Monday morning musings 2025-02-17

Nicely stated, HE. Very insightful comments. I can't say I disagree anyone you said and I appreciate your very measured tone.

I guess what bothers me most (among several things) is that KU used to always play tough and smart down the stretch of close games. Not this bunch. Collapse is not too strong a word for what this team has done too many times this season.

HE always with the well thought out post. What is most concerning is the team’s regression since Nov in pretty much all aspects. They shy away from the fight unlike past KU teams. KU teams used to be the big bad bully that reached into an opponent’s chest and ripped their proverbial heart out. Now Utah doesn’t bother to storm the court …and KU can’t take candy form a newborn.

Couldn't agree more. I, too, have given up on these guys. Agree on Hunter as well. I saw St. Johns live at MSG a couple weeks ago and Ejifor is 1000x tougher. Maybe not as talented overall, but he doesn't avoid contact, plays defense, dunks, etc.

Last year was disappointing. This year is downright depressing.

At the risk of alienating a lot of Bill Self coolaid drinkers, I have consistently been on the record for 3 years that KJ Adams and Dajuan Harris are nothing more than role players. To quote “build” a team around those guys, in my opinion and now in the evaluation of the objective data, is a quick and sure path to mediocrity. I have a player rating system that obviously I believe in and I believe it has efficacy, rates Dajuan Harris at a level you would expect for a decent back-up point guard. He rates out as the 2nd worst point guard going back to 1990 at KU. Only Nadiir Tharpe rates out worse. He is a nice player and I would be fine with him on my team as a backup PG. KJ ditto. KJ has a few strengths like Dajuan but has some glaring holes in his game. It all adds up to a player who would be a decent backup but rates way to low for starter far much less than a core starter. Fran Fraschilla stated it blatantly in the Colorado game. He agrees, based on his unambiguous comments, that KJ and Dajuan are nice role players. But Self has chosen to make them the core and has tried to build a team around them. Well if you want to make a case that you can destroy talent Bill’s portal choices would provide some evidence. These guys build a resume and come to KU to underperform. Is it Self’s system? Or maybe is it that you are adding talent to a marginally talented core and expecting the new guys to fit in rather than become the new core.

I have said for three years that Self should recruit over KJ and Dajuan rather than making them the core and building around them. How many teams have outshined our core. It really boils down to KU and Self has built a team from parts that are simply decent college basketball players. That is far away from a take no prisoners mentality. Self seems to get married to certain guys and becomes completely blinded to the reality of their ability to lead a championship level team.

As some of you may remember, I have a power rating system called DPPI. Last season was a disaster. It was a borderline disaster before the injuries as KU ranked only 10th in the country with an adjusted rating assuming KU’s core 5 starters played every minute of every game. But when you took McCullar out of the lineup, KU ranked 129th in the country. Overall for the season we ranked 28th. Now 28th out of 362 teams is not bad by some standards but by KU standards it is catastrophic. And this season KU ranks 16th overall and 21st in the pure predictor. Seriously, there is no getting around the fact that the last two season, KU has been a 15th.to 25th ranked team. And ad in 2023 it doesn’t move that needle much. What is one huge commonality of those teams? KJ Adams and Dajuan Harris as core players. Again, Self has decided to build a team around these guys. He has won the portal lottery so to speak and has failed spectacularly. Could so many pundits be so wrong about so many players when we look at KU’s transfers? Or maybe is it time to go cold turkey off the coolaid and say that Self has failed. Do we have enough evidence to say that the core theory of KJ and Dajuan is a failure? I say emphatically yes. Clearly our portal players have been failures. But after so many consistently underperforming, the correlation would start to beg the question of is it self and maybe the core group at KU. Yes, correlation does not necessitate causation but it does beg the question. And when I actually put the data in the system and rate it out, the causation is supported. I am not a let’s fire Self guy or anything like that. But I am a let’s hold the dude accountable for his monstrous salary and worship status. I am simply sick and tired of the perpetual deflection of the factotums. I like Greg Gurley and Davis Lawrence and Sean Kellerman and the others. They do a great job for KU and are true blue KU guys. But they are world class deflectors for Self with comments like “all these internet critics have no legitimacy since Self h=is a HOF and we should trust in Self becasue he is a HOF’er. Well, that is a logical fallacy of post hoc ergo proctor hoc. Self is clearly one of the best coaches of all time, no one is arguing that. My argument is that KU has failed epically and trended negatively for some time now and he is at the center of the cause of this.

I love Dajuan and I will be all for a huge celebration of his career on senior night. Ditto for KJ. But I am not talking about them as young men. I am talking about them for the role they play in this team. And really it is not their fault. They have played their role as best they can in my opinion. It is the fault of Self for putting them in the position to fail by making them into something they simply are not. That would be like building a team around Mitch Lightfoot. Mitch was a crazy fun KU player and great guy. And he was one helluva 10-14 minute per game guy when needed. But to build a team around him would have been ludicrous. Self needs to regain some killer instinct and see the reality of his players.

What it comes down to IMHO is Bill Self is a bit too loyal to his guys that have been around.

Well said and even though everything was before last night's game...it aged spot on.

Next year, this is is SO critical IMO regarding Coach Self: "...he’ll have to learn to trust someone else."

I just felt the line-up changes, and short leash really affected this team - they were playing loose and "trusted" in the big games early on...then the noose got tighter. I am not one to question Self's success at all, but you have to adjust in coaching (or management), and I didn't see it this year. We've always had that weird end of Jan to mid Feb, the sky is falling b/c of a couple of games, but then they work through. This team totally feels like the 2019 team you referenced above.

As I'm a Cubs fan too, and hope always spring eternal I'm hoping the TTU, Houston, AZ stretch, we revert back to the team at the beginning of this year.

Rock Chalk!

HawkErrant wrote: Dickinson (ugh), Mayo, Moore and Coit are the only other sure scholarship losses.

One quibble...Coit is reportedly able to come back since his JC year no longer counts against his eligibility years at DI (NCAA blanket waiver). Personally, I think that is another case of the courts run amok but...