Best posts made by konkeyDong

I don’t mean do you remember Christmas time last year. If you’re at all like me, you spent Christmas worry about what gifts to get your kids and wife and folks and such. You negotiated travel plans or how much time to spend with your family and how much time the in laws got. Were you supposed to bring wine or a desert to the white elephant exchange?

What I mean, do you remember the feeling of Christmas from when you were 12. That year, the only thing I really wanted for Christmas was this book. It was really well illustrated and I could just stare at it for hours. It wasn’t a terribly long book, nor an expensive gift. My mother actually told me I could get anything else I wanted in addition to it, but there was something about that book that just fulfilled my every adolescent desire. I didn’t need a skate board or a new bike. I just needed that book, and the anticipation and build up to that particular Christmas has always stuck with me.

Nowadays as a man of means, I don’t get that feeling at Christmas time anymore. I love Christmas as much as any red blooded American should: I love the traditions; spending time with my family; my son’s excitement when he unwraps a present. But me, I don’t get excited anymore. I tend to just go out and buy something when I want it, and as I’ve grown older and amassed more stuff than my house can manage, my wants have grown fewer and less urgent.

For a long time I’d thought I’d never get that kind of a Christmas feeling again, but today, cheesy as it sounds, and pitiful as it is for a grown man to feel this way, I felt that same twinge my 12 year old self did unwrapping that book.

I’ve followed Cheick Diallo’s journey for the past 3 years. I’d heard the name when Kansas first offered him, but it wasn’t until I found a clip of this play that I got excited (it’s at 47 seconds in case this doesn’t embed correctly):

He wasn’t a top 10 or even top 15 recruit at that time, but after seeing him get that kind of a hustle play put back, I knew I wanted to see him play in Allen Fieldhouse. So the wait was on. I watched him play on live streams of all star games when I could. I followed him on social media. I’m sure in my low moments, I did things bordering on cyber-stalking. The anticipation. The hope. The dream!!!

I know there will never be another TRob, though a lot of players will get compared to him (heck, I’ve described Big Cliff as reminding me of TRob physically), but Cheick is the only big man who truly reminds me of him where it counts. This kid is all heart and grit. He plays hard and scraps for everything. I don’t know how many hours of basketball I’ve watched this kid play, but I can say with earnestness, I’ve never seen him take a play off in 3 years. Who was the last basketball player at any level that you could say that about in a span of 3 weeks, let alone years?

This isn’t the happiest day of my life, and not even in the top 10, but this will be a day I remember forever simply for the way it made me feel. This is wish fulfillment at it’s best. Rock Cheick, Mr. Diallo, and thank you for becoming a Jayhawk. (And thank you too, my fellow posters, for not ribbing me too hard that I’m out here gushing like a school girl!)

Here we are again the dog days of summer, the longest time of the basketball year. We can do our best to keep our interest up, but there are only so many ways we can dissect the failures of last season; so many times we can project starters, leading scorers, and benchwarmers. Even with the WUG giving us a feast of highlights when we’d normally only a bit to nibble from camp games, we’re still in a no man’s land as college basketball fans. Even on the recruiting front, with Self’s tendency to bring his classes together late, we’re going to be light on action in the coming months. So I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that we got our nonconference schedule out in a rather timely fashion this year and project how I think it’s all going to play out. Here’s my take on the overall schedule, as well as a breakdown of every game we play, what’s of note about the teams, and how I think we’ll fare.

The Schedule

Self made it clear that, after running his past two teams through a meat grinder in the nonconf in recent seasons (Kansas was the highest Big 5.5 team in NCSOS on Kenpom the past 2 seasons) that he made a mistake to do that to a young couple of teams, and wanted to let off the gas this time around. Myself, I’m a fan of the tougher scheduling, but I think UK, Duke, and UNC have been a little smarter about it, tending to schedule a few really big games with a lot more cupcakes in between. Self seems to have cribbed that plan. We’ve got several teams on the list that finished below 50% overall, in their conference, or both last season. We’ve got a NCAA upset capable mid-majors. We’ve got a couple of nice super heavyweights, and a solid field in Maui too. I see this schedule as giving us the right mix of truly challenging games and and opportunities to develop our bench and future stars. All in all, mission accomplished with this schedule.

The Games

University of Northern Colorado - AFH - Nov 13

UNCO finished 15-15 last season, going 10-8 in the Big Sky conference, and ranking 257th in Kenpom efficiency. They return only 2 of their top 5 scorers in juniors Jordan Wilson and Cameron Michael. They’ve added Juco (small) big Jamal Evans, but no one else that’s likely to be a major impact player. I’m expecting this outing to be a stroll in the park for KU, as UNCO looks like a team on the the way down, not up. We’ll probably run out to a big lead at the half, then let the B squad clean up in the final 10 minutes while UNCO cuts a 30pt deficit to 18.

Result: KU 82 - UNCO 64

Michigan State University - Champions Classic, Chicago, Ill. - Nov 17

When we last faced MSU in the Champions Classic, KU gave up a late lead when no one could prevent Keith Appling from repeatedly driving to the rim on the high screen and roll. Last season we got the better of them in a typical Big 10 style game that served as a bit of a break out for Svi, but sadly would serve as his highlight game of the year. That same team made a push to put MSU back in the Final Four for the first time in 5 years. Overall, the team that we beat last season was better than who we’re likely to face this time around. Although Izzo does return 4 of his top 6 scorers, the stats suggest that Tum-Tum Nairn, Izzo’s only true PG for the coming season, isn’t going to be able to step in and replace what Travis Trice gave him last year. Combo that with losing your top defensive player and rebounder in Branden Dawson, and I think MSU is a team that will be good, but one that we should be able to handle.

That’s not to say there’s no cause for concern. The Spartans should have considerable firepower from deep next season. Top 3pt shooters Denzel Valentine and Bryn Forbes are back for their final seasons and will be joined by WVU transfer Eron Harris, who torched us with 28pts on 5-7 from deep in our visit to Morgantown in 2014, and baby-faced freshman Matt McQuaid, a 4-star shooter from Texas. They’ve also upgraded in the frontcourt with McD’s AA Deyonta Davis, a player best described as a poor man’s Cheick Diallo. Although I expect the trio of Costello, Schilling and Davis to be a tough group, none of them is the proto-typical beef sheet/space eater type bigs that have typically defined Tom Izzo’s teams. Luckily that guy, Caleb Swanigan, decided to back out of his commitment in order to join the footers at Purdue, where he could play PF, not small C. I still see this as being very much a grind, but I don’t think Izzo has either the bigs nor the PG to keep up with what we’ll be fielding. KU will pull ahead in a game that will be close until the final TV timeout, when Izzo’s guns finally run out of ammo.

Result: KU 66 - MSU 58

Maui Invitational

Although the field has been set for the Maui Invitational, the brackets haven’t been released, so there’s no telling exactly who we’ll be slated to play. Nevertheless, I have my suspicions that the tournament organizers will want to see either a KU/IU final or a KU/UCLA final given the teams available, so I’m going to put us opposite those two schools. Likewise, a student vs master game is the sort of thing tournament organizers and television broadcasters love to engineer, so I’m putting Wake Forest on our side. I know when Duke plays in the invitational, K requests to be in the opposite bracket as D2 host Chaminade, as playing D2 teams is an RPI killer. In our last trip to the islands (one in which we faced Duke in the finals), we also avoided playing Chaminade despite being in their bracket, suggesting to me that RPI hawk Self is of like-mind to K. Thus, I’ll put Chaminade in the IU/UCLA bracket. St. John’s is a school that KU has some history with, but ancient and recent. Not only did we beat them out this past spring for the services of Cheick Diallo (after a heretofore unheard of hiring putsch), but they were also felled in KU’s first NCAA tournament triumph in 1952. Bigs coach and top recruiting assistant Norm Roberts also coached the team from 2004-10. For that, I’m guessing they’ll wind up in our bracket as our first opponent. As for UNLV or Vanderbilt, I think it’s a toss up, but I’ll go with UNLV being pitted against UCLA in the first round, so Vanderbilt will face off against Danny Manning’s squad in our bracket. Final projection:

Kansas vs St. John’s

Wake Forest vs Vanderbilt

IU vs Chaminade

UCLA vs UNLV

St. John’s - Lahaina Civic Center, HI - Nov 23

Despite having a good amount of talent, St. John’s went only 21-12, 10-8 in the Big East last season, which as enough to make the NCAA tournament, but not enough to save Steve Lavin’s job once school legend Chris Mullin became a possibility. Mullin’s transition to HC was far from smooth, however. With D’Angelo Harrison and Sir’Dominic Pointer both lost to graduation, Mullin was set to rebuild with his remaining stars. It was not to be, however, with the unexpected departure of two key cogs from the previous two seasons in PG Rysheed Jordan, who was forced out due to academic issues, and star C Chris Obekpa, who elected to transfer. He also lost the commitment of blue chip Brandon Sampson. That leaves Mullin’s squad without not only the top 6 players from last season, but no player that even averaged double digits in a previous season on the roster. What little help he’s getting will likely come form PG duo Marcus LoVett, Jr, a former KU target, and Frederico Mussini, a Nike Hoop’s Summit participant from Italy. Given a new HC and effectively a brand new roster with only a month of playing together under their respective belts, I have no idea how this game will play out, other than to say KU will prevail and it won’t be particularly close.

Result: KU 83 - St. John’s 59

Vanderbilt - Lahaina Civic Center, HI - Nov 24

As much as I would love for that Self/Manning face off to occur, given the bracket I’ve drawn up and the 13-19 finish the Deacs put up last season, I don’t see any way Manning’s boys would make it past a veteran Vandy team, especially one that returns all but one of their top six scorers and made it to 21 wins last year, good for a top 40 rating on Kenpom. Unfortunately for the Commodores, they don’t have half the talent of Lionel Ritchie, and all they’re gonna leave on the floor of the Lahaina Civc Center is a whole lot of funk.

Okay, it won’t be that easy. Between leading scorer and rebounder Damian Jones, Luke Kornet, and as well as the promising freshman footer, and former teammate of KU target Schnider Herard, Djery Baptiste, and stout Samir Sehic, Vanderbilt will be a brick house in the post. Likewise, they’ve got machine guns in Wade Baldwin IV and Matthew Fisher-Davis, both hitting over 40% from deep last season. Riley LaChance also shot a healthy 38% from 3 in his first year of college ball. For all that offensive prowess, however, Vandy is a fairly poor defensive team. Although they were decent FG% defenders and shot blockers, they rebound poorly, and their 4.9 steals per game makes our mediocre 6.5 look sterling. Baptiste should help their rebounding situation, as well as contributing a few blocks, but the guard core that failed to turn opponents over is likely to remain in place, and that should make the difference in the end.

Result: KU 77 - Vanderbilt 65

Indiana University - Lahaina Civic Center, HI - Nov 25

Although it’s perfectly conceivable that UCLA could emerge from our opposite bracket, I think we’ll be facing off against our 2nd Big 10 foe on the year. Crean’s team figures to return perhaps the best scoring backcourt in the country. Last season James Blackmon, Jr., Yogi Ferrell, and Troy Williams combined to score 45ppg on 46% FGP, 42% from deep, good for 20 wins, a top 10 Kenpom offense, and an NCAA berth. What held the Hoosiers back, aside from an injury to Blackmon, who is out for the summer after another injury, was a lackluster front court lead by the dismissed Hanner Mosquera-Perea, and the undersized Collin Hartman.

Post help has arrived in Bloomington, however, in the form of McD’s AA C Thomas Bryant (an AAU teammate of our own Cheick Diallo), and 4-Star PF Juwan Morgan. Bryant figures to bring the rebounding and shot blocking that Perea, who barely outrebounded the diminutive Ferrell, couldn’t, but I don’t expect he’ll do much else. He can certainly play on the block, but from what I saw of him on the AAU circuit, Noah Vonleh he is not. Morgan will probably time to make an impact, but he is long, athletic, and something of a putback artist. Max Biedtfeld has also joined the Hoosiers, leaving Ann Arbor behind, but at a stout 6’7", 250, I don’t see him making much of a dent, as he was barely effective for a depleted Michigan frontcourt. Given that, I think Crean will play small, which is just as well, as he prefers to play through his guards rather than his bigs. Expect a real shootout, but one where KU still wins due to overwhelming advantage down low. Should be a good game for Perry Ellis who excels against smaller front lines.

Result: KU 84 - IU 79

The rest of the field

Since this is just one possible bracket for the Maui Invitational, I wanted to add a brief synopsis of the other potential opponents:

Chaminade

If we wind up playing a D2 school in this thing, odds are something has gone horribly wrong. I don’t know too much about Chaminade, but even with plenty of upperclassmen on the roster, I don’t see them as a team that could challenge us much more than Chile did in the WUG. In fact, Chaminade hasn’t defeated a D1 school since the toppling of Ralph Sampson’s Cavs, the sole reason this tiny tournament exists. If this match up happens for some reason, we’ll be cruising past the century mark on the scoreboard.

UCLA

Our next most likely final opponent should be a pretty good version of the team Steve Alford piloted to a Sweet 16 after a dubious call against SMU in their opening round. They’re losing major firepower with the departures of Norman Powell and Kevon Looney, but they return a solid core in Bryce Alford, Tony Parker, and Isaac Hamilton. Footer and paint patroller Thomas Welsh will have to become a much bigger impact player for them to reach their potential. Jonah Bolden, a top 40 RS freshman should also help fill some of the void left by Looney. The biggest potential impact, however, is the return of a true point guard to the team in Aaron Holiday, brother of alumn and NBA All-Star Jrue Holiday. They also add the freshman with my favorite name in this class, Prince Ali. With a little luck, UCLA can reach the finals in Maui, and they can certainly pose match up issues in the post, given Parker’s girth and Welsh’s size, but either way, I don’t think they’ve got the guard play to match us. Frank Mason will eat not only Holiday’s lunch, but his dinner and next day’s breakfast too.

UNLV

Yet another team we played last season, that version of the Rebs was dismissed rather effectively after an 18pt outburst from Frank Mason. Although David Rice has done a good job of drawing talent in, as well as retaining local stars, such as the giraffe-necked footer Stephen Zimmerman, he has yet to demonstrate the coaching chops to do much with what he’s been given. With Christian Wood and Rashad Vaughn out, UNLV is unlikely to live up to anything near the legacy of the last true mid-major team to win a national title. At AFH, we beat them by 15. In Maui, we could do even more damage.

Wake Forest

As I mentioned, Manning went through a rough first year with Wake. Although he has most of the best parts of his roster back, as well as adding a quality recruiting class highlighted by athletic footer Doral Moore, for whose commitment he beat out UK, WF is unlikely to shape up much better in a brutal ACC than the team that went 13-19 on the year. They may not have been as bad as their record suggests, ranking 124th on Kenpom, but they certainly aren’t in much of a position to challenge anyone but perhaps St. John, and of course D2 host Chaminade, in this year’s field. If we do wind up playing them, it will be in the opening round, and there will be little doubt as to which HC is the student, and which is the master.

Loyola Maryland - AFH - Dec 1

The dubious honor of worst game on the schedule is a toss up between this bout with Loyola and the one with their Patriot League conference-mate Holy Cross. Both teams finished with not only losing records, but losing conference records in a bottom tier conference (independent schools finished five spots higher in RPI conference rankings). Still, Loyola finished only ahead of Army, so this distinction is about the only thing they’ll win next year.

As for the team, the Greyhound’s bus returns pretty much everything that was loaded on last year’s trek to langour. Far more likely to be run out of the gym than to lap the Jayhawks, this match up should be little more than a stat-stuffer for the team, and perhaps a popcorn worthy highlight reel for the fans, nothing more. Our exhibition games will probably be tougher.

Result: KU 92 - Loyola MD 45 Woof!

Harvard - AFH - Dec 5

The state of Kansas and the city of Lawrence have a lot of ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and city of Boston (and it’s environs). Lawrence itself was founded with the help of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company of Boston (which is why the main drag is Mass St). Wayne Selden, of course, is a native of Roxbury. The game Wayne had devoted his life to was invented in Springfield, Mass, the state’s second largest city, and the choice of his school’s colors was inspired in part by Harvard Crimson. Originally KU’s colors would have been a blue and gold similar to that of Marquette, however, as the main benefactor in founding the school, Amos Adams Lawrence, for whom the town is named, was a Harvard man, it was decided to add crimson to the school’s repertoire.

Despite all of these connections, I can neither recall nor realize a time when these two teams have actually met, so this may well be the first. And it’s just as well that it is as Harvard is currently riding atop the Ivy league and has their most successful coach in school history manning the helm. Tommy Amaker’s Crimson have a streak of NCAA tournament appearances going that dates back to 2012 (only the 2nd time they made the dance in school history), and even notched a couple wins in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Perhaps more important was the emergence of Jeremy Lin in the NBA. Whatever you attribute it to, Amaker has made Harvard not only a respectable destination for academics, but athletics as well.

2015-16 figures, however, to be something of a rebuilding year for Amaker. He’s lost all but 2 of his top 6 scorers and, as Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships, it’s not likely that his incoming class have much impact. Siyani Chambers, the team’s play maker, does return and Amaker can flat out coach, so I don’t expect this to be a rout. KU will outlast the Crimson in a surprisingly close game.

Result: KU 61 - Harvard 54

Holy Cross - AFH - Dec 9

You could basically copy and paste my analysis of Loyola here and you’d get about the same result. The Crusaders are a bit better than the Greyhounds, but are just as underwhelming and undersized. They have 4 or their top 6 guys back and actually put up a good number of blocks and steals per game (enough to rank top 40 in both). It won’t matter, though, as they’re offensively challenged to say the least. With no rebounding and very little scoring ability, but the ability to manufacture turnovers, we’re in for a decisive, if sloppy victory. This should come as no surprise as Holy Cross was the first step in each of back to back Final 4 runs in 02 and 03, and Kansas hasn’t lost to a Patriot league team since our bitter defeat to Bucknell the next year.

Result: KU 63 - Holy Cross 46

Oregon State - Kansas City, MO - Dec 12

Oregon State was listed among the programs trending up in ESPN’s preseason analysis of the Pac 12. Surely that has more to do with the hiring of HC Wayne Tinkle, who brought along with him his 4-star son Tres, than it does an 8-10 conference record on a team that loses very little. To their credit, the Beaver’s PG Gary Payton, Jr did lead the team in scoring and rebounds, as well as leading the nation in steals per possession, so it’s not as if they lack any star power. They’re also long on length. None of their 6 scholarship bigs is shorter than 6’10". Fortunately none of them are talented scorers, and only one is anything resembling a shot blocker, Daniel Goomis.

I was as surprised as anyone in 2012 when the Beavers gave us a legitimate run for our money at the Sprint Center, but I won’t be caught unawares twice. I’m expecting this one to go down very much like the last: Offensively challenged team causes a lot of turnovers, but can’t put up the numbers to fell the giant. Tinkle may have a team on it’s way up, but it ain’t there yet.

Result: KU 64 - OSU 55

Montana - AFH - Dec 19

The Montana Grizzlies are a bunch of big bears from a very tiny pond. The Big Sky conference from which Montana hails is one of the worst in the country, raking in at #27 out of 33 conferences in 2015. Although they finished with 20 wins and a 14-4 conference record, I doubt it will be any kind of wrestling match. They have 4 or their top 6 scorers back and were able to wrangle an NIT berth thank’s to a solid offense, but they were blown out by a mediocre Texas A&M team thanks to the Grizzlies poor D. Brandon Gfeller is their lone shooting threat, although Mario Dunn is capable. The size of the Grizzlies is also nothing special. Marin Breunig does score and rebound, but he’s a poor FT shooter and his D makes Perry Ellis look like Jeff Withey. No one of note is coming onto this team to replace leading scorer Jordan Gregory. Poor rebounding and a mediocre steal rate will make this one a solid win. Expect to see the 'hawks run away with this game in the 2nd half.

Result: KU 74 - Montana 60

San Diego State - San Diego, CA - Dec 22

In many ways, KU’s lone true road game in this nonconf schedule could be the hardest one of them all. Steve Fisher rose to fame after somehow guiding Big Blue to an NCAA title in his first 6 games as a head coach, and continued with the Fab Five in the early 90s. He hasn’t had the same resources nor the same success since he landed at San Diego State, but he’s almost always had tough and competitive teams in his 15 seasons there, leading them to a 27-9 record, 14-4 in the MWC. So it was hardly a shock that a coach with Fisher’s pedigree was able to come into Allen Fieldhouse and leave with a win. That narrow setback came before the emergence of Joel Embiid as the best C in the country, before Wiggins truly showed any ability to take over games, and with a not quite up to the task Naadir Tharpe running the show. Despite not having anyone likely to be drafted in the top 5 on the roster, the team we field this year should be much better overall.

With that in mind, a W might seem academic, given that the Aztecs barely managed to hang on at AFH. Not so fast! Three things haven’t changed: San Diego is still a long and defensively strong team; team star Winston Shepherd is still on the roster; and Steve Fisher still heads the ship. Finishing 4th in defensive efficiency on Kenpom last season, but only 166th for O, this game figures very much to be one of contrasting styles. Kansas was certainly no stranger to good defense last season either, finishing 10th thanks largely to their FG% D and rebounding (plus surprisingly good shot blocking numbers), but scoring came far more naturally for us than it has to the Aztecs. What is likely to turn the tides is that half of the top scorers for Fisher’s squad have gone, specifically double digit contributors Aqeel Quinn and J.J. O’Brien. This has to be a devastating blow to an already anemic offensive team. Top scorer and player Winston Shepherd is still there to soften the hit, as is his soon to be partner in crime Malik Pope, who really started to come on late in the season. Redshirt Zylan Cheatham and new comer Jeremy Hemsley will mean no shortage of big bodies, but unless D’Erryl Williams can develop into a real point guard for this squad, I see defeat in the cards for a team lacking a floor general. Expect a real boxing match, though.

Result: KU 57 - SDSU 53

University of California Irvine

It’s a great time to be an Anteater. A 21-13 finish and a very first NCAA tournament berth are high watermarks for a historically lack luster program. But the big story at UCI has to be Mamadou Ndiaye, the 7;6" 300lbs Senegalese pivot. He’s the top of the returning scorers along with gaurds Alex Young, Luke Nelson, and Jaron Martin. UCI neither stood out as a defensive team, nor defensively, but was still able to take an Elite 8 bound Louisville team to the wire in their lone March Madness game. The key to the win will be dealing with the massive middleman Ndiaye, but the load may not be as bad as it seems. Ndiaye is a lumbering foul machine, and Perry Ellis is adept at taking bigs off the dribble, as well as getting fouled on his way to the hoop. Get these things done, and our backcourt superiority will carry the day. My guess is Mamadou fouls out midway through the 2nd half and we never look back.

Result: KU 68 - UCI 52

University of Kentucky - AFH - Jan 30

The choice to have blue blood heavyweights KU and UK face off in this year’s edition of the Big12/SEC challenge was all but foregone. LSU and aTm have had successful recruiting seasons and are certainly intriguing teams, but nothing is going to put more butts in seats than these two historic programs go at it. Now much to our chagrin, KU has almost always been on the losing end of these meetings, owning a paltry 5 wins over UK throughout the years, and has suffered defeat in all 3 of our most recent meetings. That should make this bulletin board material, especially given the players we return from a team that was utterly humiliated 72-40 last season. This Jayhawker wants revenge too.

In addition to the intrigue, this game is also one of the most difficult to predict. None of UK’s top 7 scorers nor rebounders return. That’s hardly unfamiliar territory for Kentucky, though. They do have a very strong recruiting class, headlined by C Skal Labissiere, and recently bolstered by Canadian Jamal Murray, but this team doesn’t have the talent level nor the depth that Calipari has been privileged with in his time at UK. What has BBN on edge more than anything is waiting for Skal to be officially cleared to play. He wouldn’t be the first kid waived off for the season that Cal’s brought to Lexington (Enes Kanter), and between his OAD pedigree and UK’s meager post depth, that sort of loss could spell a season as low as 2013’s for a team that treats Final Fours like trips around the block. KU likewise has to get its star big man cleared, but if Diallo’s debut is delayed, we’ve got more tools to patch the hole. Tyler Ulis and Alex Poythress will mean UK has some key veterans to blend with the new comes, and Jamal Murray and Isaiah Briscoe are big, athletic play makers, much more in the mold of Derrick Rose or John Wall than the Harrison twins.

In the end, I think this is more likely to be a vintage Calipari team than a dud. And for that reason, I have to say KU’s revenge fantasy reaches fruition! After all, what Calipari teams seem to do more than anything is sort of sleepwalk through the regular season before using overwhelming waves of individual talent to make a run in the dance. This just figures to be a much bigger game for KU, and in our venue to boot. We won’t be taking UK to the woodshed, but that same fight that carried a dead-legged KUSA to a win against a game group of Deutchers in double OT will carry the day on Jan. 30th. UK probably has the overall backcourt edge, but wave after wave of big man bodies will wear down the thin Big Blue Line.

Result: KU 81 - UK 75

Summary

So you heard it here first, KU will sweep their nonconf opponents this season, a feat not repeated since the 2010-11 season. It’s going to take some luck, but the grit on display throughout the WUG is exactly what it will take to get through this fairly strong schedule. Good Wayne has to show up to all the big games. Perry has to keep attacking bigger post men. Svi needs to turn his great fundamentals into a good all around game. Chieck needs to qualify, then become this team’s pacemaker. But I see it all coming together. It’s going to be a very good year to be a Jayhawk.

Ah, the shifting winds of recruiting. As we’ve all heard by now, Chris Mullin pulled an incredibly baller move and stole the Diallo carpet out from under Calipari’s feet. The big question is, with Slice at St. John’s, has Mullin now tilted the scales enough to beat out Norm Roberts? I gave it a couple days to let the dust settle, but things couldn’t be any less clear at this point.

For starters, Slice to St. John’s is perhaps the slickest move, both tactically and strategically, that I’ve seen in recruiting in the past decade. Short term, you get the obvious in with Diallo, and long term, you get the guy with the best connections in the NY/NJ/Philly triangle, an area we’ve recruited heavily over the years (Twins, Robinson, Taylor to name a few). That’s hardball, hardcore, tough nuts politicking. St. John’s now has Cheick’s lead recruiters from both ISU and UK. In fact, the move is so strong, it’s virtually knocked UK out of consideration, and I thought they’d be our biggest competition given how lukewarm Cheick was to Mullin. But Mullin did what he had to do.

All hope is not lost, though. Last Thursday, the consensus was Diallo was all but mind made up on KU and ready to commit at the JBC. Even losing some ground, there’d be a long way to slide to lose this one. Mullin is still recruiting as though he’s not going to have Diallo on his team, too. That could indicate that he’s not as strong as he hoped he’d be even after the move, but he may just be being prudent. Diallo is a Nike prospect, but St. John’s is UnderArmor, so it’s unlikely that Nike is using any pull to move him in either direction. Norm Roberts is a great closer, too, and I’m sure he’s preparing some great stuff to go for the kill. He’ll be telling Diallo about Self’s track record with getting bigs into the NBA. He’ll point to the last kid from Africa that signed on the dotted line, injured his back and foot, and still went #3 in the draft. He’ll mention the door is wide open on a potential title contender at KU, whereas at St. John’s they’ll be lucky to finish 4th in the waning Big East. If anyone can make this deal happen against these headwinds, it’s Norm.

Still, the waters have been significantly muddied since last weekend. If Diallo stays on schedule and declares at the JBC or the day after, he’s ours. But if he waits until next week, it’s anybody’s game. Heck, there are even a few die-hards saying ISU is in this, despite the KU v SJU consensus. Things aren’t as rosy as they were, but I’m going to keep the faith on this one.

Ok, so I’ve been gone from the site for a while, but HEM brought up where we are in recruiting the other day and I’ve got the time, so here’s my weigh in:

Obviously the early signing period came and went with out even so much as a whimper on the recruiting front, and understandably, that’s left some posters both here and on the old site on edge. This year is such a mixed bag and reminds me a lot of the position we found ourselves in between the 2011 and 2012 seasons. We’re in on a very narrow, but elite number of players, but pretty much everyone else has decided where to land. This is a little odd after last couple years where all but a handful of players decided early, and KU was able to clean up pretty well, but these things are cyclical, I suppose.

The biggest and more apparent threat to KU recruiting this year is Calipari’s platoon system and whether or not it proves to be attractive to the incoming recruits. By his own admission, the platoons are just a gimmick to keep Cal’s freshmen happy after the unexpected return of the Harrison Twins and Dakari Johnson, but if it pays dividends and UK can put the full 7 of 10 players currently projected into the league, there’s a real chance that we get swept in the head-to-heads with UK in the class of 2015 and then are relying on the transfer/carousel/Merv Lindsay wire to come up with more bodies. That said, I don’t think that’s the most likely scenario today, and based on Calipari’s recent behavior, it doesn’t look like he’s counting on that either. With all of that established, I’m going to break down on who we’re still in on, what kind of player they are, where we appear to rank with them, and what odds I’d give to them signing. This list will be based on the offers list from Verbal Commits.

1. Marcus LoVett, Jr.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Bill Self is recruiting an undersized, underweight, low-ranked/unranked PG after striking out with better options. If that scenario gives you heart burn, there are two good reasons not to panic: 1 Frank Mason; 2 Devonte Graham. With the unfortunate departure of Conner Frankamp last month, our PG situation for the next 3 years has become pretty much solidified. LoVett wouldn’t necessarily be a bad addition to that, but anyone we’re looking at in this class should strictly be considered depth, as I don’t think Self is going to hand over the keys even if we sign a combo like Malik Newman or Tyler Dorsey. LoVett isn’t without his strengths. Although not a great shooter, he is a great passer and has very good control over the ball. But like all undersized players, he’s a real defensive risk, and like many young PGs, he dribbles way too much for his own good. The sick moves he can bust out in highlight tapes will turn into bench minutes really quick against competent D-1 defenders.

Given that we’ve only offered him very recently and given that we haven’t made any kind of real push for the kid, I don’t think Self sees adding another ball handler as a priority this season, meaning for the time being at least, he trusts the situation of Mason/Graham with Svi and Selden as the emergency relief. Between that and the near guarantee of being a career backup or being recruited over, I’d say the odds of signing LoVett are pretty low, and even if he did sign, it would be to his detriment. He’s carrying an offers from UCLA and SDSU, and given their PG situations and his West Coast lineage, I expect him to choose one of those schools.

Odds to KU: 25%

1. Malik Newman

Is it enough to say Kentucky and be done with him? Actually, things are a little bit more complicated with him than that, but that doesn’t change where my mind is on him much. UK already signed combo Isaiah Briscoe and SG Charles Matthew to compliment an all but guaranteed to be returning Tyler Ulis and Devin Booker, so they have a really good backcourt lined up already, plus it looks like Antonio Blankeney will be spending time in Lexington next season, as well. Given that, you’d think we’d have an in, but that’s where the platoon thing comes back to haunt us. Even if Poythress or Lyles returns, there’d still be room for another 3 as both of those guys are really more face up 4s than anything, so the situation is very fluid for Cal. Self won’t platoon and really only wants to play 4-5 perimeter guys anyway. Given who it looks like we’ll get back right now (I actually believe that Selden will get his rehab sorted out enough to come out this year, so that’s Oubre/Greene/Svi/Mason/Graham), I don’t see any real benefit for Newman in terms of coming here, and really, he’d just be bumping Greene or Graham in all likelihood.

As for his strengths and weaknesses, all I will say is that Newman is a combo, the best player at his position in this class, and his ranking is fully warranted.

If you’ve taken a look at the ‘Crystal Ball’ feature on CBS’ 24/7 sports, you’d see that UK is a heavy favorite for Newman, as well. Now, myself, I don’t put a ton of stock into those predictions because most of the contributors to the site are guys like Matt Scott, enthusiasts that have parlayed their hobby into a day job, but not real experts of any kind. If you do take a look at them, though, the two guys really worth paying attention to are Jeff Borzello, CBS’ resident recruiting guru, and Jerry Meyer, a seminal member of the site before it was purchased by CBS. Those guys tend to actually be in the know when it comes to recruiting information, and Meyer is especially reliable. He sees Newman at MSSU, and barring the return of platooning, I think that’s the most reasonable guess at this point.

Odds to KU: 5%

1. Tyler Dorsey

The other combo and West Coast guard Self is looking at this year, Dorsey is a former Arizona commit that makes no bones about his desire to play point, and his frustration at getting cut by the USA Basketball team that Stumpy was assistant coaching. Dorsey is very much the poor man’s Malik Newman, but that could bode well for us as a long term option. He doesn’t have Newman’s length, strength, handles, or touch, but he’s still all-around solid in the areas that matter. He needs to get stronger, work on his handles and passing, but as an upperclassman, he’s likely to be a real force.

According to what I’ve heard as of right now, Dorsey really likes KU, but the reality of the opportunity to play the point is what’s keeping him thinking. Every indication is that it’s down to us and Cal(ifornia), and that he’ll commit sometime this winter. Honestly, I think this one’s a coin toss. I think he could realistically be a point option as an upperclassman, but the patience and willingness of kids these days to play their way there can’t be relied upon. At Cal, he’d be joining Jabari Bird and Jordan Matthews, with Tyrone Wallace’s senior season being the only thing between him and full control, as all of the Bear’s other guards are crap. One way or another, Dorsey is likely to have to wait for his gratification, at least a little, but if I were placing a bet, I’d have to go with Cal at this point because there are just so many more unknowns if he chooses KU. They may not win a ton of games, but at Cal, he’ll be able to do what he wants and get a lot of minutes without having to look over his shoulder at who might be recruited over him.

Odds to KU: 45%

1. Jaylen Brown

Why is Self putting so much energy into recruiting small forwards right now? Better question: why have so many elite 3s signed with Kansas in the past two seasons when Self’s offense put’s next to no emphasis on that position?

Jaylen Brown is basically a stronger version of Andrew Wiggins. Great size and length for position? Check. Spin moves and freakishly athletic dunks? Check. Lock down D? Check. Relies entirely on his athleticism to get by? Check. Dribbles too high and away from his body? Check. High potential/low foundation? Check.

Okay, okay. I’ll lay off Wiggins. I actually really loved having him on the team, and I think, even though it didn’t pay off during his lone season at KU, there are dividends to be had if he wins Rookie of the Year and becomes an NBA All Star. We’re waaaaay overdue for another. Seriously, though, we have Svi, and I don’t know why we’re bothering with this guy. He’s a fantastic prospect, but not the sort of player I’d want to build a team around, especially a OAD. Wiggins was really a lot better than Brown, and love or hate the hype, he brought an injection of interest to KU in what might have been the first real rebuilding season for Self in his tenure here. Brown doesn’t even have that and we have a glut of guys that can do more, if just not as flashy.

As for signing him, I’ll say we don’t. Between him, Newman, and Blankeney, I don’t think all 3 could co-exist with who UK already has without Booker or Ulis transferring, so their situation looks like a real Mexican standoff. Any two could probably work, and Blankeney will undoubtedly be the first to pull the trigger, but I bet it’s Newman that follows suit, if either do. Brown is looking at UCLA and is taking his last two officials at UNC and Michigan. UK is the front runner in the twitter sphere, but when the dust settles, I’m thinking Brown winds up in yellow, whether bruin or wolverine.

Odds to KU: 5%

1. Brandon Ingram

Stop me if I’ve already used the ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one before’ joke. Ok. Everything I’ve said about the futility of recruiting Jaylen Brown applies to Brandon Ingram, although Ingram is a much more fundamentally sound player. The only reason I can think of that would make his recruitment make sense for KU is if Self wants to play him at the 4 a la Julian Wright. Ingram has decent handles and court vision for his size, plus can score with his back to the basket, so it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility, but he’s also not going to soar in for dunks over players trying to take a charge. In a lot of ways, he’s like Kelly Oubre with less athleticism and a better J. I don’t know if he’d struggle with the speed of the D-1 game the way Oubre has, but if Oubre grows over the season and comes back, we really have nothing to offer Ingram, and he has very little to offer us.

Compounding matters with Ingram is that he’s a life long Puke fan, and all indicators point to him not venturing too far from Tobacco Road. I think the only reason he hasn’t committed to Duke already is the enormous logjam Duke has in their back court. K has already signed Luke Kennard and given who is likely to be back next season (Tyus Jones, Matt Jones, Grayson Allen, Semi-should-probably-transfer-Ojeleye, and Rasheed Sulaimon), there really isn’t any immediate use or need for Ingram there either, as K doesn’t platoon (jesus, I sound like Dick Vitale!). That leaves UNC and NC State as the remaining hometown options. I’ll say UNC for now and call it good.

Odds to KU: 1%

1. Ivan Rabb

Finally we get down to some genuinely good news. If you’d asked me in October where we stood with Ivan Rabb, I would have said ‘outside looking in.’ Then seemingly out of nowhere, Self pays the young man a visit and at the moment, I’m thinking top 3. At a long and lanky 6’10", Rabb would bring a lot more size to the 4 position than we’ve been accustomed to under Self. Given what happened against UK this year, and the fact that we have MSU queued up for next year’s champion’s classic, that added length would be very welcomed. At his best, Rabb actually reminds me of Joel Embiid. He’s a little too skinny, but has great hands, timing, patience, and really good footwork. He doesn’t have JoJo’s grace, and I don’t know if he has Jo’s mean streak, either, but if anyone can pull off an impression of an impression of Olajuwon, Rabb’s the guy. On the downside, in addition to being too skinny, Rabb likes to score face up , despite his good feet. He doesn’t have any real goto move with his back to the basket. He’s also a little soft. Still, with some Hudyization and seasoning, he’d be a real force for KU.

What is perhaps most exceptional about Rabb right now isn’t necessarily his talents, but the tepid reaction he had to Big Blue Madness. Although his HS coach downplayed his lack of enthusiasm as simple exhaustion, he points to Halloween in the list of events more exciting than visiting Lexington. That, his enthusiasm for Cal(ifornia, again), and his mother basically saying Ivan doesn’t necessarily see himself as an OAD (same article) leaves a lot of operating room for KU, and we haven’t even had our official yet. Were I to venture a guess at who the remaining schools are in Rabb’s top 3, I’d say it’s us and UCLA. Zona could be there as well, but with Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarc likely to finish their senior years in Tucson, PT could start to be a real consideration. At any rate, I like where we’re positioned with Rabb right now.

Odds to KU: 35% with plenty of room to grow

1. Cheick Diallo

Diallo is a guy I identified in 2012 as a young up and comer to covet. Time has only strengthened that stance. Diallo is a physical specimen nearly on par with Wigs. Blake Griffin dreams of one day having Diallo’s bounce, quickness, and energy. Diallo is also tough and nasty. He’s got swagger to spare and played through a back injury last summer because his teammate Thomas Bryant (more on him later) just couldn’t carry the load. Diallo blocks shots. Diallo cleans glass. Diallo dunks everything. Diallo is raw, but sick. Sound familiar? Diallo is the cheetah. Cliff Alexander is the lion. Being a little more terrestrial, Alexander has struggled against length so far (mostly UK and MSU), mostly because that baby hook of his is still in utero. Diallo will probably struggle more against the back-down type of bigs (Okafor, Josh Smith, Cameron Ridley) when defending, but should be able to get them foul’d up on the offensive end. Diallo is more desirable.

The big 3 in Diallo’s recruitment are us, ISU, and UK, and from what I hear we’re the frontrunner, but I think that depends heavily on Alexander or Ellis joining the Association. Alexander will probably get there, but as an undersized 4, there’s a very strong possibility of slippage if he doesn’t get his minutes up. Ellis isn’t on anyone’s radar to go pro this season, but if he can keep up what he did in Orlando and show some ability to score against length (Use a turnaround jumper, dammit!), he can play his way into a mid 1st rounder, but that’s his ceiling. Perry will still project as a SF to most NBA teams, and then only as a career back up, given that he can’t defend elite 3s on the perimeter. That clouds things significantly, but not terminally.

ISU will make a good push for Diallo, but if we’ve got post minutes, I think he’s ours for the taking.

Odds to KU: 50%

8] Carlton Bragg

Bragg is another big I’ve been pretty high on. In terms of pure skill set, he’s probably the most talented 4 his class. If I could compare him to a Jayhawk player, it’d be Darrell Arthur: great scorer, good defender, above average athlete. He’s mostly a face up, attack off the bounce type right now, but scores at all levels, good BBIQ for his position, and would fit very well in Self’s system. His J is pure, his touch supreme, but he lacks focus sometimes and has no nasty that I’ve seen. He’s better than Perry was at the same point in time, but faces many of the same challenges, right down to the questionable height (almost definitely not 6’9" ) listing and limited length (though he should be a better defender). As such, Bragg is at least a TAD, but could be a 4 year starter too.

Throughout the summer, KU was where I saw Bragg. That’s changed recently. The aforementioned Jerry Meyer still has Kansas as his prediction, but the grapevine says Cal(ipari this time) has made Bragg a top priority and is making the push. Illinois and UCLA are also involved, but I don’t consider them much of a threat. Bragg is down to two schools in actuality, and I can’t say that we’re the favorite among them. Bragg would probably also be willing to platoon (I hate that that’s a thing now), so the allure of PT isn’t necessarily there for us. If our ties to Adidas are worth anything on the recruiting trail, then we can make up the distance. But big shoe has failed to deliver us on a number of bigs lately (Chris Walker, Tarc, Tony Parker), so I wouldn’t cast my lot with them. The lone glimmer of hope at the moment is Thomas Bryant.

Bryant was offered, but never really recruited by us. He basically worked his way down to just Syracuse without committing. But just this week UK offered, even after Bryant’s mother opined that she didn’t think it was a good fit for her son. Cal missed on Henry Ellenson during the early signing period, and clearly he’s not satisfied with just Skal Labissiere signed up so far. The move on Bryant could just be hedging bets, but it could also indicate losing ground with another target. Unfortunately, I don’t think UK is falling behind with him, so unless something changes behind the scenes, Carlton Bragg is looking like a Wildcat.

Odds to KU: 40% (if that seems high, remember, it’s a two man race)

1. Caleb Swanigan

Swanigan only barely merits mentioning here in that we’ve offered him and technically, he hasn’t cut us yet, but I think that’s only a matter of time. No one believes he’s seriously considering the Jayhawks right now, and there’s been no activity that contradicts that. Furthermore, as a wide-bodied, but undersized center, I don’t see him as a great fit. Self’s bigs are usually the sort that can get up and down quickly. Swanigan, for all his strength and rebounding prowess, wouldn’t really keep up with our schemes too well. He’s considering MSU and UK, and honestly, he’s the perfect sort of fit for Izzo, so I say let them have each other. If we get desperate, though, there is still time enough to horn in on his recruitment.

Odds to KU: 0%

1. Stephen Zimmerman

Zimmerman is another unexpected bright spot on the recruiting trail. He’s a super athletic 5 with awful hair, but high potential. He’s actually a lot like UT’s Myles Turner, swapping some range for better athleticism. He’s very quick on his feet and gets up incredibly well for his size. He’s got great length too. Like Turner, he’s more of a face up player than a back to the basket guy. He’s also pretty good at putting the ball on the floor, as long as he limits himself to a couple of dribbles. He’s on par with Cole Aldrich or Sasha Kaun in terms of shot blocking ability. He’s a little on the lean side, but has a good frame to build. Still, the biggest knocks against him are that he’s not a back to the basket scorer, and that despite good physical size, he’s awfully soft, shying away from contact, and not rebounding as well as you’d expect. He needs to work on his footwork too, but the whole of his short comings aren’t things you can’t say about most elite prospect bigs at this stage.

Zimmerman’s looking to OAD and he wants big minutes too. In other words, no platoons (and that should be the last use of the word from me in this post, and hopefully the remaining season). Wherever Zim plays, he’s planning on being on the floor 30 minutes a game. That makes the source on Zagsblog.com that says UK is NOT in Zim’s top 3 all the more credible, and when UK offered Bryant, Zim was the player I assumed Cal was making up for. The other thing the Zimmerman’s have been pretty vocal about is the strength and conditioning situation wherever he goes. That’s another great point in the KU column. If there’s anything to be worried about with recruiting Zim at this point, it’s that we probably can’t over come Ellis and Alexander both returning, but I’d consider that a pretty good problem to have. Still, I’ve consistently heard that he wants to stay out west, and until our post situation becomes clear, I’m going to have to consider that the default position, so I’d put UNLV up front for the time being. Still, we’re very much in this one.

Odds to KU: 30%

Bonus) Thon Maker

Thon Maker is a 7ft small forward based on his current skill set, and a member of the class of 2016. He’s been in the news, however, on speculation of whether or not he’ll reclass to join the class of '15, with a decision pending in January. For my money, anyone who talks about reclassifying this much is going to do it. It’s just a matter of when. But when that does happen, Self will be in a very good position to capitalize.

Maker is exceptionally athletic, with incredibly long arms and legs. He’s also got unbelievably good handles for a guy his size. He can score at all levels and is a superb shot blocker, using his agility and length the way God intended. Maker has the potential to make Anthony Davis seem like just an ugly chump. Still, Maker is insanely thin and frail. He can’t back down or prevent being backed down, and his slight build leaves minimal optimism about building bulk. Likewise, he hasn’t learned to assert himself as much as he could on the offensive end, and needs to work harder on the glass. With his natural gifts and some good coaching, he could put up 15/10/5 kind of numbers in short order, but it will take work. Also, even if he looks like a 3 when he plays, he probably shouldn’t play one. His J just isn’t there, and he’s got too much size and grace to waste out on the perimeter.

As I said, KU is in really good position to capitalize if and when Maker makes his move. Maker has already been on an unofficial, and coach Townsend has visited his school now on a couple of occasions. Nonetheless, Cal smells blood in the water too, and UK has made a big push recently. Also Maker visited Mizzou once, and that just automatically docks a couple points in my book. Provided I’m right about reclassifying, I think it will be a two-horse race between KU and UK, unless something changes soon. There are other schools involved, but none of them have put in as much effort just yet. We’ll see how it shakes out in January.

Odds to KU: ???

…but after tweeting this:

It’s been a long 3 years. Just wanted to thanks all the coaches who recruited me and stopped by my school appreciated

Cheick Diallo followed Perry Ellis on twitter. Turns out he follows a lot of Jayhawk players. Just a couple from UK. No one from SJU.

@BeddieKU23 WOOOOOOOOO!!!

2016 looks to be another big recruiting year for KU. My one real qualm about the WUG was that with Self tied up during the first half of July, we’d end up missing the best part of the summer recruiting season. Smartly, Self decided to leave his two top guys (Roberts and Townsend) behind. But with the upper limit on departures could be as high as 7 scholarship players this year, something we haven’t seen since 2011, a year that proved to be rough on the recruiting trail, this year’s haul is going to be all important in terms of maintaining Big 12 dominance, and keeping KU from falling further behind our blue-blood brethren.

Realistically, I don’t expect there to be quite as many as 7 scholarships opened, but I think the minimum to plan for is 5 (With 3 bigs graduating, Diallo likely to OAD, and one of the wings either taking the plunge (Svi or Selden) or looking to transfer (Greene or Vick)). With all that in consideration, here’s my 5 man dream recruiting class for 2016 by position:

PG) De’Aaron Fox

A consensus top 15 kid, all around, he’s a great player and the exact type of PG I (and more importantly Self) like: 6’3", great length, elite athleticism, supremely quick, great ball control, good passer, sees the floor, great defender, and a real ball hound. He’s a capable scorer, but unlikely to ever be the top scoring option. He is awfully scrawny for the time being, but that hasn’t made him shy about taking contact on the drive, and he’s a decent finisher at the rim. His J is mechanically sound, but his shooting touch is inconsistent. If all that sounds a lot like Tyshawn Taylor, I’ll be the first to admit it is, but Fox is doing a better job of learning to play at more than one speed than Ty had done at the same point in his career.

Given all of that, he’s likely to take 2-3 years in school before Fox is really ready to make the jump to the pros. Time to develop is exactly what KU has to offer given that we really don’t need to land a PG in this class, although we should want to. If Fox picks KU he can not only build his body with Hudy, but get schooled by both Frank and Devonte, almost as good a backcourt pair as Collins and Chalmers. Of course instant gratification is a concern, and with Fox being a Texas/Nike kid, Shaka at UT, and Fox very much a “Havok” (not “Havoc”) friendly kind of guard, we’re likely 2nd banana to UT right now.

SG) Terrance Ferguson

Terrance is a true shooting guard with potential to so much more. Already blessed with a pure J and NBA range, this consensus top 15 kid has room to grow into a great defender and a 15+ ppg player, should he become an upperclassman. Ferguson is very much like a plus version of our own Brannen Greene. Whether squared up in catch and shoot situations or curling off screens, a swish seems all but guaranteed. Admittedly, his shooting stance is a little hinky, but it seems to work for him, and that’s all that matters. What makes him a plus version of Greene, however, is that he’s a far superior athlete, and a better all around ball handler. He’s not a take you off the dribble player like Vick, though. Just a kid that you can run some more stuff for. He’s a great finisher in the open floor, and has the hops and length to go and grab a lob or stick a put back that’s anywhere near the rim. Most of his scoring is going to come from kick outs and set plays.

Also like Greene, Ferguson is going to have plenty of work to do to get to the L someday. He’s not a great defender, although he does a better job of creating turnovers than his matriculated counterpart. Being longer should help that area of development. He just needs to put equal effort into his game on the opposite side of the court. His storking legs give him the sort of stride where, with focus and Self defensive coaching, he has potential to be Releford level lockdown. The biggest area of improvement, much like Fox above or Svi, is that he needs to add a lot of strength and with those stork legs and average shoulders, you have to wonder if he’s got the frame to build on. His triple-threat game needs work too. BBIQ-wise, he’s average.

All in all, there’s a whole lot to like about Ferg. KU has already emerged as an early favorite in his recruitment. As long as we place a wing in the draft this year, I think we’ve got a great shot at sealing the deal.

SF) Josh Jackson

Jackson is one of the top wing players in the country, and it’s not in the least bit difficult to see why. He’s among the elite athletes in his class. @jayballer54 already did a really nice write up on Jackson. What I’ll add to that is he’s very much a player in the vein of Andrew Wiggins. He’s already a D-1 level defender and he’s nowhere near his ceiling in that regard. He’s also a real scorer, but not much of a shooter. The similarities to the NBA ROY don’t end there. He’s got a lot of the same moves attacking the basket, including the trademark spin. There are a couple key differences, though, between Jackson and Wiggins. As an athlete, despite being at the top of his class, Jackson isn’t quite on the very top level. Wigs was an elite athlete by NBA standards from the day he set foot on campus. Jackson isn’t quite as long. He doesn’t have the uber first step, nor the 2nd and 3rd bounce. No shame in not quite being as athletic as a once in a generation kind of player, though. The saving grace, however, is that JJ is waaaaaay more aggressive than Wigs was. While everyone adapts to D-1 speed at their own pace, I’d be really shocked to see Jackson ever defer the way Wigs sometimes would.

Again, as @jayballer54 already mentioned, KU is seen as a leader in Jackson’s recruitment. But unlike Ferguson, Jackson would have little to fear in the way of upperclassmen keeping him out of a starting line up.

PF) Schnider Herard

With most of our defections coming from the bigs, the class of 2016 is going to demand at least one immediate impact player and at least one developmental/depth player for our front court. For the developmental side of the coin, my pick is Schnider Herard from Haiti. I’ve seen Herard ranked as high as the low 40s, although he’s dropped off ESPN’s most recent top 100 (still rated 4 stars). I think he’s likely to finish in the top 80 - 60 range, though. He’s most commonly listed as a center, but he does have a burgeoning face up game and overall good touch, so face up play is a distinct possibility, and lacking a true back to the basket game, I’ve listed him as a 4 for our purposes. He does know how to use his body, though, and his thighs are like tree trunks. He’s also developed his upper body a ton since arriving in the states, adding about 40 lbs top to bottom from his freshman to junior seasons. His best assets right now are his size, at 6’10.5" in shoes and 260 lbs, and his athleticism. He’s a good rebounder, too. As a player, he’s really just a bigger Tarik Black. His game is all about power and throwing his weight around. He is among the rawest of raw players I can remember Self ever offering (unless you count Wesley, which I don’t). If Herard’s game is steak tartare, Big Cliff’s is beef jerky.

What Herard does have, though, is NBA potential in a 4 year package. If he can learn to play D without fouling, add a drop step, a hook, and the ability to score over both shoulders, he could be a 2nd rounder by the time he moves on, a la Sausha Kaun. He’ll never be a franchise player, but he’s got everything you could want in a journeyman.

As for his recruitment, he appears to be wide open right now. While I can’t fault Self for not making Herard a top target, he’s exactly the sort of kid that will be easy to miss on not because we can’t offer him the best long term opportunity, but because we can offer the least short term benefit. There are plenty of mid-tier teams that would be overjoyed to start him or, at very least, offer him significant playing time as a freshman. Cal, Purdue, ASU, Nebraska, and any number of Texas teams could all make pretty immediate use of a guy like him. If he is on the market late, I think it’s an easy sell, but if he goes early, we’re probably S.O.L.

C) Marques Bolden

Another player that’s already shown up on another poster’s wishlist (thanks @HighEliteMajor), Bolden is my top overall want in this class. HEM’s post on him was must read and covers everything you need to know, but here’s my 2 cents: For a player comparison, I’ll go with #45 Cole Aldrich. He’s not the best athlete, best shot blocker, nor best back to the basket scorer, but there are no real blind spots in his game either. He’s got good shooting touch, a killer hook shot, nice size, a good set of post moves, and rebounds well too. The biggest strike he has had against him was level or effort/focus, but according to Eric Bossi, he’s been dominant on the AAU circuit as of late, playing with a heretofore unknown ferocity.

What should make me happiest is that he’s a self-proclaimed life long KU fan and we’re seen as the front runner in his recruitment. What gives me pause, however, is that UK and Duke are coming on strong, and the way he’s been playing, he’s likely to be among the most coveted bigs in a class lacking quality in that respect. The longer he stays on the market, the more of a dog fight it’ll become. Hopefully we get this one over with by Late Night.

@nuleafjhawk Here you go:

You know, prior to this game, I used to like Marcus Smart despite the backflip last year. After this game, though, it’s a complete 180. I can see why he came back to school - taking full advantage of the OSU drama department’s resources. There were a lot of Oscar season jokes about his behavior, but it wasn’t even good acting. It was disgusting. Dirty and undignified. A guy who’s supposed to be one of the toughest players in the country doesn’t fall down at being breathed on. Worse, that T he got on Selden was completely bogus. I’ve watched and rewatched it over and over again and you can see the blue of the student section barrier between both elbows and Smart’s face as Selden cleared out. Honestly, as bad as he was today, I wish Selden had just straight up busted his nose for all the bad acting. A little here or there doesn’t bother me. Sometimes you gotta sell a call or the refs won’t see it, but what we saw today was nauseating and ridiculous.

Over the past few seasons, I’ve defended Self’s coaching in early exits from the dance, particularly when I felt like the loss was more on the players than the coach. HEM always takes the coaching angle (and being a sometime coach, who can blame him, and I expect such an analysis to follow). This year’s exit, though. This is on Self. He couldn’t figure out how to beat a team playing a 6’4" 6’7" 6’7" frontcourt? Really? Self needs to find another assistant that can build big men the way Manning did. Lucas did a fine job on the boards, but our inability to outscore WSU in the paint was ridiculous. Anyway, I’m probably done for a couple months. Let you know if I hear anything good on the recruiting wire. Otherwise, God bless and take care for a while.

@icthawkfan316 Thanks. I like this place much better anyhow.

Somebody rubbed my lamp, so I’m forced to make an appearance :).

@truehawk93 To answer some of your concerns about Zimmerman, I don’t think we’re off his radar, but I don’t think we’re in a favored status currently, either. One of the nice things about the kid is that he and his mother are very open and active on social media, so it’s relatively easy to get him to talk about what he’s looking for. His wishlist thus far has been 1) OAD, 2) get big PT (necessary to OAD in all likelihood), 3) find a good strength and conditioning program.

Zimmerman knows he needs to bulk up in order to compete in the association, and what we have to offer with Hudy sets us apart from even other elite programs. That’s our biggest in. But PT and getting college out of the way seem to be the more important factors for Zimmerman. There was a source at Zagsblog about two months ago that was saying UK was not in the top 3 for Zim, but that he favors staying out west. I don’t know if UK has moved up in that regard (I suspect not because they offered center Thomas Bryant shortly thereafter, but, in retrospect, that could be because of Bragg), but the west coast rumors persist. Basically, UNLV has constant access to the kid and, although they may not win a ton of games or get the same national exposure that KU, UK, and Zona can offer, they have the most in the way of guaranteed PT and he’d be greeted as a hometown hero should he choose that path, so I think @BeddieKU23 is spot on in his analysis. The biggest hurdle for him coming to KU at this point is Big Cliff’s semi-failure to launch. No one can question that when Alexander gets minutes, he’s usually very productive, but the fact that he still hasn’t cracked the starting rotation at this point spells a very likely return, and I don’t think Zim wants to compete for that time. Bragg committing just compounds that.

Now, that said, I don’t really have any inside information about Zimmerman. In the absence of that, I always deffer to looking at Jerry Meyer’s recruiting predictions cause he’s the best in the game. Meyer currently says UK, but admits it’s more of a default position, and one based more on UK making Zim a primary target than the other way around. How meaningful is that prediction then? Who knows? But if you’re wanting to glean something as we approach April, Meyer is the guy to follow.

As for where we wind up with recruiting this year, I’d be genuinely surprised if we added 3, especially given the guys we’re targeting. Dorsey, who was a KU lean back in December, saw the writing on the wall and decided to go Oregon. Malik Newman is a kid that I still have a hard time believing will wind up here, but there is a lot of smoke in that camp at the moment, and that may have triggered Dorsey’s decision. I wouldn’t count out Diallo. I still think he’s quite high on KU. ISU wants him more, but Norm’s done such a good job recruiting him. It’s hard to see him not closing the deal, but again, Cliff’s likely return may ward him off. Duke now having pushed Rasheed Sulaimon out of the picture has basically paved the way for Brandon Ingram to come in and start. I know Bragg wants to play with him, but Ingram is an unabashed Duke fan and now has the golden path. I can’t see it playing out any other way. I’ll like our chances more with Ivan Rabb when we can actually get him to visit campus.

So yeah, I think we’ll add one more top guy, probably Diallo, but maybe Newman, and that will be that.

Lastly, I think Hunter Mickelson has got to go. I’ve got nothing against the kid on a personal level or anything. He seems like a genuinely good dude, but he’s clearly outclassed here and struggling to beat out Landen ‘Paddle Hands’ Lucas for even scrap minutes. He should grad transfer to Arkansas State or some other similarly small school where he’ll actually see the floor, rather than continuing to wilt on our bench. I know Svi isn’t playing much anymore either, but there’s a kid who I know will be ready when his name is called. Mickelson, not so much.

One last word on Thon. He’s reclassifying. We’re in a strong position, having paid him several visits and already having received an unofficial, but that pesky school in Kentucky has also make a push with him recently. That’s right, Louisville is in hot pursuit. Actually, a lot of schools are trying to horn in on Thon. I wouldn’t call KU the definitive leader at this point, but like I said, we’re strong. Him and Diallo basically comprise my wishlist for the rest of the class.

According to Zagsblog.com, Thon Maker is doing the reclass dance. This is great news for KU, as we’re probably his early leader and no worse then tied with UK.

The problem with the argument that Final Fours and Championships prove conference superiority is that it really tells you nothing about the quality of teams in the conference other than the one or two that made it that far. Was the ACC really the best conference in 2010 because Duke won a championship after UNC won in 2009? Well, UNC lost to Dayton in the NIT finals and only Maryland and Georgia Tech made it in with Duke, both being eliminated in the second round. In the same year, 7 Big 12 teams made the dance, 2 advancing to the Elite 8 (while KU produced a massive choke job to UNI, ugh!), so who had the better tournament and which was the better conference? I don’t think it’s even logical, let alone fair, to judge the entire conference by the showing of its best team. UF and UK both made the Final Four last year, and Tennessee made an Elite 8 run, but again, the rest of the conference was terrible, and it seems an enormous stretch to me to say SEC > Big 12 because they had one good team and two that overachieved. Hell, the AAC is a joke of a conference outside of UConn, and I don’t think anyone with sense would claim AAC > Big 12 in 2014 just because the Huskies cut down the nets, right? We can all see how silly that is, right?

I’m certainly no pot head. Although I did try marijuana in my early twenties I had terrible experiences with it, I have never felt the slightest compulsion to try it again. That said, I have never once heard a compelling reason for either the prohibition against its use, nor the demonization and misinformation that seems to surround the topic in some circles.

If you find the argument that marijuana is “no worse than alcohol” an uninspired moral equivalency (although it isn’t a moral equivalency, but an empirical one), how about we substitute fast food or football? If that seems flippant, may I point out that marijuana is not a chemically addictive substance, so the comparison to fast food addiction or something like pornography addiction is apropos. These substances don’t alter the function or make up of one’s brain in order to cause their addiction. They merely feed the dopamine engine (our natural reward center in the brain). Literally anything that does this can become addictive to a person, and that means literally anything one finds pleasurable.

Never the less, the fact of the matter is that in a free society, the default position for any activity is always one of permissiveness. We allow people to consume things or participate in activities that have little morally redeeming value and can quite literally kill them because we supposedly value the right of the individual to make an informed and responsible decision, and to the extent that a minority cannot, we tolerate that in order to respect the autonomy of the majority. Were it not for that, any measure of restrictions that today we would find to be draconian at best might seem to be reasonable in the light of preventing harm to ourselves and to society.

But even if appeals to freedom and personal responsibility don’t persuade you, I would point out that since 1971 when Richard Nixon fired the opening salvo in the war on drugs, we’ve invested over a trillion dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000) in fighting drug use (primarily marijuana, which accounts for about 40% of all drug related arrests), and yet the marginal rates of marijuana use in this country have been relatively stable over the past 30 years. About half of all people in this country are in my camp; people who have tried marijuana in their lifetimes. Yet only a very small percentage of people continue to use throughout their lives (predictably, usage peaks in the late teens/early twenties, before dropping off precipitously as people reach their 30s and beyond). In other words, we’ve invested a ridiculous amount of money fighting a problem that doesn’t actually exist. The only thing that we do have to show for cracking down on marijuana is that we’ve doubled the arrest rate for marijuana related crimes since 1982 (90% of which are for mere possession) and we’ve got the largest prison population (both in real terms and per capita) in the western world.

Marijuana definitely isn’t harmless and definitely shouldn’t be treated as such (and no one who wants to pursue professional athletics should have anything to do with it), but the policy for dealing with this social ill that has existed these past 45 years is a colossal failure and is more a blight to our society than pot use ever was. And for anyone who truly believes that our society is running down the tubes, I’m sorry, but that’s a self-serving delusion. Despite the problems we face today, the world, and this country especially, has never enjoyed greater wealth, health, prosperity, and freedom. Today people live longer, have more choices, and are less likely to die violent deaths than ever in human history (even with ISIS/Al Queda, Mexican drug cartels, etc). Don’t romanticize the past just because it seemed simpler or better to you at the time. Every era has had its struggles. Today is the greatest day to be alive.

Full Metal Jacket. And I guess, technically, Forrest Gump too.

So with that out of the way, is it safe to say that the platoon thing blew up in Squidward’s face? My biggest fear coming into this season that my long held belief that it was virtually impossible to play an undefeated season in the 40 game world of college hoops would be shattered by a new era of single school dominance to rival John Wooden’s, anchored not in having transcendent talents with no other options than to play college ball for 4 years at a time, but by crews of top 10 talents willing to eschew franchise level pt in exchange for 20 minutes of fame per game, and a cakewalk to the title each year.

But this post season, UK missed on every top recruit left on the board. This could be coincidence, just poor timing with all the UK departs (of which at least 3 shouldn’t be happening). Alternately, it could be the case that 20 minutes of pt isn’t enough for the modern blue chip. I know it was a factor in both Zimmerman’s and Diallo’s commitments to non-UK schools. Ivan Rabb was also notably underwhelmed with UK, being more excited about Halloween than Big BM (phrased for emphasis).

Regardless, I’m not at all upset with Brown’s decision (though I was totally caught off guard). With so many top recruits dispersed to so many schools, it’s unlikely they’ll be a dominant group of teams. More a 2010 or 2011 style year than a 2012 or 2013 where the title favorites were obvious from the get go. Most importantly, we got ours. Diallo and Bragg give us exactly what Self’s offense was missing: rim protection and more scoring at the 4. I’d still like to get Tevin Mack, but I won’t be surprised if he follows Smart. That JuCo shooting guard we were in contact with would also be a fine addition. Just a depth add, but a guy who can get minutes in Korea or if it takes time for Greene to get back into the groove. Overall, next year is shaping up just fine in my eyes.

To me, the interesting thing about a 30 second shot clock is that it might actually decrease scoring even further. A lot of people assume shorter clock = more possessions = more scoring, but it’s not that simple. After all, who does a shorter shot clock benefit? The defense, of course. Shortening the shot clock just gives the offense less time to find a good shot. The reasons the NBA has more scoring has more to do with the players being more talented on average, the game being longer (48 minutes instead of 40), and the 3-second defensive rule that opens up the lane more. The lack of being able to camp a footer in the lane is the reason Andrew Wiggins can go from 2nd Team All American to Rookie of the Year. At any rate, I am in favor of some of these changes, but yeah, the rules are only ever going to be as good as the refs, and I prefer the more physical and defensive minded game in college to the NBA style.

@HighEliteMajor Assuming we accept your version of reality, what’s the remedy? Do you want to see Self fired?

@wrwlumpy Jamari is a knife. Landen is a spoon. You’ll be happy to have each one in different situations.

@HighEliteMajor Great post HEM. You actually beat me to the punch on this one. I was going to do a class of 2016 thing once 2015 was official. Great news about Bolden is, not only is he a strong KU lean, but he’s a life long KU fan and has made no bones about that. He is ours for the taking if we make him a top priority, which wasn’t necessarily the case with Davis.

Bolden is also on the top of my wishlist for 2016 big men. Everything you’ve said about him is everything I’d have said too. For comparison, he’s a lot like Cole Alrdrich, but a more skilled scorer. His hook shot is what every coach dreams about when recruiting a center. The other guys on that list right now are Australian Issac Humphries and Hatian sensation Schnider Herard.

The Hump is kind of an odd one. He’s one of the least athletic footers I’ve ever seen. Like, a true footer, but a below the rim player. It’s weird. Imagine Georges Niang, but 6 inches taller. In terms of pure basketball skills, though, he’s the best big in the class. Fundamentals are sound. Footwork is good. Shoots out to 15 ft, but scores with his back to the basket. Catches and passes well. Can put the ball on the floor, but doesn’t dribble more than he needs to. Just don’t throw him any lobs.

Herard is a lot like Tarik Black: Long, powerful, athletic. He’s definitely more of a long term project than Hump or Bolden, but he’s the type of guy that is going to give you 4 quality years, then do a stint as a relief player in the league.

Lastly, I am getting more positive buzz these past few days on the Cheick Diallo front. Nothing on the order of what I was hearing two weeks ago, but plenty of reason to remain optimistic. Hopefully we’ll find out what’s what after Ingram’s commitment on Monday. I’ll be really shocked if he goes anywhere but Duke at this point, but if he were to venture out of state, KU would probably be the destination.

@HighEliteMajor I don’t think Greene as a 3pt shooter is a mismatch for Self’s system at all. I know Self doesn’t value the 3 ball as much as you do, but everything you’ve said about Greene’s offensive game was also true of BMac’s, and he set a freshmen scoring record in his lone playing season at KU (I know you could also run lob plays for him, but that’s about the only real difference). The problem for Greene is that Self values defense more than 3pt shooting, and that’s an area where BMac wasn’t lacking. If Greene could show value on the defensive end, I have little doubt that he’d get more of the elevator plays, screen and curls, and flare screens and other shooting orchestration Self was willing to do to get BMac his. Until that happens, though, Self will see Greene as just a shooter, and if you’re a shooter on a Self team, it’s produce or dog pound because you’re not going to make up misses with extra possessions.

As reported by Rustin Dodd:

Friday, Oct. 9: Late Night in the Phog

Wednesday, Nov. 4: vs. Pittsburg State (exhibition)

Tuesday, Nov. 10: vs. Emporia State (exhibition)

Friday, Nov. 13: vs. Northern Colorado

Tuesday, Nov. 17: vs. Michigan State at United Center in Chicago (Champions Classic)

Monday, Nov. 23: vs. TBD (Maui Invitational at Lahaina, Hawaii)

Tuesday, Nov. 24: vs. TBD (Maui Invitational at Lahaina, Hawaii)

Wednesday, Nov. 25: vs. TBD (Maui Invitational at Lahaina, Hawaii)

Tuesday, Dec. 1: vs. Loyola (Md.)

Saturday, Dec. 5: vs. Harvard

Wednesday, Dec. 9: vs. Holy Cross

Saturday, Dec. 12: vs. Oregon State at the Sprint Center

Saturday, Dec. 19: vs. Montana

Tuesday, Dec. 22: at San Diego State

Tuesday, Dec. 29: vs. UC Irvine

Saturday, Jan. 30: vs. TBA in Big 12/SEC Challenge

.

And announced by the guys:

.

Self was true to his word in terms of dialing it back, but I gotta say, he may have gone a little overboard. Unless the SEC/Big12 challenge opponent is UK, we don’t really have any marquee home games (although I think playing LSU or aTm would be fun too), and the lack of another true road game, stinks. Really, the game I hate the worst is Oregon State at the Sprint Center. We did it 3 years ago, and I’m just not that interested this soon. Get a top half Big 10, ACC, or PAC-12 team at the Sprint Center and another on the road, and I’d be happy. The way it stands now is a little underwhelming, though.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! That was one of the most fun games I’ve watched in person. The wife won box seats from her job and it was crazy! I’m going to be chanting U-S-A at KU games from now on. As for a break down of the game play, here goes:

Nic Moore was good. Wayne looked more like the kid we always hoped he’d be. Frank Mason was stellar. If he’s half as good this season as he was tonight we are going to be all smiles. All smiles IF we get more out of our forwards. I know Hudy has been laser focused on preventing injuries the past few years, but the lack of strength in our post players is a real concern. Perry is still Perry, for good and for bad. Bragg’s thin. I knew that going in. He can’t keep from getting backed down, although he does have active hands and got a number of steals and good deflections. He’ll still struggle to defend straight up, though. Lucas and Mickelson… Those two are just so weak. I’ve been saying for years now that the only hope Lucas has to be an effective post player is to get jacked, like Rico Gathers jacked, and just dominate below the rim. It’s not going to happen though, and that leaves us without anyone who can really just straight up defend those Canadian/Michigan St. style bigs. The tournament exit headline this year could very well read “Mondale to Self: Where’s the Beef?” And we’re still struggling to finish around the rim. Bragg also settles for pick and pop too easily. I’ll reserve final judgement until Diallo gets here.

We played some 3-2 zone to start the game, and it was the biggest reason we struggled in the first half. FIBA rules space the floor a lot more and it made our zone incredibly weak. I’ve never been a fan of 3-2 zones anyway (they leave the best part of the floor wide open), but it’s clearly the wrong defense for this style of play. I hope not to see it again, well, ever really. Our man to man was a ton better and really helped us get back into the game. We did a good job of turning Canada over, but we weren’t great on the boards. Overall, just more struggle than we should have had. Still, we played a very convincing final 4 or so minutes, and we walked away with the W, which is all that really matters. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Holy damn, what a wild ride! Had to watch it on my phone while driving, so I’m glad I didn’t wreck. A totally gutty performance down the stretch. Despite being held to under 33% field goal shooting, they found the will to win. If you can do that in July, you can do anything come March/April. Self is going to be able to go to the well with this game when the going gets tough. Love love love my team. Love love love my country. America is proud today! Rock Chalk Jayhawk, go World Champs!

Here’s what a CBS Sports poll had to say.

@Jesse-Newell More Cheick Diallo news please!

I think what’s especially sad is that this has the real possibility of ending Poythress’ dreams of playing in the NBA. He’s an amazing athlete that’s been saddled with being a tweener, too small for the 4, but not enough perimeter skill to be a 3 (sound familiar?). But it’s tough to come back from an ACL injury, and the way the NBA drafts these days (more on potential of up and coming young bucks than proven commodities), his lack of skill development, age, and now this are going to make it really hard for him to stick. Young men like him sacrifice so much to get that chance. It would be tragic if it never came.

@HighEliteMajor Timefor anotherclassic HEM/kD disagreement On point 2, yes, we didn’t do great against the press, however, lack of preparation wasn’t the problem this time. Lack of preparation means no plan and/or no practice. Since neither of us get to actually sit in on KU practices, neither of us is truly able to say beyond conjecture exactly what gets practiced, but I think it’s safe to assume that at some point over the winter break, press breaking was worked on to some extent. And just watching the first few possessions of the second half, it becomes immediately clear that guys knew what they were supposed to be doing, but failed to execute. You say the plan was to passively pass over the press. I’m a little surprised to hear that from you, honestly. The first time this team struggled with a press on the year, you delivered an excellent treatise on how to break the press, which included passing over it. There was nothing passive about the tactic. Yes, guys dribbled toward the trap areas, but that’s what you do if you’re going to pass over a press. You can’t pass the ball away until you draw the trap defenders towards you, and you’re not going to draw trap defenders towards you without moving towards the trap areas. Simply launching the ball down the court is going to lead to live-ball turnovers and run-outs. I suppose you can criticize the strategy, but it was one that, if you didn’t advocate it yourself, you at least admitted its viability.

Now, we don’t get a good look at the first pressing possession, at least from CBS. Joel’s block on Nash leads to a shot clock violation. The camera actually catches Smart signalling his team for the press, but the possession itself gets lost between camera cuts. There’s a steal in the back court and a layup from Nash. I’ll chalk that one up to caught off guard. The following possession, the guys move to their press-break positions. Tharpe advances the ball, then passes to Selden. Selden moves towards the trap, the trappers start to move, then Selden reacts to pass back to Tharpe. Unfortunately, he’s a little antsy and takes a stutter-step before he makes the pass and gets called for the travel. In the next possession, Selden gets the ball in the same position, finds Embiid on the sideline on the look ahead, makes the pass and it leads to a beautiful alley-oop to Ellis. And on the next, Selden recognizes the same situation, but this time passes while Embiid isn’t looking. The pass whizzes by and, despite his fantastic length and speed, Embiid is unable to make the save back to his teammates.

I could go on from here, but I think the point has been made. There was a clear plan. When the plan was executed, it did what it was supposed to do and led to easy buckets. When it wasn’t, it led to turnovers. Luckily, most of them were dead-ball, but either way, it quickly got OSU back in the game. Now, I suppose you could make the case that poor execution of a plan is lack of preparation, but in my opinion, it’s just lack of experience. Practice as much as you want, but there is no substitute for the real thing. Selden didn’t respond well, but he knew how he was supposed to respond. Mason and Tharpe both had instances of where they dribbled too far into the traps or their outlets moved too late or too far and wound up in trouble, but regardless, they seemed to know what they were supposed to do. Again, if you want to make the argument that passing over the press isn’t the right way for this team to approach the issue, fine. But they had a plan and were clearly instructed in how to execute it. Self can teach them what to do, but he can’t very well jump in and run the point himself.

@wissoxfan83 It’s gonna be real awkward when he forces overtime by hitting a late game 3… on his own team!

Adjustments I’d like to see Self make for OSU and going forward without Embiid:

The question that’s on everyone’s mind, or at least should be, will be answered around 4pm this afternoon. Was the WVU game last Saturday an aberration, or was it the true KU-sans-Embiid exposed? My take is neither, but that doesn’t mean changes won’t have to be made. As @HighEliteMajor and others have pointed out, Self, as talented as he is, is about as flexible as a 2-ton i-beam. But if Holly Rowe’s tweet is true, and this team is breaking huddles with a shout of ‘National Champs’, then Coach Self no longer has the luxury of intransigence. The only thing really keeping this team from being the best offensive force in the country is turnovers (we’re ranked #5 by kenpom.com despite giving up the ball on 19.1% of our possessions), but on the defensive end of things, we’re considerably less strong. Embiid’s role in this, and this should be no surprise given his Big 12 DPOY status, has been bailing out KU’s porous perimeter defense with his mere presence, not to mention high block rate (11.5%, which ranks 26th nationally). Without JoJo, however, we’re considerably more vulnerable in the paint, as Juwan Staten made painfully clear to us. It’s not that we don’t have a good post defender alternative. Tarik Black is actually very good defensively. He’s got great length and strength so as not to be pushed around by post players of any size. Unfortunately, he can’t be relied upon to stay out of foul trouble, even if, often times, those fouls are unwarranted. Jamari Traylor and Justin Wesley are too foul prone too, but for real. They both tend to either set illegal screens on the offensive end, or play with their hands too much on D. Perry Ellis usually gets criticized for being too slow defensively. I don’t think that’s really the case either, he just isn’t a good help defender most of the time. He has a tendency to rotate too late, meaning a lack of recognition, not quickness. Lucas, for his part, is an odd kind of tweener. He’s neither strong enough for his size to hold his ground in the post against big bigs, nor is he quick and agile enough to use his length to simply bother shots. I think he could be either of these things, but he needs to make a decision on what kind of player he wants to be and work with Hudy to adjust his size accordingly during the off season. In the meantime, the best we can hope for out of him as that he does a good job of maintaining verticality and just not being a net negative. Okay. So that’s what we’re up against. How do we thread the needle? We’ve got lots of options, but here are the ones I think will work both specifically for this game, and for NCAA tournament games as well:

1. Naadir is off-point: If there’s one glaringly obvious adjustment that needs to be made based on Saturday’s performance by Naa, it’s that he shouldn’t be trusted to be the primary defender on most point guards. This includes Marcus Smart, as well as anyone else he’ll face for the remainder of the year. When he’s locked in, he can do a decent job of containing smaller pgs off the bounce, but savvier and quicker guards will simply blow by him too often, and muscle ballers, like Smart, will simply bully him and post him up, especially without JoJo’s no-nos. For all of the grief we give Tharpe, though, he can be a good defender when used properly. In last year’s Big12 tournament, Tharpe was assigned to guard KSU star Rodney McGruder and did a really good job of it. McGruder, of course, was a catch and shoot guy that liked to come off multiple screens. Isn’t that Phil Forte minus 5”? Tharpe’s assignment vs WVU should have been Eron Harris (who only takes 24% of his shots at the rim, and 50% of his shots from beyond the arc), not Staten. Harris gets assisted on 75% of his made 3 pointers, which is the definition of a catch and shoot guy. Tharpe can be called upon to chase guys into the paint, and for a non-driver like Harris or Forte, that’s a net positive, versus a net negative against the Statens and Smarts of the world.

2. Small ball: I don’t think we should be a small ball team all of the time, but for certain matchups it’s warranted. OSU is one of those matchups. They’re already playing pseudo-small ball, as Le’bryan Nash is an undersized, face-up 4, or a 3 without a J, depending on how you look at it. Point is, he likes to drive to the rim to score his points, thus, he should be defended more like a slasher than like a big. We have the right kind of guards to defend an undersized 4, and given how hard it’s been to come by, I’m sure Braennen Greene and Andrew White, especially, would appreciate the playing time. Both of these guys is solid enough to contain Nash on the drive, and each is a good enough shooter to help punish OSU for double teaming Black or Ellis in the post. Like I said, I wouldn’t make small ball the default like Good Ol’ Roy did last year, but there are going to be games ahead where that look will be the best (KSU and ISU, if we get past OSU).

3. The Kansas Break: Although I’d never wish that we return Roy Williams over Coach Self, I actually think this year, both coaches would probably be happier with the other’s team. When UNC has been impressive, it’s been because of impressive defense. Offensively, they aren’t even a top 50 team, but defensively, they’re considerably ahead of KU and have played a strong schedule too. Offensively, KU is top 5, and Andrew Wiggins is probably the best transition finisher in the country. It’s probably too late to teach the Kansas Break proper to this group, but Self still needs to find more ways to get his team into transition more often. We aren’t a great half court team, so we should be attacking the rim within the first 10 seconds or so of the shot clock. We’re also not a great passing team, and while I have hope for this group moving forward, especially if Wayne Selden returns (as he should), part of the reason we have so many TOs is because we have a weak passing team playing Selfball (ie, passing around the perimeter in the half court). Are there principals of the secondary break that can be worked in for this group?

4. Zone: Okay, everybody and their mother has brought up zone defense as a way to keep Black out of foul trouble and keep guards out of the paint, and everyone has an opinion about which zone. Self has tried 3-2 and it’s been pretty horrendous. I’ve seen 2-3 proposed (I wanna say this was Jesse Newell), as well as 1-3-1 by our own HEM. I favor triangle-and-2, and here’s why: The 3-2 has been awful for a few reasons: 1) Tharpe/Mason/Frankamp is too small to be in the front cornder of this zone. I get the temptation to try Wigs out at the top with his quickness and gaudy wingspan, but we don’t have a third guard long enough to complete the sort of front you need to run a 3-2 zone unless you have Selden play point on the other end. So far, that hasn’t happened. 2) The Perry Ellis problem. Just as he tends to be slow to react as a help defender he doesn’t anticipate well on the perimeter and the 3-2 requires him to work from the perimeter and short corners more. 3) The 3-2 doesn’t protect Black, as the 2 are the primary defenders of drivers at the short corners. 1-3-1 could work with Black in the middle, but that one makes me feel especially queasy about rebounding, plus that makes Perry a big liability as, being slow to help, he’s also liable to be slow to trap and rotate as the sole baseline defender. I suppose you could put Wigs down there… I’m just not sure. @HighEliteMajor , I’m hoping you can scheme this one up for me, cause I really can’t wrap my mind around it with our current personnel. That brings us to the triangle-and-2. My reasons for favoring this are that we can still protect Black by having him as the man in the middle, but we can also maximize Wiggins’ on ball prowess, while being able to hide Tharpe, or at least, to mitigate the blow by factor. Tharpe can either be part of the man-to-man team and work on containing a shooter, or he can be put on the wing if we’re facing a poor shooter there, allowing Selden to be a man-to-man defender. But having said all of that, don’t try to zone OSU, or any other small ball team with 2 shooters. They have Forte, so there’s a natural role for Tharpe to play, and each of Ellis, Black, and Traylor can take turns guarding Kamari Murphy. We don’t need a true second big for Nash, so just man them up and go to work.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Whatever happens, I believe in the team that we have even without Embiid. We’ll find out what they’re made of this afternoon. RCJHGOKU!

Given that Selden was wearing all that leg gear since his jr year in HS,

I think it’s relatively safe to say that any loss in pop over the season was due to the normal wear and tear of the game, or at least that any knee problems he has he brought with him. I’ll change my mind on that if we get news of a surgery, but until then, file this away as a known factor.

Post edited to fix formatting

In the postmortem of the season, I threw down a gauntlet to posters clambering for change in Self’s system. I said that it wasn’t enough to enough to simply make claims about what was a better way to run a team, or to rely on maxims and buzz words as justification for comments. After all, saying Self got ‘out coached’ in such and such a game, whether it’s accurate or not, doesn’t really say anything meaningful about why a loss happened or how it could be prevented in the future just as much as saying ‘Self is a genius’ when he wins is not in any way instructive. @HighEliteMajor took up that gauntlet, to his credit, and offered a seven point plan and why he thinks his changes are better. Unfortunately for me, I have been super busy the past few weeks and have only had time to drop in some recruiting nuggets as I got them, so my apologies HEM, but here’s my response:

As many of you have know, and some of you, oddly enough, have criticized me for, I’m a numbers guy. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the phrase ‘lies, damned lies, and more statistics’, but the fact of the matter is that numbers don’t lie, people do. Yes, numbers can be manipulated selectively to reinforce a wrong headed point, but the beauty part of statistical evidence is that when someone offers a set of compiled data, it can be reviewed, revealing omissions, errors, and falsehoods. To that end, I’m going to quote some numbers from kenpom.com, hoop-math.com, statsheet.com and refer to some of the ideas for KU’s offense that Jesse Newell brought up. Here’s HEM’s original list:

1. Expanded Zone Offense: No surprise here. Our zone offense is stagnant many times. Two simple elements of focus, and a third necessity. First, more active screening. By and large, KU’s zone offense only screens near the top of zone for the lead guard, or on the back line to set up a lob dunk. Active screening across lane and at the wing can create more seams for penetration and lanes for entry passes. Second, ensuring that our lineup always has a clear and present three point threat. The classic zone buster. Always. And free that zone buster to shoot. Third, we have to have skilled scorers at the high post. Can’t beat the zone if you’re feeding a guy who can’t score from the free throw line.

2. Pace of Game: When coach Self arrived, there was this fear that he would play a slow brand of basketball. It isn’t a fear any longer – it’s just fact. Self doesn’t not really encourage a fast paced game. He may say that he wants a faster pace, but his actions discourage it. Turnovers cause you to find the bench. Quick shots? Look out for the hook. Who throws the ball in? Oh, the guy we have designated to throw the ball in. Press? Nope, too risky that we’ll give up an easy basket. Aggressive press break? Not the usual gameplan – slow, methodical passing. Random, targeted trapping? Rarely – simple man to man will do. Note to Self: Take advantage of your athletic superiority. When you play a slower game, you permit less skilled teams to remain a part of the game. Strategic use of the press is a must. Is there risk? Sure. But there seems to be more risk in being conservative, particularly in March. Further, playing at a faster pace regularly will make it much easier to deal with teams that play fast in the tournament.

3. Valuing The Basketball: This change is important. I understand that the easy approach is to simply conclude that all turnovers are bad. However, in my view, the over emphasis on valuing the basketball has inhibited our offensive growth – it has been a horse collar to this team. It is a climate of unacceptability that appears to make guys play tight. Yes, turnovers are not good. But they aren’t always bad. In fact, 15 turnovers can be much better than 7 turnovers. It all depends on the amount of possessions in a game and the pace of the game, and what that pace of game does to your opponent. A team that doesn’t turn the ball over is usually not playing aggressive enough. This goes hand in hand with the prior paragraph on Pace of Game. Increasing the pace will generally increase turnovers. But that change in pace will also affect our opponent. If we are playing a team that wants to play slowly, there is usually a reason why. The most common explanation is that it’s because the opposing coach knows that the fewer possessions, the more chance that he has to stay in a game against a team with more highly skilled players. Wouldn’t that be what you would do if you played KU? To me, this is why we have been susceptible to upsets. Coach Self permits opposing teams to dictate pace and style of play. The Texas Tech game at Lubbock this season was a classic example. UNI was another. Coach Self would be well served to adjust his mindset and be willing to accept more turnovers. Again, we don’t want turnovers. But sometimes, turnovers are indicative of aggressiveness. It is a necessary evil, but not one to overreact to.

4. Take Advantage of Match-ups: Undoubtedly, this is an area where our current system fails – unless, by default, we have a match-up advantage on the post. Sometimes that match-up might be our shooting guard isolated on his defender, or our point guard taking a smaller guy to the block, or Ellis taking a bulky four man out on the wing. Taking advantage of match-ups to exploit scoring opportunities creates a more dynamic offense. This is a pretty simple concept, but one Self’s system routinely fails to incorporate. Similarly, playing small creates incredible match-up problems for opponents. We saw it first hand against MU in 2012. We simply couldn’t have Withey and TRob on the floor together for long stretches due to MU having Kim English at the four. Self is resistant to playing anything but a conventional attack. Sometimes match-ups dictate something different.

5. Be Bold: Coach Self is notoriously slow to adjust. His belief, which is not an uncommon coaching trait, is to most times “do what we do”, with faith that it will prevail. I just ask coach Self to trust his instincts. If it appears that an adjustment might work, side with boldness instead of the conservative path. We have history that supports that, too. On our final four run in 2012, coach Self boldly utilized the triangle and two. I think with the 2012 team he felt that because of the lack of depth, he had to think outside of the box. Boldness includes pressing, playing small, going with the hot hand – anything that rocks the boat. My suggestion is to always think out of the box. What limits boldness? Fear and arrogance. Fear that moves will fail, and arrogance that “system” will ultimately prevail. I ask that coach Self discard the chains that limit boldness.

6. Accept Zone Defense: This is came up early in the season – many, including myself, felt that an “all in” switch to zone defense with our personnel would have been the best move for the Jayhawks. We had a young team. We had a big, back line defender in Embiid. We had a three who was long and athletic. We had a point guard and four that couldn’t defend. And we had a post player (Black) who was in constant foul trouble. Coach Self is a strong believer in man to man defense. But that strong belief prevents him from freeing his mind. This past version of the Jayhawks was by far the worst defensive team at KU under coach Self. There was simply no way Self could cover for Tharpe, and the numerous times he compromised our defense. Then, on the back line, Ellis was soft and largely ineffective. Add to that a team devoid of veteran defensive leaders who had played under Self, and our defense was a disaster. We played multiple teams that ran zone. Louisville ran large doses of zone on its way to the 2013 title. UConn played zone. UK played some zone. Florida played lots of zone. But somehow, coach Self concludes that zone won’t work here. That simply lacks any logic. Brilliant coaches run it. Championship teams use it. Somehow other teams can run both. But we can’t. Zone defense needs to be accepted as a realistic alternative.

7. Cultivate Three Point Shooting: One concern is that coach Self fails to cultivate three point shooters. There doesn’t seem to be a urgency on Self’s part to play a dead-eye shooter. And shooters are faced with the famous quick hook. Cultivation of three point shooters requires a coach to understand that a shooter needs freedom. It’s not like a power forward pivoting and scoring on a post move. A shooter has to have a mind that is free of doubt. A coach has to offer freedom, has to accept misses, and has to accept shots that may be taken before a post entry pass is attempted. Just a touch more flexibility. Three point shooting can, and many times does, dominate the college game. In March, there are times when you catch a hot shooting team. We have to be prepared to have an answer. For KU to play at its maximum potential, there has to be a bit of leniency here by coach Self. We’ve seen vaunted three point shooters struggle here. Giving the shooters a touch more leeway is a great start.

1. Expanded Zone Offense: I don’t have much to say about this other than that, prior to this year, Self’s teams haven’t uniformly struggled to attack zones effectively. In fact, beating zones has been a real strong point in the Self era, including against teams the play zone as their primary D. The 2007 team beat Florida’s zone. The 2009 team lost to Syracuse only after Boeheim switched to man D. The same was true of the 2012 team when they faced Baylor for the third time that season. That said, none of these suggestions are bad, but I think the real difference this year was more on the personnel end and less a matter of the strategy. As our shooters improve and as we get more leadership and better play out of the PG spot, we’ll see the return to form.

2. Pace of the Game: Saying that Self plays a slow brand of ball really is completely untrue. KU teams under Self have finished in the top 100 of adjusted tempo in 9 of 11 seasons. The two slowest? The 2005 team finished #163 in Kenpom’s tempo rating, and the 2008 team finished 136. The fastest was the 2011 team, finishing at 55. Now, it is true that Self’s teams play significantly slower than William’s brand of ball, but it’s not like we went from being Paul Westhead’s LMU to being Bo Ryan’s Wisconsin. We went from being a secondary break team to a mixed tempo team. Further, that slow down may actually be a good thing. Just doing an overview of NCAA champions in the years that Kenpom covers, only 3 of the past 13 finished in the top 25 for tempo. Not surprisingly, those teams were Roy’s two UNC title teams, which both finished in 8th place for tempo, and Maryland’s 2002 team which finished 16th. Not only do most other championship teams play slower than Roy Williams, most of them play slower than Self does too. In fact, the median tempo ranking for the rest of the title teams is 142.6. Even factoring in everyone, it raises to only 112.2. If the goal of this exercise is to examine changes that would improve our chances at cutting down the nets, then I suggest to you that the tempo doesn’t matter much, and if it does, recent history would suggest that playing more deliberately is the way to go. I’d also point out two other things that raise my eyebrows. HEM suggests that playing at a faster pace will help us deal with teams that play at a faster pace in March, but those teams are the ones that we’ve tended to beat. Every team that has upset us has played at a slower average tempo than us not a faster tempo (including VCU). I’d also point out that pressing slows the game down rather than speeds it up. While there are teams that both press and play fast (Maryland comes to mind, as do Mike Anderson’s teams), increasing the tempo of the game is usually achieved by shooting quickly. Although it may seem like pressing gets teams ‘sped up’, it actually reduces the number of possessions in the game. Why? Well, although it’s true that you can either get a quick steal and score while pressing or get punished by a good press break, what happens on most possessions is the pressed team simply gets the ball past the halfcourt line and the pressing team falls back into their halfcourt defense. This does make teams run their offense in a shorter amount of time, but the reality is that they just end up using more of the shot clock, not that they actually shoot faster than they would were they not pressed.

3. Valuing The Basketball: I’ll say, this if a first in the history of college bball, suggesting that a team overvalues the ball. While I get the point that not all TOs are bad and that the sheer number of TOs doesn’t tell the story, statsheet does, and it’s not good for this theory. The average TO% for title teams in the past 13 seasons is 18.6%, and that number’s been trending down recently. Self coached teams in that span (including Illinois) have averaged a 20% TO rate. The only teams to finish with over a 20% TO rate on the season and an NCAA title were the back-to-back UF teams that finished at 20.9% in each of those seasons. Now, I get that there could be an argument made that giving a kid the quick hook makes them play tight and makes them more TO prone, rather than less, but that’s the only way to justify not taking corrective action. Whatever conclusions you draw from that, though, it’s clear that we need to turn the ball over a lot less than we have been. Unsurprisingly, this is the same thing Newell concluded in his article about improving our offense.

4. Take advantage of Match-ups: I generally agree here and recent talk from Self makes me the he does too. He’s talked about playing one of our many wings at the 4 for an extended period. This may be his plan for AW3, and would explain why his transfer hasn’t been announced yet. He also talked about trying Selden at the point to create Deandre Kane/Marcus Smart type mismatches there. Selden wasn’t particularly good at posting up smaller guards (and this was only tried a little bit at the beginning of last season), but it’s certainly something he could add to his game this year.

5. Be Bold: Boldness isn’t something that’s easily measured, so I don’t really have much to say for or against it statistically, but the suggestion to ‘always think out of the box’ gives me pause. Thinking outside the box certainly can be good, but the box exists for a reason. Boldness is salt. A little goes a long way. Too much, though, is the fastest road to ruin.

6. Accept Zone Defense: I definitely felt like we needed to have a zone D that we could run without Embiid in the game, but I certainly wasn’t in favor of an ‘all in’ switch to zone. Although this team was the worst defensive team of the Self era, let’s not overstate the problem. That worst team finished ranked 34th in defensive efficiency on Kenpom. That’s not title team material, but it’s not an all-hands-on-deck situation either. It’s also not strictly speaking true that Self is anti-zone. His past teams have played some zone, but generally, he’s reserved using it for games where we’re having trouble guarding a player (like Derrick Rose in 2008 or Robbie Hummel in 2012). Clearly, though, time is spent on it. He had a 3-2 zone this season, but the big problem was that it was worse than the below-standards man D. I thought he could work a triangle and 2. HEM thought a 1-3-1 would be best. Either way, though, my guess as to why zone went away this year altogether is that the 3-2 went so abysmally that Self gave up on spending time on it when there were so many other things that demanded attention with this team. As for how it affects our post season, 8 of the past 13 title teams played man to man as their primary half-court D, and of the ones that played zone, 4 of 5 were zone/press teams (Maryland, UF x2, and 'ville). Syracuse is the lone straight zone team to win it all in recent history. It makes sense to me, though, that zone press teams are more successful given what pressing does to begin with. The biggest problem with running zones is that they can be exposed by shifting the ball around, so if there’s less time available to open up a seam in the zone, there’s a lesser chance that it gets scored on. Given that, if you truly want to be all in on zone, then a zone/press is probably the way to go. @jaybate 1.0 has suggested that morphing Ds will be the future. He may be right, but statistics don’t exist for the future, and no team playing a true morphing D has won it all yet (though Florida used a mix of zone and trapping man after the press). That said, I’m fine with zone as an ‘as needed’ option. To date, no one has shown me the data to suggest that switching up to ‘throw off’ the opponent is a significantly better plan.

7. Cultivate Three Point Shooting: Newell touched on this point and there’s no denying it: KU under Self has pretty consistently had a lower 3PA% than most teams and certainly every other championship team. Now remember what I said about numbers not lying, but people doing it? Newell doesn’t quite lie, but he makes a critical error in explaining why he thinks shooting more threes is important. He points out that given the NCAA averages for shooting % on 2pt and 3pt field goals, 3 pointers are more efficient, yielding 1.035 ppp vs .97 for 2 pointers. This, however, is a really misleading statistic because it lumps all 2pt shots together, when there are really two distinct types: shots at the rim, and 2pt jump shots. Most stats lump these things together, but the good folks at hoop-math break it out (unfortunately, though, they only have 3 years worth of data), and when you see the break out two things become clear: first, the reason 2 pointers are less efficient as a whole is that the average FG% on 2pt jump shots isn’t much higher than it is for 3 pointers without the added benefit of the extra point; and second, the 3 pointers that Self is giving up are largely becoming shots at the rim, and these shots are a LOT more efficient than even 3s. Looking at this year’s numbers alone, KU took nearly 5% more shots at the rim than average D-1 teams and shot over 6% better on those looks for a total of 1.34 ppp on those shots. Even average teams get 1.21 ppp on shots at the rim, so I think Self’s dogged determination to get the ball inside to score really is the best idea. That said, we do still need credible 3pt shooters to keep defenses honest, and that’s something that was sorely missing this year. Even our guys that were designated gunners didn’t shoot all that well, and we finished slightly under the average for a D-1 team from deep. Does that mean accepting quick 3s? I’m not sure that’s the answer. If I had a subscription to Synergy Sports and the time, I’d figure it out, but I’m out of luck on both counts. What I will say is that all too often I saw our shooters pass up open 3s to go back inside after the ball came out. They should all have the green light at that time, I would hope. There were also a few times (like Mason’s needless shot fake and drive to the basket after Traylor’s steal off the press during the Stanford game when there were two defenders in the paint and no one near him) where players should obviously have taken a quick 3 rather than looked to go inside. That said, I only recall players with carte blanche shooting immunity after they’d become highly trusted (the Morris twins as Jrs were allowed to take trailing 3s, Sr. Tyshawn could should as much as he wanted, EJ wasn’t gun shy, and even Selden didn’t get benched for shooting quickly this year), so it’s really an individual thing as best as I can tell.

If HEM’s message to Self this off-season is ‘free your mind’, my message is ‘do the maths’. Newell pointed out to an irate poster in his article that data-driven paradigms in sports are really only in their infancy. There’s a long way to go and a lot that can be achieved with new models. As key as someone like Andrea Hudy has been for KU’s consistent success, we may be in want of a brain builder to match what we’ve gained from our resident body builder. With the resources and data at his disposal, I’m sure Self could get a lot more out of a good quant than what I can glean just from reading raw data.

Lastly, @jaybate 1.0, I saw your post about network models of guard play and I’m totally intrigued but haven’t had a chance to give it much thought. Keep it in the back of your brain for the fall, cause I’m sure I’ll want to revisit it then.

Svi is pretty much a handful of tweaks away from being the best player in a Jayhawk uniform since Paul Pierce, and I say that without hyperbole. If through this year and next summer he gets a little stronger, gets a little more consistent with his j, and finishes just a little better, he will be the player of the year next season (provided the team isn’t too balanced). I’ve honestly never seen a freshman that plays at his level of BBIQ. He plays like a junior 6 games into the season.

Duke has released Semi Ojeleye to transfer. They had him listed at 6’8" and 230 lbs. Ojeleye was interested in KU, but never recruited as we had an overabundance of wings (also, it’s well known that Self has some enemies within the in state AAU world). As far as recruiting goes, this is significant for three reasons: 1) we’re unlikely to sign a SF in this class, 2) it frees up some room for Brandon Ingram to commit to Duke (which I think will now be incredibly likely), 3) given his size and skill set, he’d be an excellent back up if we miss on Bragg, which is looking more and more likely each day. I’d love to sign some size in the next class, but getting Ojeleye now and having him sit out a season means he can slot right in after Ellis leaves and alleviates some of the need for another big, as he can play both forward spots. I’d easily take him and a good center for the year. He hasn’t named any potential schools just yet.

@HighEliteMajor said:

Remember Simien and Marcus? Both had pretty sweet fade away shots, and turn around jumpers. The simple problem with Ellis is that defenders do not have to respect him beating them going backward.

I’ve been beating that drum for the last 3 years. Everything about Perry’s skillset says he should be a better version of Marcus Morris. Instead, he struggles against the sorts of defenders that Marcus would routinely embarrass by using his footwork, touch, and turnaround J. George Niang is a full inch shorter and could barely clear a broom handle in his first two years at ISU, but he has a turnaround and a fallaway hook that allowed him to still get looks against the likes of Jeff Withey and Joel Embiid. THIS is where losing Danny Manning has killed us in terms of what our big men can do. Norm Roberts has delivered the goods on the recruiting trail, but he just can’t develop bigs the way Manning could.

@HighEliteMajor I don’t have any new info that would change me from where I stood a month or so ago. Jerry Meyer having us over UK gives me some hope, but I won’t be surprised if he changes his prediction between now and then. The one thing I will say is don’t count out Illinois. He has been tweeting about them a bit lately, and the timing of this commitment is so odd. I could reasonably see that he’s looking at KU and UK and thinking, I’m not going to play as much as I’d like given who they’ll have back. Karl Towns and WCS are the only two guaranteed to leave for the NBA this year. Big Cliff might make that leap on KU’s side, but that’s about it. The weird part of the Illinois theory is that as far as I know, Bragg has never set foot in Champaign, but then again, we got Julian Wright site unseen, so it’s hardly unheard of. The thing that really kills my optimism, though, is that KU’s staff really hasn’t had the kind of significant contact lately that UK and UI have.

The downsides of missing on Bragg are obvious. He’s a 2-3 year player in all likelihood, and a very talented scorer. On the other hand, missing on Bragg could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Although I’ve compared Bragg to Darrell Arthur, he could turn out to be another Perry Ellis. That’s not to impugn Ellis, but what we need in our rotation for next season isn’t another finesse tweener, and you run that risk with Bragg. But Bragg to UK would all but guarantee that they’re out of spots for post players and that would strongly bolster our positions with Zimmerman and Diallo.

So long and short, I don’t think we’ll win this battle, but it could spell us winning the war. Always look on the bright side of life.

The headline for this thread really should have been “BIG SHOE COMES THROUGH FOR KU”.

Although this is an interesting read, the source seems incredibly dubious. There is no such newspaper as the Pasadena Post. And I can’t find Michael Miller connected with the AP or any other legit org. I’m no fan of Calipari and he has been caught cheating in the past, but this doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

@drgnslayr The NCAA will never, ever, EVER force a school to vacate a title. I guarantee you that if Mario clanked the miracle, Derrick Rose’s situation would have been overlooked. Same thing if Chris Webber’s infamous timeout never happened. There are a lot of reasons it won’t happen, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to get the title under those circumstances anyway. We lost the game, we didn’t earn it, and it’s better that the asterisk appears by the word Syacuse in the book of life than by the word Kansas.

@drgnslayr Couldn’t be more simple. Syracuse isn’t putting a whole lot of energy recruiting top guys from outside the area. At KU we have to. Sure, there’s the occasional Ellis or Simien, but the amount of top talent coming out locally or even regionally is tiny. Plus lately we’ve been going for the best of the best, competing head to head with guys that usually have Duke, UNC, and, of course, UK on their lists, not to mention the odd UF, UCLA, or Zona. Boeheim has set his sites on more mid-tier guys lately, much the same as Rick Pitino. Whether or not you go for the top 10 vs the top 50 is a debate that’s been rehashed a million times on our various forums, but as long as Self is competing head to head with Calipari and Consonants, we’re going to be looking like this every year.

@DoubleDD I don’t think there was any tampering on KU’s part with Chukwu. When the whole Kevin Young/Steve Fisher thing went down in 2011-12, the story from both Self and Young was that Young’s coach contacted him about an opportunity to play for KU, which led to Young contacting Self. When Self found out that Young was still committed to play for SDSU, he cut him off and told him to officially re-open his recruitment (ie, tell Fisher) or they’d have nothing more to say to one another. That’s what Kevin did, and the rest is history. Now Fisher saw this as tampering, and I can understand his feelings, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t think anything like that happened with Chukwu (although, we could find out that that’s not the case), and I wouldn’t call what happened with Conner Frankamp tampering either, and he up and left KU identically to how Chukwu up and left Providence. At any rate, you’re right about dog eat dog. There’s nothing wrong with KU profiting from Providence’s loss.

Is there any other former KU pg you’d rather have mentoring Frank and Devonte?

@drgnslayr Actually, Emmanuel Malou was drawing attention from high major programs, and KU did indeed offer him days before he declared for ISU. I’m not surprised it didn’t show up in Rivals or ESPN, as they do a pretty bad job of keeping things current, and it was over before we really even got started.

Malou was already pretty much a done deal since the Clones had been working on him for a couple years and he’d played some ball in Des Moines. Still, he isn’t your typical JuCo prospect. He’s seen as a guy with a shot to be an NBA role player. He handles the ball very well for his size, and can score at all 3 levels. Imagine Georges Niang, but with athleticism and length. Either way, I imagine KU would have been pretty happy with him, and ISU is getting a guy that could really cause us some grief on occasion. But we’ll see.

At any rate, Bolden is the prize this season (at least in my mind) as Cheick was last season (again, in my mind, and damn, let him play already!). Some mix of Azubuike, Herard, Allen, and Lightfoot could fill in the rest (and, of course, Giles, but let’s be real), but man, oh man, we gotta get Bolden.

@RockkChalkk There are only 3 names that cause me to visibly shudder when I see them on a commentating crew: Knight, Raftery, and Vitale.

Knight is a master of the game, but he frequently mixes up players and repeats comments. Basically every shot he’s ever seen could have been improved with a head/ball fake. He was moved to the SEC beat a couple years ago. I don’t know if he’s still announcing games, but it’s better if he isn’t.

Raftery is not a master of the game, nor of color commentary. “Onions!” and “man-da-man” have to be two of the stupidest catch phrases ever uttered by a grown man. The former is probably especially cutting to me because he used if after Ali Farokhmanesh buried us with an ill-conceived 3ptr in 2010. #NeverForget

Vitale, also a failed coach, is nevertheless an extremely warm, caring, and good man. I hate his voice and his even stupider catch phrase. Still, I do have a roundabout appreciation of him thanks to Grantland’s Mark Titus, who has turned Vitale’s frequent Andy Rooney-esque asides into a regular and highly entertaining diversion in his college hoops power ranking articles. That, and in real life, Vitale is such a wonderful human being, I think he deserves all of the success he’s had as a spokesperson of sorts for college basketball, even if I don’t care for his delivery.

If you’re feeling the burn of ESPN3 blackouts, find a free VPN to connect to outside the blackout zone and use that to launch ESPN3. Free VPNs are really slow, but ESPN3 only checks where you’re connecting from when the stream launches, so you can launch the stream, then disconnect from the VPN and enjoy KUBBall at normal broadband speeds. That’s what I’ve been doing to watch the exhibitions and late night. Time Warner can kiss my butt as far as that goes.

I, for one, LOVE those jerseys. Maybe the best alt jerseys they’ve played in during Self’s tenure. Hope we see them a lot. Hell, I’d take those over our regular one every game.

@JayHawkFanToo said:

I am sorry but the use of that word is offensive whether on lyrics or as a pejorative term. Many prominent African American have spoken against the use of the word in rap music (along with other offensive terms) as it helps trivialize it; even “cool” people such as Jason Withlock have written and condemned the use of the word. It seems to me a double standard that has been tolerated because of political correctness.

For starters, aren’t you the one making the argument for political correctness? You’re saying, ‘I find a word offensive, therefore so must everyone else, and they should modify their behavior to comport to my sensibilities!’ That right there is the Webster’s definition of PC policing. Not every black person has to agree to the terms of its usage in order for it to be okay that a lot of them do. And for those that choose to, I think they’d argue to you that the whole point is to trivialize the word and rob it of it’s power.

Rap music is popular with young people of all races but apparently only black people (oops, am I allowed to say black anymore?) can say the words and not people of others races? That is BS. This would be the equivalents of saying only Hispanic people can call each other one of the many disparaging terms such as wetback, but people of other races could not? I don’t think so. If African Americans want to stop the use of the “N” word, they should start by doing it themselves…“do as I say and not as I do” has never been and never will be a good way to set an example.

Secondly, why do you care about the double standard? Do you want to be able to say the N word? What is it that you think is lost or gained by one group having exclusive rights to a word that is about them? You might as well be complaining that you can’t hit a woman. I mean sure, it’s a double standard, but there’s nothing desirable about regaining the right, and there’s little to fear from being struck yourself (Ronda Rousey not withstanding). Besides, that double standard isn’t unique to blacks nor Hispanics, for that matter.

There has been a long standing social convention that members of a group, especially a group considered a minority, are allowed to use certain words and phrases or express ideas or tell jokes about the group that might be considered derogatory when uttered by outsiders. This extends to white people as well, or at least it used to when whites weren’t considered homogeneous. My father is full-blooded Sicilian (as is pretty much his entire family), and his complexion is white as can be. Still, when he was a young man there were towns, neighborhoods, and institutions where he was either not welcomed or might encounter open hostility because he wasn’t the right kind of white. The Irish, Polish, Slavs, Germans, Jews, and Catholics have all faced that kind of discrimination in this country’s history, even those white as snowflakes. Each of those groups also developed their own jokes and language based on reclaiming elements from that derision in order to render them harmless. I’m sure everyone here has heard an ethnic joke regarding at least one of those groups at sometime in their lives. And as each of those groups became more a part of the mainstream, that element of the culture began to fade because it wasn’t needed any longer.

Finally, it’s not as if black people are okay with other black people using the N word in all contexts either. The first time I visited Las Vegas, I was waiting for a bus, having finished breakfast, when a homeless black man went up to another black man, who was waiting to go home from his night shift (I would guess this guy was a cook or some kind of custodian because his uniform was dirty), and started asking him for money. The homeless man kept talking about how they were N words (with an a) and how N words stick together and this and that, but the guy didn’t want to give him any money. The homeless man started getting belligerent, and finally started saying that the man wasn’t an N word with an a, but an N word with an er because he wouldn’t stick up for him. The guy then became enraged and started shouting at the homeless man for being a shiftless N word (again with an er) and for being the reason the word existed in the first place. At this, the homeless man slunk away the bus stop and went down the next couple blocks to beg from the people at that stop, having been thoroughly humiliated in front of the rest of us, none of whom were black ourselves.

Anyway, I’m not trying to single you out here or silence. But I genuinely don’t understand your perspective on the matter. Again, you seem to want to rail against being PC, but what you’re demanding is political correctness. There’s no two ways about that. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that the term racist itself has become something akin to the N word to us. I mean, I bet you most white people wouldn’t even blink at being called a cracker, and most kids (white or black) have probably never even heard the word honky before, but call a white person racist and that’s about the worst thing you can say about them.

The thing about it is, it’s true to some extent. That isn’t to single out whites. I think everyone has racial prejudices. It’s kind of impossible not to. Nobody gets to spend time with people from every part of the world and learn about their culture and values, so we invariably retain some short hand or misconceptions based on our limited experiences. I think the combination of the inability to recognize that fact and get over being criticized about it is a big part of why race relations haven’t really improved in this country for the past 30 years. Minorities want to talk about racial issues and their experiences vis a vis race with white people, but white people are so concerned with that extremely toxic label that, even knowing in their hearts that they harbor no hate for others, they don’t want to engage and chance that word sticking. If we’re ever going to get past it, I think it’s incumbent on both sides to change their behavior. Whites need to stop either putting their heads in the sand or blaming minorities that racial problems exist, and minorities need to stop wielding the R word like a sledgehammer to silence those with differing viewpoints and be willing to engage whites on their own terms if they really want dialogue.

This turned into way more of a rant than I intended it to, but I really do want to hear what you have to say, so please consider this a hand extended in camaraderie and not an open palm meant to chide.

A very good look at Smart’s bad acting

@JayHawkFanToo I still don’t buy into your definition of political correctness here. I think I agreed with you on the point that blacks and other minorities are quick to cry racism when facing criticism. Did I not call it a sledgehammer? You’re right that my analogy of the double standard of women being able to get away with hitting men but not each other didn’t match what you’re getting at, but again, it is still the case that blacks are allowed to criticize each other, as are Asians, Hispanics, Jews, etc, etc, including various white groups, so I don’t see where the political correctness element comes in. Everyone is allowed to say certain things about their own group in the same way that everyone is allowed to bad mouth their own families, but it would be considered untoward to speak poorly of another person’s family unless you’re especially close to them.

As for whether or not that is right or wrong, I think that’s up to the individual to decide. If it offends you, so be it, but that doesn’t make you the voice of authority in the matter. And again, demanding that everyone comport to your sensibilities on the issue in order to avoid offense is a form of political correctness. What you describe as ‘demeaning’ one’s own race, another might find harmless, or even empowering.

I’m also quite certain that the phenomenon of celebrities being allowed to maintain their social status in the face of domestic violence accusations extends well beyond the boundaries of race. Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Shawn Penn, and Bill O’Reilly are all white men that have all been accused or found guilty of violence against women and continued to enjoy their star status, and that’s hardly the tip of the iceberg. I think it says more about celebrity culture than about race relations or double standards.

I don’t know for certain that you’re not a minority, but I wouldn’t say it’s just an assumption. I drew that conclusion based on your own choice of words and attitudes and what my experiences have been like. I admit my deduction could be wrong, but I don’t see how it would change the tenor nor the substance of the conversation. That said, you’re nowhere near the least PC person I will or have ever met. I know comedians. They’re the least PC people in the world. You’ve self-identified as a conservative in the past and, in my experience, conservatives tend to be very PC just like liberals tend to be very PC, especially when you get to the extremes of the spectrum. The only difference between the two is that what one describes as politically correct, the other would simply call correct. My saying that black people (and other minorities) need to change their behavior if they want to be able to discuss race issues with white people isn’t political correctness either. You said yourself that criticizing black people is politically incorrect, and there I have laid a criticism upon them. Were you trying to say that white people not being allowed to say things that might offend black people is politically correct? That I can buy.

Finally, if I don’t understand your perspective, there is plenty you can say. You can make an effort to extend dialogue and explain yourself in other terms rather than getting defensive about it. Not that you owe me any such explanation. I’m not here to make demands of you. But if you’re not understood in the way that you meant to be, you’re not powerless to do anything about that. So please, if I have misunderstood you, take the opportunity to explain yourself, if you’re interested. If not, I’ll live.