Stop the Self hate - Kansas coach measures up in March

Unfortunately, is an Insider story, so much won't show. http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/insider/story/_/id/19014373/kansas-jayhawks-coach-bill-self-measures-march-elite-eight-losses

A lot of good points - will post some later.

Quote from story: "If you go to the tournament every year for the better part of two decades and win just one (ha) national title, all of those annual losses have to have occurred somewhere between the round of 64 and the national championship game. Why does it seem like so many of Self's losses happen in the Elite Eight?

That's easy. Self's seven No. 1 seeds at Kansas have under-performed when it comes to reaching the Final Four, but they've actually over-performed in terms of getting to the Elite Eight. Since 1985, 70 percent of top seeds have reached a regional semifinal. For Self's No. 1 seeds at Kansas, that number has been 75 percent."

Thanks for the additional info - I got distracted for a while. The bit about Coach K was one I planned to post. Another was this:
"We love March Madness but we don't love randomness
To be sure, Self's no Tom Izzo when it comes to March success. (Actually, Tom Izzo isn't looking much like Tom Izzo anymore, but I digress.) Compared to the number of wins a team would be expected to record based on their seed, Self's 33 tournament victories during his tenure as coach at KU is actually about four wins shy of the average.

Given that Self has taken 14 separate KU teams to the tournament, we would, on average, expect to see each Jayhawks team win 0.29 games more than they have. In other words, attaining that average would yield one additional tournament win every three years. That's measurable, but I'm not sure it's commensurate with the perception of Self as somehow uniquely benighted in March."

Speaking of Izzo - did anyone notice that he stood on the court during game action? Also, he was constantly talking with one of the refs - strange and unacceptable IMHO.

I will guarantee you that I will be making deals with the Devil himself next season when 14 in a row comes in to play! Until THAT is put to bed.....I won't be thinking of Elite 8 performance at all.

Now those bets are all off once NotO changes his signature line!

The last para from the story: "Maybe there is such an explanation, but I doubt it's "Bill Self suddenly becomes a much worse coach annually in late March." Who knows, maybe coaches stay about as good at what they do from game to game and see unexpected things happen to their teams anyway. Maybe that's why we watch."
When NotO changes his sig line to 14 next year, I believe some of the pressure will be off for a Final
Four trip. I still hope we make it next year - San Antonio 10 years later - how sweet would that be!!! Plus the best path of R1 & 2 in Wichita and Midwest Region in Omaha - all very doable from the eastern slope of the Rockies.

I agree. I did a bunch of research before the tournament on Self, K and Williams in the tournament since Self has been at KU. I tried to post it but it disappeared and then it was tournament time and I didn't want to jinx anything. Now I can't find my stats, but basically it showed that Self isn't really that far off from K and Williams in his tournament appearances (other than in NC's). They were all pretty close in that respect and UNC (I think) didn't even make the tournament for two of those years (I think our fans would go nuts if that ever happened). I didn't have the seedings, but I'm sure they were all similar overall. In addition, through last year's tournament, Self had a .702 % winning stat in the tournament, with K at .769 and Williams at .745--and they both have several more years in it. Finally, SportingNews did a ranking of teams overall from 2001 -2106 based on NC's, FF's, Championship games, SN player of year, all americas, total tournament wins and NBA picks. UNC was #5, Kentucky was #3, KU was #2 and Took #1. Not that shabby. And, only 4 teams who were #1 at the end of the regular season (before conf. tournaments) have one on to win it all. In fact, 8 teams who were either ranked in double digits or unranked have won it all--twice as many! Shows the difficulty of winning this thing. All that said, I hope he figures out a way to deal with his own stress about getting into the FF so that he doesn't continue to subconsciously affect the team and stress them out/tighten them up.