**** OFFICIAL 2013-2014 Kansas Basketball Repository Thread ****

[ArrowheadHawk]

#18 AP/ #20 Coaches (10-4,1-0)

Players

Spoiler!

Returning Players
1 Naadir Tharpe Guard 5-11 170 Jr.
3 Andrew White III Guard 6-6 210 So.
4 Justin Wesley Forward 6-9 220 RS Sr.
10 Evan Manning Guard 6-3 170 So.
11 Tyler Self Guard 6-2 165 So.
20 Niko Roberts Guard 5-11 175 Sr.
21 Christian Garrett Guard 6-3 185 Jr.
31 Jamari Traylor Forward 6-8 220 RS So.
33 Landen Lucas Forward 6-10 240 RS Fr.
34 Perry Ellis Forward 6-8 225 So.

Incoming Class
SF ***** Wayne Selden
C ***** Joel Embiid
PG **** Conner Frankamp
SF **** Brannen Greene
PG **** Frank Mason
SF ***** Andrew Wiggins

Transfers
Hunter Mickelson
Tarik Black

Non Conference
11/8/2013 Louisiana Monroe Lawrence, Kan. W(80-63) (1-0)
11/12/2013 Duke Chicago, Ill. W(94-83) (2-0)
11/19/2013 Iona Lawrence, Kan. W(86-66) (3-0)
11/22/2013 Towson W(88-58) (4-0)
11/28/2013 Wake Forest Paradise Island, Bahamas W(87-78) (5-0)
11/29/2013 Villanova Paradise Island, Bahamas L(59-63) (5-1)
11/30/2013 UTEP Paradise Island, Bahamas W(67-63) (6-1)
12/7/2013 Colorado Boulder, Colo. L(72-75) (6-2)
12/10/2013 Florida Gainesville, Fla. L(61-67) (6-3)
12/14/2013 New Mexico Kansas City, Mo. W(80-63)(7-3)
12/21/2013 Georgetown Lawrence, Kan. W(86-64)(8-3)
12/30/2013 Toledo Lawrence, Kan. W(93-83)(9-3)
1/5/2014 San Diego State Lawrence, Kan. L(57-61)(9-4)
Conference

Spoiler!

1/8/2014 Oklahoma Norman, Okla. W(90-83)(10-4,1-0)
1/11/2014 Kansas State Lawrence, Kan. 1 p.m.
1/13/2014 Iowa State Ames, Iowa 8 p.m.
1/18/2014 Oklahoma State Lawrence, Kan. 3 p.m.
1/20/2014 Baylor Lawrence, Kan. 8 p.m.
1/25/2014 TCU Fort Worth, Texas 8 p.m.
1/29/2014 Iowa State Lawrence, Kan. 8 p.m.
2/1/2014 Texas Austin, Texas 3 p.m.
2/4/2014 Baylor Waco, Texas 6 p.m.
2/8/2014 West Virginia Lawrence, Kan. 3 p.m.
2/10/2014 Kansas State Manhattan, Kan. 8 p.m.
2/15/2014 TCU Lawrence, Kan. 3 p.m.
2/18/2014 Texas Tech Lubbock, Texas 7 p.m.
2/22/2014 Texas Lawrence, Kan. 6:30 p.m.
2/24/2014 Oklahoma Lawrence, Kan. 8 p.m.
3/1/2014 Oklahoma State Stillwater, Okla. 8 p.m.
3/5/2014 Texas Tech Lawrence, Kan. 7 p.m.
3/8/2014 West Virginia Morgantown, W. Va. 11 a.m.
Big 12 Championship
3/12-15/2014 TBD Kansas City, Mo. TBD Details

[RustShack]

Originally Posted by Al Czervik

You are getting dangerously close to COMO status when it comes to your predictions....

Nah this is legit. He even said on his official visit yesterday he has the best relationship with Iowa States staff.

He's said the three most important things to him are coaching staff, playing style, and location to home. We nail all three. And we are loaded next year, so we can make a huge run next year with him before he's one and done.

Side note, Iowa State is ranked 21! You're 2, hope you make it to 1 by the time we play!

[Mr. Plow]

That was a good win yesterday Rust.

[Prison Bitch]

Damn good win, Michigan is a serious thread for Dallas this March. (I guess that would be April by that point). Iowa State needs to be a perennial Top-25 team with their fan support, good arena, and inability to possibly compete in football with the South schools. Go all in.

[RustShack]

Our team is so well rounded this year it's crazy. Last year if there three wasn't falling we were in trouble. This year we can actually slash to the hoop well AND play defense. We are so ahead of where we were last year with number of threes made lol.

Hopefully our starting freshman SG gets it going soon though, he's supposed to be a lights out shooter and nothing is falling yet.

[ArrowheadHawk]

Originally Posted by RustShack

Our team is so well rounded this year it's crazy. Last year if there three wasn't falling we were in trouble. This year we can actually slash to the hoop well AND play defense. We are so ahead of where we were last year with number of threes made lol.

Hopefully our starting freshman SG gets it going soon though, he's supposed to be a lights out shooter and nothing is falling yet.

Should be some fun games against you guys again this year.

[Buehler445]

Holy ****. Nice win ISU. That will rock the boat some. The stronger the conference the better, even if we don't get the title with a young team that might lose some up front.

I'm all for whatever it takes to get this team to the highest potential in March.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by RustShack

Side note, Iowa State is ranked 21! You're 2, hope you make it to 1 by the time we play!

Why? So Weathermax can cry to Bill Self again when we beat you at your place?

[Pants]

The woe of Prison Bitch explained:

Opinion: Zenger explains that TV deal good for KU

The mind has a way of suppressing memories that hemorrhage at the slightest rekindling of them.

Remember the conference-realignment scare? Remember the term “Forgotten Five”?

Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri in some circles became known as that when college athletics were on the verge of a seismic shift driven largely by conferences seeking schools that could generate the biggest television bucks.

KU had two strikes against it. The Flint Hills may take breaths away, but beauty and a low-stress lifestyle free of insane traffic don’t equate to TV sets. Rutgers and Maryland are headed to the Big Ten because they are in the middle of large media markets, even though viewers aren’t tripping over each other to watch the Terps and Scarlet Knights play football.

Once Kansas made it out of the Forgotten Five forest alive, it was time to find out why raiding conferences were avoiding the school the way we all avoid compulsive talkers cursed with bad breath and a tendency to prattle about nothing but their ailments, their children, their shot-by-shot accounts of their most recent golf round.

They were told in part what they already knew. They didn’t have enough TV sets. They weren’t conveniently located. They were the idiot-savant of the college athletics world, brilliant in basketball, nationally anonymous in so many other sports.

To overcome the population and geographic issues, the Jayhawks had to patch the holes that they at least had the potential to fix.

That in a big way was behind the move to strike a deal with Time Warner. So the athletic administrators swallowed hard, coated themselves with a beehive-shaped coat of armor made of paper mache and handed clubs to those in their fan base from whom they had stripped their TV remote controls for two exhibition games and four regular-season ones. Tonight’s contest in Allen Fieldhouse against Iona College is the third of six such games.

Those who either can’t subscribe to cable TV because it’s not offered in their areas or choose to subscribe with a competitor of Time Warner’s and live in an area that blacks out a half-dozen of the games on ESPN3 feel like the next-door neighbor who liked their cozy neighborhood just fine and doesn’t like the idea of a hot-shot crashing the block, tearing down a small house and resurrecting a mansion. They feel helpless to do anything about it. They yearn for the way it once was because it was perfect.

The athletic department likes the new deal because it gives national exposure to sports that normally don’t get that and because of Time Warner, at its cost, not at the university’s cost, has produced coverage of the school’s lesser-attended sporting events. Also, Time Warner has loaded the airwaves with what’s known as “shoulder programming,” shows devoted to KU basketball, football, other sports and even academic-related activities.

KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger wishes he could tell the disconnected-for-six-games customers something they want to hear, but he can’t, so he is left to answer a simple question: Why did he do it?

“Two-fold,” Zenger said. “First, I believe any decision we make, the core value has to center around your student-athletes. This provided 500 student athletes the most exposure possible to regional and national coverage. What it did for them in exposure and recruiting is unrivaled.”

The games and shoulder programming are seen nationally, increasing exposure of a brand that in one way has a subtle advantage on most because, in the Jayhawk, the school has one of the nation’s coolest mascots. (I love it when someone from another region of the country looks both ways to make sure nobody’s looking and quietly asks: “Is it a real bird?”)

“If you are in the Time Warner areas, you’re naturally in there,” Zenger said. “Then the ESPN3 part lays over the top of it and takes you into another close to 100 million homes. Let’s say Ritch Price recruits a kid in California or Hawaii, Florida, wherever. His friends and family can watch him play baseball, whereas before they couldn’t. What he and other coaches were running into, now that we have it, we can say it, that was a problem.”

The switch has been painful for blacked-out fans whose interest in KU athletics pretty much begins and ends with KU basketball and in some cases to a lesser extent football.

“I’m from here (Hays),” Zenger said. “I would never do anything to alienate anyone in our fan base. But at the end of the day, we have to take care of our student-athletes and our coaches and give them that competitive edge every day and hope that people understand that those decisions are based on what’s best for the student-athletes and the coaches.”

What’s it in for Time Warner? Teaming with KU gives it an edge on its competition.

“They came to us,” Zenger said, “and said, ‘We’re willing to give you somewhere between $1 and $2 million worth of production a year that you don’t have to pay for. And not only are we going to do all these telecasts, we’re also going to do 300 hours of shoulder programming for basketball, football, for the university.’”

The university?

“If you watch Jayhawk Insider, the Chancellor was on there the other night,” Zenger said, “talking about all the attributes of the University of Kansas. We’ll have our Provost, the E.V.C. (executive vice president) of the Med Center. This is truly a Jayhawk Network to help sell this institution. In doing that, we expanded our brand to a level that most other schools don’t have the opportunity to do.”

Zenger’s position doesn’t allow him to repress the scary days and sleepless nights of the conference-realignment tremor. Becoming a more attractive conference member is reason No. 2 to the stated No. 1 of looking out for all student-athletes at KU.

“It’s all too clear in my recent memory,” Zenger said. “I was encouraged by folks around the country to continue to expand our national footprint and exposure.”

Those telling Zenger what negatives had to be reversed typically started by praising the basketball team and academic reputation and then told him KU needed to become elite and stay elite “nationally and within your conference with your brand.”

How?

“You’ve got to keep your national coverage, be a national brand, for everything, not just basketball,” Zenger said. “Your basketball has to stay at that high level, and your other sports have to rise up to it.”

As long as Bill Self stays at Kansas, basketball will remain an elite school. The winning tradition and conference affiliation are factors as well. Zenger signed Self to a 10-year contract extension worth nearly $50 million, so he did what he could there. Highlighting the tradition will take another step forward with the construction of the building that will house the original basketball rules.

That leaves conference affiliation. Zenger was told by credible sources he needed to increase the national brand of the athletic department and make more sports relevant to be well positioned the next time conference realignment rears its venomous fangs.

The TV partnership with Time Warner helps toward that end, even though it means for two exhibitions and four real games ripping the remote out of the hands of so many people who cherish KU basketball as the most important form of entertainment in their lives.

Given the talent and entertainment value of this year’s team, the negative consequence of a smart play for the future is especially painful.

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Why? So Weathermax can cry to Bill Self again when we beat you at your place?

I had an Iowa State fan refer to me and call KU "little brother" sometime last week. WTF? Fans are really out of touch with reality sometimes.

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Game day bitches.

[Ceej]

Originally Posted by Chiefs Pantalones

Game day bitches.

This, bitches!!

[Silock]

**** Zenger's bullshit. I like the guy, but that TV deal ****s me. I want to watch the game from the comfort of my home tonight, but I can't. **** that. It's horseshit.

[ArrowheadHawk]

Originally Posted by Silock

**** Zenger's bullshit. I like the guy, but that TV deal ****s me. I want to watch the game from the comfort of my home tonight, but I can't. **** that. It's horseshit.

So get Time Warner if it's that important to you. That is the point of this.

[Reerun_KC]

Solid article, explains a lot...

Thankfully with DTV, I will be in my home watching the game tonight...

Thank you DTV and Full Court.

[Mr. Plow]

Originally Posted by Silock

**** Zenger's bullshit. I like the guy, but that TV deal ****s me. I want to watch the game from the comfort of my home tonight, but I can't. **** that. It's horseshit.

I know it's not what you guys up in NE KS want to hear, but I've been impressed with the channel. Lots of coverage of different things and the quality of the basketball games is outstanding.