Post Mortem A Tale of Two Teams, It was the best of times, it was the worst ....

I have posted a ton of data on this site supporting the proposition that Coach Self is perhaps the best coach in the country in winning games in the regular season. Since he has been at Kansas, he has won more games than anyone while perennially facing one of the toughest schedules in the country. He has been able to recruit great talent and he has shown he can coach over the course of a season to mold a team to excel in the rigors of a 30+ game schedule. Literally, no one has done that better than Coach Self. He deserves full recognition for that.

Then there is the NCAA tourney. What should be patently obvious to the most casual observer is that what it takes to win in the NCAA tourney is slightly different than what it takes to win over the grind of a long season. Obviously many of the ingredients are the same. Talent, coaching, offense, defense, etc. But there are some things that are highly accentuated in the NCAA.

USC is 24-7 on the season. I would argue that if Coach Self were the coach of USC, they would be more likely 26-5 or even 27-4. The things that a coach can do to contribute to wins in a conference season or over the course of a season are where Self excels. I think USC would be a better overall team for the long haul with Coach Self because he is the best at that. But then there is the NCAA.

I am going to do the tale of two teams. Let's take KU and Oral Roberts. KU is a team that has decent talent 7 or 8 deep but we we have no star. More importantly, we have no real transcendent talent on the team save for possibly Marcus's defense or Jalen's rebounding. What we have is a decent group of players with decent talent but no single go-to killer that can take over a game. Overall, we are more talented than Oral Roberts. What Oral Roberts has is two players who have assassin's attitudes and unique talents in Abmas and Obanor. If I were a Oral Roberts fan, I would be the opposite of KU fans. I would be super frustrated that my team could not turn this talent into a better team over the course of the season and win more games. If Bill Self coached Oral Roberts, they would win a lot more games over the course of the season.

But in the NCAA, when you have that kind of individual talent and you can channel it for a game, you can be a giant killer. We saw that with the Mobley brothers. So a part of KU's inability to succeeed in the NCAA, this season for sure, is a lack of assassin talent. In 2008 we had a number of assassins on that team. We had Tyshawn in 2021, who had that talent and ability. We had Malik, Svi and Devonte' in 2018. We had Kirk and Nick in 2003. We had Danny and a few other guys in 1988.

The NCAA is also about luck and other things that are just part of the game. Getting hot at the right time, etc. But there is no denying that KU has more often underachieved than overachieved in the NCAA. Is that on Self? Well, yes in large part. It is on him to recruit and develop that kind of talent regularly. Losing to USC is no disgrace. Heck, we were an underdog. Losing by 34 is a disgrace. Part of this was USC just found lightning in a bottle. They had a once or twice in a season type game. But part of it was that they had transcendent talent that could just as easily be called underachievers during the regular season.

I think Self overachieved with this team this season. That is to his credit. This team lacks talent. He managed to get us to 2nd place in the Big 12 and a 3 seed in the NCAA. That is brilliant coaching. But because of who this team is, they had the cards stacked against them in the NCAA. I think part of Self's problem in the NCAA is he overachieves often in the regular season due to his great coaching. BUt the question is, would we trade some regular season success for more NCAA success? Hmmmmmm!!!!

I think it should really be apparent that this team was not as talented as some other teams KU has had. I agree with your analysis. I am one who is willing to live with "underachieving" in the NCAA tourney for maximizing the performance over the season. I think the current coaching staff is doing an amazing job. They are not perfect but I think they are the best out there. I really wish last years team would have had a chance to compete in the NCAA tournament.

Good thoughts Konza. I would have to say as the nerd deluxe, the guy who just spent a fair amount of money to buy game data back to 1950, I obviously deeply derive joy from the consistency of the KU/Self/Williams streak. By just about any metric you want to apply over the last 35 years, only 2 schools are going to emerge at the top in every metric. Duke and Kansas are head and shoulders the elite over the last 30 years of regular season success. And I LOVE that. I spend a lot of time mishing and mashing data only 5% at most ever sees the light of day on this board. But it warms my heart as I see in all it's stochastic and mathematical splendor the amazing run we have been on. But I have also been very candid, and not always to the delight of others on this board, that KU's performance in the NCAA has been anything but elite. It has been sub elite. We can all speculate and hypothesize the reasons why, but the data is pretty clear. We have had decent success in the NCAA largely because we have earned high seeds but what we have done with those seeds has been less than many other schools and what Self has done is not as good as coaches like Jay Wright and Roy Williams. I would take Self 100 times out of 100 for building a program to sustain over time. But there is no denying, Williams has delivered in the NCAA Tourney, at least since he went to UNC. I would put Coach K in the category of being slightly above average in the NCAA in terms of delivering to seed. He has taken some teams to the tourney that were so far superior to the field and he has won some NC's with those teams and he has flamed out on occasion. But when it comes to delivering to seed, Self has been sub-par. When it comes to building a winning program, Self has been the best in the country. A true conundrum.