This week is like xmas for me. From the very first time that brackets were available, I have been enthralled at the beauty and magic of this tournament. How lucky I have been to have watched such an amazing program like KU. The last 40+ years have been a joy watching this program, these coaches and these players, as they redefine excellence. Clearly they are the best sports team in America, bar none. Name someone else with the 35 + years of the excellence we’ve had? Name somebody else who is a better basketball coach than Bill? And to have a team this year that carries the torch proudly, working so hard for so many minutes, hours, days, and months giving everything they have for us. How lucky we are. How blessed we are. Sorry if we doubt you at times. Win or lose…thank you, Jayhawks!

I’m not done rolling in it-it’s just so amazing. I might roll in this one for years. It’s been like a weight ever since 2008…so many great teams, so many teams that came up short… the POUNDING we put on Nova was great! The 2nd half of the Miami game was incredible. The first half defense against Providence, the way we swatted away Creighton’s bid for an upset, and to top it off by coming back from 16 down was storybook, it was amazing, and it validated this team, this program,us fans, and this coach.

WE’RE BIG EAST CHAMPS!!!

Hey, hope everyone is well. I’ve been on stealth mode for awhile, but I always read the posts. No, there are not pages of analysis like there was before, but there is still very good stuff. This is the best collection of KU fans on the intraweb. So, let’s get to analyzing: We kind of crapped the bed a bit yesterday, but maybe we realize how important Remy is when we pontificate why we looked so crummy yesterday. Our offense simply has to start 2 point guards, or we end up looking like last year. JCL>Jalen. Put him in, coach…he’s ready to play… Big Dave is in a state of mental confusion, so whatever they are doing to help him ain’t working, folks. They need to make a mix tape of last year when he smoked it during conference, and make him watch it about 1,000 times… It really sucks we couldn’t get our feet wet in conference at home against the Purple Toads, and now have to go on the road for our first 2 conference games, followed by a Clone invasion. Geez, the road gets much more difficult from here on out. I still think the ceiling is national championship. Let’s win the conference, and beat Dook and Ratface for the title!

Saw a tweet today that showed KU has a 21 year streak of being a 4 seed or higher in the tournament. The next closest is Gonzaga at 5 years. How lucky we are!

We don’t win this w/o Remy…

A little off subject, but I have to say that the UNC fanbase might be the classiest group of folks I’ve ever encountered as an opponent. Dozens and dozens of them on another site came in and congratulated us. I was a little shocked. We share a mutual hatred for Dook, and they genuinely were about as gracious as I’ve ever seen. RCJHGKU.

@BShark said in Next Year's Team Thread:

@mayjay said in Next Year's Team Thread:

@BShark Outside shot is great, but we need some big bodies down low. He got pushed out of position a lot this year. Needs to put about 30 lbs of muscle on, especially in his leg strength.

Another offseason with Nijem will do wonders.

Speaking of Nijem, remember when we used to play NCAA tournaments years ago, and our guys were exhausted? I have noticed how much fresher our team looks compared to the other teams- case in point…UNC. We wore out Nova and Miami as well. I know Nijem doesn’t get the credit and the publicity that Hudy used to get, but I firmly believe he is superior as a trainer and it showed during the tournament run. He’s part of the team that is working hard in the background… that get little to no credit…yet his contribution to our title is enormous.

@BShark said in Border War Game Thread:

Another thought is Kevin has been great the last two games. Was so smart to not bother playing him against Texas Southern.

McCullar coming alive has changed this team.

Love getting the W in Stoolwater. That’s a place that has been rough for us too many times. The blown lead and the 9 minute drought sucked, but we managed to come back, and post a double digit victory. No doubt we have issues. We certainly don’t look like the 6th best team in the country. But, we live to fight another day. Rock Chalk.

@nuleafjhawk I want them to play fast- not slow.

I hate to interrupt the coaching clinic, but Mitch has a message:

https://twitter.com/Mitchlightfoot/status/1617746026240299010

We are so good, adversaries pretend to be "fans"on our boards, and troll us. We live inside their brains 24/7. They want to be us, and can’t, so they hate us.

I think my 14-4 conference floor is in danger, but can’t blame a guy for wanting to think the best about this team. KenPom had us finishing 11-7 in conference preseason, so 12-6 and/or 13-5 are certainly in play. TOUGH league. Best in the nation, and it’s not even close. Worst case: we end up 11-7. That would put us at 8 losses, probably 9 losses going into the tournament. The fact we have complied the most Quad 1 games, along with the toughest schedule known to man would still put us in competition for a #2 or a #3 seed. Put us in the Purdew bracket, and let us go to town.

I think we beat Tucky. Truthfully, I’m more worried about the 3 games after Saturday’s game than this one. Although we owe those egg sucking dogs a beatdown.

The beauty of a Bill Self team is they always seem to overcome whatever criticism the fans have. Whether it’s a player, a strategy, an offense, etc. Whatever we think we know, he knows it x 3. Case in point: MJ comes in, immediately loses his man,who casually waltzed to the rim for an uncontested layup. Within 5 seconds of him coming in. We’ve bantered about MJ getting more time, and it would seem logical to say let MJ play through his mistakes. But, maybe the mistakes aren’t from lack of knowledge; maybe they’re from lack of effort. If his offense is a bonus, maybe the lack of defense completely offsets it. The truth is, we don’t know.

@wissox said in Baylor Game Tonight:

@kuballin10 “We make a great comeback and get screwed by the refs”. Read the game thread. About 10 comments in a row after the comeback about this call and that call. Equally bad? Not sure, but my comment was about that critical stretch where we get bumped and nada, and then tap guy on shoulder and ref calls a foul. Pretty egregiously bad reffing there.

Go ahead rag on our point guard. He spectacularly led this team to a national championship. He’s hit a bit of a wall here like everyone else besides Jalen but your estimation of how bad he’s hurting this team is way off.

And again, your takes would be easier to stomach if you ever thought it was ok to say something good during a game chat, but you’re so predictable in when you comment.

Block him. He isn’t a KU fan- he’s a troll.

It was fun thinking we were going to go through the B12 undefeated. We were going to be the overall number 1 seed, and repeat as national champions, even though we lost 4 out of 5 of our top scorers from last year. Now we’re back to “Self’s pets” and Self has “blinders” as we lose games in January.

It looks so great, then it looks so grim. We don’t like our players-we don’t like our coach. We were a FF team- now we won’t make it past the first weekend. Lather, rinse, repeat. Every year.

I hope we win tonight. I know it’s going to be tough. I hope we win Saturday- I know it’s going to be tough. And the next 3 games after that- tough. Still, I wouldn’t trade our program or our coach for anybody else in college basketball. We truly are one of the most spoiled fanbases in the world. UNC, Villanova, Dook would give their left nut to be 16-3 right now.

Confession: Last year, after we lost our 2nd game in a row ( TCU), I came to the conclusion that last year’s team was never going to win anything- that this group of players ( Och, Dave, CB, and Remy ) would never win because they just weren’t clutch. I even posted that I thought Bill had lost the team. And then we win every game. Every. Game. for the rest of the year. So, I kind of sold them short, which I don’t normally do. I’m normally the other way. But not last year. Doesn’t mean we’re going to magically win 17 in a row this year- we have issues, no doubt. But, I’m not going to get off the best ride in town. I’ve been following this show since 1972, and I’m going to keep following it, win or lose.

The winner of Chiefs/Cincy will win the Superbowl.

We have a game like this every year. People forget we’re in a rebuild year after winning the national championship. We’re still a good team but we’re going to lose every time we defend like that. On to the next one- hopefully we can have a good game against Baylor.

Alright…let’s play some defense, guys…

@drgnslayr said in K-St Game Thread:

@BeddieKU23

Caught that, too. It was spot on. Everything except him trying to take a punch for the team by blaming himself for the timeout. At the time he started to signal the TO Jalen wasn’t shooting yet and at that moment our team needed the structure of a play. Had JWil missed the shot, everyone would have been saying “thank God” Self called it.

I’ve been vibing in for quite a while that MJ isn’t whole. Think it’s back spasms that come and go and will be with him through the remaining part of the season.

Spot on about Kevin remembering shots. Kevin is thinking too much instead of just playing with a free consciousness. The perfect example of who to mimic is JWil. He’s as good as any Jayhawk we have ever had about playing in the moment and being free. Really love that about him and we are getting a plus on our results because of that.

I think we need to consider Harris’ minutes down the stretch of this season and try (whenever possible) to give him rest, both in games and other times.

I’m really bummed about MJ and hope I’m wrong. I viewed him as our “late Remy surprise” going down the stretch of this season and into March.

Would be a big help if one big started “getting it”… not sure if it will happen. First… they are all so different from KJ and the other 4 players are used to KJ exploiting his speed and strength. Guess that says more about how valuable KJ has become over the season so far.

I still think this team has another gear to hit. Just not sure if we will be fresh enough down the stretch to kick into it. Some things we just don’t know until we are there. What happens if we drop several upcoming games, including maybe a blowout? Suddenly the Jayhawk Nation questions the quality of this team… suddenly we have a chip! How will they react?

We were 6 for 29 from 3. We missed 10 free throws. 3 starters fouled out. We were down double digits. We end up losing by 1 on the road against the best Silo team since Jacob Pullen, Beasley and company.

My chief concern is playing starters too many minutes, and wearing our guys down. We don’t get easy buckets at all. We don’t want to play fast, so we end up in these grinders that suck the life out of a team. Joe has got to get more minutes. Same with Bobby. Zuby has got to get up to snuff.

Gradey was completely gassed, and was leaving lots of shots short. Kevin is in the mindzone, where the thinker is stopping the do’er. KJ was simply a revelation the first half, and Jalen had his best day ever as a jayhawk, imo.

Juan is not letting the game come to him and is pressing with mistakes he doesn’t usually make. He was gassed and injured after the fall, and played like it. Free your mind, Juan. We know how good you are. Just go have fun again.

TCU is going to let us run and we should be able to score easier. Of course, so will they. We’ve had good luck against running teams ( Misery comes to mind), so it should be a fun game. Would love to see Kev and Juan just relax and play ball the way we know they can. Like you said, we certainly haven’t played our best game yet.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/01/19/irans-unrest-fake-news/