@DoubleDD All system’s take time to learn. You want to go to an open offense chucking up 20-25 threes/game? Great. Only problem is the other team has a say so in the matter. Sure we could throw up shots with a hand in our face every time, but then I suspect we would be shooting a significantly lower percentage and wouldn’t all be convinced that our strength was outside shooting. Instead you have to create an actual offense to get players open. To create space. To screen. Actions. Movement. Still getting players in rebounding position. Etc.

This is the crux of my defense of Self sticking with the hi-lo offense. You cannot simply scrap everything you’ve been doing in years past for something different. Personnel changes and it is true you should play to your strengths, but doing so within the same offense is the way it has to happen. I argued the same point last year when some fans were clamoring for a switch to a zone defense. If you aren’t teaching the same things year in, year out, then you have no consistency. The foundation of your team, the 3 and 4 year players (or the high basketball IQ 2 year players) would not be nearly as effective if one year you’re teaching one thing then the next year you’re teaching something else.

Last year we were more equipped to play inside-out. We had Embiid, and even Black was better than our bench options this year. Also, our outside shooting was not great. Greene couldn’t be trusted to see the court, so he doesn’t even factor in. Selden had very poor mechanics and wasn’t near the weapon he is this year from beyond the arc. Wiggins was mediocre at best, shooting 34%. Mason was below average. Etc. So we can agree that last year we were more geared to the inside-out, hi-lo game, right? So fast-forward to this year and the personnel has changed. No Embiid or Black, and Cliff is producing as most freshman have under Self. But Greene has improved enough on defense to see major minutes, Selden & Mason have improved their shots. Oubre is an upgrade over Wiggins in terms of three-point shooting. Clearly the strength of this team is in its outside shooting. Not many would debate that. However, who’s to say if we changed the offense the results would be the same? Suddenly you have second year players Greene, Selden, & Mason discarding much of what they learned as freshman in lieu of starting over with a new offensive scheme. Does this new learning curve afford Selden the time to focus on re-tooling his shot? For Greene to find a comfort zone within the offense enough that he can improve his defense to the level of serviceable? Would Mason be as successful running the team or would he in essence be a freshman PG, and therefore would he still have the confidence to shoot with such success? I doubt it.

And then what happens next year if we recruit the necessary pieces to once again effectively run a hi-lo offense? Do we switch again, therefore creating even more inconsistency with the players’ performance?

I’m not saying there aren’t some tweaks that could be made to maximize our outside shooting. We’re seeing Self do some things. Not as many as some would like, but give it time. Could be this young team is similar to the '05-'06 team: a young team full of freshmen and sophomores. A team that looked lost early in the Maui invitational and lost in the first round to Bradley. A team that would go on to win the national championship in 2 years. Sometimes patience, focusing on the big picture, and staying the course is the right play, even if the rewards yielded are not immediate.

So imagine my surprise to log on yesterday after the game and see that most of the conversation was not about the awesome performances of Perry & Devonte, and instead the conversation is more about the season’s demise.

Yeah we could have played better yesterday as a team. But how can you not be encouraged by the play of Ellis? And Graham busting out of his mini slump? To Perry, I think it’s easy for some to dismiss his successes by focusing on some of his struggles. Call it the Randy Quaid in Major League 2 syndrome. “Who cares? They’ll blow it in the ninth.” Afraid of being disappointed by being excited about something promising so instead they try to diminish the good as not really all that good at anyway.

We all remember the struggles early against Kentucky. Last year against Stanford. HEM has given us the 2-point FG% stats for the year on occasion. However, something they said during the telecast yesterday made me feel optimistic. They were talking about our 2-pt % being so low on the year, but said we ranked second in the Big 12 in conference games only. So perhaps we are trending upward? Perhaps our early struggles inside the arc have dragged down our overall percentage so much that it has blinded us to our improvements. I’m not suggesting that inside play it’s now one of our major strengths, but maybe it’s not the albatross around this team’s neck that we once thought?

As to Graham, he joined the group of Oubre, Selden, & Greene that are all capable of giving us great performances on the perimeter. All 4 won’t do so every night (Mason appears to be the only one to do so on a consistent basis), but we see that Self has plenty of options to find the hot hand and to guard against foul trouble & injury. To me that’s huge. How many times have we heard that good guard play is key to tourney success? Well yesterday we got two outstanding performances from Graham & Mason. How can you not be optimistic about that?

Still lots of room for improvement with this team, but yesterday watching the game i want thinking “Crap. We’re screwed.” I was thinking how sweet it was to see Perry throwing it down and smile, and how it was a relief to get Graham back on track. Those are two really good players, not just nuggets of fool’s gold.

Great game. A few of my own musings:

• Just a couple of games ago we were debating the merits of cutting Selden’s minutes, perhaps even removing him from the starting line-up. After back-to-back good performances against the kitties and the 'clones, maybe he’s OK where he’s at. I will say this - his offensive success is heavily reliant on him knocking down treys, so in that respect we can still entertain the idea of Greene cutting into his playing time. I think what I would like to see is for Self to stick with Selden, but then to quickly switch plans if he’s struggling, rather than letting Wayne labor and the team suffer. Go with the hot hand or whatever the situation calls for. This team has too many talented options. For the past couple of games though, it’s been nice to see Wayne lighting it up.

• Speaking of the redistribution of minutes, it might be time to start easing up on Mason’s. He’s had some pretty paltry shooting performances over our last 5 wins (the exception being an 8-12 night against TCU), hasn’t hit a 3 in the last 4 games, and he needed a flurry of points at the end of the last 2 games to extend his double-digit scoring streak. Given his shooting woes, I wonder if his legs might be tiring a bit. I just don’t see any reason to play him 37 minutes when we have a capable back-up, unless Self is concerned with Graham’s turf toe and has decided to prioritize managing Graham’s minutes instead.

• I know Lucas gets a lot of flak on these boards, but he’s a nice 4th big to have around. I think a lot of our angst regarding Lucas is that he has often been thrust into a position where more is expected or needed from him than should be. Either because of foul trouble or Cliff’s faulty motor or Jamari being ineffective…it has often fallen all the way down to 4th-big-Landon to play major minutes. He lacks on skill, but he’s always ready and always comes with effort. Good game from him tonight.

As HEM predicted, we swept the 3 games in 6 days. Now for the next mini-campaign: a 4 games in 10 days stretch that goes @Okie St., @Tech, home against Baylor, @WVU. The game in Morgantown on the 16th is the one I have highlighted, which is not to say we can’t lose any of the other 3, but the match against Huggins’ bunch will be tough. I have it penciled in for a loss right now. Even so…we’re definitely in the driver’s seat.

Here’s my amateur analysis of the game:

1. Kind of disappointed in Selden. With the exception of the Florida game, it seems that every time he gets a little momentum going and I expect a Florida-esque performance from him he just takes two steps back. Two games in a row he failed to finish a dunk, leading me to wonder if the knee injury has permanently zapped some of his hops from him. More than anything, I thought he was supposed to ascend to be our lock-down defender, yet he let Delon Wright almost single-handedly make it a close game. At least in other games that he’s struggled in one area (usually his scoring) he’s made up for it in other areas. Yet no rebounds and only 2 assists today (one was real pretty though on that bullet pass to the post).

2. A mixed bag with Ellis. I was impressed with his defense, and I thought he grabbed a couple of “man’s” rebounds today. His offense carried us early. Then…? Without re-watching, I can’t tell if we just stopped running offense for him or if he just quit looking for his shot or if Utah just did that good of a job containing him, but we can’t go that long without him scoring.

3. As was mentioned earlier, welcome back Jamari Traylor! And I don’t mean welcome back from the 1-game suspension, but welcome to the '14-'15 season! We don’t win today without that performance.

4. The evolution of the Oubre/Svi/Greene PT triangle. This will likely intrigue me all season. It keeps moving towards Oubre and away from Svi. Hard to argue with the progress Oubre has shown, and I know Svi played pretty poorly against Georgetown, but a part of me wonders if Svi isn’t going to be buried because Self has done the risk analysis of losing each player and Svi is the less likely to bolt. In short, Self knows that short of Svi returning to Europe, he has Svi for 2 years. If he buries Greene or Oubre, a transfer would be likely. And while Oubre is obviously talented, there’s always the OAD pandering factor that one has to wonder about.

Specific to this game, if Greene isn’t hitting his 3s, he’s really only valuable as a late game free throw shooter. Which is nice; he was definitely clutch (along with Jamari!). Svi didn’t do much to impress, but didn’t look as lost as he did against Georgetown either. Oubre played well I thought, but not enough to garner a ton of separation from the other two.

Stay tuned…

1. Mason. He has his Tyshawn moments. At times he leaves his feet without knowing what he’s going to do with the ball. But I can’t tell you how nice it is to watch the games and NOT see Tharpe at the point! I know that might seem mean-spirited, but it’s night and day. It’s the opposite of being spoiled with Frank - after wanting solid PG play for so long, I never take his competence or effort for granted. I did, however, miss Graham today. Hope he gets healed soon. Love his game too!

2. Rough game for Cliff, although his rebounds per minute continue to be a big plus. He’ll be fine.

3. Overall, I thought we should have shot more 3s. As I expect to be the case throughout the year, we struggle against taller front lines. At least today we only struggled to score, whereas they didn’t really punish us on the other end by scoring a bunch with their bigs.

A week off before a game against Lafayette, with a quick turnaround at Temple. Hopefully a good week of practice will sharpen the fellas up! Rock Chalk!

So partly because I just love reading these boards so much and am trying to jump start a little pre-game conversation, I thought it would be fun to get a thread going about what we were expecting for the upcoming game and maybe picking a “Hawk to Rock” Any other suggestions are welcome; I think it’s espn that has on one of their segments or stories “bold predictions”. Maybe going forward we could incorporate it into @wrwlumpy 's fantastic posts about our next opponents. But for the sake of today I just started a new thread.

Prediction: KU wins 74-60. The TCU game gave Self plenty to preach about and should grab the guys’ attention. It is almost the equivalent of coming off a loss.

Hawk to Rock: Brannen Greene. After failing to launch a 3 in the last game, he’s got to have itchy trigger fingers. Playing before a rowdy home crowd, I expect to see the 3 to the temple sign from him multiple times running back down the court.

@joeloveshawks I think you’re spot on in your assessment of Cliff. He’s not going to learn a bunch of back-to-the basket moves that transform him into Wayne Simien this season. He’s not going to develop a face-up jumper he can hit consistently. Those things will only come with many reps during the off-season.

That being said, he can still improve this season. The game could still slow down for him and situations become familiar enough to him to where he is simply reacting rather than thinking. This is what is preventing him from playing more minutes. This is what is causing him to foul with such frequency. Remember TRob his freshman year? Kind of the same thing.

Now TRob didn’t really start figuring it out until his sophomore season, but he was also playing less than half as much as Cliff is. TRob was the 4th big, behind Cole and both Morris twins. He averaged 7.2 mpg. Cliff is averaging 18.5 mpg, which puts him at 3rd among the bigs. So Cliff is getting substantially more on the job training, and my hope is that it does finally “click” for him. His scoring might not go up all that much, but that’s not all that big of a deal to me.

I’ve said all along that Cliff is the only player that can be paired with Perry to make Perry better. Perry needs a true low post presence alongside him in the post to optimize his game. Perry can’t be placed on the low blocks all game long. Traylor is not a low-block player. Lucas lacks the skill to draw enough attention down low. Cliff is the only one who can take up space in the post and allow Perry the freedom to play the type of game that maximizes his abilities. Cliff can do the dirty work down low - defend and rebound - so that it doesn’t fall on Perry and take its toll on him. And Cliff must be accounted for down low by the defense, because while he may not have a lot of scoring moves or shooting range, he can get the ball and power to the hoop. No one else on this team can do that regularly. This is the main reason why I feel that Cliff “figuring it out” and being able to be depended on to play more minutes is the key to this season. Not because of the direct benefits Cliff offers, but because of the ancillary benefit of getting the most out of Perry. Like Self says, when he’s on Perry is our best player. A consistent, productive Cliff would help him be “on” more often, imo.

This is to say nothing of the fact that I think it is pretty unlikely that any team can win 6 games in March without at least one legit low-post guy. Cliff is that guy. No one else can be. Consider how he played against Texas, then try to imagine winning that game without him. Against Texas’ big front line. Now flash forward to the tournament and say we run into someone with that size. Like Stanford last year. Or Kentucky.

The perimeter play is solid. I don’t worry about that, even when figuring in a poor shooting night. So I disagree that our perimeter play is what a Final 4 run will hinge on. I would say that our perimeter play is the foundation from which such a run can be built on. But hinge on? I think it much more hinges on us needing a solid performance in the post and whether anyone can deliver one. We know Cliff is capable - again, the Texas game. Now, can he do it in March? Will he be able to play well enough to give him 25-30 minutes?

It’s questions like these that make me wish there were bigger teams in the Big 12 for Cliff to cut his teeth against.

@Crimsonorblue22 The one thing I’d say about Cliff and being highly ranked is that we have NEVER seen a post player come in and play at a really high level as a freshman under Self. Granted, Cliff was higher ranked coming out of high school than any other post player Self has recruited, but that only means he was higher ranked in comparison to other players in his class. He might have been ranked lower in a different class. So it’s all relative. I think prior to Cliff, Darrell Arthur was the highest ranked post player Self had brought in. #16 by Rivals in 2006, and if memory serves he was #9 by ESPN (they only go back so many years, and 2007 is the cut-off right now). Cole was #30 by Rivals in 2007 and #13 by ESPN.

Anyway, enough about the rankings and back to freshman post players under Self. A great deal of the time, freshman have had to sit and wait their turn. Cole was buried on the bench as the 4th big. TRob was in the same boat, behind Cole & the Morris Twins. Perry’s play was so uninspiring that he couldn’t overtake Kevin Young. Jeff Withey, despite transferring and having a year in the system before he was eligible to see the court, still was invisible for a year and half before he developed enough and playing time opened up.

So with a great many post players from years past, we don’t have a baseline for how they perform as freshman because they didn’t see significant minutes. It is likely they were no better than Cliff.

Perry’s situation is an interesting parallel to Cliff’s. In the '12-'13 season, most fans were debating how we had to have Perry emerge as a scoring presence at the 4 to maximize that team’s potential. Perry was clearly more talented than Young. Sound familiar? We’re having the same discussion this year about Cliff needing to emerge and overtake Jamari & Landon. But Young was doing more things right as a senior than Perry was as a freshman, so Perry averaged only 13.6 mpg, 5.8 ppg, and 3.9 rpg.

Another comparison in terms of playing time as a freshman would be Marcus Morris. Following the exodus of players from the '08 title team there was an opening for a post player to garner significant minutes. Again if memory serves, Self flipped back-and-forth between both Morris twins starting, but Marcus ended up playing a bit more that year. His stats for a contributing freshman were 18.5 mpg, 7.4 ppg, and 4.7 rpg.

Arthur is another who saw similar playing time his freshman year. I think he was at one time a starter, then deferred himself to a role off the bench. He averaged 19.0 mpg, 9.8 ppg, and 4.7 rpg.

Compare Perry, Marcus, & Shady to Cliff who is averaging 18.6 mpg, 7.9 ppg, 5.6 rpg.

So to answer to your questions: no I don’t think this is the best Cliff’s got nor do I think we’d be better off with another freshman taking his minutes next year. Cliff is playing about at the level I’d expect for a freshman post player under Self. We’ve seen how other players have had similar struggles as freshman and turned out pretty good. Replacing him with another freshman (Bragg or someone else) would most likely not yield better results than Alexander as a sophomore.

That being said, I think it’s 50-50 right now that we lose him to the NBA after this year, so the discussion might be purely academic.

@HighEliteMajor I understand fully where you’re coming from. As I’ve said previously, I get that you’re a big picture guy. I am too, to an extent. I just don’t believe in sacrificing all the joy out off the season at the expense of focusing on the big picture.

I’ve ran it down like this before, but we have 3 NCAA championships in our history. If that truly is all that matters, why be a fan of a sport and a team that most years are going to leave you disappointed? I’m not saying that shouldn’t be our goal every year, but the reality is it’s not going to happen very often. Acknowledging this, for me the only options are to be miserable most years, quit watching, or to…dare I say…enjoy the ride?

And for me, enjoying the ride doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to the team’s issues. Others, yourself included, usually do a better job of covering the issues. My post was merely a way of giving everyone a look at the other side of the coin. Because like I said, i watched the game yesterday and I was more impressed with Perry & Devonte then I was disappointed in Cliff and the lack of 3s attempted.

To anyone pining for Ol’ Roy, what’s his record against Self? What’s UNC’s record this year? Maybe it’s that people want '97/'03 Roy back. Good luck with that.

Much as I asked that people not go overboard after the Lafayette win (I think some were stitching Hunter’s name & number on banners), we also shouldn’t overreact to one loss, no matter how ugly, that was on the road two days after the Lafayette game. I don’t disagree with some of the analysis, I just think some of the emotional reaction is over-the-top and unjustified.

@konkeyDong Looks to be some guy who comments on the kusports.com site. Some silly back-and-forth going on over there. Every time I check that site I tell myself not to scroll down to the comments. When I do I am always disappointed - in humanity and in myself.

@jayhawk-007 I’ve discussed this at length before. First thing I’d ask anybody who is wondering about this is: did you ever watch him play in high school? I did a couple of times, and what I saw was someone incredibly lazy. During a 3 game tournament his senior year. He was the tallest player on the court at all times by at least 4-6 inches. Easily the most athletic guy on the court. I don’t think he cracked 20 pts combined in the 3 games. Wasn’t even what is consider good on the boards. He was able to defend, but again this was against much smaller players so you had to wonder if it was just his height. Basically, he as thoroughly unimpressive.

However, that is not the main reason. After all, Calipari doesn’t recruit untalented players. The biggest reason was a lack of interest on his part in coming to KU. WCS played his high school ball that year (and maybe AAU ball if I remember correctly) with Shavon Shields, son of HOF former Kansas City Chief Will Shields. A lot of WCS’s “inner circle” came from Will, and for whatever reason they steered him clear of Lawrence. Recruiting is too time intensive to spend a great deal of it on a long shot that showed no interest, so Self moved on. Hard to blame him for that.

Anyway, just a refresher course on the recruitment of Willie Cauley (he added the Stein after his high school career was over).

@HighEliteMajor Very sorry about your friend. That is horrible. Unfortunately cities of any substantial size develop ghettos/hoods.

Which if you’re going to annex Kansas city/Johnson county to your pros column for Lawrence I think it only fair to include the levels of crime in that area, which without looking is surely substantial.

@Crimsonorblue22 Well my computer has been on the fritz so I have to post from my phone, which I don’t really like. I’ve still been reading and liking posts occasionally.

Also, some of the rhetoric has gotten a little tired, particularly the blaming of Self for the team going into a 3pt shooting slump because he said fools gold seems ridiculous to me, but since I can’t argue my point as effectively as I’d like (again, because of the computer/phone issue) I’ve kinda limited my exposure to this site.

@JayhawkRock78 campus-wise it’s still no contest - KU all day every day. No disagreement there.

@Crimsonorblue22 I wouldn’t live in Lawrence because there isn’t as much to do for my son. Not that I don’t imagine Lawrence is a fine placed to raise children, but straight up I’d choose Wichita.

I live on the west side. Definitely prefer it to the east side, although it has its advantages too.

I live in Wichita and while it is definitely not a college town, it is a decent place to live. Anyone who has problems finding good restaurants, hotels, or bars either got done bum advice on which establishments to frequent, is overly biased, or just lazy.

There’s a lot of cool things to do here. Independent league baseball, indoor stems football, and my favorite: minor league hockey.

A few years ago they opened the new Intrust Bank Arena and that attracts lots of cool events such as concerts and if I’m not mistaken they were finally able to attract the NCAA to use it as a future site for 2nd & 3rd round games.

As a parent, I can say Wichita offers a lot more than any other city in Kansas. Zoos, exploration place, parks, youth sporting leagues, YMCAs, etc.

Wichita also offers a lot more blue collar employment opportunities than any other city in the state. Hard working residents are able to earn a decent living here.

Again, Wichita is not a college town, so from a student perspective KU & Lawrence are better hands down. But as an adult in my mid 30s with a 6 year old son, you wouldn’t be able to get me to move up to Lawrence (unless you offered me season tickets to men’s bball )

@drgnslayr True that having Kobe & MJ definitely was a huge factor, but neither of those players won a championship with other coaches running other offenses. And he won in his second year as coach of the Lakers, so it didn’t take him all that long to get Kobe on board with his system.

I’m just saying Phil is more like how you describe college coaches - had a rigid system identity, “recruited” (in his case signed players and assembled a team) to fit that system, etc.

@drgnslayr i think Phil Jackson and his what…9 championships?..would disagree with your characterization that NBA coaches mimic different styles to win at all costs. Seems he had a pretty specific identity (triangle offense).

Anyway, not just being argumentative. I liked much of your post. Good read.

@HighEliteMajor I understand fully where you’re coming from. As I’ve said previously, I get that you’re a big picture guy. I am too, to an extent. I just don’t believe in sacrificing all the joy out off the season at the expense of focusing on the big picture.

I’ve ran it down like this before, but we have 3 NCAA championships in our history. If that truly is all that matters, why be a fan of a sport and a team that most years are going to leave you disappointed? I’m not saying that shouldn’t be our goal every year, but the reality is it’s not going to happen very often. Acknowledging this, for me the only options are to be miserable most years, quit watching, or to…dare I say…enjoy the ride?

And for me, enjoying the ride doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to the team’s issues. Others, yourself included, usually do a better job of covering the issues. My post was merely a way of giving everyone a look at the other side of the coin. Because like I said, i watched the game yesterday and I was more impressed with Perry & Devonte then I was disappointed in Cliff and the lack of 3s attempted.

So imagine my surprise to log on yesterday after the game and see that most of the conversation was not about the awesome performances of Perry & Devonte, and instead the conversation is more about the season’s demise.

Yeah we could have played better yesterday as a team. But how can you not be encouraged by the play of Ellis? And Graham busting out of his mini slump? To Perry, I think it’s easy for some to dismiss his successes by focusing on some of his struggles. Call it the Randy Quaid in Major League 2 syndrome. “Who cares? They’ll blow it in the ninth.” Afraid of being disappointed by being excited about something promising so instead they try to diminish the good as not really all that good at anyway.

We all remember the struggles early against Kentucky. Last year against Stanford. HEM has given us the 2-point FG% stats for the year on occasion. However, something they said during the telecast yesterday made me feel optimistic. They were talking about our 2-pt % being so low on the year, but said we ranked second in the Big 12 in conference games only. So perhaps we are trending upward? Perhaps our early struggles inside the arc have dragged down our overall percentage so much that it has blinded us to our improvements. I’m not suggesting that inside play it’s now one of our major strengths, but maybe it’s not the albatross around this team’s neck that we once thought?

As to Graham, he joined the group of Oubre, Selden, & Greene that are all capable of giving us great performances on the perimeter. All 4 won’t do so every night (Mason appears to be the only one to do so on a consistent basis), but we see that Self has plenty of options to find the hot hand and to guard against foul trouble & injury. To me that’s huge. How many times have we heard that good guard play is key to tourney success? Well yesterday we got two outstanding performances from Graham & Mason. How can you not be optimistic about that?

Still lots of room for improvement with this team, but yesterday watching the game i want thinking “Crap. We’re screwed.” I was thinking how sweet it was to see Perry throwing it down and smile, and how it was a relief to get Graham back on track. Those are two really good players, not just nuggets of fool’s gold.