It’s Learning, Not Losing

At least, that’s what John Calipari said in his pregame interview. We’ll see exactly what Coach Self learned about the team, and what they learned about one another, fairly quickly. Here’s what I learned from the loss: 1. @T_2ReleFOUR is going to have to be The Man. It never has crossed my mind yet that Travis is the most tenured Jayhawk. He’s been on campus the longest, he’s been on the roster the longest, he’s practiced the most, he’s been privy to Coach Self’s tutelage the most. This is big. This is important. That makes this, for all intents and purposes, his team. That translated to the most minutes on the floor on Tuesday. It translated to TRele being in charge of leading this team down the stretch. And, finally, it translated to him taking the final three for the tie. It seems to me, on all of those counts, he has a lot of work to do. #24 needs to step up his game; quick, fast, and in a hurry. 2. The Return of Mr. Big Shot. Elijah is not going to be the leader of this team. He is much more comfortable propping the young guys up, than breathing fire into a team spiraling out-of-control. Those are the facts. But the other fact is: when you need a cold-blooded shooter, he will knock them down. He hit some mammoth shots last night, and I imagine we will see some monumental, world-class, all-time shots from him throughout the season. 3. The introduction of @J_Mari31 . Woo. I don’t know what else to say. Jamari Traylor was relegated to coming off the bench, and limited to 25 minutes of playtime. But, boy, did he make the most of it. His alley-oop dunk in the first half blew the roof off of The Georgia Dome, and set twitter afire with tweets of admiration. His backboard stick of a Gary Harris breakaway layup in the second half was equally highlight-worthy. He may not break the starting lineup down the stretch, but he made every case to secure a spot for now. 4. On the other end of the spectrum, @PElliz was less impressive in his debut. Although he was the sole McDonald’s All-American in Crimson and Blue, and the most highly touted freshman on the floor, he was limited to 17 minutes and only four points. Worse, he had a bad turnover. Bad, in that, it looked awful. For everything that Jamari did to accentuate his stature, Perry did the opposite. I’m sure that by the time that the Big XII conference schedule is under way, Perry Ellis will be the superstar that we all expect him to be. But, as of Tuesday night, he has a long way to go. 5. The second half should have belonged to BMac. @Humb1e_Hungry23 was invisible to bad in the first half. But he also had some highlight reel moments in the early second half, helping to push the Hawks to their biggest lead. Unfortunately down the stretch, he could not maintain his heat, and, worse, his defense was awful. I’ve touted him as the phenomenal scorer that Coach Self has been missing at KU. He needs to do a lot more than he did at The Champions’ Classic. So, the resultant loss drops us to 1-1, and 0-2 at The Champions’ Classic. In the early years of Bill Self Basketball, those numbers would have been devastating to me. But, worry not, I saw very good things last night. We wasted a lot of possessions, that’s what we do. We had 16 turnovers and missed a third of our free throws. That is also what we do. But, we were in a trench war with Tom Izzo, and we looked in control for 38 minutes of the game. I hate to channel Coach Cal, but, for me, on Tuesday night we learned more than we lost.