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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Kansas basketball notebook

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KU vs. Colorado

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2009 KU-CU Jan. 31

KU vs. Colorado

Collins has off day

Sherron Collins, who missed 12 of 16 shots, including nine of 10 three-pointers, simply chalked it up as a bad day.

“It was one of those days my teammates carried me when I was struggling,” Collins, Kansas University’s junior point guard, said after scoring 11 points with four assists and three turnovers in Saturday’s 66-61 home victory over Colorado.

“I was going to keep shooting. Everything felt good coming off my hand. A couple rimmed in and out. I missed some shots I usually hit. It’s all right, though,” he added after KU improved to 6-0 in league play and 17-4 overall.

Despite his struggles, the 5-foot-11 Collins managed to come up with one of the biggest plays of the game. With the shot clock down to one, he hit a floater to up a 62-59 lead to five points with 23 seconds left. His two free throws at 4.8 seconds upped a 64-61 margin to five points again.

“I was able to get past the first guy, elevate and make the shot,” Collins said of the floater. “At least that was one of my shots I knew was going in today.”

Collins played with a sleeve on his left arm with a pad protecting his non-shooting elbow.

“I have a contusion they call it, a bruise. It didn’t bother me. I just didn’t want it to get hit again,” Collins said.

Collins went 2-for-2 from the free-throw line, stretching his streak to 29 makes without a miss. School record is 34 by Wayne Simien (2004-05). Calvin Thompson made 33 straight free throws in the ‘83-84 season.

Cutting it close

KU coach Bill Self kept his cool on the bench, but was sweating a bit when the Buffs whittled a 21-point deficit to two.

“I was worried, obviously,” Self said. “Tyrel made the three, and that let us breathe (giving KU 57-52 lead). I felt like all along we were going to win. But we had lost all momentum. We didn’t have any juice defensively. We didn’t create havoc, and we let them get comfortable. I bet you they scored 10 possessions with the shot clock under eight seconds.”

Gym shoes

Coaches from KU and Colorado wore tennis shoes in support of Coaches Vs. Cancer. Also, the officials used special Coaches Vs. Cancer whistles. It is Coaches Vs. Cancer Suits and Sneakers awareness weekend.

Stats, facts

KU holds a 167-39 series lead over Colorado. The Jayhawks have won 13 in a row and 39 of 40 games versus the Buffs. ... KU has won 36 consecutive games in Allen. ... KU has won six straight games heading into Monday’s game at Baylor. BU has lost three in a row. ... CU had a season-low seven turnovers. CU had eight against Iowa State. ... CU has lost 24 straight Big 12 road games. ... KU hit 19 of 20 free throws. It was KU’s top effort since making 22 of 23 against Princeton on Dec. 22, 1999. It was KU’s best effort in a conference game since going 17-of-18 against Oklahoma on Jan. 8, 2008. ... Markieff Morris scored a career-high 10 points. He was 4-for-5 shooting with four rebounds. ... Brady Morningstar played a career-high 39 minutes. .... CU outshot Kansas, 47.1 percent to 41.2, marking the second time the Jayhawks have won while being outshot this season. The Jayhawks have been outshot in only five of 21 games. ... KU had 37 rebounds to CU’s 24. KU’s bench outscored CU, 20-2. ... The Jayhawks were held without a field goal for 7:10 and scoreless for 5:30 during the middle portions of the second half. ... Colorado shot 65.2 percent in the second half, the highest mark against KU in a conference game since Oklahoma shot 68.4 percent on January 18, 1989. ... Perry Ellis, a 6-foot-8 freshman recruit from Wichita Heights, attended and sat behind the KU bench.

Bowl winners

KU’s football team was honored for its Insight Bowl victory over Minnesota at halftime.

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Comments

jaybate (anonymous) says...

"To Pick a Lot, or Not to Pick a Lot; that Is the Question"--William Hamlet SelfSelf has been making logical, effective counter moves on defense and offense the last few years, which is the sign of an excellent strategist.Get beat by Howland Hack'n'slap? Install Hack'n'slap.Get pushed way out on the perimeter by defenses essentially pressing the perimeter to take away your three and force your offensive initiation too far from the rim? Dust of Iba's weave and and let your lightening fast guards run it our of what starts out as a pick and roll set. The weaves gets emergency baskets for KU in high pressure situations time and time again.Get beat beat by Arizona and Dunlap's 3/4 court zone press Version 1.1.3 used to push KU out and confuse KU about what an opponent will fall back into in half court defense? Immediately dust off and implement Zone Press Version 1.2.1.1 to create a mutually assured confusion (MAC) scenario for the opponent. You wanna disorder the game? Fine. Let's totally disorder the game and see how you like it. I have the better athletes. In chaos, we'll see who handles chaos better.KU has not yet been beaten by the spread and ball screen (Nebraska), and Princeton on Thugs (Georgetown), and Princeton on Altoids (Colorado), and Princeton on Steroids (Memphis) schemes yet that I recall. But they seem to handle these pick-enriched schemes decreasingly well over time. Implied is that the opponents are getting better and better at executing these pick-enriched offenses (PEOs) and at recruiting players with the skills to optimize picking and coming off picks.It appears these pick enriched offenses (PEOs) are spreading and proliferating, rather than becoming an evolutionary dead end, as I at least hoped they would. Carril and John Thompson Version 1.0 started a slowly spreading plague. Thompson played and coached for Carril and adapted it to be played with a black jack and a tire iron. Carril took it to the pros for ten years, where Portland, the Wizards and others tried it out. Then Calipari gave it last years snazzy moniker, Princeton on Steroids, and, badda bing, badda boom, Johnny C put it back on the muscle map.

February 1, 2009 at 11:12 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jaybate (anonymous) says...

Self's version of PEO's so far is the elegantly simple Pick and Roll (PAR) used since shortly after the last ice age.PAR is what you play if you want to create an opportunity to shake and bake right now; then reverse and repeat if it doesn't work.PEO, on the other hand, is what you play, if you want to irritate a team to death until you get an open shot. PEO is just an endless chain of picking events and pin wheeling cuts off picks with back door picks thrown in everytime a defense gets the hang of fighting through or picking. PEO forces a belly button defense to think about something more than belly buttons. It forces them to think about picks at any moment. When PEOs work, opposing defenders develop Sudden Pick Syndrome. They start spending more time anticipating the next pick and figuring how to fight through it than they actually do guarding their men. PEOs are the only thing that appears to really annoy Bill Self. Bill Self is annoyed by PEOs, because he knows he can beat them if his team will be equally patient defensively, and if he just sticks with Eddie Ball 101, and substitutes for mismatches and keeps defending.The achilles heel of the PEO scheme is the same as with all offenses that try to dictate tempo to an Eddie Ball team. Eddie Ballers like Bill Self just adapt, like an amoeba and say, okay, we'll take what you give us, when you're defending us, and we'll mismatch you when we defend you. So screw the picks and deliberation. We eat ugly wins for breakfast, dude.But...If PEOs keep getting better and better, there is going to come a tipping point, where Self has to add real PEOs to his offensive quiver.

February 1, 2009 at 11:13 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jaybate (anonymous) says...

The interesting thing about it is that PEOs are really what Iba started out with. They are what Eddie junked to free the athleticism of contemporary athletes.It will be interesting to see if Bill and the rest of the Eddie Ballers can come up with a new wrinkle more in keeping with Eddie Ball, than simply adding one of the existing PEOs.For what its worth, here is Carril distilling Princeton in the NYT.Carril breaks it into three pieces..."One is a play called Celtic. Another is a play called Knick.“That’s two-thirds of it right there,” Carril said."The other third consists of six options off those plays — various picks, rolls and cuts meant to end with layups or open jump shots.“It just happened that you go to do something, and you can’t do it, so you have to find something to do because what you try to do initially doesn’t work,” Carril said. “And then the second thing doesn’t work, and then the third thing, until finally you get at a spot where there aren’t any more options. We figured out that we got six things out of that.”Then there are usually 8-10 seconds left on the clock. Pete says the entire offense can be run and still leave 8-10 seconds on a 35 second clock. At the end of the options, you reset, knowing you can't rerun the entire offense, or throw up a hail mary. What it means is that players always know what to do next. Things are scripted and unfolding through a much longer series of scripted options, before the offense has to be reset and replayed. Defenders have much less chance to get comfortable and used to how the offense is going to run. Basically, Carril's offense has the quality of a rich computer game in which you have to go quite aways down a programming tree of choices to see it loop and repeat. You keep losing before you get to see it loop and repeat. The psychological advantage of Carril's offense, though this is my assessment and not his, is that Carril's offense takes away a defenses sense of mastery and dominance over an offense. You don't really get stops against a Princeton offense. It just keeps moving down the decision tree for 35 seconds. A defense rarely gets that positive reinforcement of, ha, we stopped them and they have to go out and reset. And it also much less frequently gets the quick reinforcement of, ha, they put up a quick, bad shot and we got the rebound and are off to score ourselves. Run at its most thorough and demoralizing, Carril's offense effectively denies a defense stops altogether. Either the offense gets a basket, or it keeps going until the shot clock runs out. This makes the manly man defenses feel like they didn't get a stop. The clock just ran out on these irritating bastards. Next time down the floor they are going to run all these annoying options and the best we can hope for is they run the clock out. Dang!

February 1, 2009 at 11:14 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jaybate (anonymous) says...

Pete Carril says he got it from an old Princeton coach and simply worked out the options to six steps.Odds are the old Princeton coach cribbed it from old Mr. Deliberate himself, Henry Iba.Will Eddie Ball have to reembrace this part of Iba Ball at last?Will Eddie Ball embrace a real PEO once again?We probably won't learn until Bill Self loses his first game to this kind of team?Or has he already and I just don't recall it?

February 1, 2009 at 11:14 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jaybate (anonymous) says...

Link to Carril in NYT. Its old but worth a look.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/sports/ncaabasketball/30carril.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=e5a8a43dd0c689ec&ex=1332907200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

February 1, 2009 at 11:24 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Strikewso (anonymous) says...

I heard that kid from Heights is a monster - even as a freshman.

February 1, 2009 at 1:28 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

bg_duck1 (anonymous) says...

this isn't the jaybate KU basketball notebook....

February 2, 2009 at 12:15 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

cklarock (anonymous) says...

Thanks for the analysis, Jaybate -- as constructive criticism, work on more direct, concise language. I do appreciate your technical/tactical analysis of the game -- there's little to none of that in the basketball press.

February 2, 2009 at 1:11 p.m. ( | suggest removal )