Hawks look sluggish

Get rid of the residual Halloween cobwebs and get going 'hawks!!!!

But still,

RC

55-45 KU at first timeout in 2nd hlf. Said HCBS not happy with Bragg. KU 17 turnovers.

67-51 KU at under 12 timeout. Svi had 4 3's. Jackson made a couple of drive for lay-ins. Sloppy on both sides.

JR! Good to see your name back on the board!

Aaahhh...back to my happy place. Hope eeryone had a good offseason.

Tonight was fairly typical and not unexpected. Washburn is a good team who came in pumped up to go down swinging on a big stage. KU were rusty, sloppy, and couldn't rebound. No biggie, HCBS will have plenty of "teachable moments" for them on Wednesday.

Jackson and the freshmen need to get the butterflies out and get used to playing in a big time atmosphere. That will happen. Good to see improvement by Vick, and to see Svi making shots. Of course our backcourt (especially Frank) are very solid and will win games for us.

The only real downer for me was Landon who, as a senior, shouldn't be making unforced errors.

Bottom line, they played to (or a little below) the level of competition. Onward and upward.

I had a nightmare after the game that we had 24 turn-overs!!!!

We'll know more soon. I believe your prognostication,

RC

Nerves. Inexperience. Lack of real motivation. And horrible refs. A mix of factors that lead to a very tedious game to watch. We should be a lot better soon. Of course, we aren't watching Indiana or Duke right now, and for all we know, they are just as ................off key. We'll find out on the 11th how good we're going to be in the early going.

Side note on Jackson:

With all the hype around him, it's only natural to expect to see him dunking from half court, hitting no-look 3-pointers, and putting on a Globetrotter-esque performance. Obviously that's not reality, and he'll need to make some adjustments to his new environment (as was evidenced by his lackluster 1st half).

I remember feeling the same way about a kid named Andrew Wiggins who early on seemed more apt to defer to his teammates than take control himself. Clearly in the 1 year we had him, he turned out to be a fairly decent player, who had an acceptable season, and who was able to find employment at the next level . I imagine that Mr. Jackson will similarly adjust quickly to his new surroundings, and despite not having the years of experience playing at the D1 level, will adapt and excel in short order.

As far as Indiana and Duke go, everybody's freshmen at this point are adjusting, and previous years' bench warmers are moving up into more significant roles. All of this requires a certain adjustment period before everyone has adapted to their new roles. To me, the key are the guys like Mason and Graham who are guys who are returning to familiar leadership roles. I haven't looked closely at Indiana or Duke, but in making a head-to-head comparison, I'd think that you'd want to start by comparing how many returning starters each team has as a benchmark of how good they'll be early in the season. For the newbies or recently promoted guys, it's still kind of crapshoot until things settle down in late December and January.