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.

[CoMoChief]

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.

I will be the first to tell you that Bill Self is not a top 5 coach in the NCAA.

[leviw]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

I will be the first to tell you that Bill Self is not a top 5 coach in the NCAA.

Ohhhh...you're the one that sets the rankings. Good job if you can get it.

[Chiefs_Mike_Topeka]

Originally Posted by Laz

wow .... nice homer glasses

Call it homer glasses if you want. But everything I stated is objective and true. I just don't have this stupid obsession with Bill Self not being as good as Roy. I think Bill Self is every bit as good a coach as Roy. And in alot of ways better. Roy could never make adjustments if a game was going sideways.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by leviw

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?

no ... it's not

i said Self didn't like to run .... you disagreed



you were wrong

[Al Czervik]

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.

Nice post Mike......Thus, the reason that Roy, until a couple of years ago, and Marty could never win the big one. Instead of adjusting to the game at hand, they tried to force the same style, regardless of the circumstances.

[Chiefs_Mike_Topeka]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

I will be the first to tell you that Bill Self is not a top 5 coach in the NCAA.

Give me 5 better at recruiting, game planning, and game day coaching. The total package.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Chiefs_Mike_Topeka

Call it homer glasses if you want. But everything I stated is objective and true. I just don't have this stupid obsession with Bill Self not being as good as Roy. I think Bill Self is every bit as good a coach as Roy. And in alot of ways better. Roy could never make adjustments if a game was going sideways.

this thread is about whether Self wants to run the ball .... not a comparison to Roy Williams

you the one that is trying to make it about Roy.

[Chiefs_Mike_Topeka]

Originally Posted by Laz

this thread is about whether Self wants to run the ball .... not a comparison to Roy Williams

you the one that is trying to make it about Roy.

Ohh really? And I wonder how all you people that want to see the Hawks run got the impression that the Hawks don't run enough based on what? Because the last coach was sure known to play slow half court tough basketball.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Chiefs_Mike_Topeka

Ohh really? And I wonder how all you people that want to see the Hawks run got the impression that the Hawks don't run enough based on what? Because the last coach was sure known to play slow half court tough basketball.

jesus christ .... everytime someone brings up the coaching style of Bill Self you start crying about Roy William.


The Jayhawks have the athletes and depth to run 50% of the teams they face out of the building.

Self doesn't like to do that, so the Jayhawks are missing out on using a valuable weapon (in the opinion of some).

[leviw]

Originally Posted by Laz

no ... it's not

i said Self didn't like to run .... you disagreed



you were wrong

I never said he "liked to run".

02-21-2007, 04:17 PM

Originally Posted by leviw

They do run, but near as much as Roy did. They don't rely on the secondary break, because the offense works. Push it (after turnovers, which they get a ton of) when it's available, otherwise, why wouldn't you instruct your players to slow it down and play what you practice?

[Chiefs_Mike_Topeka]

Originally Posted by Laz

jesus christ .... everytime someone brings up the coaching style of Bill Self you start crying about Roy William.


The Jayhawks have the athletes and depth to run 50% of the teams they face out of the building.

Self doesn't like to do that, so the Jayhawks are missing out on using a valuable weapon (in the opinion of some).

Yeah and that "valuable weapon" is really killing them. How will they ever be a good team??

[DaWolf]

The fact is yes you can run 50% of the teams out of the building but what happens against those teams that don't allow you to do that well? KU has played many styles of hoops over the years but none of it has won a championship since '88.

It really doesn't matter what style we run though, if BRush and Wright show up ready to play, no one will beat KU...

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by Chiefs_Mike_Topeka

Yeah and that "valuable weapon" is really killing them. How will they ever be a good team??

there is good and then there is good enough

when we come up against one of the really good teams in the Tourney and need something extra ........ and we don't have it because you and Bill didn't feel like it.

just remember your post.

[Mr. Laz]

Originally Posted by DaWolf

The fact is yes you can run 50% of the teams out of the building but what happens against those teams that don't allow you to do that well? KU has played many styles of hoops over the years but none of it has won a championship since '88.

It really doesn't matter what style we run though, if BRush and Wright show up ready to play, no one will beat KU...

i'm sorry ....... i don't recall saying that KU should run EVERY game.

i merely think that Bill Self shouldn't let his phobia of giving up an easy basket deprive KU of a valuable weapon.

[leviw]

Originally Posted by Laz

i'm sorry ....... i don't recall saying that KU should run EVERY game.

i merely think that Bill Self shouldn't let his phobia of giving up an easy basket deprive KU of a valuable weapon.

Instead of moaning to us about it like a broken record, why don't you tell him what he should do with this team. I did the liberty of finding his e-mail address:

joanstep@ku.edu