youth?

I am not chastising you, or judging you.

I am seriously asking.

justanotherfan said:

As long as college athletics, specifically football and basketball, are big money industries, there will be corruption.

——

Whether intended, or not, your response captures a core issue without referring to it.

Not trying to put words in your mouth, or suggest that you actually think in the ways your comment seemed to open up. So what follows just uses your response as a spring board into the issue.

Assuming corruption can never fully be eradicated for reason A (big money in this case), and the system corruption feeds on parasitically is also asymmetrically benefitting a group of persons widely reputed to need extra help (many poor African Americans trying to climb out of poverty by playing and coaching and reporting on college basketball , the apparent reasoning emerges as: shouldn’t we just sacrifice a few of the needy group to said corruption to get the benefits that the paracitized system is yielding for the rest of the needy group? Essentially this line of thought rationalizes preying on 17 year olds as a tolerable cost shifting on a few to get the net benefit for the many, at the same time it asserts inevitability.

It’s reasonable to note here that most forms of human inequality (aka asymmetry) are based on assuming this sort of moral and cost/benefit calculus.

Sometimes the corruption is petty and it’s cost seems rather tolerable. Other times it is vicious and cruel and triggers a desire in us to stop as much and the worst of it, as possible, knowing it’s unlikely we can stop it all

Car thieves and the guys that part out the stolen cars actually create a supply of cheap OEM parts for the poor and young and indirectly enable the OEM to keep their original prices high and discourage competitors selling substandard parts for cheap. Insurance enables the system to a point. No one can hope to stomp out the corruption of theft and parts rings, so those benefitting, especially those with incomes dependent on the corrupt system, say, as long as there is big money, there will be corruption and shrug.

Heck, Humans have sickened and killed some other groups of humans in medical research to get health benefits for the many. We have never fully been able to eradicate either the exploitation in drug research, nor the occasional Dr. Mengele’s at the extreme either, so we make use of the research of lunatic butchers, as well as more or less decent researchers practicing on the unfortunate. We can’t eliminate corruption, because of big money, some think. And shrug. Anti-depressants trigger some suicides, but hopefully prevent more and make a lot of managers and investors rich, so why not benefit from it? Look away.

Cigarettes reduced stress until one symptomized cancer and lung disease. But it was good for magazines and TV which brought us our sports, that we distracted ourselves with even as our loved ones slowly agonizingly died of lung cancer and oxygen deprivation. Look away. Work in advertising and climb out of poverty. There is big money in smoking, so there will always be corruption.

Humans have also enslaved some of us to get the net benefits of forced, uncompensated labor for the many. British mill owners and financiers, not just Irish-American plantation owners and New York and Baltimore financiers and slave traders , benefitted well from slightly malaria resistant African slaves laboring unsalaried on Southern USA plantations. Indentured English workers for two centuries expedited early agriculture and manufacturing for colonial settlers. African tribal social orders of inheritance were stabilized by selling African children to middle eastern slave traders and other African tribes before white slavers ever showed up. And so on.

Clean up may never prevail over Corruption; that is how it tends to go in religion, politics, intelligence, economies, and even in Vice itself. Vice Thieves routinely cost shift onto other vice thieves, after all.

Thus the real issue seems not whether corruption will exist, as you asserted, but how much of it are we willing to avert our eyes to? What limit do we put on it, knowing some good persons will need to be helped, so they do not bear unfairly the cost of driving down some of the corruption?

With the above as prologue, there appears another nagging problem with your assertion that I mention precisely because I suspect a person of your intelligence will be able to explain: it does not take into account the corruption that has been documented in college basketball to pre-exist the arrival of big monies in amateur college basketball.

The earliest days of the game saw part of it staged as an amateur recreation in YMCAs, while another part was staged as big city entertainment. Burlesque and fight promoters staged games and tournaments and eventually professional leagues, as entertainments as much to encourage gambling, as ticket revenues. Amateur college basketball got drawn into “entertainment” very early on. It has been a goose laying a golden gambling egg for a very long time. Phog Allen complained openly about the game’s compromise by gambling well before the NCAA formed and hoped the NCAA would help reduce the corruption by gambling.

What is it about amateur college basketball that predisposes it to so much corruption that among other things traffics in so much temptation being offered to 17 year olds?

It’s not a simple answer at all IMHO.

There is astronomical money involved in the education of ordinary students. Amateur college basketball is a tiny sliver of KU’s annual $1 Billion plus budget, but the REPUTED near systematic corruption that tempts ordinary students is reputedly vastly less.

I would hypothesize that because the stakes are so high for university budget money (i.e., the monies streams are so huge related to research pork and ordinary students fees and federal education subsidies) that controls have long since been put in place to limit the corrupt temptation by low life’s of the vast numbers of students to keep the vast monies valved to the university officials, not the lesser elements of our culture. Universitiy officials are hardly saints, of course. They have entered into the racket of financialization with banksters to overcharge for educational services and books, so as to leave many young persons essentially indentured debt slaves for a time after college, but even such debt slavery hardly equates with tempting 17 year olds with prostitution, drugs, under the table cash, cars, clothes, home mortgages, and informal agent relationships, plus the physical wear and tear of the sport and the reputed “under-education” of athletes, does it? There are degrees of corruption to be chosen, aren’t there?

In contradistinction, so much of the monies of sports are quietly seemingly inextricably interwoven with TV, gaming and petrowear revenues that the school officials apparently could not find a feasible way to control so they apparently effectively cut loose of college sports in a number of ways in exchange for a relatively minor cut of the gaming and petrowear action, and in effect looked away and threw 17 year olds to the mercy of reputedly some pretty low forms of human predators.

What is it about our beloved game of amateur college basketball that has drawn it into a web of reputed corruption since BEFORE the big money came on the scene.

My hypothesis is the most rudimentary of starts. Probably hopelessly incomplete.

I hope you will take the time to contemplate the issue, so that maybe the reputed corruption can be pushed back at least a little down the road.

17 year olds are so very young.

@approxinfinity

When thinking about Trump and part of the Pentagon vs the Private Central Bank controller’s Deep State’s with its Siamese NEOCON/NEOLIB REPUBLICRATS, board rats need to remember that Abraham Lincoln was resisted, vilified and subverted from the moment he took office and tried to broker a deal among the three axes of private oligarchy seeking to control the building of the transcontinental railroad and telegraph network that was THE crucial issue that the US Civil War was fought to resolve. Lincoln was hated in north and south until Sherman cut the South in two and Grant savagely put Robert Lee in a vice he could never escape from and so should have surrendered to the North not more than 1 month after Sherman reached the sea.

But even when the war’s outcome was no longer in doubt, Lincoln was vilified and subverted by the private oligarchies of north and south.

Even in the election of 1864, when the war’s outcome was largely decided, the interests in Baltimore and New York ran General McClelland, whom Lincoln had fired, against Lincoln in hopes McClelland would agree to a peace with the Confederacy that would result in the transcontinental RR and telegraph being controlled by the New York, Baltimore and Confederate interests.

Succession, Slavery, emancipation and tariffs were all just bargaining chips in the Grand game of controlling global maritime trade passing through the Western Hemisphere.

War was waged to decide who would be the hegemond of communication and transportation of global trade through the Western Hemisphere.

Even after victory at war he was assassinated to stabilize the hegemony of the surviving private oligarchy after the war. The last thing any of the surviving axes of private oligarchy wanted was a President with the largest standing army in the world, and a navy large enough to blockade the entire Atlantic and Caribbean coast of USA from the Great Powers of Europe, and able to use the great Army and Navy to impose government of the people, by the people and for the people on his own domestic private oligarchy. He was assassinated, of course.

Trump appears in a somewhat similar position and apparently knew it going in. It was probably partly why he agreed to run. He, like many, understood the epic moment in which we live. He told everyone as much in front of the Lincoln Memorial the day before Inauguration Day. He was elected to broker a deal among at least two and likely 4 axes of private oligarchy to decide which of them get to wage cold and hot war to try to take over Trans Eurasian communication, transportation and energy. The game is about control of global trade through the eastern hemisphere.

Corruption at the national level is just a bargaining chip, same as jobs, taxes, abortion, pot, gun control, terror, pedo rings, MeToo, fake Russia Collusion, fake dirty dossier, and impeachment are just chips. This is about winning the right to wage cold and hot war to control eastern hemisphere trade! No side will ever rest until the outcome of who is the new hegemond is decided. The eventual hegemony won’t be Trump any more than it wasn’t Lincoln. The President merely brokers these deals. And if he gets too powerful, he is assassinated. Such brokering has happened a number of times in USA history. It is happening now. They don’t always get assassinated. It depends on how much power flows to them—how much risk they pose to the private oligarchy.

What can happen regarding cleaning up corruption at the local level of murder crazy Chicago, or in amateur sort, or in college basketball depends on whether these can be used as playable chips in the Grand game for political advantage in the brokering of trade through Asia.

I can’t tell yet.

But strategists high up in the food chain have probably had a pretty good idea for awhile.

Rock Chalk!

(Note: all of the above is just opining by an ordinary American and basketball fan, who reads history, loves his country, and watches from afar with no insider information or agenda to grind.)