Posts made by bskeet

@dylans said in Norm Roberts Retires:

Jacque is 50. Beard 52. Will wade 42. Todd Golden 39.

Bill was 41 when KU hired him.

Thanks @dylans. This is a helpful and relevant data point.

FWIW, Miles is 42. Chase Buford is 35.

@approxinfinity said in The portal.:

@Kcmatt7 think i was incorrect about those guys. Jesus. All i did was ask google the ones i thought i recalled being lefties. Apparently Google really wanted to tell me “yes”. So much misinformation. Just looked at the youtube vids thx.

FYI: There’s a known ‘syncophancy’ issue with some AI (I think gemini fits in this category, Chat GPT definitely does). They are being trained to flatter the user because A/B user testing shows that users like the AI better that is more flattering. Users use (engage with) a tool more if they like it. Therefore, the AI business boosts likeable characteristics —- known as engagement hacking.

So, sycophancy is a side-effect of engagement hacking.

As a result, AI will often tell you what it thinks you want to hear and that may have no connection to what is real or factual.

My 2cents: I see this as a succession planning effort. The assistants that will be brought in will be “interviewing” for the role of HC. Whoever stays will have established a relationship with the players that are crucial to retain as the head coaching position transitions. (The new ‘GM’ will be a part of this process as well). I think this is all about program continuity and stability.

The absence, rather than the addition of players, will mean that next year’s team will be able to play with a faster tempo. I think that will make a big difference.

As far as I can tell, all additions (so far) will not impede the tempo.

Are there rules that cover practice players? For instance, could Zeke, etc return as a practice / scout player? I’ve always thought it helps teams to play against the best practice squad possible. Would it make sense to invest in that?

@rockchalkjayhawk Yeah… Not much variance. But maybe there’s a tipping point on some of these…

Surprisingly, the stat that seems most corollary with a high-achieving team is FT% ~16% (or above, like Duke this year - holy mackerel!)

It kind of makes sense: Late game situations, teams that can A) draw fouls and B ) make foul shots, will have a better chance of winning.

It seems to be more important than whether the team is generating 33% or 30% of their scoring from 3 (teams get to the FF in that range and don’t get to the FF in that range).

Took me awhile to make sense of this-- I think this is distribution of points by source (these always add up to 100%, right?)

I’m pulling for Houston as well. I am surprised that Vegas had Florida 1.5 pt favorite. Houston has most of the profile characteristics of a national champ. Experienced team and coach who have experience on a quick 24-36hr turn around; won both their league and league championship; close to home; elite defense (a la ‘defense wins championships’).

David Brooks offers an intellectual conservative perspective on Trumpism that resonates strongly with me (a moderate)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-populism-power-pursuit/682116/?utm_campaign=one-story-to-read-today&utm_content=20250407&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=One+Story+to+Read+Today

@HoraceZontal 100%. This situation sets my creative mind ablaze. I’ve been thinking of a lot of potential cartoons – Trump as Alfred B Neuman “What? Me worry?”

Or an oblivious Trump supporter yelling “Let’s Go Brandon!” on the stock exchange amid a sea of stares from angry traders and Trump sheepishly whispering “Not right now.”

Or running the TV set to Bloomberg Business Channel on mute while putting Genesis “Throwing it All Away” on repeat play.

@HoraceZontal said in All of a Sudden:

@FarmerJayhawk believe me, I get it. I was an international trade lawyer for 30 years. This is akin to watching a frustrated 8 year old try to fix a computer by hitting it with a hammer

Maybe you should copyright that.

Not a UConn fan normally, but that was a UConn team for the ages. Probably jumpstarted another run of championships.

Incredible to win 2 final four games by 25-30 points each.

@approxinfinity Man, I sure hope that doesn’t happen. I want him to explode to the list of wooden award watch… along with DP

In the case of Flory’s decision, I doubt any of us know the details.

But for the sake of giving him the benefit of the doubt, let’s consider a possible scenario (completely hypothetical):

$800,000 might be double what he got last year. So that seemed like a good place to start from KU’s perspective. He heard he could get a lot more. Maybe $2 million, so he enters the portal. Maybe he even gets into conversations that look like $2 million is possible. KU doubles its offer.

He has a bird in the hand of $1.6m with a coach and program he knows or possible $2m with unknowns. He leaves $400k on the table and sticks with KU.

We can be critical of shrewd business practices (which are unfortunately way too common), but when was the last time you left $400k on the table to stick with KU? (possibly 20% salary raise?) That smells like team spirit to me.

I will just put out there this reminder – and, yes it might be rose-tinted a bit… But, just remember that this year’s much maligned team beat Duke and, barring an unimaginable collapse, would have beaten Houston as well (two Final Four teams and possibly the National Champion).

I’m convinced that what happened to this team wasn’t about talent and skill. And we may be over-rotating on roster construction as well. What happened was intangible stuff in the heads of players/staff and in the locker room. Whatever the bug-a-boo was needs to be eliminated.

If the rebuilding is proceeding the way it sounds, I’m loving it.

I still think Bill Self is the Man and has a great feel for players and can coach with the best of them. If he can get his guys to fix the phantom issue, this program WILL perform well again. That’s my 2 cents.

Free markets have a pretty good track record for 70 years. Apparently it wasn’t enough.

Greed. It will bring us all down.

The old friend I care about the most is Flory.

Darryn looks great… maybe better than Wiggins. But he’s just one guy. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that roster construction is crucial. But I’d prefer to construct a roster with Darryn than without.

He was MVP for the West team, which won for the first time in several years. The West actually played a little D and Peterson was part of that. Lots to like about what Darryn put on display on a stage that was teeming with talent. There are quite a few guys who looked like raw NBA talent.

@FarmerJayhawk said in The portal.:

Heard Auburn’s number for Flory is around $3m

!!!

???

You can do a lot with $3m.

Peterson is 100% delivering on both ends. He looks tremendous. He lives above the rim.

@Texas-Hawk-10 said in The portal.:

@drgnslayr said in The portal.:

That’s what a GM in college does. They manage the NIL side of the program. Part of that includes communication with parents/handlers in regards to NIL stuff. The head coach still has final say on everything, but a GM deals with all the NIL stuff related to a program.

Well, if Self was cool on the idea of having a GM, this situation might warm him up a bit.

@approxinfinity I tend to agree about Flory. The only thing I can think is that these days what makes a guy easy or hard to work with goes beyond the guy and extends to his agent and ‘team’.

So some of the issues we see may be about the individual and some may be about others around the player. For us outsiders, there’s rarely visibility to know which is which for sure.

The canceled banquet is the strongest signal that there’s trouble in River City.

Expectations are fragile, but powerful. Expectations for the fans, the team and the staff were very hight at the beginning of the season. The preseason ranking, the portal recruiting and NIL money all fed this.

Speaking for myself, the expectations have been shattered and that has left me with a sense of loss.

But, high expectations are not necessarily the problem: Teams need high expectations to a degree. Players have to believe that they can win. But it can be a double-edged sword.

The high expectation carried the team through the preseason. But that first roadtrip to Creighton and Missouri shook the confidence and the doubts and criticism started to set in. As the B12 season started with a loss, the extremely high expectations became a detriment.

Home losses. Slipping out of the top 10, then 20 then 25. The disappointment snowballed. It was palpable with the fans and observable with the team.

I think a big part of recovery within the program relies on resetting expectations properly and then and managing those expectations carefully. (Fans’ expectations are impossible to manage… The program needs to put on ear muffs to most of the outside world and work through this.)

On this board, there’s been a lot of discussion about accountability (playing the best guys and not having favorites, etc.), which is sort of the other side of the coin to expectations. I personally believe (complete outsider view) that accountability is not as much of the problem given that there has been such a track record of success and success is predicated on accountability.

However, the glue that ties accountability and expectations together is communication. Here is where I think things may have gone sideways. Self has been pretty loyal to seniors and I think has pride in the program’s tradition and ability to bring guys along to the senior night, etc. If the incoming portal guys were not given accurate guidance on their role, or even if they were, and they feel their expectations were violated, they are going to get disenchanted.

That disenchantment from unrealized expectations is corrosive, and I think that’s where things stand.

Flory and DP are a very good core and foundation upon which to build. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking that and trust that is a priority.

No one could have beat Alabama last night. That was an all time performance.

I’m surprisingly apathetic about the TT / Ark outcome. It was exciting at the end… but who cares.

@approxinfinity said in Bracketology:

Y’all are just hAIters

Is AI ready to stand alone? No. Its a companion tool. And yeah the uncertainty with certainty bit is true and silly.

And I totally get the feeling that for creative stuff it is soulless.

But so is Jon Scheyer.

Is Duke partnered with Microsoft? Maybe Jon Scheyer bot is running Copilot, or Autopilot Beta.

Good stuff.

I don’t hate AI. I hate when people force any technology into a product for the sake of anything other than legitimately improving the user experience.

My only point is that AI is not ready for primetime for most use cases and it’s resulting in many users misusing the AI features in products.

In some cases the misuse is because users are not saavy enough to understand the limitations and the tech interface is underdeveloped to help users know when the results are probably unreliable.

In other cases the misuse is because users are very savvy and know how to manipulate tech which is under-tested and underdeveloped to prevent deliberate misuse.

@kjayhawks said in What does “faith in Bill” mean?:

@BShark said in What does “faith in Bill” mean?:

I would agree that next year actually is important to see if Bill can have success in this era. Some reasons to believe he turned over a new leaf with regards to player handling in the middle of this season but old habits die hard.

Next season is the most important Basketball in the history of Kansas.

lol… sounds like political hyperbole!

Hard to imagine any season being more important than season 1 when Naismith established his game as a sport here.

I do like the idea of trying to rank the most important seasons in KU history. Would be a very interesting exercise. (maybe a future idea for a thread)

thx.

He really disappeared this year. There were like 7 minutes in the second half where he looked like his old self-- driving, hitting layups, making plays…

Really an enigma why he wasn’t like that more often this year. At times I wondered if there was something behind the scenes because he wasn’t himself.

Michigan State. Just because Izzo has been there a long time and seems to run a decent program.

That said, I could easily be talked into rooting for almost anyone else at this point because I’ve got almost zero enthusiasm to direct toward any team.

Sorry… D2 = ?

@Jayblaze All the proof you need to know that AI technology is not ready for prime-time. It inherits human biases and spits it out uncertainty with certainty.

Not so many stunning upsets so far today.

Maybe more tomorrow or maybe in the next rounds when the medium seeds are playing the high seeds… I really thought there was a bit more parity this year so I was ready to see some surprises.

I also wouldn’t cry if more SECs bit the dust.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Welp. Sigh

Wore my Southeast Regional champions tshirt from 1991. Hoped it would be good luck.

Pretty sure KJ tore his Achilles.

Yesufu missed it by that much

Hey, that’s a scary story and I’m really glad you are here today to tell it.

Take care of that heart! We’d like you to be here for many more KU tournament runs!

In Coach Self’s defense, he might know that’s his most important job as head coach and it just didn’t work out.

I say that because: 1) before the team had entered post-season play last year, he was talking about his thoughts on what he wanted for the team (more athletic, shooters, etc.), and 2) Scheyer may look uniquely good because Cooper Flagg is the kind of player that can mask weaknesses in your team roster.

There are former Jayhawks who have coached in the D League and elsewhere… Aaron Miles… Right? Just curious if that kind of candidate would be considered.

@BeddieKU23 True, but not to this extent… 14 teams in the tournament?

That is 87.5% of the conference! Unprecedented and a bit besotted methinks. Not a fan of schadenfreude, but if the SEC flames out in the first couple rounds, I may smirk a bit.

I would think if you totaled the number of NCAA Tournament games played by players on every team, KU would have to be near the top if not the top.

@nuleafjhawk LOL

Besotted: strongly infatuated. “he became besotted with his best friend’s sister”

Limerence: the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship

I’ve got 2 fabulous vocabulary words to describe the committee’s view of the SEC: besotted and limerence.

Our identity is mostly throw the ball inside to Hunter. That’s not altogether bad, but, with that strategy we cannot give up lots of 3s to a team because the math isn’t in our favor.

The 2 identities that I’d most like to see change starting immediately are 1) the ability to withstand a push by a team and come back from a deficit in the game, take the lead and hold it to the end, and 2) finish the halves – that is, execute flawlessly in the final 1-2 minutes and come out even or ahead of where we were at the under 4 timeout.

@kjayhawks So, this is a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with what I said.

I didn’t say the government was efficient. I’m not saying that politicians are not corrupt. I didn’t say anything about foreign aid or the cost of universities or taxes.

So… I’m not really going to battle on this stuff… because politicians ARE corrupt.

But corruption is not a partisan thing. A lot of your points seem to be partisan examples.

I would say we may have a difference of opinion regarding whom to trust to fix corruption. I don’t trust a guy who operates consistently on the edges of the law and, in my estimation, has a history of crossing the line. I don’t trust the guy who has a track record of bankrupt businesses.

I’m watching the market tank as I type. Seems like its more like “Make America 1928 Again”.

As for the US being one of the worst corporations in the world – I’m no economist or political scientist, but based on my limited knowledge, the US is NOT a for-profit business. The analogy of the US being a for-profit business is a false premise.

The US is a government. It’s closer to a non-profit if the analogy must be pushed, but it’s better to not try to fit it into either of those models. The practices of running a for-profit or non-profit business are different from running a government and mapping business practices wholesale onto a government is dubious.

That said, it SHOULD have fiscal responsibility and accountability. (I think that’s what Congress is supposed to do, but I’m no political scientist…) I think it is obvious that it should not operate in an ever-deepening deficit.

That said, I’ve heard others explain that the rules are different for governments and particularly for the government that owns the standard global currency. Again, I’m no economist, so I’ll leave it there.