Exposed

Tired team with no depth playing a fired up group of good players. So the loss is pretty understandable, and one loss at this point in the season doesn't mean much. However, it also exposed KU's weaknesses. Defense was a step behind all night, and there is not a really good defender on the team anyway, especially with Self forced to play so many guys so many minutes.
Not much of an inside game except for alley-oops. Shut down and/or contest the threes, and this team is pretty average offensively if that. They can't drive to the basket like last year, and the lack of height and depth are killers. Because they can't drive it, they don't shoot many free throws. Graham saved them with his bombs against Syracuse, but Dok is still very raw, and Newman...all Big-12, really Bill? Good defensive game plan by Washington, and I expect to see a lot of the same going forward.
If Preston can play, maybe they can figure out a way to win the league again, but this team's ceiling doesn't appear very high to me.

B2B loses at Sprint Center to Pac 12 teams. KU didn’t come to play, and played like garbage, other than Vick. No one saw this loss coming, HCBS has his material because ASU is going to come out hungry.

I didn't think Vick played well either, as Washington's game plan was to make him beat them. He scored 28 points, but with how they played us, he should have had 50. They guarded Dok and Vick with one guy and the other 3 with 4 guys. I have never seen a strategy like that employed and cannot believe we didn't score at a much higher rate. Every possession could have been either a 5 foot shot in the paint or a lob dunk.

I agree with you on Vick not playing very well. They left him open in the middle of the lane all night. I also agree with your earlier post that we looked a step behind all night. This was the first team that really exposed our lack of size but it has been there the whole time. It was one of those games where nothing goes right, a lot of shots in and out. Hopefully we can figure this out before too long.

Let me retract the “well” re Vick’s play and say that relative to the rest of the Hawks he played well. I agree that KU missed too many bunnies and did not make UW pay for stretching the zone. HCBS will get on them, but still might not be enough as AZ St is going to be tough:

I think MInerscoach nailed it. Early on, they had no trouble getting it to Vick in the high post where he could either a.) attract a post defender opening up Dok for a lob, or b.) NOT draw the post defenders up, and make an easy 8'-10' shot.

Vick should make 75% of those shots if he's not defended well. It seemed, however, that he started getting tight and short-arming them. Hell, he would have been better driving and drawing contact rather than tossing up weak floaters.

Then Dok got 2 fouls on him, and so did Lightfoot. Our lack of offense, and having to play small let Washington stay with us and eek out a small lead.

The 2nd half was similar, except that Washington got confident and started making shots, and we got scared and it hurt our execution as we tried to force stuff.

One takeaway was that last year's team seemed to find ways to win, even if they were down 10 with 3 minutes to play. These guys didn't show that kind of tenacity, but I do think they can learn it. Kind of like the Navy SEAL concept of "the only easy day was yesterday" and never ever quitting. I'm not sure they have that yet.

Still, the sky isn't falling yet. I think getting Preston back is a key element. Had we had him in the lineup yesterday, it's likely Dok and Lightfoot being on the bench wouldn't have been as big of a deal. I also think that Vick played similarly against both the 'Cuse and Washington zones, but that since we were hitting 3's, it wasn't a big deal.

Finally, Newman needs to watch a lot of tape so he can compare what he's actually doing vs. what HCBS is telling him to do. I'm guessing that there's a fairly large divide between those two things.

Spot on! You could see the confidence in UW grow as the night went on. If Dok doesn't get that offensive foul in the 2nd half, we get a lob dunk and the Hawks are down 2. I think that foul allowed UW to extend the lead on the next possession and our little run was stopped. We get the lob dunk there, I think we win the game.

And one more thing on Vick, almost seemed like his unselfishness hurt him last night. I don't think he could believe how open he was, players at this level do not see that and I can see how it affected him mentally. He literally could have gotten a shot every possession and almost seemed like he didn't think he should try to score every time. Self teams are expected to move and share the ball. UW set up a game plan that said you can have a shot from here and here only. We just kind of froze and this lack of ball movement on offense can cause a lack of movement on the defensive end as well.

We were just out of sorts and like Fran said last night, most teams that don't play zone for a living could not duplicate that game plan. On to Arizona St.

He literally could have gotten a shot every possession and almost seemed like he didn't think he should try to score every time."

Agree that he could have gotten a shot practically every time, and you gotta figure that HCBS will give him the green light to shoot anytime he has an open 10 footer.

I also think that in addition (or maybe instead) of not trying to be a ball hog, I think when you get the ball in the paint, you anticipate being closely guarded and physical contact. If you OVER anticipate it and it doesn't come, you may be gripping the ball to hard, and/or having other physical reactions based on the expectation of some kind of contact. So when you're left alone, it's enough to screw with your timing.

A couple weeks ago when Svi's shot wasn't falling I noted that when he was standing still and putting up wide open 3's they weren't falling, but when he was in motion and the shot was part of a more complicated physical activity, he seemed to have a higher percentage. Kind of the same here. A couple times, Vick just looked awkward turning and lofting up a floater. I think he may have actually had MORE success (higher percentage) if he'd have taken a dribble and tried to get to the rim, even though he would have been defended better.

Oh well. Hope they learned a lot and are moving on.