lets stop and marvel

can we all just stop and marvel for a moment at how great a coach we have? while i love our team and its individual players this year as i always do, it simply must be recognized that this is the most ragtag, shallow team assembled at ku for quite some time. the age old notion ( for football usually) of “ we may be small but we are slow” really applies here. not only are our starters inferior talent wise to most decent teams but to make matters worse we have virtually no depth so quite often in the fourth quarter of these games we are both talent and energy deficient. doke, malik and lightfoot are still essentially non elite freshmen minutes-wise ( poor doke was simply embarassed vs bamba last nite), svi ( who i love) is a senior who has never lived up to his promise, and vick and devonte shld probably both be at appalacian state. no one on this team will ever be a first round pick, let alone lottery. so why are we 11-2 with one of those losses to an undefeated team currently ranked number three in the country? because self puts each of these players in a position to be successful based on their skill set and he gets them to play both offense and defense as a team so that they add up to more than the sum of their parts. and hes coaching a style of play that is completely different from the preferred inside/ out style he prefers. when they need a boost in confidence he seems to always do the right thing from calling svi’s number to win at nebraska ( hes been brilliant since) and picking malik to receive a crucial inbound pass last nite ( after not starting) to ice the game with free throws after just missing one ( look for malik to live up to coach’s confidence vs texas tech). selfs in game adjustments, time out play calls and substitution patterns have been particularly brilliant this year. all this aside tho our relative lack of talent, shallow bench and integrating the new players will ( especially in a tough big 12) catch up with us. we will have a couple of bad runs and lose 5 or 6 conf games. that shld still be enough for 14 in a row i think and by the time march rolls around we shld be ready for a run to the final 8. thx to hcbs. no other coach i know cld get that kind of result out of this team. happy holidays to all! g

Thanks...needed that after some of the musings on this year's team members...I'm a fan first!

Rock Chalk!

Big g, I will completely agree on the main premise of your post. Self is in the HOF for a very legitimate reason(s). But I will disagree on a two ancillary points. First, it is IMHO not correct to say this team has minimal talent. We have had teams in the past where we would have dearly desired to have the depth of shooting talent this team has. Clutch shooting is one of the more important and desired talents in college basketball. We have 3 elite shooters. We probably do not have a 1st rounder in the current rotation, 1 agree on that. But that is not a good gauge for team talent. We have 2 senior leaders and that is always huge. This is not the most talented team KU has had but we put a lot of talent on the floor every night. The second issue I disagree with is IMHO, DOK in no way got embarrassed by Bamba last night. I thought Dok actually played a very solid game. Bamba just had a crazy outstanding game. Sure, Dok got blocked a couple times but unlike many players in the past, he adapted and contributed in a lot of ways not the least of which is a double double. I was actually quite pleased with Dok last night. BUt as I opened up with, the overall theme of your post I am in total agreement with.

both good points corpus. the talent issue is of course highly subjective. my real point was that none of our “elite shooters” wld be starting for duke or kentucky or north carolina. self has to a great extent made them elite players with his sytem/coaching/preparation/in game adjustments, as he did with frank the last four years. helps of course that all three are extremely coachable which i think shld be selfs number one character trait to recruit to. regarding dok the first half was extremely one sided to bamba until self coached him up at half time. my real point again was that while both teams had 7 footers on the floor one is clearly a lottery pick this year and one is likely a four year project yet as you say because we have HCBS the matchup nearly got to neutral. amazing. taking nothing away at all from how hard our players work, how unselfish they are, or what generally great guys they are the straw that stirs the drink is clearly bill self who 10 yrs from now i think will be recognized as the best ever at what he does.

Doke was not "embarassed" against Bamba. First of all, his back was bothering him and he almost didn't play at all. Second, Bamba is an extremely talented and physcially 'freakish' player, who had a great first half but a rather nondescript second half. And Doke had an excellent 2nd half once he adjusted to Bamba's length. And at least 2 of Bamba's blocks were goaltends. And I hope you are attempting satire in your comments about Devonte and Vick, because if you're not, well........................

I have been trying to see your point of view about the lack of talent, but I just can't agree. To be fair, could you point out what you believe is lacking and why our best players wouldn't start for teams in the top 10, for example? Personally I do not see this team's players as you describe them. We have a great coach, yes, but he can do only as much as the talent allows, IMHO.

Thank heavens the players you mention are NOT at Appalachian State!

Sir, all due respect, you are wrong and long wrong in your comments. Devonte and Vick are very good and at times great players. Period. And Dok played very well. 13 points and 13 rebounds with a bad back? I'll take that anytime.

sorry for an unintentionally provocative post. i was just making the factual point that absent a chance event devonte would be a senior guard at appalacian state today. and that vick similarly was not heavily recruited. and and that bomba is a freakishly talented player and dok is not. of course i dont wish devonte was at app state; i love that hes with us, and vick, and dok, etc. talent is of course subjective; the only two data points we have really are how heavily a player is recruited out of high school and how highly rated he is in real and mock nba drafts. my only point was that on that narrow measure our 7 current scholarship players wld not rank nearly as highly as they are playing ( as has been true with some exceptions in the past, see wiggins, embiid). much more so than any of the top programs we recruit more high character, coachable four year players who when combined with self end up punching way above their weight. i LOVE that we get success this way. that we can beat memphis in 88 because we outwork and outcoach them. that we beat bomba on their court because dok outworks him and with selfs help outsmarts him. thats a virtue not a critucism. its russ beating wilt over his entire career. its pop and the spurs beating more talented teams. BUT the only way you win this way consistently over many years is with a truly world class coach which was my central point. its just particularly impressive this year with no bench, no superstars. i do think 10 years from now it will be clear that hes not just really good, hes the GOAT. time will tell. best to all g

It's all relative. How many pros are on this team? If I had to put on my NBA GM hat right now, I'd say that DG, Vick and Dok are potential NBA players....at best.

Compare that to some former squads where we had 4 or 5 future pros on the team, and this team is certainly less talented than some of those groups. Every year, some of the blue blood teams end up with teams with 4 or more future pros and we don't have that this year.

That being said, if you look around the Big 12 or petty much any team not in the states of Kentucky or North Carolina, and you'll find that lots of good teams have 1 or fewer future NBA players. So it's not unheard of for teams to win their conference or have a decent run in the tourney without pro-level players. Of course, it's a lot harder to get to the final four or win a NC without one, but that's another story.

To anybody paying attention, this was clearly a "rebuilding" year. We've got the Lawson brothers and Charlie Moore all sitting out due to transfer rules (3 rosters spots) and Cunliffe having to sit out for the 1st semester (call it 3.5 roster spots). Getting DeSousa in early is a stroke of good luck, and it will help. Losing Preston was a serious wrench in the works as well as a serious distraction. Throw in the fact that Carlton Bragg was scheduled to be with this squad and Dwight Coleby coulda been here, and our conveyor belt of talent has had some issues.

Nevertheless, we're still considered the favorite to win the toughest league in the nation, so that does say something positive about our coach's abilities. Sometimes you can get complacent about greatness when you're in its midst and I do think HCBS will go down as one of the all time greats (beyond his mere HOF status). So with that sentiment, I agree....take a minute and appreciate who we've got leading our program.

Now to temper that: before we canonize Saint Bill of Oklahoma, he's blundered and will continue to make mistakes. Aside from his questionable results in the NCAAs, he's made some recruiting errors, let some very good players leave the program that could have helped us, and regardless of how we've gotten here, the responsibility for our lack of a front court falls directly at his feet.

We're a good team. We won't win a national championship this year, but we have the potential to take the streak to 14. Not sure who else I'd want coaching our guys.

great points not o. wld just make the obvious follow up that yes certainly you can win a conference title without 4 future pros in any given year, or maybe two or three peat. but 13 yrs in a row when very often the big 12 has been the best or among the best conferences? and we take for granted that he will do it again this year in what as you say can only be considered a rebuilding year. AND he runs a clean program. AND he develops players as people too ( sherron, brandon, frank, etc etc who obvi left better people). AND he coaches a very entertaining brand of basketball. AND he respects the KU tradition ( making sure roy and ted get their due) and studiously avoids trying to create a bill self cult of self importance ( no pun intended!). and as you say he makes mistakes but seems to learn from them and takes ownership. who does that anymore? sorry, done for now g

One point and then one recommendation:

First, I'm a huge HCBS fan. Period. For all the reasons you mentioned and more. I will say, however, that I've been burned enough in the past by becoming a huge fan of somebody only to be disappointed when you find out the "real" story. As a result, I always reserve a small percentage of skepticism for ANY famous person that I admire.

The fact remains that college basketball is a dirty sport. Many kids are on the take, and many coaches are as well. Kansas is an Addidas sponsored school, and we all know now what Addidas has been up to. I'm thrilled that we weren't caught up in that mess, but it does make you wonder. Billy Preston has a questionable car ownership issue, Cliff Alexander's mom took money, and I could go on. While there's no "fire" in the KU program, there's been enough smoke to make me worry at times. I do think Self has SO FAR shown that he runs a clean program and has a good handle on his players, and tries to recruit "good kids". Nevertheless, if news broke tomorrow that (insert player) took money from a booster, or that (insert another player) had a bogus SAT score, and that even HCBS took part in something so out-of-character that he'd go from hero to goat in the blink of an eye, I can't say that I'd be 100% surprised. It's just the nature of the very sketchy business that is college basketball? Makes you wonder if the "clean" programs are just better at not getting caught.

Not saying that I suspect anything specific regarding Self, because I don't. Nevertheless, in college basketball, absolutely NOTHING surprises me, and I'm not going to put blinders on that our program is somehow immune to human fallibility and bad decision making. I like sausage but have no interest in seeing how it's made. Likewise, I'm happy to accept the image of Kansas Basketball and HCBS as it has been presented to me, and HOPE (as opposed to KNOW) that the perception and the reality are aligned.

Now for the recommendation: for Christmas my dad got me the new Jason King book, "Beyond the Streak - Untold Stories from Kansas Basketball's Unrivaled Big 12 Reign". It's a season-by-season chronicle of Self's career at Kansas from the time he took over from RW through last season. Rather than actually writing the book, King compiled tons of interviews (current and past) from the players and coaches from each year to tell the story. It's fantastic. I'm just into the '07-'08 campaign now, and it's excellent.

One thing that was a bit of an eye-opener (but shouldn't have been) in the book is how tough HCBS is on his players. It's amazing to me how down some of the guys have gotten over the years as a direct result of how tough Self has been on them. I've learned that while Self seems like an affable guy off the court, you really REALLY don't want to be one of his players if you're not meeting expectations. Not a knock on him, but it does show you that the guy you see on TV can be pretty tough to work for.

thx for the book rec not o. will certainly pick up. agree with your admonitions btw. do believe tho self is smart enough ( if not honest enough) to play by the rules because he knows hes now a huge target and theres lots of folks out there making it their job to take him down. cld we still get burned by an asst coach bending a rule? sure. and no doubt self is very tough on his guys but i think they know he does it in their intetest ( which of course is his as well). whats telling is that they all keep coming back and they all want affinity with the program. brandons speech at his jersey retirement were so telling in this regard. embiid was only here a year and laments not staying longer even tho hes an nba all star now. and then he closes desouza for us. former players dont get paid for this kind of loyalty.