Best posts made by MR11

@benshawks08 100% agree and see what you are saying but doesn’t mean that them leaving can still be a positive for KU. Those are 2 programs that we would have a hard time beating out for B12 champions, so we now have a much better change of winning the B12 and making college playoffs which would have been otherwise unlikely.

I think people are getting a little too caught up in valuing how much money your program is making vs how much you are winning. I know more money means better player but I firmly believe the fan experience is better with a slightly worse quality team that competes for B12 titles than a better overall team playing to be middle of the pack/bottom feeders in the SEC.

Now if in 5-10 years down the line and KU is king of the B12 and then getting walloped in the playoffs every time we make it there (gonzaga type situation in basketball) I may change my mind, but this team has a long way to go before getting there and I doubt anyone is seriously complaining if that is were the program is at.

I will never really fault coach for not giving a player a guarantee they will start. Sell in a role for them, yes. Say we have a spot that is theirs for the taking, sure. But if a someone thinks that they don’t need to perform day in and out to get minutes, than they are going to cause problems for the program eventually.

To go one further, KU was also the better team in the OSU game. This team was a few plays away from being 11-1 and sitting one game away from playoff football. That hurts a bit but also goes to show this is one of the greatest program turnarounds in football history.

You raise a good point with UT/OU leaving there is going to be a power vacuum in football. If Lance hangs around long enough, we have as good of a chance as any to fill that void.

@rockchalkjayhawk Griffen was already a better defender last year than Furph under an offensive minded coach, so would be a surprise if he ends up worse.

McCullar is a big loss on defense no doubt and that probably makes us worse, but I feel like the defense we all remember from last year was when he was injured. Slotting timbies in for the SG comparison and I find it hard to believe Storr will be a downgrade. Add that to hopefully the rest of the bench giving better defensive contributions and I think a top 10 defensive even isn’t a pipe dream.

I’ll back up my optimistic thinking by sharing that barttorvik 2025 prediction has us as the #4 defense (not that I put too much stock into that).

https://barttorvik.com/trankpre.php?sort=AdjDE&conlimit=

An update to @Texas-Hawk-10 old post on the history of the matchup:

Kansas and Duke have played 14 times all time. Duke leads the all time series with Kansas 8-6 with 12 of the 14 games being played on a neutral and each time only visiting the other once apiece. Kansas and Duke are tied 3-3 against each other in the NCAA Tournament and Kansas leads Duke 3-1 in the Champions Classic. Self is 4-2 vs Duke while at Kansas.

Dec. 1, 1985- Preseason NIT in New York: (3)Duke 92, (5)Kansas 86 (1-0 Duke)

Mar. 29, 1986- Final Four in Dallas: (1) Duke 71, (2) Kansas 67 (2-0 Duke)

Feb. 20, 1988- Allen Fieldhouse: (6) Duke 74, Kansas 70 OT (3-0 Duke)

Apr. 2, 1988- Final Four in Kansas City: Kansas 66, (5) Duke 59 (3-1 Duke)

Feb. 18, 1989- Cameron Indoor: (11) Duke 102, Kansas 77 (4-1 Duke)

Apr. 1, 1991- National Championship in Indianapolis: (6) Duke 72, (12) Kansas 65 (5-1 Duke)

Mar. 19, 2000- NCAA Tournament 2nd Round in Winston-Salem: (1) Duke 69, Kansas 64 (6-1 Duke)

Mar. 27, 2003- NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in Anaheim: (6) Kansas 69, (7)Duke 65 (6-2 Duke)

Nov. 23, 2011- Maui Invitational Finals: (6)Duke 68, (14) Kansas 61 (7-2 Duke)

Nov. 12, 2013- Champions Classic in Chicago: (5)Kansas 94, (4)Duke 83 (7-3 Duke)

Nov. 15, 2016- Champions Classic in New York: (7)Kansas 77, (1) Duke 75 (7-4 Duke)

Mar. 25, 2018- NCAA Tournament Elite 8 in Omaha: (4)Kansas 85, (9)Duke 81 OT (7-5 Duke)

Nov. 6, 2019- Champions Classic in New York: (4)Duke 68, (3) Kansas 66 (8-5 Duke)

Nov. 15, 2022- Champions Classic in Indianapolis: (6) Kansas 69, (7) Duke 64 (8-6 Duke)

Based on predictive sites, the line for the game should be around Duke -2/-3. Will be KU’s first game of the season where they aren’t favored, so excited to see how the team reacts.

@BShark too many regular season NBA games to be a good product is the main problem. Players take off games since playoff seeding can be a crap shoot, so really just playing for home court advantage which isn’t as important as players being healthy.

I generally agree with your sentiment but we have to check our biases with this. A neutral observer could watch a random NBA game vs a random college basketball game and I bet most would say the NBA game is more entertaining. College ball just has better intangibles and better tourney format which puts it over the top for me, but we are also usually watching a top 10 team play. I don’t know that I would say the same thing if I grew up in Boston a Celtics fan who went to a non basketball power college.

Kind of a leap to get that from what I said, we already dropped a home game and Houston doesn’t have to play at ISU, so winning the regular season B12 is not likely no. But I also don’t think it would be a massive upset if they did (~10% chance based on betting odds does seem about right).

I didn’t even say they will for sure be good enough to compete for a F4, just that is won’t take miracle for this team to improve to that level. They have shown they can hit that level of play in spurts, but do need some improvements in execution/consistency.

Honestly the main thing I worry about with this team is facing a team that can exploit Hunter on defense, because that is always going to be there.

@dylans man Greene definitely on my top 5 what could have been KU players list. Had the stroke and height to be one of the greatest spot up 3pt shooters of all time but couldn’t do anything else even to an average level to stay on the court.

Feel like with a Jaun/Shak/KJ/FB/HD lineup no one scores on either end

Yeah unless there are major rumblings about a player being unhappy, I’m not going to put too much stock in speculation of who is gone and who is back. Every comment here over the offseason was that Jamari was going to be gone and he is still with the team.

@drgnslayr I have a suspicion that Self always makes the we don’t practice zone comment to the media so opps don’t prep for it and he can pull it out in must win games to switch things up. Not that I think they practice it a lot, but I bet he runs zone scenarios before games he thinks he can use it.

@BeddieKU23 not a medical opinion by any means but greg gurley was on a podcast where he thought Bill was probably back to about 80%

@dylans said in So, Kansas Reinstated the Border War (for the Chiefs):

By that definition your grandpa’s elevator was a huge failure. No doubt he borrowed some money to build it, repaid the loan and successfully operated it for many years. However the money he accumulated came from the local community and so his success meant someone else local lost, therefore it was an economic failure under these terms. - a ridiculous statement that I believe in no way, but it seems to be your argument against the star bonds.

I don’t care to add to either side but lets keep a clear mind here and not argue in bad faith. Whatever hypothetical loan you are talking about would not have been paid back with taxes and can’t be compared to the star bonds.

Would likely have Flory and him for 2025 then. Would love this just as it means getting back to Bill’s early years where he had a few years to coach up the bigs instead of the years with Cliff/Cheick where we see flashes, but not consistency.

@stoptheflop Nothing wrong with a little speculation as long you keep in mind it is just that. We definitely don’t know for sure this is the same girl in all 3 cases and don’t know who committed the vandalism either. Interesting that this happened over two months ago and no charges have been filed even though there are witnesses.

Effort is needed but just as important for defense is intelligence. Knowing the scouting defense and where to be positionally is why average 4 yr athletes can be better defensive players than the majority of one and dones (i.e. the Brady Morningstar Effect). Effort gets you 90% of the way there, but a good offense/coach will recognize when a team is overextending and out of position because they are trying to do too much.

@Zabudda Furphy seems to be a better cutter than Gradey was so if teams guard him aggressively, he may be able to still exploit that. Even if not, that still would occupy the opponents best defender for the game and give everyone else a better matchup. That’s still good for a guy that was the 6/7th man a month ago.

Hunter is still over 40% from 3 from the season even with the 0-7 recently. Offense has looked good lately and I think we are looking for things to complain about if that is the concern right now.

Problem recently seems to be that the starters are playing so many minutes that the defensive intensity takes a hit. I worry about that less in march when the stakes are higher, but this team definitely plays down to their competition. That will make winning the b12 difficult.

Idk I’m not as down on this team as everyone else seems to be. They are kind of built for march with the only thing really missing is a good 6th man. It’d also be nice if we could get a little more scoring from our pg, but Dajuan has come up big for us before so not going to completely count him out. We go into the tourney completely healthy and I would pick KU as a good bet to get to the F4. And if timbies can tighten up his play a bit, a championship run is on the table.

Turns out this team can be pretty good with a healthy McCulla’ and Timby knocking down 3’s. Just have to hope that keeps up (and hope Bill has a plan to adapt the defense for teams that can expose Hunter’s slow recovery on screens).

I think the hesitancy is valid as the staff supposedly did have concerns about his athleticism, but seems like not enough to be a deal breaker. I agree with you for the most part and I personally wouldn’t expect him to become a starter, but think he can be a solid backup/secondary PG and spell Harris some mins without the offense suffering. If the only thing he does for the team is push elmarko to be better, I would slot this as a solid win.

@kjayhawks that’s putting a lot of stock into exhibition games with partial rosters to be making such surefire predictions. Lots of ball to be played still so lets enjoy the ride a little before putting this team in a box.

Counter argument to this: if Bill lets the players get away with mistakes/sloppy play, he is telling both that player and the rest of the team that there aren’t consequences for bad plays. You also want to give the players feedback on these mistakes so that they don’t become habits. Typically the sooner you get this feedback, the more impactful it is from a learning standpoint. Maybe letting the play a little more free flow helps in the short term, but it is always going to be better if you do so with proper muscle memory/habits built up. Maybe that means some players take longer to gel, but seems like trading short term gains for long term growth to me.

Yeah KJ has his offensive deficiencies, but man does he make up for them with the rest of his game. Also nice to see Griffen step up a bit in the 2nd half after really struggling in the 1st.

Only negative from the game was that Hunter, even outside of the ejection, was playing a sloppy. I know he was getting hacked, but can’t let that seep into your decision making. I remember one specific possession where he got swiped at at the top of the 3 pt line and you could tell he was rattled from it because he immediately tried to drive and back down his man which isn’t his game at all. When that didn’t work he settled for a 15 ft fade away contested jumper with probably 15 sec left on the shot clock. Freshman level play there.

Because our best player isn’t injured forcing us to start a failed transfer and two freshmen that aren’t quite ready. I also think it is reasonable to expect the team to continue to gel and improve through B12 play.

@kuballin10 Dude I have been nothing but straightforward, how is me summarizing my original post as thinking “compete at the highest level” twisting of words? Is a number 1 seed not qualifying as playing high level college basketball? I’ll even post it below so you dont have to scroll back to see it. You don’t need to start every message with a snarky comeback, I’m not trying to attack you here just answering your questions.

“Yes? Auburn look good but who else are you really scared of that makes you think they can’t? KU’s biggest opponent is themselves and there is no reason that they can’t improve to the point where they are competing for a 1 seed. Not going to say it is a lock to happen, but there is definitely a “real chance”.”

There is a lot of talk here focused on lineups, NIL, and transfers, but everyone is missing the one common factor in all of Self’s F4 teams. What we need to turn around the KU basketball skid is another Teahan.

Feel like Flory needs to be watching tape of the Houston bigs cause he can be a monster on the offensive glass too

@drgnslayr said in Norm Roberts Retires:

Oops. No, not now! I meant a phase out. 1 or 2 years. We probably learn more about his timed exit with Roberts’ replacement. I keep hearing Chris Beard’s name as a replacement for Self. Is this real? I like his abilities as a coach, but this is KU! Are we going to be able to keep our reputation for long coaching runs? I wonder if that will be possible moving forward!

Agreed, we aren’t the SEC. Honestly is embarrassing to me that there is even speculation that KU would go with Beard and I’m hopeful it is just fan chatter.

Seems like a real shot but definitely going to be competition for him. Missing Sarr might end up a blessing if this frees up budget and lets us land Williams.

Agreed that interconference transfers aren’t my favorite but with conferences so large now, you are ignoring a large portion of the transfer pool by not looking at them.

https://twitter.com/_liljoe1/status/1379847111349534725

I think our 3 most likely losses on the schedule are:

• vs. Duke (Never play well in the CC)
• @WVU
• @OkieSt (Bill never wins here and I am higher on OSU than most this year since they get forte back)

Loss 4/5 might come from @ISU/@Oklahoma but we should be favored in both of those games.

@Zabudda I’d say Furph is a scorer, just not in isolation situations. But that seems to be the only thing missing from his offensive game.

Agreed that his defense has also been notably improving and he even notched 3 steals in the OU game. It seems like he can still get hunted a bit when his man has the ball, but he is not much of a liability in off ball situations.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article120910448.html

The latest update on the case: Bragg filing for self defense and should have an update on the motion within five days.

Idk what the comments were, but probably shouldn’t have removed the student seating that they did if fan environment/energy was the priority

Just to get the rumor mill churning on this, I’d say it is payback from this girl after the Bragg incident. It would match up with the other rumors saying this is the same girl in both the Bragg and Vick case and that she embellished both times.

Hypothetically if Morris is cleared of all charges, would anyone be OK with him staying? Doubt we ever get that level of clarity with this situation, but even if we did I’m having a hard time coming up with a scenario where I wouldn’t want KU just to be done with him. This is your second chance, so it is your responsibility to make sure you dont put yourself in these situations. Plus him tweeting what he did after the news broke goes to show he doesn’t understand the severtity of the situation.

@jayballer73 He is more a comparable size to Frank. I believe Nic Moore was on the wrong side of 5-9

The KC star article mentioned him retweeting someone who was complaining about false accusations ruining lives. So the content wasn’t the worst, but not knowing when to lie low shows even more poor decision making.

Roster depth is not great but should be ok as long as the gaurds don’t get injured. Probably won’t have as good of practice bodies but who’s to say how much impact that has. Bill never plays more than 8-9 at the end of the season and we at least have that. Can’t say I’m not nervous with Kevin’s injury history though

@RockkChalkk your edit is quite inflammatory, this obviously wouldn’t be the case with any other player. Morris has a history of domestic violance and only got a plea deal because the victim wasn’t going to testify. That case has plenty of evidence that he shows little respect from women and it is unlikely he would have gotten off if she did. Could he have changed? Yes, but in my eyes he needs to prove that and a new accusation popping up is not how you do that.

I would maybe be comfortable with him staying if there is some sort of combination of no evidence of any wrong doing, victim has a history of false accusations/proof she is looking for a payout, and his behavior that night by witnesses is impeccable. But knowing the case was already forwarded to prosecutors makes me think the likelyhood of all that minimal.

Mostly curious if the F4 will be vacated

@BShark @Woodrow I don’t usually get too excited about reclassifications for 5 stars but seems like he would have to stay here for 2 years before being draft eligible?

If not, '25 may be better. I feel like 1 and done reclasses rarely work. Even the best 17 yr olds tend to struggle to have a significant impact their first year in college.

@BeddieKU23 more apt to say that about Udeh though. Zuby at least ended up with a coach comparable to Self. Not that rick is as good at developing big men, but he is still one of the best all time coaches.

@approxinfinity seen around that griffen is rated as an above average defender. Can hope that going from Nate Oats to Bill improves that a bit more.

At least with having lineup depth, there is actually some motivation for the players to play D vs timbies getting to coast for 25 mins a game (Sorry for bringing up bad memories, just still can’t believe how much he played last year).

@rockchalkjayhawk said in What to Expect at the Champions Classic?:

Another poster said something earlier that I was also wondering about…why were we doubling and trying to recover to the typically wide open Kentucky shooters? Odd coaching when Kentucky had no big of concern. That seemed the main problem to me for awhile.

I would guess the doubling was to keep Hunter out of foul trouble and Bill wasn’t as afraid of Kentucky’s 3 point shooting.

Don’t mean to interrupt the shitting on kuballin, but was wondering if anyone had a program vibes update on if Kugel’s transfer will get worked out?

@drgnslayr to go along with the low post scoring, feels like out offensive rebounding is down. Hunter is good at what he does so it is hard to complain, but it is a lot harder to get your own miss with his 4 ft jumpers than when you are shooting from under the basket.

Easiest thing for me that the team can improve is to lower their turnovers. I know a high TO rate is a symptom of high assists since we are passing the ball more, and I am fine with the TOs when trying to make a play, but we seem to still have a high number of sloppy ones. Juan even seems to be ending drives every so often with a prayer of a pass and I can’t ever remember him doing that in the past. Know that is pedantic but this team’s offensive strength is ball movement and being the best passing team is country is what they should hang their hat on.

I can understand why Pitino rubs people the wrong way but college basketball is definitely more entertaining with him in it.

Self is at a min staying through next year, so realistically we are talking about Pitino at 74 being hired. Boeheim made it to 78 which I could see Rick passing but probably best case getting 5-6 years out of him. Could honestly only see KU considering him as a fallback option.

Oats and Wade are both options I would be OK with, but I’m not pushing Self out the door for them.

@jayhawks2010 devil’s advocate, he’s a 6’-9" wing who has averaged some 16/7 over the last few games at over 40% from 3 and has shown high level cutting ability. NBA loves wing players and there are prospects taken in the 1st round every year putting up less number than that.

I’m not saying he’ll go, but if he continues at his current pace there will be a team willing to draft him in the 1st round. I think there would be a decent chance he stays though because he has top 5 pick potential going in the draft next year.

@Texas-Hawk-10 You say that like Oats was accused of being an accessory. Maybe I am not remembering it correctly but he wasn’t trying to cover up anything and had not involvement leading up to the shooting. He was just selfish in not wanting to sit his star player and hold him accountable. IDK how that is anywhere close to being comparable to direct involvement of a crime and doing so kind of minimizes the severity of Beard’s domestic assault.

I still think Beard’s is worse but can see how you could reason Golden’s is comparable so won’t argue with you there.