KU: Self prefers to not run

[Mr. Laz]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...s/16878820.htm

Posted on Sun, Mar. 11, 2007
COMMENTARY

It's a grind Self prefers

By JOE POSNANSKI
The Kansas City Star

OKLAHOMA CITY | Bill Self said something interesting and maybe even revealing the other day. This was after his Kansas basketball team had beaten down Oklahoma in a Big 12 tournament game. At one point in that game, Kansas had decided to play a little full-court pressure defense. Self said the Jayhawks did that just to speed up the tempo a little. A change of pace.

Well, the Oklahoma players had absolutely no idea what to do. They were bewildered. The Jayhawks swarmed and double-teamed and surrounded and swatted at the ball, and the Sooners looked scared half to death. They turned the ball over, which led to a Kansas dunk, which led to the crowd going crazy, which led to more Oklahoma panic, which turned a fairly tight game into an easy-peaceful-feeling blowout.

“Yeah, we can do that every now and then,” Self said. “But we’re not the kind of team that could play that kind of style all the time.”

He said this so matter-of-factly that it was easy to miss. In fact, from afar, Kansas looks exactly like the kind of team that could play that style all the time. These Jayhawks are deep — they can play eight or nine guys. They are athletic. They are fast. They are fierce. They have amazing recovery speed. This team would be a dream team for a coach like Rick Pitino, Nolan Richardson, Jerry Tarkanian or Bob Huggins, a coach who loves to press and run and destroy another team’s will.

In another coach’s hands, this team might average 100 points per game. In Bill Self’s hands, this team did not score 100 points once all year.

“Bill,” you asked, “why couldn’t you play this style all the time?”

He hemmed and hawed for a moment or two. He talked a little bit about how a team has to play all styles. He talked about how it’s hard to win it all by pressing and running in the tournament. He talked about how his players would not appreciate that style. None of those reasons quite added up. Then Bill Self smiled. It was time to come clean.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “When you play that style, you will give up some easy baskets. And I just cannot stand giving up easy baskets. I can’t coach that way.”

•••

Kansas beat Kansas State again Saturday afternoon, and though the final score was a close-looking 67-61, the game wasn’t much in doubt. The Jayhawks built up a double-digit lead and then held off the Wildcats with a lot of jabs in the final 10 minutes. That’s exactly the way Kansas beat Kansas State the last time they played — scored points early, held them off late. Bill Self calls that “grinding it out.” It’s his recipe for winning tough games.

“Everybody knows that we’re really good when we’re running up and down the floor,” Self said. “But in the tournament, you can’t just play that way. Teams won’t let you run up and down. It’s proven year after year: You have to be able to grind it out to win.”

There are those words again. Grind it out. There is absolutely no doubt that Bill Self does not have a grind-it-out team. He coaches four McDonald’s All-Americans. That’s a happy meal. He has a team NBA scouts watch closely. He has five players averaging nine points or more per game, and any one of them — Brandon Rush, Mario Chalmers, Julian Wright, Darrell Arthur or Sherron Collins — would average a whole lot more in a less-crowded field. He has athletes, supreme athletes, Olympic athletes, a virtual track team.

“They are just so athletic,” Kansas State’s Cartier Martin says with wonder in his voice. “I mean, wow, they’re talented.”

Meanwhile, Bill Self coaches them like they’re the six-man team from Hickory High in the movie “Hoosiers.” Four passes, boys. Everybody plays defense here. There are obvious questions to ask: Why doesn’t he let them run? Why doesn’t he turn them loose? Why doesn’t he unleash 40 minutes of Jay-hell on America?

Well, the reason goes something like this: When you’re coaching a team, you have to be who you are. It’s not a choice. You can’t fake coaching. You can’t impersonate someone else. Coaches can read each other’s books, attend each other’s practices, take notes at each other’s clinics, study each other’s film. But in the end, a coach will always fall back to what matters most inside. It’s not really a choice.

Bill Self is from Oklahoma. It’s that simple. He was born in Okmulgee, he grew up in Morris, he went to school in Stillwater, he coached in Stillwater and he moved to Tulsa. He lived in Oklahoma 36 of his first 37 years. And I believe there is something in the Oklahoma air, something that you breathe in and it sends a special coded message to the brain, a message that shouts: “Play defense! Keep the score down! No easy baskets!”

This message comes from Henry Iba, of course. All Oklahoma basketball comes from Henry Iba. He believed the game was meant to be played slow and scores were meant to be low. He won two national championships at Oklahoma A&M, coached two Olympic champions and taught a whole lot of Oklahoma people how to play that kind of ruthless man-to-man defense that really dominated college basketball for a long time. John Wooden learned from Henry Iba. So did Bob Knight.

One of the Oklahoma A&M players he taught was a guy named Eddie Sutton, who years later coached some tough Oklahoma basketball himself. He had an assistant coach named Bill Self. And so it goes.

So this tough Oklahoma basketball is simply in Self’s wiring. The Jayhawks averaged 83 points per game the year before he took over (and 91 points the year before that). In the four seasons since he has taken over, Kansas has averaged 76 points a game. That’s a huge drop-off, a different world.

Then again, in those four years, the opponents’ scoring average has gone from 67 to 65 to 61 to 60 points per game. This year, Kansas’ half-court defense has been so smothering and overwhelming, you know Henry Iba looks down proudly. You know Mr. Iba has no use for all the dunks they show on SportsCenter.

“In the tournament, you have to be tougher than anyone else,” Self says. “You are not going to just run people out of the gym. You’re going to play close, tight games, and it’s going to come down to who makes the big plays down the stretch. A lot of times, it’s going to come down to one play.”

Bill knows this from his own heartbreak. Everybody knows the recent history — his Jayhawks lost a close one to Bradley in last year’s first round, lost by one to Bucknell the year before, and lost to Georgia Tech in overtime the year before that. He had similarly close tournament losses at Illinois. His dream of shocking the world at Tulsa (“That was the best team — as in team — I ever had,” he says) ended in a 59-55 loss to North Carolina in the Elite Eight.

These devastating losses have convinced Self that this Jayhawks team must be tougher than any other team he has coached. He’s coached them that way. It isn’t that he’s trying to hold them back — “I wish we would run more,” he says. And it isn’t that he’s crowding his offensive players or preventing them for shooting — “I wish we’d shoot more three-pointers,” he says. “I’ve wished that all year.”

No, it’s just that Bill Self will not change his coaching style. He can’t change. He coached them to play rough and tough Oklahoma basketball at Oral Roberts, coached them that way at Tulsa, coached them that way at Illinois, too.

And now, he has this race car of a team, a Jayhawks Porsche. He coaches them the same way. Yes, he tries to take advantage of his talents. He promises that, on occasion, for a surprise, he will unleash some of that wild, smothering, full-court defense that led Kentucky and Arkansas to their national titles. That could play a big role in the tournament. He says that when the tempo is right, he will ask his players to run like mad, the way Kansas did for Roy Williams. “I won’t hold them back, believe me,” he says.

More than anything, though, he believes he has coached a team that can beat you in whatever style you want to play. Slow it down, speed it up, pound it inside, shoot it outside — he thinks these Jayhawks can win any of those ways. And they’re tough, too.

No one can argue with the results so far. Kansas is 29-4, has won 10 in a row, is all but assured of a No. 1 seed, might be the overall No. 1 seed. No team in the country is playing better.

But like always, this Kansas team will be measured like every other Kansas team and every other touted college basketball team — by its performance in March. It really doesn’t matter how they win. After the last couple of years, people in Kansas will appreciate a good Oklahoma grind-it-out victory.

As long as the word “victory” is on the end.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call (816) 234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Bill Self

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “When you play that style, you will give up some easy baskets. And I just cannot stand giving up easy baskets. I can’t coach that way.”

where's Levi?






.

[Skip Towne]

I think Self went to high school in Edmond, OK, not Stillwater.

[Lzen]

I have no problem with this. As long as it works. I think Roy's last team here got to the title game due to their defense. That team played better defense than most of Roy's teams over the years at KU.

[BigVE]

The beauty of this team is that we can play ANY style and still win.

[BigVE]

P.S. Free throw shooting is still our achilles heel though.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Lzen

I have no problem with this. As long as it works.

heh ... ya


i still wish he was a good enough coach to fit the style to fit the game.


i want us to run if the other team can't handle it or doesn't have enough depth. I want us to pound it if the other team doesn't have enough size.

we should even play zone if the other team doesn't shoot well from the outside. We have great length and should be able to play a dominate 2-1-2 zone.

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

I would love to see what we could do if he just let them cut loose one time. That could be fun to watch.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by beer me

I would love to see what we could do if he just let them cut loose one time. That could be fun to watch.

it would be great

especially if they actually practiced "being cut loose"




they are running on pure instinct and athleticism

it's a major coaching weakness imo


.

[CoMoChief]

I dont believe this at all. This team knows how to play great defense. This team needs to run. There is such a thing as running the court and playing good defense.

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by beer me

I would love to see what we could do if he just let them cut loose one time. That could be fun to watch.

Yeah no shit.

[Direckshun]

Well what the hell.

If Bill appreciates this style of play, then why doesn't he get players that fit that kind of scheme?

...not to say these players don't, but these players were built to put up numbers offensively, and Self doesn't really permit that.

[Chiefs_Mike_Topeka]

Fug you people kill me!! and get over this "Bill is no Roy" bullshit. Bill Self is one of the top 5 coaches in the NCAA. It's as if you don't even watch the games. Hell just read the article it tells you what you need to know. He is such a good coach that he can coach his team to play any style a team throws at him. Regardless of what you think there is no way you can just run and run and run against every team. There are teams out there that are put together specifically to stop that. And for an example look at the MU-KU game at the Phog. MU played zone that whole game and bailed out 3 people on every shot to get back and stop the break. They slowed the game way down and drug it into the mud. KU played that style and gutted out a win. In the game at Missouri MU played their regular style of pressing and gunning and KU ran them out of the building.

Bottom line is that regardless of the offensive talent you have assembled if you can't/don't play defense YOU WILL NOT WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP! And you have to be able to adjust to any style of game. To me the mark of a bad coach is to refuse to change how you approach a game. (Hence why I think Herm Edwards is a friggin moron) Bill Self can coach any style and get his players to buy in. And if they won't they are gone; Padgett, Downs, etc.

[leviw]

Originally Posted by Laz

where's Levi?






.

Is this not what I've been saying all year?

This team can run if they want, but why? They're winning when they're not running. I love what he did against OU. The ability to be able to switch up and play the grind-it out style or pick up the tempo, press and run is great. Self has done both, but he prefers the grind-it out style...and, like I said, it's working, so what's wrong with it?

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Chiefs_Mike_Topeka

Fug you people kill me!! and get over this "Bill is no Roy" bullshit. Bill Self is one of the top 5 coaches in the NCAA. It's as if you don't even watch the games. Hell just read the article it tells you what you need to know. He is such a good coach that he can coach his team to play any style a team throws at him. Regardless of what you think there is no way you can just run and run and run against every team. There are teams out there that are put together specifically to stop that. And for an example look at the MU-KU game at the Phog. MU played zone that whole game and bailed out 3 people on every shot to get back and stop the break. They slowed the game way down and drug it into the mud. KU played that style and gutted out a win. In the game at Missouri MU played their regular style of pressing and gunning and KU ran them out of the building.

Bottom line is that regardless of the offensive talent you have assembled if you can't/don't play defense YOU WILL NOT WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP! And you have to be able to adjust to any style of game. To me the mark of a bad coach is to refuse to change how you approach a game. (Hence why I think Herm Edwards is a friggin moron) Bill Self can coach any style and get his players to buy in. And if they won't they are gone; Padgett, Downs, etc.

wow .... nice homer glasses