Weekend Hoops Notes

Not a good weekend of basketball. Nope, not good at all.

Jayhawk Talk

Well, I feared playing Arkansas from the moment the brackets came out a week ago. Long, athletic, fearless, a little crazy. They resembled Texas and TCU, teams that gave KU three of their worst losses this year. Saturday afternoon I began to gain confidence. KU was more experienced and had been tested all year. Arkansas dropped just about every big game on their schedule. There was a little turmoil on their roster. They might be more talented, but they certainly weren’t the more steady team. Get a lead, force them to shoot jumpers, and hold on to survive and advance.

For 25 minutes KU were about perfect, leading by 12 with under 16 to play.

Then it all fell apart.

I wasn’t mad or sad that KU’s season was over. I never expected them to repeat, and while my goal was to be the first defending champ since 2016 to reach the Sweet 16, this team outperformed every other expectation I had for them.

No, I was mad at how they lost. They went soft. They missed free throws. They got both a 5 and 10 second violation, neither of which they had picked up all season. They took a couple very quick, nervous shots when there was still a lot of time left in the game. It wasn’t just a game KU could have won, it was a game they should have won. They pissed it away.

A bad end to a great season, with most of the worst errors of the second half committed by the players who made some of the biggest plays of the year.

Would Bill Self being on the sideline have made a difference? Maybe. He might have adjusted quicker and differently to what Arkansas was doing, notably how they attacked off the pick-and-roll. Maybe he would have called a different out-of-bounds play or two.

However, I think it’s a disservice to Norm Roberts and the other assistants to put the loss on them. I don’t think the general message from coaches to players was much different that it would have been had Self been there. It was individual breakdowns that caused the loss more than any tactical choices the coaches made.

Saturday was a great moment for the KU haters. Not only did another highly ranked Jayhawks team fail to play to their seed, but, as it is currently set to be constructed, KU will likely take a step back next year.

For the first time in seemingly ages, there is no player in the system who is set to take over the mantle as Alpha. As Perry Ellis passed to Frank Mason, who handed off to Devonte Graham, who handed off to Udoka Azubuike, who handed to Ochai Agbaji, who handed to Jalen Wilson. I doubt that either DaJuan Harris or KJ Adams have the ability to take on that kind of role next year. There is a very good recruiting class coming in, but none of those guys seem like they are the next Gradey Dick, who himself wasn’t the best player on the team this year.

The easy answer to that these days is to hit the transfer portal. It’s hard for me to see a transfer coming in and being the Alpha from day one. It takes everyone the better part of a season, if not longer, to figure out Self’s system and expectations.

The portal is also problematic since KU already needs to shed a player or two in order to get under their self-imposed sanctions for next year. Assuming all four committed recruits still show up in the fall, some non-senior/non-Gradey Dick player will need to depart. If Self wants to add a transfer(s), that means another has to hit the bricks.

I can think of at least five guys who have a good reason to transfer, either just to get a fresh start or go somewhere where there are better opportunities to play. I wonder how NIL will change their calculations, though. Is it better to stay at KU and not play much and maybe be unhappy, but make more NIL cash, than to find a better playing situation but not have the same NIL chances? Weird times.

Now don’t take my prediction too strongly: KU will still be good next year. But they will be very young and unproven.

Oh, and there’s the little matter of Bill Self’s health. I’m an optimist. I think he’s going to be fine and coaching at KU next fall. It remains a question, though. If you don’t think the coaches he battles with the most on the recruiting trail haven’t been putting the word out that kids can’t trust Self to be their coach, you don’t know a thing about recruiting. [1]

So defending champs no longer. But the Kansas Jayhawks remain the reigning men’s division one basketball national champions for another two weeks.

Rock Chalk, Bitches.

Other Tournament Thoughts

We went out to dinner Friday evening with some friends who are far less interested in sports than I am. I checked the Purdue score at halftime and was surprised they were down, but figured they would rally. I checked again midway through the second half and they were up five. About 20 minutes later we began hearing occasional noise from the bar area, capped by a huge roar. My buddy and I quickly whipped out our phones and saw Fairleigh Dickinson had just hit a 3 to go up five. We watched the last seconds on a phone. Amazing. I don’t know that many people had a whole lot of faith in Purdue getting out of their region this year, but to lose their opening game? Stunning.

Matt Painter is a very good, borderline great, coach. He recruits to a style and gets those players to excel in that system. He sees the big picture and tweaks his system for the strengths of each year’s roster. He makes terrific adjustments within the game. But, man, that dude has terrible, terrible luck in March.

I know some IU people were having a lot of fun with this, especially in tearing down Painter and the “myth” that he is a great coach. There’s definitely a pattern here, but the randomness of the tournament is a bitch. You can never really quantify how coach X or program Y has such bad luck over time. Is it mental? Is it something specific Painter does wrong? Does Bill Self really coach differently in the Elite Eight? Or is it just the roulette wheel of March Madness coming up the wrong color time and time again?

My bracket was looking pretty good until Saturday evening and Sunday. Fortunately everyone else is getting wiped out, too. I picked 10 of the Sweet 16 and have five of the Elite Eight and three of the Final Four left. I’m second of 44, sixth of 155, and seventh of 49 in my three pools. In my fantasy league, I’m tied for second, six points out of first. And that was with the first overall pick scoring zero points in his first game. If you’re going to take a chance on an accessory to murder (uncharged), he really needs to deliver.

I’d rather be wearing KU gear Friday when we leave for spring break than celebrating bracket success.

The Best Conference in 20 Years kind of had a shitty first weekend.

A Sweet 16 without Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, or North Carolina. Wonder how long it’s been since that happened.

It seems like they’ve shrunk the commercial pool even further this year, and we’re seeing the same 5–6 commercials. Or at least we’re seeing an assortment of 3–4 and then each break has one stupid AT&T commercial and then a Capital One commercial. At least the CapOne ads are funny, but they are so overplayed.

I’m really starting to hate AT&T’s Lilly. Especially when she’s referred to as a “special contributor” by the CBS studio people.

Has anyone thought of putting Coach K and Peyton Manning in a commercial together? It seems inevitable as they both do 8000 ads. I’m going to start boycotting any products that use either of them in their campaigns. Branch out a little, people.

Oh, and if you weren’t watching the very first games of Thursday, you probably missed Coach K’s “speech” to all 64 teams. I’m so disappointed in myself that I didn’t predict CBS would find a way to make the tournament about him somehow. Guy went out a loser. Why are we celebrating him?

I do not like three-man announcer booths. They don’t give the games enough room to breath, even if all three people on the mic are good.

Finally, a rules suggestion. If a player is fouled and makes their shot going into a TV timeout, the timeout gets delayed until either he makes his free throw or the next dead ball. Those breaks kill all the drama of the and-one opportunity. This seems like a reasonable ask, especially when it sure feels like the dreaded double timeout occurs a lot more often in March. No, I’m not just saying this because Kevin McCullar missed an and-one free throw after a commercial break.

Kid Hoops

It was a delightful weekend of getting up at either 6:45 or 6:15 to drive on snowy roads in a single-digit windchill to watch L and her travel team take the court again.

They were perfect Saturday, getting two double-digits wins over very physical teams. L looked a little intimidated by the physical play and struggled with turnovers in the first game. She had six total points on the day, and probably rebounded better than she did anything else.

Sunday we faced a team from Michigan in bracket play. They were super tough on defense, and led by 11 midway through the second half.

Our girls made a nice run to take the lead late. But it felt curiously like the KU game. We missed five free throws in the final 3:00. One of our assistants got a technical that cost us a point in that same stretch.[2] The game went to overtime where our best free throw shooter went 1–2 with 20 seconds left to put us up one. The Michigan girls threw in a crazy shot – a banked, running layup from high off the glass – to take the lead with 10 seconds left and we couldn’t get a shot off before the buzzer.

Bummer.

That team went on to win the championship with our game being their closest of the weekend.

There was another connection to the KU game. Like DaJuan Harris, L rolled her ankle. Unlike him, she never came back into the game after getting hurt. Fortunately since we lost she didn’t have to miss another game (or two). When we got home it hurt to walk but didn’t look too swollen, so we’re hopeful she didn’t injure it too badly. The good news is we won’t play games for another three weeks because of spring breaks, so she has a nice, long, built-in rest period.

(Monday morning update: she’s in a boot and it still hurts pretty bad, but still not a ton of swelling or discoloration.)

She had been in the game less than two minutes when she got injured, so she didn’t get a chance to do anything. When she rolled it she was backing down a defender at halfcourt. She went down, lost the ball, and her defender picked it up and went in for an uncontested layup. Two more killer points.

I asked L about the bench technical. She shook her head and said, “Those refs were so soft.” I think she’s been watching Bill Self videos.

Oh, sports are dumb. So, so dumb.