The Hawks are Not a Great Team Right Now

After watching the game and looking at the box score I think we are not a great team. We have some tremendously talented players but at this point the sum is not more than the parts. The stats that point to that for me is only 9 assists on the 23 made baskets. I think we will be very good by the end of the year. I think QG is thinking about it too much and has lost his confidence. Hopefully things will click for him sooner than it looks right now. It is amazing, when I think about it, that we are undefeated with the toughest strength of schedule and all I do is complain that we did not look that good.

I feel your pain...or should I say complain...

I keep hoping that the switch will flip and the boys will begin to show us and the nation what we are all expecting them to do.

Rock Chalk! Jayhawk!

I will agree with the literal meaning of your proclamation that we are not a great team right now. But I will clarify that that should not imply that we are a less than good team or even a very good team. I believe the biggest perception of the team right now is dominated by the fact that we have not quite lived up to the hype. But there are several things about this team that have been exceptional along with the things that have been poor. We have to keep in perspective that we have played a killer schedule and we are 9-0. And if you go with the composite computer rankings which largely consider scoring margin, we are still top 4. How many times have we had teams that tended to wilt under pressure? This team has often played their best ball with their backs to the wall. And if you look at the past Jayhawk teams, the side of the ball that we excelled with our teams that went the farthest was the defense. This team sure seems to have the components to be a great defensive team. Dotson is young and has a long way to go to be a leader on the floor on offense, but his defense is already excellent. Marcus is a flat out defensive dynamo. MItch off the bench brings some serious defensive ability. I think this team better get it’s overall act together and quit playing with fire or we will lose some games we should win. BUt I also see a lot of upside to this team and again, we are 9-0 which is not to be ignored.

Well said, Corpus. It's nice to read something positive on this board instead of all the negativity of late.

I'm wondering when (if ever) we've been a "great team" in mid-December. Just going from memory, but it seems every season starts with great promise and then we either drop a game or two in Nov-Dec, or have some ugly wins against teams that, on paper, we should be running out of the gym.

I kind of wonder if somebody could create an algorithm that could determine the general "tone" of the posts here and plot it on the calendar. I imagine that you'd see a curve like this:

May - August: relatively quite. Occasional blip for a recruiting story, or overseas exhibition game.

August - October: the hype begins. Talk of preseason polls, and how great so-and-so will be this year, or our new fabulous recruits. Very few cautionary discussions that so-and-so has hopefully gotten past whatever issue has hampered them previously.

November - December: DECLINE. Oh no, we lost a game. Holy cow, PLAYER X can't seem to figure it out, and STAR RECRUIT Y isn't living up to the hype. Much wringing of hands and pacing back and forth.

January: realization that we're ranked pretty high and have won almost all of our games. Mistakes start to decline and leaders emerge.

February: cautious optimism returns. Begin calculating the magic number to locking up our Xth consecutive Big 12 title. Dang, we dropped a game against the emerging "next best team in the conference". It's ok, we'll beat 'em in Lawrence.

March: we've finally returned to the same level of optimism as we had at the end of October. The team has (not surprisingly) delivered. We've locked up the Big 12, and are heading to the conf tourney with nothing to win or lose, just hoping that nobody gets hurt. Heading into the Dance with a 1 or 2 seed, annoyed that the committee screwed us by putting us in THAT region, or overloading our region with 4 NBA teams seeded way too low.

April: Season ends one way or the other. Some disappointment if it's not 1988 or 2008. Overall interest level drops to baseline. Wait for the NBA draft to see where our guys graduate to.

The point of all this is that I guarantee you that if you look back at the posts from Nov-Dec from pretty much any year, this is VERY typical stuff. Meanwhile we're 9-0 having played one of the toughest non-con schedules in the country. As much as this team isn't GREAT right now, I don't think we're ever GREAT on December 17th.

Meanwhile Vick is more often than not playing well, Lawson is a guaranteed double-double and Garrett has emerged as a total lockdown defender. Once we get one or two other guys (c'mon Dotson and Grimes) reading the same sheet music, and Dok back, nobody's going to want to play us.

Happens every year. Patience grasshopper