Friday, December 03, 2010

The Bruins Cry Foul

I hate the fact that it takes a b.s. controversy to get Kansas any national attention at all, but at least the NCAA is backing us up. Yes, it was a foul against UCLA. No, it was not a foul that normally gets called with 0.7 on the clock in a tie game. It was probably a makeup for the previous play when Reed turned it over after apparently getting bumped on the inbounds.

Whatever, Self is right: We would have lost that game on the road. It was frustrating in a lot of ways, but I thought UCLA deserves credit.

Howland seems to sort of have Self's number -- beating us with (somewhat) lesser talent in '07 and putting up a fight at Pauley last year with (very) lesser talent. Howland made all the right moves; our overplaying defense gave them a lot of trouble (10 steals), but they countered by backdooring us again and again. And, though I got sick of Fraschilla pointing it out endlessly, bringing their Shaq-like freshman off the bench was a good move.

UCLA, like 'Zona, is a talented, young sleeping giant that will make some noise this year, I think.

I'm not too worried about the free throws -- terrible though they were -- that just seemed like an anomaly to me. The bigger concern is whether our big men are really ready to tangle with the toughest frontcourts in the nation. In fairness, I don't know if there are a lot of big men in college hoops who are as powerful and as talented as 'Zona's Williams and UCLA's Smith. We shall see.

4 comments:

  1. Self: “I don’t know if there are a lot of guys like Josh [Smith], but if I was coaching against us, I would attack our bigs every possession. Everybody can see it. It doesn’t take a guy who studies a ton of tape to know after watching one game to just throw it to your big guys because our big guys don’t guard very well.”

    Uh, ouch.

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  2. In a game where there wasn't a lot to love, can we at least praise Tyshawn Taylor and Tyrel Reed.

    I had to listen to the UCLA radio guys who kept going on about how UCLA can't let a role player like Taylor score that much. They were real focused on the scoring averages and seemed shocked that Reed and Taylor could put up so many points. Made me think they'd never actually watched the Jayhawks.

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  3. Yeah, I liked the way Reed took over in the 1st half and TT took over in the 2nd. It will be nice, however, if Selby is able to shoulder more of the scoring burden and let those two do more facilitatin.'

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  4. Chris makes a great point: one of things I like the most about Self's teams is the way that almost anyone could be the leading scorer on any given night.

    TT really was great last night, and did his share of "facilitatin'" alongside his scoring--5 steals and 4 assists to go with those 17 points.

    I know I've been worrying about the interior defense for a while now, but last night actually seemed like a bit of an improvement. And, in any case, I'd rather get burned on the backdoors by UCLA than Emporia State...

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