Harrison Barnes chooses North Carolina

i'm happy for this kid. the weight is off his shoulders, so to speak. sure i'd've liked to've seen him in our uniform, but i'm not going to bash him for his choice. must be okay now to pursue players "that have to fly over so many states" to get to the former coach's school. he couldn't go after top-ranked kids back east, but now he's there, it's okay. our n.c. did nothing to mitigate his crappy recruiting cop-outs. there's a certain "type" that he looks for, and let's face it, he'd never recruit a sherron, or morris twins, etc. barnes is his "type". no knock on barnes, either. good for him. whoever said the recent thuggery might've steered him away from here, might have a point, and good for the kid if he thinks he's "above" that.

if he chose for a mix of bb and academics, i'd say duke would've been the more obvious choice. i've read various places that nc state is the more "academic" of the 2 north cackalack schools. is that true? does anyone here know?

November 13, 2009 at 6:43 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Opurum may be equalizer

lots of issues i'm seeing:

we live and die with reesing. when he's not himself, for whatever reason, we die. when he "does his thing" we live - WELL. the year we pulled his shirt, he didn't have as much talent around him as he does now, and he made plays. he hasn't looked like himself lately. is that our play-calling, opponent's d prep/gameplan, or something else? i don't care about why. my money is still on reesing. any smart money should be. he's the equalizer, and i don't care who we're playing.

from what i've seen of opurum, and since 'in todd we trust' hasn't been himself, why not waste the opponents' preparation by running the ball a bit more? if we get the 3 or 4 yards we need, we become more than a spread team, and d coordinators have to actually work to stop us andandand reesing gets to operate a bit more. we also gain more control of the clock/ball. of course we need to make that yardage. until sharp is healthy, we can't do that, and i'm not sure we can. i LOVE the kid, and if he gets enough touches he IS going to bust one, but all we have is a passing game until he gets healthy and/or until he busts one. i'd rather move a bit of the load to opurum. he's healthy, he's big, he moves forward. run a draw w/ 2 backs when they aren't rushing a bunch or when the safety is up? oh, we'd rather set up the run w/ the pass. i like that, but when it doesn't work...

i hate to look back for where this team slipped, but i'm just going to put this out there. the day that bill young left, we LOST more than we could imagine. think about that one for awhile. if we were down at half, we knew that he was going to go in at half, hatch a plan, and the d was going to just get stiff, do their job, and if the offense did what they were capable of, we'd have a chance to win. we don't have that now. was it solely young? no, but he was a big part of the success we had - and we had pretty decent linebackers. our lb are small and slow.

October 30, 2009 at 10:35 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Big 12 hoops media day: Self gets things going with historical comparison

i'll also go out on a limb and say that tyshawn better bring his "a game", and that he better keep it with him at all times. with this roster, you never know who might be coming in for you. there's a professional athlete on the squad as well as some "local" talent that might be hard to keep off the floor if others start slippin'.

i'm getting dizzy thinking of the lineups that ourSelf could "just thow out there".

anderson's game could become the 2nd fastest 40 min in bb, if ourSelf really wanted to extend our stingy half-court d beyond the timeline: like say to 3/4 and just eat into the other team's shotclock a little bit earlier. we have the talent to apply STRONG man pressure from anywhere on the floor, and we'd probably be effective with it. we could just replace the parts, and keep right on moving. i know he doesn't like that style, but i'd like so see some of it from time to time. imagine how much more time opposing coaches would have to spend in addition to their normal prep for us.

October 22, 2009 at 8:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Backups pushing KU defense in new direction

i've stated many times that our special teams could make us a much better team. they are not helping us much at all. i KNEW that it would be a matter of time before old balls at silo tech had the special teams ironed out, and contributing. why can't we do it? we might have lots more trouble with them than i would've thought a month ago. i'd hate to have to live with their fans all over again.

our LB corps are small and slow. they are not the seasoned, hard-nosed types we're used to. if we had any a rivera or mortensen type on the field right now, with an aquib type behind them, we'd be a very different team right now. our record might be the same (MIGHT be), but we'd not be nearly as worried as we are. tharp is the only lb we have that looks like an lb when he's just standing there. he's going to be something else before he finishes up here. last year's d v. this year's o, would be a closer game than last year's o v this year's d. last year's d would get some stops against reesing; this year's d wouldn't.

i don't understand running sharp the way we have either. we will not be able to run him like we did earlier in the year against big 12 size and speed. it won't work. it didn't work against CU, and it won't work against many other big 12 defenses either. opurum HAS the body, the speed, and the "mean" to run up inside and still get some yards. he also has the speed to get to the next level and make life hard on the secondary if we use the right plays to get him there. why do you think we have trouble throwing the ball w/ jake in there? they know we can't run with him, so they can send the house and clamp down on the wideouts. we need him AFTER we have the opponents on their heels a bit. i love the kid, but he's not going to get a ton of yards on his own. opurum can.

so then, i see us making a bowl, but i see us struggling mightily before we get to that point: even if we change defensive personnel every week. with a few key stops, and a better offensive gameplan we might have a greater chance.

October 22, 2009 at 8:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Big 12 hoops media day: Self gets things going with historical comparison

wayward - did you forget x? how?

jayhawkjeff, i was reading these posts to see if anyone else would make the "he does less with more talent than anyone else" comment like i was going to make about barnes. i'm glad that someone (you) did. i've always felt that way about ut. i LIKE barnes enough, i just know that when we play them, they will find a way to let us win, and/or we'll find a way to make them let us. if it's close under 3 minutes, i always like our chances against them, and i don't care about the talent on the floor. i DO care that we've got ourSelf and our assistants. besides talented players and ourSelf, we've got d manning, townsend, dooley, AND the biggest catch that you never hear about, barry hinson. hinson knows basketball! you can't tell me that he's not one of the greatest "secret weapon" assistant/bb staff coaches in the country.

for the record i like mike anderson. i don't care that he's at missouri. he coaches the style of basketball i like to watch, and he does a good job of getting his players to buy in. i'd say that lyons and carrol were successful because the style of play. if you get the right player for that style, it doesn't matter what their names are. they benefitted from it more and did better than they would've had they played for a 'walk-it-up' coach. that IS to say that, it wasn't just good for them, but that it was good for the other players, the crowd, the future of mu, and the league. their run in the tourney benefitted the league coffers as well. i can't dislike him. i love to watch/coach uptempo basketball. live or die with it, it's much more fun to play and watch.

i'd rather watch FOOTBALL than worry about basketball right now anyway.

October 22, 2009 at 7:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

KU’s Morningstar suspended

maybe he got into trouble from tying to do the right thing?

he has a few drinks (since he's been legal for a couple of years) at a friend's in kc (those of us from around here have at least one of those), decides to "sleep it off", wakes a little bit early (he's on boot camp time afterall), gets in his car, and ignores/overlooks that stupid const site speed limit, and gets popped. he's tired, and maybe a little bit impaired by legal definition, so now his name is all over and ourSelf has to punish him for breaking curfew.

maybe not what happened, but i've been in that situation many times over the years, and it's not necessarily the case that brady was out raising hell, giving the middle-finger to everyone out and about, and the jayhawk nation at large. no one has considered that maybe he was trying to do the "right thing", and just did a poor job of trying to do it.

i'll go on record to say that i hate that construction over there. people are either going 50 (presumably to avoid being pulled-over) or they are going 80. it's dangerous because there always seems to be a bottleneck of traffic going radically different speeds. i'm sorry that brady had to be the "sacrificial lamb" in something that he didn't really start.

tyshawn should've faced stiffer penalties. no, he wasn't implicated in a crime, but his hand didn't just spontaneously break. his bonehead move led to the closer scrutiny, and brady should've been smarter than to chance it. that said, we don't know what punishment tt ultimately got. i'm sure he understands the error of his ways in the matter of the "burge brawl" and the "hoch hiccup".

October 4, 2009 at 4:41 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Dugan Arnett’s KU football notebook

tharp is the only lb that looks physically like a linebacker. he is put together. he's not the fastest guy though. our other 'backers look kind of small. of course i'm comparing them to mortensen so it's kind of unfair, but tharp is the closest physically to what he was, and looks like he could really turn into something more special than he is.

September 25, 2009 at 9:49 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Perkins calls meeting with KU football, basketball players; statement issued

can you imagine being chewed out by "uncle" lou? i don't care who you are, you'd be scared. i'm not scared of many people, but uncle scares me badly.

please remember that lots of these guys aren't from the joco. other locales 'ain't nuttin' to f* wit'. there's a different mindset where everything is not always peachy, and it's not hard to slip back into that. especially when a girl is involved, and a sense of "team" is involved. i've got 2 bags; one is the well-educated professional bag, the other one is quite the opposite. none of this excuses these guys, but i'm saying that old habits don't die: they hibernate until they're "useful"'.

September 23, 2009 at 7:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

It’s time to call a truce

this crazy behaviour isn't new. it's pretty new from the basketball players though. when i was there the fb players were terrors of the town. the biggest exception to that being a certain kid from louisiana with bad knees. even though he was "play-wrasslin'" with his homie IN A CLUB!, and not paying attention to his girl, he got kinda shocked when i did. he was too shocked to really do anything but he made it known that if he wanted to act like it was jr. high in a nightclub whilst ignoring his "date" she was off-limits. i wasn't worried, i knew he had bad knees.

that said, i'd noticed a difference in the fb players since ourMangino got to town. i've also noticed a difference since ourSelf got here. just sayin' that i'm not surprised anymore.

September 23, 2009 at 7:11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Fracas sends KU guard Tyshawn Taylor to hospital

never heard about tt being a hotdog. i've heard he's a "character guy"... which makes him instantly suspect in my eyes. that said, i don't really care what the report says. i wasn't there, so i really don't know what happened. sure it makes us look sort of bad, but i really don't care. kids will fight sometimes. grown ups will fight sometimes. people will fight over stupid things all the time. it's only a big deal when there's a big budget involved (such as it is here, and all).

sheesh.

September 23, 2009 at 12:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )