kansas basketball

Rock, chalk, and other matters pertaining to Kansas Jayhawk basketball.

Bracketological breakdown, 2010 edition, volume 1!

16 March 2010 in basketball, kansas basketball | 2 comments

Geek alert! I’m talking basketball. It’s March, and the madness of the season has overtaken me. Thus, I won’t be offended if you are about to click back to Twitter, or your RSS reader.

I’ll start by not wasting anyone’s time complaining about this year’s tournament pairings. That path is well-traveled.1 And well it should be! The pairings are outrageous! Kansas was punished! Kentucky, Duke, and Syracuse — they’ve all got golden tickets to Indianapolis. Right? Right?

For starters, I’m glad I’m not Kentucky

For so many reasons. Let’s look at the round two match-ups. Texas and Wake Forest have been terrible — horrible — over the past couple of months. But, they’re talented, and each could gel for just long enough to beat anyone in the country, including Kentucky. Is this unlikely? Highly. Is it more likely that Cornell will grind their way past Temple, Wisconsin and Kentucky? Perhaps. But indulge me: Texas actually matches up pretty well with Kentucky, size-wise and talent-wise. I think that it’s possible that they could get motivated (ever so briefly) to not be embarrassed by them. Am I picking Texas over Kentucky? Maybe not. Texas coach Rick Barnes is never in danger of out-gameplanning anyone. He’s never been accused of having his team ready to play, and his teams are always threatening to underperform. Let’s not forget this. Still, I wouldn’t want to be a Kentucky fan, not in this tournament, or in any lifetime. Because let me be frank: I don’t think I could face a world without reading, without literacy. I just don’t think I could do it.

Which reminds me, did you hear that Coach K was born in the year of the Ratfaced Bastard?

Eerie, right? Not sure what his astrological sign is, but I’m relatively sure that all the major media figures kiss its ass.

But Duke didn’t get an easy road, either

I know, most people say that Duke has the easiest path: a #4 seed in free-fall after its star blew out his knee (Purdue), and a #2 seed that lost six of its last ten (Villanova). I say: Thank you for noticing, world, but look at the #3 seed: Baylor. This team got punished for playing cupcakes early — Hardin Simmons? Texas Arlington? Southern? Hartford? Coach Scott Drew, c’mon. You asked for your cruddy seed. But then Baylor played a tough conference schedule, didn’t lose a game by more than 7 points, and they absolutely light it up (119 points per 100 possessions — 5th in the country). Enough about Baylor; Duke may not even get there. Louisville will give Duke everything they can handle in round 2; perhaps more. Rick Pitino v Coach K, in the second round? Fans’ brains might explode. Which coach do I hate more? Minds will boggle.

Back to the Wildcats

Kansas State. Are they good enough to reach the Final Four. Yes. Can they beat Syracuse? Quite possibly. How do you beat Syracuse? You punish the zone. And K-State has two guys who can do this — Pullen and Clemente. What about the glass? Two more guys: Wally Judge and Curtis Kelly. They can hold their own underneath. KenPom has K-State ranked 5th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage at 40%. They gather 40% of the rebounds on their offensive glass. That’s huge. And they play great defense. Did I mention I wouldn’t want to be Syracuse? I wouldn’t. Especially because a big guy might be hurt. Or, he might not be. March madness, baybee!

The team that will break my heart: Cornell

Every year I pick a team like this. They’re good. They play under control. They’ve got a system. All the ingredients are there for surprise. Subtext: They played very well against Kansas. Okay, let’s face it, they out-played Kansas for 20 – 25 minutes in the hallowed hall of Lawrence, and they came up short (barely). Texas A&M, Baylor, Colorado, Kansas State and Memphis also played very well against the Hawks, and lost. Subtext: I also have these teams doing well in the tournament. Caveat! Anyway, every year, I pick a team like this to get out of the first round, and they lay an egg. I’m looking at you, Butler team of 2008. This year’s heartbreaker is especially obvious to avoid because Temple is a good team who could easily ... force the aforementioned egg? To emerge? Anyway, Temple is a great defensive team, though you wouldn’t have been able to see any evidence of that against ... Kansas! Yes, they lost to the Jayhawks at home. By 32 points.

Did I mention that this bracket breakdown was from the point of view who has watched 34 Kansas games, and roughly 20 total other games. Caveat!

1 I will offer one suggestion: Why not just factor their media desirability into the RPI? Your team’s winning percentage x their opponent’s winning percentage x their opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage x the likelihood that your team will draw a large, rich audience to the Final Four weekend equals their seed. It’s obviously a factor in every year’s bracket. Last year, North Carolina was invited to do the Tennessee Waltz all the way to Detroit. In other words, they had it easy. In other news, the nation loves them some Tar Heels. It’s worth mentioning that advertisers tend to pay more when the Heels are playing. And of course CBS is for-profit enterprise. You get the point. We all do. It’s time to be up-front about it.

Okay, wait. One more thing. I will post something about the absurd lopsidedness of the pairings:

You want to make marginal No. 1 Duke’s road that easy? Seeding the bracket is tough, but come on. The South reeks of a committee that lost the forest for the trees, and Kentucky, Syracuse and Kansas — especially Kansas — will suffer. So much for being the overall No. 1. If we can’t reward Kansas for its excellence with something better than this, then the anti-expansion folks’ main point is officially moot. The regular season doesn’t matter.

More here.

As he steps to the line, he feels game pressure

7 January 2009 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

The Bilastrator has coined a new term: “Game pressure.” During last weekend’s Kansas-Tennessee game, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas repeatedly said that Kansas players were feeling “game pressure” when they stepped to the free throw line. Game pressure? As opposed to ... practice pressure? As opposed to other kinds of pressure that you’d feel during a big game? Or a nationally-televised game? Game pressure? That’s the best that you’ve got?

Now, I was going to let this go, because I think I know what he means: “Game pressure” sounds like a specific kind of pressure that can’t be replicated outside of a game. Young teams, perhaps, are particularly vulnerable to it because they haven’t been in as many ... games. Anyway, I was going to let it go until Bilas referred to Kansas guard Sherron Collins as “Lawson-esque” (as in North Carolina guard Tywon Lawson) and then predicted that Tyler Hansbrough will again be the national player of the year.

You mean Lawson is “Collins-esque,” right?

Where was Lawson in the Final Four? I’ll tell you: He was getting killed by Collins. If Collins played in the ACC, he’d be getting compared to Chris Paul. (I think he’s more like Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson). On that note, I hope that Bob Knight is going to break up the ACC-loving commentary cabal at ESPN. From the couple of games I’ve seen, he is made for TV. And he speaks to basketball fans, not just fans of the ACC. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things; not a surprise. He’s also likely to compare current players to non-ACC players (such as his Indiana players from the 70’s), and he’s completely at ease in dissing other talking heads. Is there some way that I can get his commentary on every game? Please?

Aldrich rips the ball away from Hansbrough
Aldrich ruled Hansbrough in the Final Four. “But he just works so hard.” Other athletic centers rule him regularly. “He doesn’t take possessions off.” The argument against him being player of the year is so strong; it seems almost silly to carry it out. Photo: Getty Images

I’ve got no real beef with Psycho T, as Hansbrough is known, but he is not the best player in the country. How could he be? Whenever he plays against anyone big and athletic, he gets killed. Yes, he brings it every night; yes, he leaves it all on the court. Dickie V loves it. All the older commentators love it. Who doesn’t love a kid who plays hard every minute he’s on the court? I love it. He’s like Nick Collison. Nick Collison was awesome, but he was not the player of the year, was he? Would anyone argue that he was, other than hopeless Kansas loyalists? He was a good player on a great team. Like Hansbrough, now. Collison’s problem was that he didn’t play for the most visible program in the most over-hyped conference in the country. If Hansbrough played at Texas, he’d get compared to Collison all the time, and he’d be the feel-good choice for the Naismith. If only.

March Madness / Zapruder analysis of Mario’s shot

13 April 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

A couple of days ago, I was watching Mario’s three-pointer for like the 150th time, and I decided to do it JFK/Zapruder style. Click. Sherron blows by Derrick Rose. Click. Click. Click. Sherron begins to fall. Click. The ball emerges in Mario’s hands, he takes a big jump-step toward the top of the key, jumps, fades. Derrick Rose leaps. Ball leaves Mario’s hand. Arc-ing, arc-ing. Swish. (Rewind). Swish. (Rewind). Swish. I felt like Kevin Costner in JFK: Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.

An obscured leaping figure

As I stepped through the swish multiple times, I saw something I hadn’t seen before, a sort of puff of smoke on the grassy knoll. There’s a leaping figure behind the backboard, at the very far end of the Kansas bench. Just after Mario’s shot goes through, the players on the bench appear to be in disbelief, but a black clad figure at the end of the bench suddenly springs up, spinning, arms flailing. I think that this was pretty close to my reaction as well.

Ballard celebratesThis is closest I could come to a shot of the bench at that moment Mario’s shot goes through the net. It’s unclear who it is from this photo, but it’s almost certainly the same guy you can see onscreen, jumping and celebrating.


You can kinda see a black blur behind the backboard in this YouTube clip, but it’s much more clearly viewed in high-definition about two feet from your TV screen.

Fast-forward to the post-game celebration, and it becomes clear that the figure is none other than former Kansas backup point guard and current video assistant, Brett Ballard. Awesome. I was always a Ballard fan because he’s a Kansas kid, from Hutchison. [Here’s a nice Kansan profile of Ballard.]

Now he’ll always be the visual record of my own reaction to Mario’s shot.

Kansas basketball / A dadgum classic

8 April 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

Surreal. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind. Kansas trailed by nine points with two minutes left, and yet somehow managed to win. Chalmers’s shot. Collins’s steal. Roy Williams — “Benedict Williams” to many Jayhawk fans — wearing a Jayhawk sticker. Is it possible that all of that *really* happened?

Watch the last few minutes of the game again, and you’ll begin to see how many little things went KU’s way. There were big things, of course — Calipari’s lack of faith in his bench, Joey Dorsey’s fouls, CDR’s clankers from the line — but there were also those momentary mistakes that add up: a terrible transition decision by Memphis, questionable judgment when Calipari doesn’t call timeout after a made free throw to ensure that his team fouls, and the simple bad luck of Derrick Rose’s first free throw that hit every part of the rim and then bounced out with 10 seconds left.

Still, Kansas needed a miracle to simply pull even.

Mario's shot
Photo: Streeter Lecka

Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated really nails the last few seconds in his Tourney Blog: “The ball took what Collins said seemed ‘like five seconds’ in the air, perfectly rotating, and Brandon Rush, who had positioned himself near the basket in the event of a tip, looked up at the net and ‘saw it splash right in there.’ ... ‘It will probably be,’ said Self, ‘the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history.’”

The bench reacts to Mario's shot
The bench reacts to Mario’s shot. Photo: Jeff Haynes

The Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock commented on the stories behind the story: “That’s how you win it all, exorcise the demons and baptize a new era of greatness. You do it with an unforgettable rally, a stunning three-pointer and with your most famous and infamous coaching alum sitting in the stadium, cheering you on and sporting a Jayhawk sticker.”

Baby Jay all the way
Photo: Jed Jacobsohn

The Star’s Joe Posnanski on Memphis’s seemingly insurmountable lead, and Mario’s shot: “When you’re young, you live in the moment. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Chalmers was not feeling the pressure of history when he fired the shot. He never could have made it then. Kansas was trailing by nine points with barely 2 minutes left. Memphis had taken all the intensity and will and ferocity that Kansas had to give, and then the Tigers pulled away. Up nine with about 2 minutes left? Over.”

Self & Sherron
Sherron & Bill Self. Photo: Streeter Lecka

Collins’s contribution was huge, despite his turnovers. He was in Derrick Rose’s face all night, and his pace and fearlessness created the two biggest moments of the game — the steal with just under a minute left, and the pass to Mario with 5 seconds left. Dana O’Neil’s article on ESPN really captures it well (title: “Without Collins, there is no Chalmers.”). Derrick Rose commented on Sherron’s play during Memphis’s post-game press conference: “He did what he supposed to do as a point guard — control the team, push the ball up the court and make tough plays at the end. He just controlled the game.”

Self was characteristically modest after the game, “The outside public may view people that win a championship differently, but coaches know you don’t get smarter because a hard shot goes in or doesn’t go in. I’m proud of our guys, happy for everybody involved, but I don’t see it that way.”

I’m not sure what it will take for the talking heads to give him some respect, honestly. In ESPN’s pre-game show, the former coaches (Vitale, Digger, and Knight) lavished praise on Memphis coach John Calipari. Vitale threw around all the usual hyperbole (“genius,” “innovator,” as I recall), and even Knight complimented Cal’s inventiveness as a coach. After the game, the mood was funereal around the ESPN desk, as if they themselves had lost the game. Why? There are some compelling conspiracy theories bouncing around the comments on the Lawrence Journal-World site, e.g. “[Supporting] Kansas promotes [KU’s] recruiting and keeps Kansas a Cadillac program. In turn, that steers recruits away from schools where the talking heads have loyalties and relationships with coaches that give them the access they require in the major media markets they need to pump up their Q ratings and market share ratings.” Hmm.

Finally, the NYT’s Pete Thamel posted some engaging commentary on The Quad, the NYT’s college sports blog. He describes the scene in the Memphis locker room afterward:

There are only two locker rooms I’d ever seen where the players were this devastated. One was the U.S.C. locker room after Matt Leinart and the Trojans lost the national title to Texas in the Rose Bowl. I remember Leinart sitting alone on a bench, eating a turkey sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie and drinking a Gatorade. It was kind of surreal that his whole senior year had come down to that.

The other was the Oklahoma locker room after the Sooners lost to Boise State in what many consider the greatest finish to a college football game. That would be the Ian Johnson, Statue of Liberty, hook-and-ladder game. The most bizarre scene from that locker room was Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops just standing by himself, staring off into the ether. It’s rare to see a head coach alone anywhere, anytime. But Stoops could have been on Pluto, and no one at that second was going to visit.

Finally, today’s Kansas City Star front page. Nice! I had the 1988 version on my bedroom wall for about 10 years, until it basically turned into dust.

Kansas City Star front page


March Madness / Final Four shit

2 April 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | 1 comment

If words are windows to the soul, this blog has become a massive vista onto my sports obsessions and, specifically, Kansas basketball. Soon enough it’ll all be over, the fever dream will end, the sun will rise, and I’ll be back to the old stuff. Until then, I want to post one more thing, to commemorate the Jayhawks’ run to San Antonio.

Kansas Jayhawk Final Four 2008 t-shirt - I could give a shit about Carolina
I designed a t-shirt that expressed my feelings with regard to the Heels, which — in a really weird coincidence — echo Ol Roy’s sentiments c. 2003.


For many Kansas fans, Roy’s angry words ring true — truer, even — today. Sure, Roy may have claimed to have “given a shit” at that moment, but he changed his tune a week later. Jayhawk fans probably still couldn’t give a shit, to say the least. Now, we can declare this to the world. [Buy it now now now from Zazzle].

A day that will live in infamy

In case anyone’s wondering what the heck the shirt is all about, let’s take a quick trip down YouTube lane. The year was 2003; the time was 10 minutes after KU’s national final loss to Syracuse; the place was the tunnel outside the Kansas locker room.


It actually gets better with age, doesn’t it?

The “shit” part clearly wasn’t pre-meditated, yet it was perfectly timed, putting a bitter exclamation point on a ringing rebuke. Of course, the most shocking part of it all was that it came from the man who had — to that point — cornered the market in “dadgums” and “doggones:” Ol Roy, the kind country cousin of college basketball. In more ways than one, that interview was the end of an era, and in retrospect, Roy’s aw-shucks-ing and dadgum-ing seems a little silly, but it sure worked well for a while.

Now, well. Times have changed.

Basketball / It’s bracket time

19 March 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

2008 NCAA tournament bracket
You probably can’t tell, but I’ve been worrying over my picks for the last couple of days.


My patented approach = tossed out the window

I’ve filled out 20+ brackets in my life, and each year I take basically the same tack: At least one #1 seed goes down relatively early; every Big 12 team represents. This mostly works, but it gets complicated because I also generally want Duke to flame out early (and with the greatest possible degree of humiliation), and I expect the Pac 10 teams to eat shit as well. History has not been kind to this approach.

Did I mention that I usually send Kansas to the Final Four at least as well? So yes, I usually lose whatever pool I’ve entered.

Instead, I predict that history will be made in a couple of ways

Of course, I still have Duke flaming out and Kansas winning, but I’ve twisted a couple of the other valves in my strategy engine:

  1. All 4 #1 seeds make the Final Four. In every case, I couldn’t imagine any one of them losing. North Carolina is playing in their home state all the way through. Memphis is good, and they’re mad, and I don’t think they’re going to have to face Texas, so who are they going to lose to? Pittsburgh? Bob Knight thinks so, but I’m not so sure. Kansas is also good, and they’re focused, and I just hope that Bill Self has them ready to go. UCLA is the only team that, to me, seems vulnerable, if only because K-Love’s back may be hurt. Then again, Ben Howland is a wily bastard, and I wouldn’t put it past him to use a very minor injury to start messing with the minds of future opponents, a la Bill Belichick.
  2. The Pac 10 performs. I dare you to look into the seasons that each of the teams played. They played good teams, and they performed pretty well. I’ve got USC in the Elite Eight. Crazy? Maybe. But they finished the season pretty strong, even though Wazzu obviously had their number. Which is why I have Wazzu advancing before losing a tight one to UNC.
  3. The Big 12 fizzles. K-State is reeling, and I’ve got them losing to USC. Oklahoma looked awful quite a few times this year; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see St. Joe’s stick it to them. I’ve got Texas losing to Stanford, only because I have a hard time seeing Damion James single-handedly dealing with the Lopez bros. On the other hand, I do have Baylor and A&M winning in the first round, and I’ve got Kansas winning it all. So it’s a minor fizzle.

Remember: You heard it here first. Probably not.

Basketball / Jayhawks, predictions, bracketometry

18 March 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

Man, this year is going to be good, not only because the teams are good, but because there are good stories out there. I tell myself that I don’t care about storylines, but at some point, I absorb them. I repeat them. They become part of my conversations. All the extraneous detail from those player mini-profiles being produced by CBS will become cement itself in my memory; like Mateen Cleaves’ from 2000 tournament: his storied high school career in Michigan, his drunken driving, the tough love of father-figure/coach Tom Izzo. Why do I remember this? Why do I care? Who knows?

As Dick Vitale would say: It’s March Madness, baby!

Let’s start at the top

Memphis is the rarely defeated team with killer athletes and a dickhead for a coach; North Carolina has player of the year Tyler Hansborough and the electrifying “Carolina break” (formerly known as the Kansas break), but it’s also got some glaring inconsistencies; UCLA has good balance, a great coach, good defense, and a stone killer in freshman Kevin Love; Kansas has experience, Darnell Jackson, and a recent history of flameouts [cf. Bucknell, Bradley] to overcome.

Mid-major blah blah blah

As usual, there are also a host of mid-major teams with chips on their shoulders. Butler had Florida on the ropes last year; this year, they have to travel to Birmingham as a #7 seed to play South Alabama (a #10 seed); if they win, they earn the right to play another fired-up southeastern team, Tennessee. And Gonzaga (#7) has to travel three time zones to play a team that’s driving three hours within its home state, Davidson (#10). It appears that the tournament committee is no longer amused by fundamentally sound, deeply experienced, singularly focused mid-major teams taking down high seeds in the early rounds. An interesting development.

Mid-major dis disclaimer

By dissing mid-majors, you think I’m playing with fire, but I’m not. Oh, no. I’ve already been burned. Twice. There’s nothing left to burn. I’m a blackened husk. It began in 2006; I wrote a long email about “the myth of mid-majors” to my friends. Then, I traveled to Austin, where I watched the the Jayhawks mail in a first-round game against Bucknell. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Bucknell that they were supposed to climb inside the envelope and disappear. To the delight of the entire bar from which I watched, they held off the Jayhawks and advanced. The next year, it was Bradley. I was in a hotel in Albuquerque. Alone. Agonizing.

Kansas & UNC earn a right to stay close to home

Both teams get to stay local, but each gets tested by an interesting foe. UNC doesn’t leave the state until they travel to San Antonio for the Final Four, but they need to beat Tennessee — a team that beat Memphis, a team with a legitimate claim to a #1 seed — before they get to San Antonio. Kansas tours the Midwest, heading to Omaha, then Detroit, but they need to beat Georgetown — a consistent, gritty team that is well-suited to stick it to the inconsistent Jayhawks — before cutting down the regional nets. Seems fair, mostly.

But does this obsessing over geography really matter? I don’t know. On a purely philosophical level, the champion has to win six games, period. Georgia won four games in three days to take the SEC tournament; they’d won a total of four games in two-plus months of conference play. The Fab 5 advanced to the Final Four through Atlanta and Lexington in 1992, Phoenix and Seattle in 1993.

On a historical note

Last year, Kansas got shipped two time zones westward and played what amounted to an away game against UCLA. I was there, surrounded by cologne-wearing, hair-gelled, Steve-Lavin-look-alike douchebags who roared with every impossible fadeaway prayer hit by Arron Afflalo (not misspelled), and every brass-balled pull-up j by Darren Collison. It has taken me some time to admit that UCLA may have been the better team, a fact that wasn’t made any more comforting by Bill Walton’s pod-rhapsody about the beauty of UCLA’s win [mp3]. The tournament committee’s calculus: Kansas wasn’t a clear #1 seed, so they needed to travel across the country to beat UCLA in their back yard in order to prove they belong in the Final Four. Which brings me to this year’s Memphis team.

This year, Memphis gets sent through the fire

Don’t you get the feeling that the tournament committee smells blood with Memphis? The Tigers were ranked #1 for a lot of the year, and they lost just ONE game all year. Except. Except they have the misfortune of playing in a weak conference, and their one loss happened to come at home against a team that got its ass handed to them by Texas. For this, they get sent to Houston for the South regional final, where they may in fact meet up with Texas. (Is there any way that the crowd won’t be heavily pro-Horn?) The tournament committee is clearly saying: Show us what you’ve got, Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey. Show up what you got, John Calipari! [Here it is again. John Cheney threatens to kill John Calipari. Thank you, YouTube]. Who knows? Maybe it’s a sort of karmic payback for Dorsey referring to himself as Goliath, with Greg Oden as David during last year’s tournament. Dude, if you’re Goliath, then survive this rock-slinging gauntlet.

Rick Barnes can recruit, but can the dude coach?

Two things I noticed about Barnes during the Big 12 final: (1) The guy either can’t consistently set up a decent play off a dead ball, or his players just can’t execute one. I find it hard to believe that DJ Augustin, one of the most talented players I’ve seen in a long time, can’t execute a play. So I’m left with the impression that Barnes is just a bad game-planner. Too many times, his team came out of a timeout with some crap play that resulted in a bad shot or turnover. Augustin can often bail Barnes out by hitting lots of bad shots, but how far can this take them, really? (2) Even worse, Barnes rides his stars, and they suffer against deeper teams. Augustin played all 40 minutes in the Big 12 tournament final and he averaged 39+ for the season. He finished with 20 points, scoring only 2 in the second half and missing all nine shots that he took. AJ Abrams is no help; he can spot up and drain threes, but he’s my size and needs to run off a bunch of screens to get an open shot, and therefore he does little to ease the burden on Augustin.

Ol Roy on the horizon for the Jayhawks

While I love all of this, I’m also focused on the prospects of my team. To paraphrase a once-great Kansan, I could (mostly) give a shit about storylines. As a Kansas fan, I’m primarily worried about Portland State breaking new ground as a #16 seed. Let’s take care of that one. Then I’m worried about UNLV; then Clemson; then Georgetown. Then: Ol Roy?

In the Final Four, there’s the potential for some great, great match-ups, which I’ll detail in another post. Too much needs to happen between now and then.

Basketball / Tale of two teams

26 February 2008 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

Baron!
The Bay Area: Where Baron happens. Photo: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Living in the Bay Area, I’ve watched Baron Davis and Don Nelson breathe life into the corpse of the Golden State Warriors by playing fast, loose, undisciplined, unpredictable basketball. When they’re clicking, the Warriors are invigorating and life-affirming. Nellie doesn’t burden the team with structure — they don’t really run an “offense” or play “defense” in the traditional senses — instead, they rely on the players’ abilities to improvise, pull their opponents out of their own structures, and wear them down with running and gunning.

Playground electicity

When the Warriors are good, they’re like the best playground basketball team you could ever imagine. What makes them all the more exciting is that their roster lacks key traditional dimensions associated with successful teams. They compete without the traditional man-mountain in the low-post to take on Shaq, Yao, Duncan, or Pau; instead, Andris Biedrins, who has very little in the way of a J and doesn’t ever try to play facing the basket, uses his quickness and hops to rebound, follow, and generally surprise opponents with his ability to keep Warrior possessions alive. (Check out where The Wages of Wins ranked Biedrins for the 2006 – 2007 season) Spoiler: He’s #1 on the team, with 11.7 to Baron’s 9.7.

On the guard front, Baron and Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis don’t really run an offense as much as they weave through defenses in perpetual one-on-fives, driving to the rim, dishing to teammates. Baron has a (admittedly deserved) reputation as a shoot-first point guard, but he defers to others when they’re hot and his teammates seem to feed off his energy. Monta, more of a two-guard than a point, somehow can’t shoot the three, but he can blow by just about anyone and he’s one of the better finishers in the league right now. 6’9″ Al Harrington is more reliable from behind the arc than he is with his back to the basket; Wages of Wins doesn’t think much of him, but it’s hard to deny the problems that he creates for defenses when he’s in the game. Stephen Jackson — Stack Jack, as Baron calls him — is the glue; when he’s in the game, everyone is better. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to play with him? He’s got everyone’s back.

Darnell
Darnell can’t do it alone. Photo: Nick Krug, Lawrence Journal-World.

Contrast the Warriors with the other team that I follow, the Kansas Jayhawks. Where the Warriors are dangerous, inscrutable, fierce competitors who save their best for big games, the Jayhawks have been the opposite: soft, predictable, vulnerable when the game is on the line. Where the Warriors have at least three guys who thrive in pressure situations — Baron, Stack Jack, and Harrington — the Jayhawks have eight guys who could start on any team in America, but not one who wants to take over a game.

Last week, I trekked to Oracle with Justin, Mara, and Lynne (Lynne? Blog?), and we watched the Warriors wear down the Celtics and, in the final moments, drive a dagger into their hearts. Three days later, I watched the Jayhawks wilt in the final moments against a very, very fired up Oklahoma State team.

Part of the problem is that Kansas simply doesn’t have reliable offensive weapons; another part is that teams love beating the Hawks, and each Jayhawk opponent is playing its biggest game of the season. College basketball is different in that regard. Message boards don’t rejoice each time the Lakers lose a game, but oh how people love to see teams like Kansas (Google: “kansas” + “choke”), Duke (Google: “duke” + “choke”), and Kentucky (Google: “kentucky” + “choke”) lose. Which is fine. If people didn’t really react this way, the wins wouldn’t be as much fun.

The root of the Hawks’ problem is offensive, though. The Warriors are stocked with guys who can create their own shot, but Kansas has to rely on Mario Chalmers and Sherron Collins (and, to some extent, Russell Robinson) to break down defenses and spring Brandon Rush on the perimeter or Darrell Arthur inside. Like the Warriors, the Hawks don’t run a structured offense with interchangeable parts; they rely on athleticism. This lack of dimension is easily exploited by teams who effectively pressure the Hawks’ guards, and who run big guys out to trap the ball at the three-point line. Add to this mix the fact that Kansas guards cannot seem to defend opposing guards, and there’s no question that they’ve got some big problems to solve before mid-March.

Kansas basketball / Post-Julian thoughts

10 April 2007 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

Julian at the SIU game

Julian Wright is taking the opportunity of a lifetime, and who can blame him? He brought enthusiasm and energy to every game, contributed hugely in many of the big wins in the last couple of years (cf. these dunks during the Florida game and this epic 33-point performance at MU), and showed enough skill and potential to be very highly regarded by NBA scouts. Who wouldn’t seize a chance to be financially secure, and to play in the NBA? The future is rarely certain in these situations, as these guys can attest. Best of luck to you, JuJu.

The KU-sports-related Internet is (predictably) thrashing around with the news, and the emotions range from hurt to happy, fatalistic to optimistic. And who can blame them, really? The last four years have been tough on Kansas basketball, so tough that the mention of certain names — Roy, Micah, Padgett, Galindo, Giddens, CJ, etc — can provoke pangs and spasms of hurt and guilt. I guess Julian gets added to the list now, though personally I think he’s ready and I’m happy for him. Most of the commenters at the end of this story feel otherwise.

Julian’s departure is complicated, of course, by the fact that he pledged to stay following the loss to UCLA. This CBS reporter was really peeved that Julian reconsidered his prospects after the season ended, which seems kinda silly to me. Did it really take Julian’s change of heart to communicate to him that big-time college sports are bittersweet, unpredictable, and perpetually compromised by the twin prospects of major, life-changing injuries and major, life-changing paydays?

Whatever happens, I think that Julian will eventually have a good NBA career. Ryan Greene of kusports.com compares Julian to Shawn Marion, and I see the resemblance as well. That said, he would be way better off with established, veteran-heavy teams like Phoenix (who wouldn’t?) or Chicago, where he’d be able to learn and adjust out of the spotlight. Career-endangering teams like Memphis, Atlanta or (once again) Sacramento will give him too much responsibility too soon, though he may be able to survive that either way. Long term, he’s a Western Conference player who will come off the bench, get his 12 and 8, continue do all the little stuff that makes him great (deflecting passes, setting other guys up, keeping offensive rebounds alive), and be a good team guy to boot.

The bright sides

Looking forward to next November, here are three scenarios that reflect my thinking on the remaining possibilities for early entries and (yikes, not again!) transfers.

  • Without Wright: Actually may be better. Like Drew Gooden’s early exit, I actually think there’s quite a significant bright side here. Julian’s athletic ability and talent require that he play a major role in the offense, which results in fewer opportunities for the talents of other players — Mario’s drives and shots, Sherron’s shot and drive, Rush’s entire offensive arsenal, Shady’s sweet moves inside 12 feet. When Gooden left, Collison’s McHale-like low-post presence and Hinrich’s Stockton-like ability to make the right decision on every fast break ended up providing a system more stable than the one focused on Gooden’s always athletic, sometimes erratic presence. Without Julian at the 4, Shady starts and gets more time. This means that the line-up gets bulkier without losing that much in the way of speed. They’ll miss Julian’s explosiveness and shot-blocking, but they gain Shady’s sweet touch and better ability to (more dependably) make plays while posting up. If Rush is still around (not likely, so see the bullet point below), I tend to think that this line-up may even be more dangerous than if Wright had stuck around.
  • Without Wright and Rush: Lots of re-jiggering, lots of uncertainty. Losing Rush is a much bigger deal than losing Wright, obviously. He’s the team’s best on-the-ball defender; he became the go-to scorer during the games in San Jose, and he can stroke it. Unfortunately for him, he’s not the explosive athlete that Julian is, and scouts are not evaluating his draftability in the crystal-ballish terms of upside and potential. His capacity is known, apparently, and therefore it has limits in the eyes of scouts. Does this mean he can’t become, say, a Bruce Bowen type of player? Heck no. In fact, I think he’d fit in really well with the type of team who would draft him in the 20’s or so. And this is probably what will happen, so it all works out for the best, for him. If money and academics (which are a major hassle for him) were not issues, he’s in a great position to thrive next season. He fits into Self’s system really well; he really began to shine at the end of the season; another season would really give him a chance to refine his dribble-drive and his outside shot. But this is not an ideal world, and barring the entry of the entire UNC team or an injury that prevents him from competing in the pre-draft camps, I suspect he’s gone. Good luck to him.
    So. How do the Hawks replace Brandon? Who becomes the stopper? Who takes over the offense at the end of games? Who attracts the other team’s defenders whenever he’s on the floor? I’m not really sure about any of this. A couple of things are certain, though: This will be a seasoned, capable team. They’ve been through a lot, beaten Kevin Durant twice, won two Big 12 tournaments, etc. Moreover, they’ll be without a superstar like Brandon and Julian, and this — weirdly — might make them much more like Self’s Illinois teams — gritty, hungry, scrappy and dangerous in the tournament.
  • Without Wright, Rush, and Collins: !@$#%$#@*&. Almost too painful to consider. How many times did I text the words “Thank God for Sherron” during the Big 12 season? How many times did he single-handedly change the pace and momentum of a game with a vicious drive to the basket? He’s not ready to jump to the League, but rumor has it that he wants to be closer to home. But would he really want to sit out a year, play for a school in a mid-major conference, give up a chance to play in a Final Four, give up a chance to play on national television for 15 – 20 or 20 – 25 games next year? I really hope not. Man, that would hurt.

March Madness / My bracket, with explanations

13 March 2007 in basketball, kansas basketball, reviews, tip | No comments

UPDATE 1: A couple of changed picks; UPDATE 2: Some eerie resemblances my bracket and those of SI writers; UPDATE 4: Surveying the carnage: Thoughts after the first two rounds

Here’s the bracket that I made on the Monday after the seedings were announced.

my 2007 bracket - ideal version

UPDATE: Since Monday, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading up on the teams I don’t know/care about — in SI.com and its Tourney Blog, statistical analyst Ken Pomeroy’s blog, the NYT Bracket blog, and the ever-unfriendly ESPN.com which must hide a lot of its useful stuff behind its subscription service, Insider. In any case, the more you read about the first round match-ups, the more confusing it all gets. I’ve seen many of the teams play at some point during the season, but I’m totally in the dark on pretty much any team from the Pac 10 (even though I live in California, I just really can’t even force myself to care about it) and almost all of the mid-majors.

One bracket change came out of this — I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Duke seems less likely to get upset by VCU. Duke has been criticized a lot for being soft, sloppy, and generally uninspired, and they’re coming off a stinging loss in the ACC Tournament. How could they not be hungry? They’ve got a bunch of talented players, and it just seems really unlikely that they won’t be able to pull off a win against a VCU team that has only played one team in the tournament (Old Dominion).

While I’ve only changed one outcome, my reading did produce many doubts in my bracket, which I detail below. (It also caused me to create three more versions of my bracket to account for the different scenarios that the pundits highlighted — What if Oregon can’t play defense? What if Oden explodes on the scene and dominates everyone? What if North Carolina is as good as they appear to be in 3-minute stretches?)

Some second thoughts

UPDATE 2: Incidentally, SI writer Grant Wahl’s bracket is almost exactly the same as mine. (Actually, same with Seth Davis). Same Final Four; same final game; same outcome. The only big differences are that he has Texas beating UNC (UPDATE 3: Now, so do I), and Creighton beating Memphis, whereas I have both UNC and Memphis getting knocked out in the next round. (I also have more first-round upsets than him ... Oral Roberts over Washington State, etc).

UPDATE 4 (in the week following the first two rounds): After two straight years in which my bracket burst into flames during the first weekend, I was just happy to emerge with 15 out of 16 teams still alive. Mostly, I got burned by my late changes — Texas beating UNC and Duke beating VCU — and by the fashionable upsets that I stubbornly decided to stick with — Georgia Tech over UNLV, Creighton over Nevada, and Oral Roberts over Washington State, each of which found their own agonizing way of driving a spear through my heart. Crxp.

As usual, there were a couple of teams that I was totally, totally wrong about: (1) UNLV. Obviously, these guys can play. I discounted them because (a) who did they beat? and (b) the coach’s son seemed to play an inordinately important role. Both seemed like big-time red flags. I ignored the fact that they were experienced, and that they were clearly pissed off by their #7 seed. Who would have thought that the team that rose to the occasion would be composed of hard-nosed guys led by journeyman coach Lon Kruger (UNLV), and not composed of McDonald’s All-Americans and led by the sainted Coach K? Seemed unlikely before it happened, but oh how sweet it is in retrospect. (2) Texas. During the two Kansas games, they were dangerously weak at guard. Both games would likely have been blow-outs if Durant hadn’t totally gone off in the first 15 minutes of each. Abrams is a terrible ball-handler who needs multiple screens to get his shot going, and Augustin is completely dominant one moment and out-of-control the next. USC forced these guys to play a bigger role by taking away Durant’s dribble; good call, Tim Floyd. (Didn’t really think I’d be saying those words anytime after 2002). On the other bench, Rick Barnes made no discernible adjustments. Again, not that surprising, in retrospect.

The next round looks mostly boring to me, though I guess half the games could be exciting — UNC-USC, if USC is able to hang on while UNC goes on its periodic runs, A&M-Memphis should display some good offensive firepower (unlike Pitt-UCLA, which almost certainly will be a grind-it-out snore-fest), and KU-SIU which could be exciting if KU has a hard time running its offense against the defense-minded Salukis. Let’s hope that it’s not exciting in this way.

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