Disappointed

Plain and simple this is not a good team. Frankly they are fortunate to be 10-5, and taking lumps against meh teams like OU and OSU is concerning.. the ship is sinking fast.

Billy Packer finally said publicly what we've been saying here for a while - the black cloud of NCAA violations is taking its toll. The NCAA is really messing with KU now - letting the decision drag on for two seasons, with no end in sight. It's like probation, waiting on ineligibility, and it's affecting multiple recruiting classes.

I love our guys, but frankly most are not full starter quality on past KU teams. Garrett doing anything other than guarding is not great for us. Braun and Wison subject to shutouts when the other team keys on them. Ochai can play for anyone, but he needs help. And Mac is a serviceable backup, but not anywhere near a starter. Any team would be thrilled playing KU when Garrett or Mac ends up the leading scorer. It means they shut down our actual scoring threats.

Play hard, finish the season in top 25, and hope all this NCAA mess gets past us soon.

I will be called out for heresy, but here's where many of my friends and I are starting to come down on all of this.

Self has been amazing, and has produced a HOF level program for quite some time. But, I sensed last year, and even this year, that his heart isn't in it as much. That's a huge assumption on my part with no evidence of course, but He seems like a completely different person on the sideline.

The NCAA thing has to be weighing on him, and he knows it's impacting the program.

Is it time for KU to accept punishment, get the one year ban that is likely coming from it, and move on? Perhaps with a Bill Self retirement or leave of absence? I hate to say that, but it feels like KU needs to flush out the negative and start anew.

KU is suffering under the NCAA cloud; yet I am watching Baylor a school with no brand or bb history who plays in freaking Waco have arguably the best team in college BB..again tell how that was done legitimately.. Baylor has had criminal issues with its MBB and FB program yet they aren’t facing any punishments...NCAA is a joke...no way in no universe should a BU have a better team than KU..I’ll catch heat or be called spoiled but don’t like it, my funds that I donate to KU don’t like it and if it means refresh then so be it... frustrated alum and donor here.

I don’t disagree LKF, but KU is the poster child for all the wrong that Adidas did over the past couple decades - and more so we’re the scapegoat for all shoe company BS throughout college sports. Like it or not, we’re the target, and in my opinion we deserve to some degree what’s coming. Though many others deserve EXACTLY the same thing, we’re in the crosshairs.

so it may not be fair, but does KU ride this down for a couple more years, or do we move on? And in moving on, do we clean house and reload?

In my opinion, investigation needs to wrap up and then presented with the options KU needs to make a decision. NCAA needs to go away, outdated organization. I am glad KU is fighting back.

I am not as down on this team as some others are. We really are not that far off from being a really good team. We may not get there this year but I have hope. I think a few things that give me hope are Big Dave is a much better passer than most bigs. Jalen Wilson is still one of the most versatile players out there. Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun are outstanding shooters. Our defense is just a little bit away from being really good. The 2 biggest weaknesses I see are we can't initiate an offense. Asking Marcus Garrett to do that is not a good plan. I think he is a terrific basketball player but he is not a natural point guard. Dajuan Harris is not ready for this level yet because of his lack of confidence in his own shot. The other issue that I see is we get called for more weak fouls on drives to the hoop than any team ever. If the zebras are going to call the foul anyway we need to make the other team make 2 from the stripe. We give up an uncanny number of 3 point plays.

On the subject of BU their athletic dept is fielding really strong teams in Football and men's and women's basketball. I have no inside knowledge of how they are doing it but they not only get the talent to come to school there they also get them to stay when they could be getting paid as professionals. I think about this tears Men's basketball team. It is pretty much the same team that beat the best team in the country last year on that teams home court. They definitely have talent and according to commentators they have more just waiting for their chance to play.

The NCAA organization is all about protecting their monopoly. The Adidas scandal was a PR problem that I think they made the calculation that coming down hard and heavy on KU was the best way to proceed. It is a big enough name in CBB to be taken seriously but not really tied to a large population center. I think their feelings are that the income will not be hurt much if they throw KU under the bus and it will quite the critics.

As most of you know, I have an algorithm much like Sagarin, KenPom, ESPN Net and others. I have upgraded it quite a bit this year based on what I have learned over the years. If you look at Massey's Composite site, my algorithm is currently the No. 1 conforming algorithm. I have been tracking this team statistically in gory detail all season and it has been clear to me all season that this team is realistically not a top 10 team and possibly not even a top 25 team. I currently have them ranked 35th prior to this game. They will likely drop a few spots. I also track the +/- stat after each game and the box score. As part of my DPPI algorithm, I calculate the net effective offense and net effective defense adjusted for SOS. Right now, KU has somewhere in the vicinity of the 50th ranked offense and 25th ranked defense (I'll have the updates after all of today's games are completed). In addition, I track KU stats year on year for comparison.

I preface all this to lay the groundwork for my take on this team. This is a decent team but not a great team. This team lacks a bona fide transcendent skill set. We have a bunch of guys who have decent skills but no single player has an elite skillset save for Marcus Garrett's man on man defense. We have a team that realistically has a ceiling of maybe being a 4 seed in the NCAA tourney. Our ranking this season thus far has been a gift on our reputation and the fact that we are a blue blood. We are not and never have been a top 10 team. The best I have had us ranked this season is 24th before the loss to OSU. So why are we so mediocre (actually we are better than mediocre but you know what I mean)? Here are my thought.

1. We don't have the horses. KU has 5 top 100 players. Heck, Baylor has 6, Duke has 9, Gonzaga has 10. Our recruiting has been clearly below par over the last 3 seasons. I think everyone's assessment that the NCAA investigation is taking a toll is obviously true. It is killing us. But I would also submit that our recruiting assessment has been subpar as well. There have been a number of local area players that have not been recruited by KU that have turned out better than the guys we recruited. Baylor's No. 1 ranked team is a bunch of low ranked guys that have developed. That brings me to my 2nd point.

2. We have not developed players nearly as well over the last 6 years, specifically the front court. Dok did get much better his Senior year, but his development was slow and largely based on body development as much as skill development. 2019 was a disaster of team chemistry and team development. We really miss Danny Manning.

3. I never questioned KU scouting but the last three years I have. Last season we were just better than everyone but we often seemed to not be prepared for the other teams. We all know Self is a master which makes me wonder about the assistant coaches. Do we really have championship quality assistant coaches? I am not sure. Dooley was a huge loss as was Manning. Townsend is a proven recruiter and supposedly so is Howard. But what about scouting and X's and O's and player development? I am not enamored with the current crop of assistants in terms of scouting and X's and O's.

4. The NCAA is clearly messing us up. We need desperately to get that behind us. I am ready to accept whatever penalties to get that behind us. Is it affecting Self's attitude. To some degree, how can it not? I mean, not only is it his career and name on the line, but he has to know better than all of us how t is affecting our recruiting. It has to be affecting him or he is not human. I agree with Hairy, we may need some new blood but not Self, maybe the assistants.

5. No 4th gear. We simply do not have a gear we can shift into when we most need it. In fact, all too often this season, other teams have shifted into that gear and buried us. We have always had that gear. This year we do not. We have no player who can take over.

6. We lack mental toughness. Now I don't mean we lack guys who are trying or are competitive. What I mean by that is we lack the guys that like Tiger Woods in his prime, played his best when his back was to the wall. That is sort of related to the 4th gear comment. We do not seem to dig down when the going gets tough. We do not necessarily fade either, although we have a couple times, but we don't get gritty and step up a notch or two.

We are not a bad team and we are not grossly underperforming based on the talent. We simply do not have the talent. We are probably about a 25th to 30th ranked team, playing like a 25th to 30th ranked team. The one thing that is alarming is the incredible inconsistency. We are currently the 304th most inconsistent team in the country. That starts on defense. That bothers me. We can be pretty good on defense and we can go for long stretches where we are not good. The inconsistency is a real worry to me. The disappointment to me about this team is not the team or the record, it is the fact that we got to this point where we have a team that probably has a ceiling lower than most KU teams of the last 35 years. That is what we need to fix, what got us here.

Great analysis — NCAA needs to go by the wayside both the investigation and the organization. When KU is getting out recruited by the likes of Baylor or Texas in BB, something is amiss.....

Since Zona announced that it was going to ban itself from the post season while waiting for the arbitration I have been wondering.
I know the case against them is arguably worse; an assistant couch was convicted..

This KU team has some parts but they don't fit together, I don't think getting to the round of 16 in the All Indiana 2020 NCAA is worth loosing a chance for a deep run in 2021. This year is still off with 2500 fan crowds and games postpended all over.
Waiting until we are 12-8 to self impose may not look like punishment.

Great analysis Corpus.

Some take always:

1. Don’t most blue blood assistants move on to head coach jobs? KU under Self hasn’t produced a stable of talented coaches now running other nationally ranked programs. Our current guys don’t seem to be candidates for any higher job,, which may support the notion about recruiting and player development being down. Self is as loyal to seniors and staff as anyone I know, so can’t fault him, but that loyalty doesn’t always pay off on the court.

2. Self is not himself as a coach, and his press comments seem very blah and unemotional. I suppose he knows he doesn’t have the horses, and yelling at them and sitting them for mistakes and driving them to be better likely just makes things worse.

3. We will not get off without sanctions, so I agree that it’s in our best interest to get that over with, and this is the best time to do so. Unfortunately, waiting til the end of the season and then hitting us will hurt more, which is exactly what I think NCAA has in mind.