Best posts made by TheDrunkenJhawk

Thon Maker (#1 in class is 2016) is considering classifying to the class of 2015. Last I checked the crystal ball on 247sports says Ku is the odds on favorite to land him.

@Statmachine don’t forget Mykhailiuk

Do they?

In my opinion beating Oklahoma is going to be very important if we want a chance to win the conference because:

-Norman is a game that any team in the Big 12 could lose, getting a win their would give us a slight edge for now against ISU, OSU, UT, and Baylor.

-It would help our confidence. after OU we have to play KSU(#25 in the AP poll), @Iowa St (#9), Oklahoma St (#11), and then Baylor (#7). I would like to come out of that 4 game stretch with one loss and I would love to come out undefeated. But to get momentum going we gave to defeat Oklahoma.

How good is Oklahoma? I do not know. They did beat Texas and hung around with Michigan State, but they lost to Louisiana Tech and let teams like TexasA&M play close with them. I do know that they are good enough to give any team a run for their money in Norman.

In the previous two posts I meant “ball handling” where is says “panhandling”. Autocorrect is not being nice to me.

My personal opinion on this: We have a nine man rotation. I know Self would prefer to have eight but there are just too many good players on this team.

PG: Frank

SG: Devonté

3G: Wayne

PF: Perry

PF: Diallo

Key reserves: Greene Svee Traylor Lucas

I am going to boldly predict that Bragg doesn’t Crack the rotation but has a breakout year as a soph. It happened with Aldrich who was as highly recruited as carlton.

Please allow me to elaborate as to why I believe that Frankamp is better than Graham.

Devontés biggest strength is probably his ability to handle and pass the ball well. In the ncaa tourney 2 years ago CF showed that he had the ability to do that just as well as devonte. I believe he had something like 7 assists and 0 turnovers in the 2 ncaa games we played.

Then there is defense. DG is not a bad defender, but I think that Conner is just as good. While being less athletic he is a very crafty defender who always finds a way to stay in front of his man and annoy the cap out of the offense.

Finally there is the matter of scoring. This will be used as the tiebreaker in my analysis. While Graham is a more versatile scorer I believe that Frankamp has the advantage overall for one reason. Both Frankamp and Graham will be forced to play an off-the-ball combo guard position. This favors CF. Graham is more of a point while Frankamp seems to play the 1 and the 2 equally well. He has superior ability to try to run through screens and try to get an open look from three. If both players were going to run the point for their respective teams I would say that Graham is better, but that is not the case. Most of the time they will both be playing the 2.

I was sitting around thinking about the future of KU football, and what each position looked like, and I realized that the 2014 team could be pretty good if no one ends up being a huge bust (and I do realize that this is a pretty big if). Here are my projected starters: Offense: QB: Montell Cozart (So) WR: Nick Harwekk (Sr) WR: Rod Coleman (Sr) WR: Tony Pierson (Sr) RB: Darrian Miller (Jr) TE: Jimmay Mundaine (Sr) LT: Pat Lewandowski (Sr) LG: Ngalu Fusimalohi (Sr) OC: Jacob Bragg (Fr) RG: Mike Smithburg (Sr) RT: Dylan Admire (Jr)

Defense: LC: Jacorey Shepherd (Sr) RC: Kevin Short (Jr) NB: Dexter McDonald (Sr) FS: Cassius Sendish (Sr) SS: Isiah Johnson (Jr) LB: Ben Heeney (Sr) LB: Jake Love (Jr) LE: Andrew Bolton (Jr) NT: Keon Stowers (Sr) RT: Tedarian Johnson (Sr) Buck: Ben Goodman (Jr)

Special Teams KO: Trevor Pardula (Sr) P: Trevor Pardula (Sr) PK: Matthew Myman (Jr) or Michael Mesh (Jr) LS: Reily Jeffers (Jr) Hold: Blake Jablonski (Sr) Returns: Miller, Embree, Short, Shepherd

I was thinking that MSU’s starting lineup would be as following: Appling, Harris, Valentine, Dawson, and Payne. They would match up against UK like this:

Appling (6-1 Sr) vs Andrew Harrison (6-5 Fr) Harris (6-4 So) vs Aaron Harrison (6-5 Fr) Denzel Valentine (6-5 So) vs Alex Poythress (6-8 So) Branden Dawson (6-6 Jr) vs Julius Randle (6-9 Fr) Adreian Payne (6-10 Sr) vs Willie Cauley-Stein (7-0 So)

It looks pretty close. It will be fun to see who wins.

@KirkIsMyHinrich I don’t see Lyle beating out Oubre or Greene for the starting wing spots. Heck, I think it is more likely that our starting guards are Mason, Tharpe, and Oubre.

For the entire college basketball season it has been said that the best freshman point guard in the nation plays for Syracuse. Tyler Ennis was a five star recruit, and a McDonald’s All American, with offers from prominent colleges such as UCLA, Memphis, Illinois, Cincinnati, and defending national champion Louisville.

Ennis has helped the Orange to an undefeated start to the season, while starting at arguably the most important position on the floor he has averaged 12.0 ppg, 5.4 apg against only 1.4 topg, and 2.5 spg.

Then we have the challenger, a freshman who nobody talked about before the season started, who unlike Tyler Ennis, is not undefeated in his college career, but has helped his team bully it’s way into the AP polls. This person is named Marcus Foster. He was a three star recruit, with offers from Kansas St, Cal, Creighton, Oklahoma, Lehigh, and SMU. While these programs are respectable, they are not Louisville or Syracuse.

Foster was not a McDonald’s All American. He did not play in the Jordan Brand Classic. Few people who were not Kansas St fans had never heard of him before November. Some casual college fans still do not know who he is, and yet he is putting up numbers on par with Ennis. The freshman averages 14.0 ppg, 3.9 rpg, and 2.0 apg against 2.3 topg. He has also been credited for having excellent defense, and is high on the list of why Kansas State holds its opponents to 60.8 ppg (good for 19th in the country).

Have our Jayhawks already faced the best freshman point guard in the country? I would love to hear what others think.

Now that the Big 12 Season is over, I will post my superlatives:

1st Team:

Marcus Smart (I don’t want to put him here, but I have no choice)

Deandre Kane

Andrew Wiggins

Melvin Ejim

Joel Embiid

Second Team:

Juwan Staten

Markel Brown

Buddy Hield

Johnathan Holmes

Ryan Spangler

POY: Andrew Wiggins

Freshman of Year: Joel Embiid

Newcomer of year: Kenny Chery

6th man of year: Phil Forte

My Projections for NEXT years first team:

Juwan Staten

Marcus Foster

Buddy Hield

Georges Niang

Joel Embiid (Ryan Spangler or Johnathan Holmes if Embiid leaves)

No, he would probably be on my 3rd team but I only posted 1st and 2nd.

We do not need a new PG. People don’t seem to remember that Frank was only a freshman. He was also better than any freshman PG Self has ever had. He is better than Tyshawn as a Freshman, better than Sherron as a freshman, and he was 100 times better than Russel Robinson was as a freshman. If Mason makes to improvement from freshman to soph. year that every other PG under self (Robinson, Taylor, Tharpe, Collins) has done, he will not only be a serviceable PG but a well above average PG.

1. Frank Mason/Devonté Graham/Conner Frankamp
2. Wayne Selden/Conner Frankamp/Frank Mason
3. Kelly Oubre/Wayne Selden
4. Perry Ellis/Jamari Taylor
5. Cliff Alexander/Hunter Mickelson

Did not make rotation: Greene, Mykhailuik, and Lucas.

Neither svi nor Brannen played too poorly, but there are limited rotation spots and they didn’t seem as good as cf or graham.
I also think that Frankamp and Graham bring much needed ball handling to the game while svi and bg do not.

Wayne was a 2 who could slide over to the three.
He was recruited as a small forward by many schools out of high school.

Mario and Tt were combo guards.

Bill Self Lon Fred Huggins Tubby Trent Weber Barnes Ford Drew

I just checked Wow! cables tv listings for 7pm on November third and I could not find KU’s exhibition opener vs Washburn on any channel. According to the schedule that game is on Jayhawk TV. Does anyone know if I will be able to watch it? Thank you.

We can destroy Kentucky. Here is why.

1. They are slow. The players they rotate at the 3 are Trey Lyles and Alex Poythress. Both are better suited to play the four but are forced out of posandseldenandat interior depth. oubre and selden will blow by either of them. The Harrison’s are a little slow to be PG and SG as well…

2 they don’t have good shooters.
Similar to last years Kansas team they don’t have any dangerous shooters in there starting lineup. Devin Booker is good shooter coming off the bench, and Tyler Ulis is decent if he gets open as well. But for the most part we can pack in our defense and dare them to jack threes.

1. They are playing a platoon system. This means they will never have their 5 best players on the court at once. Their platoon system will also fail to wear us down because we are as deep as they are.

2. We have Bill Self. Cal is a good coach,but Bill Self is Bill Self.

1st team: Frank Mason

Juwan Staten

Buddy Hield (poy)

Lebryan Nash

Rico Gathers

2nd team: Monte Morris

Phil Forte

Isaiah Taylor

Georges Niang

Perry Ellis

All freshman team: Jevon Carter

Devaughtah Williams

Kelly Oubre (FOY)

Johnathan Motley

Mules Turner

All Newcomer Team Anthony Hickey

Lester Medford

Bryce Dejean-Jones

Tashawn Thomas (NcOY)

Jameel McKay

COY: Bob Huggins and Bill Self

I have been thinking about Carlton Braggs role on next year’s KU team. He will have Perry, Jamari, and Landen to compete wuth for playing time. We are also on the trail of blue chip PF/C recruits Thon Maker, Cheick Diallo, and Stephen Zimmerman. I believe that we will get one of those three players. I do not have any inside info on the recruiting of any of them, so I am just going to confide in 247s crystal ball and assume that we get Cheick Diallo for the sake of argument.

I have also been thinking about Brannen Greene’s role on next year’s KU team. Withholding a miracle, Brannen won’t start, but he will be one of the first players off the bench. Some of you see where I am going with this. Brannen has had some bright spots, and I believe he has a bright future. He has a beautiful stroke, good size for a guard, and is not without athletic ability. I do not believe that Brannen is a good player. He could sure use a red shirt year. He could work tirelessly in becoming a lockdown defender. He could also work on his handles, and on being able to drive past players to create penetration and make opposing defenders pay for getting up in his grill. After his journey of self improvement, he could unleash an epic Brannen 2.0 in the 2016-17 season. But he cannot redshirt because we will need him as a backup 3 guard next season. We cannot have Svi be our only guard off the bench, even if he does get a lot better. But there is a way to fix this problem: we give Brannens minutes to Carlton.

It is not impossible. If we start Frank, Graham, Selden, Ellis, and Diallo, then we could have Svi back up the 2 spot, Carlton back up the three, and have Traylor and Lucas back up the 4 and five, while always keeping in either Mason or Graham to play the point.

This may never work, as I have never seen Carlton play, but from my understanding he is a good shooter who is projected to play a stretch four in the college game. I also hear that he is rather quick and very athletic. If he has the shooting touch then he can score from the 3 spot. If he has the athleticism then he is just small enough that he can defend it at 6-9. He probably leaves a little to be desired from a ball handling, driving and passing standpoint at the three, but I cannot imagine him being much worse than Brannen at any of those three categories.

For comparisons sake, I believe that this would be similar to UKs use of Trey Lyles or Texas’s use of Johnathan Holmes at the three due to stacked frontcourt.

Where I said “panhandling” I meant “ball handling”.

Zing! Zong!

I think it’s possible that WSU can be better. They routed KU last year and have 3 starters including their 2 best players returning. Plus they have a pair of quality transfers coming in in Frankamp and Anton Grady. Then again in the WUGs ku played with a toughness and a defensive ability that they did not show last year. Here is how I think the starting lineups will compare.

Frank Mason > Fred VanVleet

Devonte Graham < Conner Frankamp

Wayne Selden < Ron Baker

Perry Ellis > Evan Wessel

Cheick Diallo = Anton Grady

The Selden vs Baker matchup is subject to change if Seldens play from Korea carries over to the season, but Baker has proven himself in the college game more than Selden at this point.

Bottom line these teams are fairly evenly matched and arguing for either side cannot be considered rediculous.