Mick

Corpus, what's the+/- for Hunter?

I ask because what I keep seeing is KU playing its best all around game when he's in the game.

Also glad to see Money hit a 3 at last. Popping in those FTs has hopefully reset his shot.

HawkErrant wrote: I ask because what I keep seeing is KU playing its best all around game when he's in the game.

It was definitely true today. I think Hunter played more like Self wants from our non-Perry bigs. In previous games Hunter was scoring mostly away from the basket with jump shots. Today he was in the mix all second half. When we have a big, playing big, Perry can play to his strengths.

Spot on, gents. And Dave, to your point, there was one play in the Baylor blowout that was seemingly vanilla to a casual hoops fan yet viscerally telling (and uplifting) to me. It was a play in which Perry started to make a move toward the rim off the left block, yet instead of forcing up a bad shot into the teeth of the D (which we've seen far too much in the past), he drew the D toward him and found an open Hunter off the right block moving into the paint for the easy layup. A made layup, I would add. (My biggest beef with KU bigs the last 2.5 seasons) Perry is not a strong power forward that we can consistently run our inside offense through, as we (and hopefully Coach Self) have figured out. He is an athletic small forward with substantial versatility, however, and he becomes a VERY good player when he has a companion in the paint who can actually score (and draw some attention away from him, as a threat).

If this is not just a blip but a hard trend that deepens, it's huge. Because make no mistake about it, we're going to have to win some close-margin games with our inside presence this year, and that's the biggest weakness on the team that I can see (a non-polished inside power game). That and the lack of a truly elite defense (another KU achilles the past few seasons). Shore up our game in those two areas and we have the potential to become a veritable machine by April...

It is rather remarkable (and flabbergasting), Peter. It's plagued our veteran trio (Ellis, Traylor, Lucas) for their entire college careers, which is odd in as much you'd think that repeating the same ill-advised approach over and over (with the same bad results) would eventually sink in.

I must say, though, that on occasion I've been pleasantly surprised to see them go up stronger and actually finish. Perry had one dunk on Saturday that almost brought back memories of T-Rob--which is to say that the ball was slammed so forcefully through the rim that it seemed to hit the floor before he did and threatened to crater Naismith Court. Unfortunately, I believe he did so because he was mad at himself for having gone up softly on a play prior to that and getting enough defensive pressure that he missed a 6-inch gimme. (Face plant)

If I were those three bigs, in particular, and I EVER came within a foot of the rim, I'd go up with a two-handed dunk every single time instead of a layup or finger roll. The best outcome is a made shot and a foul, the next best is a made shot, the next to worst is a missed shot but a foul, and the worst is a missed shot but no foul. I'll take those odds any day over soft, missed bunnies.

If you click on someone's profile, you'll see a list of all his/her posts. Or you can do a search. I searched "+/-" to find it. It had dropped to page 2 of the BB board.

Corpus' post