The Elijah Conundrum

As Yancy said in the previous thread, there were a lot of reasons for our loss to OSU this weekend -- not least of which is that OSU was awesome. They're finally starting to live up to preseason expectations.

Still, I hate to say it but the blame game indeed points us back to "a certain point guard." The OSU game followed the script we saw against Temple, Texas, and Iowa State, where EJ's miscues helped our opponents build a lead -- except this time, instead of righting the ship in crunch time, he melted down when we needed him the most.

I know a lot of our guys had poor games on Saturday, but it all starts with the point guard. I don't blame him so much for his shooting woes -- his stroke has always looked good to me and his shot selection was fine. But I've never seen a KU starting PG commit more unforced turnovers than EJ has this year -- not even Tyshawn as an underclassman.

Self announced today that he's standing by his man, which is fine by me. If he'd decided to start Tharpe instead, that would have been fine by me as well; it would have been more than justified. (Tharpe, by the way, showed some class after the game by adamantly not putting the blame on EJ.) But Elijah has the ability to do a lot more for us than Tharpe does; we've seen him do it before on the biggest stage. And benching him might do more harm than good to his psyche. I just hope he can get it together.