Kansas Crimson

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:50 pm "look who we beat" arguments don't have anything to do with age, or online fans, it has to do with tournament seeding. The tournament committee is still made of human beings, and public perception still factors in.

Villanova and KU both had 9 losses going into the tourney and we were a 4 seed and they were a 6 seed. We had a much tougher SOS.

The grind of the season isn't going to subside because of the non-con schedule. The big12 needs 1 or 2 truly shitty teams to give the team a break during conference season for that to happen, but the strength of the Big12 is there are no bad teams, so no easy games after we change calendars. Scheduling Incarnate Word in November isn't going to save Dotson legs in March.

We played #7, #11, #22 and #22 in the regular season in 2008 and were a #1 seed.

We have a zillion Big 12 games against ranked teams next year. We dont need a non-con game against a big name, but still beatable, P5 team to get us a #1 seed.

We didnt get a #4 seed instead of a #6 seed last year because we beat Stanford at home (barely). Most viewed it as embarrassing that we didnt beat them by more. We got it because we beat Elite teams in Tennessee, Michigan State, Nova, Marquette, Texas Tech and Kansas State while Nova only had wins vs. Florida State and Marquette to lean on.

If the Big 12 caliber dips way down then ramp up the non con but we dont need 20+ games against tourney teams. It's overkill.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:57 pm

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:44 pm

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:38 pmSo selfishly, I don't mind as many of those as possible but too many is a proven detriment. Watching guys break down as they grind out 38+ mph over and over is not good for tourney chances and I'd rather experience a national title parade than a really fun regular season game vs. some P5 non-con.

Proven detriment? Causation, correlation, grumble grumble . . .

We always play a top schedule. Sometimes we do well in the tourney, sometimes we don't. At best, it helps, at worst, it has little bearing.

This isn't a great test year as far as low-ceiling vets (except for one guy, I guess), but I'll be interested to see whether the loss of the streak unburdens Self a little bit, as far as developing guys during the season even if it means dropping games.

Really hope so. The streak was cool, but everyone from player to fan got too wrapped up in it.

I feel like you just said two opposite things in those two paragraphs.

We dont need to beat tourney teams. But we were a 4 seed because we beat tourney teams.

I also maybe stopped paying attention after you called Kansas state an elite team. Marquette has an elite player...but I wouldnt call them an elite team.

Something never done before, likely never be done again.
"The streak was cool."
I dunno 'bout ya'all but I would like to win the Big 12. It's important to me.

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:11 pm

We didnt get a #4 seed instead of a #6 seed last year because we beat Stanford at home (barely). Most viewed it as embarrassing that we didnt beat them by more.

I'm old enough to not care what online fans think.

But since you seem to care, Stanford was ranked 112 in kenpom, Grand Canyon was ranked 111 and Old Dominion was 113. I'm pretty sure that if we had won against either of those teams in identical fashion, the embarrassment you're so concerned by would have been much worse.




If you have a choice between two equal ranked teams and one is "The University of (pick a state)" in a conference you've heard of, or "Southeasternbutalsokindawestern zibbity-bop institute" from the Colonial Reinactment conference, I prefer the former.

A. The KU players are more likely to be up for the game and not overlook an oponent.
B. Fans are more likely to get excited
C. The game is more likely to be televised rather than streamed.
D. I think committee members are human and value wins against teams they've seen over teams they're unfamiliar with regardless of metrics.
E. If, god-forbid, we loose to either team, National media won't make as big of a deal about it.

There are reasons this doesn't happen, I'm just giving my opinion that in a vacuum given the choice which team I'd prefer.

I want to hear more about the colonial reenactment conference.

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:20 pm Something never done before, likely never be done again.
"The streak was cool."
I dunno 'bout ya'all but I would like to win the Big 12. It's important to me.

I thought it was always annoying when the "I'd rather win the TITLE than continue the streak" dinguses came out of the woodwork, as if those are mutually-exclusive things.

That said - there's certainly such a thing as optimizing for March/April rather than January/February. It's part of a shift toward higher variance strategies (greater risk/reward) that I'd enjoy seeing us sell out for in what is surely the latter half of Bill's time here.

Right. There's a mix.
I think you can do both.
Win games and prepare for March/April.

And despite what people think about us in March/April, we have a very solid NCAA tourney record under Self, so we've done it pretty much since he's been here.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:35 pmThat said - there's certainly such a thing as optimizing for March/April rather than January/February. It's part of a shift toward higher variance strategies (greater risk/reward) that I'd enjoy seeing us sell out for in what is surely the latter half of Bill's time here.

Aka, too much Jamari Traylor and Brady Morningstar.

"Aka, too much Jamari Traylor"

Amen.

You can never have too much Jamari Traylor.

But you can definitely have not enough David McCormack, or Cliff Alexander, or young Elijah Johnson.

If Self no longer has a fear of loosing that frees him up to bring guys along quicker, that's great.

But I still want him to maintain his drive to, during the game, want to win every single game we're in.

https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/39 ... ick-diallo

https://www.basketball-reference.com/in ... lor-1.html

TDub wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:16 pm I feel like you just said two opposite things in those two paragraphs.

We dont need to beat tourney teams. But we were a 4 seed because we beat tourney teams.

I also maybe stopped paying attention after you called Kansas state an elite team. Marquette has an elite player...but I wouldnt call them an elite team.

Hence the use of the word "elite", teams that are going to be top 4 seeds in the tourney. Stanford, my example of a P5 team that was an upgrade over a cupcake, was not a tourney team. They finished 15-16 and didnt make the NIT. Yet they still had good enough individual players pumped by a shot at a big win in AFH that it took a Vick miracle to get to OT and win.

Fun? Yes. Helped our seeding or bench development that we needed after losing Vick and Dok? Nope.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:21 pm

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:11 pm

We didnt get a #4 seed instead of a #6 seed last year because we beat Stanford at home (barely). Most viewed it as embarrassing that we didnt beat them by more.

I'm old enough to not care what online fans think.

But since you seem to care, Stanford was ranked 112 in kenpom, Grand Canyon was ranked 111 and Old Dominion was 113. I'm pretty sure that if we had won against either of those teams in identical fashion, the embarrassment you're so concerned by would have been much worse.




If you have a choice between two equal ranked teams and one is "The University of (pick a state)" in a conference you've heard of, or "Southeasternbutalsokindawestern zibbity-bop institute" from the Colonial Reinactment conference, I prefer the former.

A. The KU players are more likely to be up for the game and not overlook an oponent.
B. Fans are more likely to get excited
C. The game is more likely to be televised rather than streamed.
D. I think committee members are human and value wins against teams they've seen over teams they're unfamiliar with regardless of metrics.
E. If, god-forbid, we loose to either team, National media won't make as big of a deal about it.

There are reasons this doesn't happen, I'm just giving my opinion that in a vacuum given the choice which team I'd prefer.

And I will counter with this.

Those Grand Canyons and Old Dominions dont have the caliber of athletes that Stanford did. Even though they are ranked the same, you're much more likely to get a weird matchup against the better caliber athletes, even if they haven't figured out how to be a good team yet. Stanford had some crazy long dudes.

A. I was at the Stanford game. KU was not any more "up" for it than they were for the Vermont game I attended. They scored 29 1st half points and trailed at halftime by 6. It was the epitome of "not up for a game".

B. KU fans aren't stupid. We knew we should have whooped Stanford based on their previous results. Fans were pissed and frustrated, not "up". Whoopee, we played Stanford. It takes more than the name "Stanford" to get me revved for a game outside of the fact that it's another KU game. They arent Kentucky or Nova.

C. This I agree with. But we only had maybe 2 or 3 games that were only ESPN+ and that streams to my TV too so it doesn't bug me much personally. Love that Amazon Fire Stick. But I see why others would be bothered.

D. If you win a good amount of your games against the multiple top-4 seed teams and win the Big 12 then they aren't ever getting down to the point where they are weighing how good your 15th best win was. If it does matter then we're a bubble team and who cares at that point. Put us out of our misery and get it over with.

E. Worrying about the backlash of losing to a crappy team seems like the definition of "roiboi" to me.

A. Vermont is a bad example, they have a state name...and they were pretty good. Your original point was that we should play cupcakes...my point was simply, if we're going to play a cupcake, make it a true cupcake. If we're going to play someone ranked in the top-100, then all things being equal, it is preferable to be a team people have heard of. No one gave us much credit for beating Wofford, even though that game helped us a lot numbers-wise. LSU was behind Wofford in Kenpom, but beating LSU would have felt like a better win and would have gotten more attention.

Also, KU not being amped up for Stanford had more to do with it coming after beating Marquette and a top 5 ranked Tennessee team in Brooklyn. It had way more to do with the schedule and timing than it had to do with the specific team we played. I'm not arguing that the opponent is the only thing that impacts how important a game seems to players or fans.

D. The 15th best wins do matter though. If you're 6-3 in quad I games, and 5-1 in quad II games, it's better than being 6-3 in quad I games and 3-1 in quad II games and by having your 14th and 15th best wins fall to quad 3, it could drop you a line in seeding.

I'll play my own devil's advocate for myself here, because twocoach isn't smart enough to make good arguments against me.

The best reason for playing teams like Wofford, or ETSU, or whichever mid-major conference team who is actually really good, is because those are the types of teams we're likely to meet in the second or third round of the ncaa tournament if we are a 1 or 2 seed or in the first round if we're a 3 or 4 seed. From a coaching perspective that matters.

but, from a fan standpoint, playing East Tennessee in November just isn't a great game, and you really don't have much to gain from it.

My point is that we should continue to play a few elite Top 10 caliber teams and then ease up a bit in the middle of the schedule difficulty. Stanford is technically a bad example as well as they ended up being the third "easiest" game by RPI that we played all year.

Bottom line is that next year's schedule looks good to me. We dont need to beat the champion of every conference in the nation to get a #1 seed. Beat 2 if Duke, at Nova, Mich. State and UK and then win the Big 12 title and a #1 seed is pretty much a guarantee even if every other game was a cupcake.

2 seed.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:54 pm I'll play my own devil's advocate for myself here, because twocoach isn't smart enough to make good arguments against me.

The best reason for playing teams like Wofford, or ETSU, or whichever mid-major conference team who is actually really good, is because those are the types of teams we're likely to meet in the second or third round of the ncaa tournament if we are a 1 or 2 seed or in the first round if we're a 3 or 4 seed. From a coaching perspective that matters.

but, from a fan standpoint, playing East Tennessee in November just isn't a great game, and you really don't have much to gain from it.

Last 5 2nd- 3rd round games...
'19- Auburn and then would have been Carolina
'18- Seton Hall and then Clemson
'17- Michigan State and then Purdue
'16- UConn and then Maryland
'15- Wichita State and then would have been Notre Dame

But please, go on...

twocoach wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:58 pm My point is that we should continue to play a few elite Top 10 caliber teams and then ease up a bit in the middle of the schedule difficulty. Stanford is technically a bad example as well as they ended up being the third "easiest" game by RPI that we played all year.

Bottom line is that next year's schedule looks good to me. We dont need to beat the champion of every conference in the nation to get a #1 seed. Beat 2 if Duke, at Nova, Mich. State and UK and then win the Big 12 title and a #1 seed is pretty much a guarantee even if every other game was a cupcake.

I agree, I like the schedule. good mix of teams.

But whether you think it looks like a tough schedule or an easy one probably comes down to how much you know about teams like ETSU and UNC-greensboro.

The schedule would be almost identical in terms of difficulty if you swapped those teams out for Providence and St. Johns or Oregon St. and BYU, but the schedule would be more appealing to more fans, and winning those games would carry more weight.