These Are Dark Times There Is No Denying

Okay. It is so bad that I have quoted Rufus Scrimgeour. Please kill me. So, now let me bring you all back. There has been, and will continue to be, comparisons to the '04-'05 season. That was the last time that KU lost 3 games in a row. How spoiled are we that that is the case? But I digress... All of the haters are ready to assign a first round loss to Bradley for the '12-'13 unit. Guess what: this ain't that team. That team was Bill Self's first recruiting class + Roy's old boys. Wayne Simien, God love him, was the anchor of that crew, and he was never, ever healthy. Keith Langford was hurt in the UK game - I know, I was there. Alex Galindo got a lot of minutes, the next season he was lost to transfer and oblivion. Giddens was our shooter, and then he got in a knife fight at The Moon Bar, and wound up in New Mexico and oblivion. CJ Giles was an anchor in the paint, then he dragged his girl down the steps of her apartment and wound up in Oregon and then oblivion. The lone professional on that team was Wayne, who was damaged goods from his sophomore season on. To summarize, there is no comparison. Our current team has 2 lottery picks: Withey and McLemore. In all likelihood, Perry Ellis will eventually be a high draft choice. I believe Elijah Johnson will be paid to play. The '07-'08 National Championship team had 7 NBA selections on the roster. It's unlikely that this squad will match that, but the whole semantics of college basketball has changed. So, you can dispense of that nonsense, haters. Nonetheless, as the title suggests: these are the dark times. Maybe moreso, because this is not the '04-'05 team. Let's look at our 4 losses: First,our loss at The Champions Classic in Atlanta to Tom Izzo's Michigan State. For starters, there are very few guys who have an edge on Coach Self, but this was the 3rd consecutive loss to Izzo for Self. The Spartans outshot the Hawks 52%-50%, which was high for both squads, and KU actually outshot Sparty from beyond the 3. Down the stretch, the Spartans made their FT's, and The Jayhawks did not. KU seemed to control most of regulation, but the Spartans had alligator blood, they kept hanging around. In the end it was a circus shot from Keith Appling that won the game, a contest that came down to one possession. Certainly no cause for alarm. Now, we have the 3-game losing streak. The cause for alarm is great. However, the losses are so individually different. The Oklahoma State loss stings. It broke the 2nd longest consecutive home winning streak. We outshot the Pokes from beyond the 3, and from the charity stripe. The FG% was 41/43, in their favor. As stated in my previous post - we just got beaten by a NBA lottery pick and 4 solid role players supporting him. It's happened to us so seldomly, but with a recurring theme, in the Bill Self era. It happens. Then, there was the trip to Fort Worth. I couldn't describe their offensive futility in the 1st half any more eloquently than Coach did, so I will not try. Our 14% from 3 was only bested by our 10% in the opener against SEMO. However, we limited SEMO to 29%/25% from the field and 3, respectively. It is shocking how badly we played in the SEMO game, yet we forced them to play worse. We were outshot by 9% from the floor and 17% from the 3 against Texas Christian, which is amazing, because they shot so poorly. To reiterate the line that I have been saying all week: my mother coached JV girls. I have seen really, really bad basketball. This was the worst basketball that I've ever seen. There has not been a loss like that in The Bill Self era. Hell, there has not been a loss like that in Kansas Basketball history. So, then the question was: how will they respond now? A lot of ado will be given to the third consecutive loss. But truly, it was much more reflective of the first loss, against Izzo. Lon Kruger has not been to The Dance with 4 different schools by accident. He decided to force KU out of the paint, to equalize the superiority KU held down low, especially in light of Kansas' struggles to score. It was a brilliant manuever. Self was slow to adjust to the triangle-and-2, and when the bigs started hitting from deep again, he was slow to adjust out of it. OU improved their FG% from 36% at AFH, to 45% in Norman. They also improved 25% to 35% their 3-point percentage. Having said that, KU outshot them from the floor, and nearly matched them from beyond the arc. The difference on Saturday was at the free throw line. KU had its worst performance there since the Tennessee-Chattanooga game, where they shot a measly 53% from the line. The team meeting seemed to have pulled them out of their doldrums from the floor, but they could not overcome their free throw ineptitude. Needless to say, I believe that the suggestion may have been made on the flight home, that on their mandatory day off, the team may be shooting some free throws. So, that brings us to Monday night. KU will likely, and unbelievably be the lower ranked school in the contest. They will for the first time, in a long time, not be leading the Big XII Conference. They will unexplicably likely be home underdogs at The Phog. How will they deal with that? I'd answer with the numbers. In game one, at The Octagon of significantly-less-than-Doom, the Hawks were outshot at the line by 24%. If that happens, EMAW will steal one in The Sunflower Showdown. KU shot 62% from the stripe at home versus OU. Then dropped to 55% in Lloyd Noble. If they see the same drop-off on Big Monday, they will lose their fourth in a row. From a defensive perspective, the Jayhawks allowed OU to shoot 36% from the field in their victory at Allen. On Saturday, the Sooners improved to a FG% of 45%. In OOD, EMAW shot a weak 35%. If they improve the 9% that OU did, it will be tough for Kansas to overcome. So, as much time is being spent on Kansas' offensive woes, what restoration comes down to is something that Coach Bill Self is the very best at teaching. If they tighten up on the defensive end and make their free throws, they will be right back to form, and the sun will break through the clouds on Mount Oread. I promise.

Actually... it is Elijah's fault.

Saturday's loss to The Pokes felt familiar. I mean it shouldn't have felt familiar, this team has only lost 2 games. The Michigan State loss was nothing like what happened Saturday. In that game, the Hawks shot 50% from the field and got good contributions at the guard position. Elijah led the team had a team-high 16, plus 27 more points from the other guards. Kansas led for most of the way, up until Keith Appling hit a circus layup with 13.5 seconds left. No, there was nothing similar in the loss in Atlanta in November to the heartbreaker in Allen Fieldhouse on Saturday. Yet, it did feel strikingly reminiscent of Bill Self Kansas losses. And that's because it was. Although this was a conference game in Allen Fieldhouse, it really shook out just like those brutal non-conference games to mid-major squads that always seem to bite us. Northern Iowa, VCU, Davidson in the Sprint Center last year, that's what this felt like. Because that's what it was like. Many of our critics will say, they've been flirting with this inevitability for a while now. That their dry spells on the offensive end of the court was destined to catch up with them. But the woes that have afflicted Kansas in conference play, were not what hurt us on Saturday. This team scored 80 points in regulation. It had not done that since the American game. What happened against The Pokes was inevitable, but not because of their offensive stagnations as of late. No, what transpired on Saturday reflects the loses that have been a trend of the Self-era, and they fulfill the same failings. In the 2010 NCAA tourney, KU lost its round of 32 match-up against 9-seed UNI. The cavalcade of critics went unhinged. But, there's a correlation between that loss, and Saturday. In the 2011 Southwest Region final, #1 Kansas was upset by 11-seed VCU. Once again, the haters rejoiced. And what happened in the Alamodome that March, was reminiscent of what transpired on Saturday. In KU's home-away-from-home The Sprint Center, in December of 2011, the heralded Jayhawks dumped a sure victory to a very average Davidson team. They have yet to live down that loss. In all of those losses, there is a recurring theme: a career performance from an opposing guard, and an all-time abysmal appearance by one of our guards. Against the Panthers, Ali Farokhmanesh made the cover of SI, scoring 16 historic points, including 4 of 10 from 3-pt range. On the other side, Sherron and Tyshawn went a combined 4 of 21 from the field, and 0 for 11 from 3. More specifically, Tyshawn went 0 for 11 from the field himself, including 0 for 5 from 3. I was there, and in 2010 all of the scoring went through Sherron and Cole, but numbers tell us that Tyshawn lost us that game. The VCU game was so frighteningly similar to the UNI loss, it was chilling. The numbers were much more skewed in this one, but the bottom line was the same. The Jayhawks shot only 10% from 3, and the Rams' bench outscored us 22 to 3. But, the underlying theme was this: one of their players, PF Jamie Skeen scored a career-high 26 points, including 4 of 7 from 3-point range. By contrast, our shooting guards, Brady Morningstar and Tyrel Reed combined for 2 of 16 from the field. Morningstar finished with 2 points. He was brutal. Then there was last year's Davidson loss. In it, G Nik Cochran went for 21, and 4 of 5 from 3. He averaged less than 11 P/G for the season and made an average of 1 3-pointer. It's the kind of thing that only happens in these games. Conversely, Self, early in the season, leaned on Conner Teahan, in a shooter's role. He attempted 9 in this game, making 2. If blames rests anywhere, it was squarely with Con-ner. Tea-han. That brings is to Saturday. Markel Brown blew up for 28 points, and 7 3's. Seven. And, contrary to what Coach Self wants us to believe, it was Elijah who killed us, going 3 of 14 from the field. He was awful, and he cost us the game. Of course, I'm being facetious. What these losses truly have in common is Coach Self, himself. Now, I am the first one to laud praise upon Bill, he is the best active coach in America. But in these circumstances, he is too slow to react to a hot hand on the opponent, and too slow to make a move to find a hot hand on his own team. He made great defensive adjustments to shut down Brown in the 2nd half, and he did. Those adjustments needed to be made before he scores 22 points in the 1st half. Also, Andrew White was terrific down the stretch. Coach cannot wait so long to pull the trigger on that. There is too much talent on this bench to allow someone to go 3 for 14, or let us go down 14 points. Bottom line: I'm not one for criticizing National Champion Head Coach Bill Self, but I've seen enough of these exact same losses to recognize his weakness. For 6 wins in March to happen, he has to recognize it, also.