choking, a silly and insulting explanation

ive resisted posting responses to those whove used the choke word to describe certain players and our coach in terms of explaining saturdays game. i wasnt sure i cld post without breaking this boards rules for civility, but a few days of course give one the perspective to try to rebut such notions without so much emotion. firstly, my definition of a great coach is someone who has sustained success over a long period of time, who makes the whole better than the addition of the parts and who developes individual players over time to be better than they wld be anywhere else. on those three measures in my view self is a great coach, who when done will i think be viewed as the greatest ever. his unbeleivable conference run at ku is enough evidence of the sustained success but winning at illinois and tulsa too just further confirms the ku result. in terms of getting the team to be better than its parts i believe the case to be self evident. in those thirteen years of conference championships he has never had an nba all star ( tho wiggins and perhaps embiid will be) but instead has crafted successful teams with lots of very average players. he won a conference championship with nadir tharpe as his point guard. he won a conference championship with kevin young as his best big. he won with brady and tyrell, not the most athletic knives in the drawer. he coaches a system around the strengths and weaknesses of the players he has ( never more true than what he did this year). he gets players to play defense and get rebounds. he creates schemes to shut down star players on opposing teams with inferior athletes in many cases. travis releford comes to mind. do other coaches do this? of course. do they win conf titles 13 years in a row with ncaa invites every year. No. regarding developing players over time there is of course a long list but let me just focus on this years two seniors, frank and landon. frank shldve been at towson st and instead is POY at ku. does anyone seriously believe he wld be POY anywhere else? doesnt everyone see that bill MADE him. did frank work harder than any jhawk ever, of course. did self stay with him with many cldnt see the potential and build an offense around his unique set of skills. of course. landon doing what he did is frankly even more amazing given the abject lack of athleticism. but he was smart, he listened, he worked and self made him an asset despite the massive skepticism of the fan base and this board when he took the "advice" of the team to make landon the starter. so if hes such a good coach that he has massive sustainable success over time, and creates a real team and who gets players ( espec those who stay 4 years) to overachieve, why doesnt he go deeper in the tournament more often? the first answer is of course arithemetic-- hes there so often hes going to lose more often. and it looks worse because we are so often a one or two seed because of our success in season they go down as upsets. but are they really? i think the regular season is a coaches game. i think the early rounds in the tourney are a coaches game. at some point in the tournament tho i think it becomes a players game. the preparation time is shorter for sure which mutes the coaching advantage but more importantly the games come down to a few plays where the better players usually prevail. versus oregon we had one player on the floor who will get any nba minutes in his lifetime. oregon had three. so when dorsey and/ or brooks step back and rise over mason, graham anf vick to get clear looks for threes because of their size and skill are our players choking? when our guys dont get those same clear looks at the other end because the guys guarding them are taller and more athletic are they choking. so their shots found the bottom of the basket and ours clanked. simple. under the basket the head to head was even more glaring. jordan bell is the best athlete in college basketball. he made landon look like he was in high school. did landon choke? thats a huge insult to landon and its unwarranted. we dont underachieve in my view, we way overachieve. we have lots of gonzaga like players with an occassional OAD spinkled in. its structural. do we want to change that? i think not. most OADers wont come to ku because we make them play team basketball, they have to play defense and they have to go to class ( lonzo and his dad wld never come here). i wldnt want to compromise that ever. i will take the sustained in season success and the option we get every year to go as deep into the tournament as our talent and luck will take us. i urge us all the respect the massive effort and commitment our coach and players make. insulting them by accusing them of choking after they give their all is something i expect from kentucky fans. or mizzou fans. we are ku fans. we know basketball. we can see what we are and we can see what our opposition is. lets not take our dissapointment out on players who dont deserve that from us. okay, out of my system

Big G, I totally agree with your thinking across the board. Well said and I for one thank you for taking the time to put this in perspective. Thank You!!

Wow what a reply. I mean I'm speechless and that doesn't happen. I want to send this to so many people Thanks a ton for sharing this. I really truly appreciate it. Rock Chalk for Life!