Everyone needs to take a DEEEEEP breath, and hold it | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Everyone needs to take a DEEEEEP breath, and hold it

I'm afraid the staff is a little too in love with the deserved lauding of our offense the last couple years, and it seems this particular team at this particular point with these particular pieces is not ready to run the advanced calculus equations needed to get a hoop
Completely agree here. I would extend that take to everything beyond the offense.

The staff and the returners especially AK have approached this season as a continuation of the championship teams. That is admirable on principle, and hell that mindset worked for last year's team. But at this point that super intense approach needs to be dialed back to fit THIS year's team.
 
Something definitely looks intentional with the refereeing. If I’m Dan I stay ahead of it and start pulling some Belichek and hit pressers by saying refs are doing their best, great crew, yada and move on. He’s at a point now where any tantrums or post game comments are not going to work in his favor. Show some control, get an extra meditation in. It’s really becoming a bad look especially in today’s world of social media, especially when you’re losing. You don’t want video of yourself flopping around on the sideline going viral.

Last year the team was so good it didn’t matter. Going forward now that playing field has leveled he can’t take on referring disadvantages as every point will matter.

Separately feels like he may also have to rethink the puritan recruiting strategy. Need to go get some quick twitch athletes and dogs to complement the choir boys. Calhoun kinda kids. This past portal season was a giant whiff, over-pride on being selective and maintaining culture. You can’t win without talent and a balanced roster, no matter how great you think your system is. Last year’s team had insane talent, two guys starting in the NBA already and other two getting minutes. That group was an anomaly.

Still hopeful for this year and gonna enjoy every minute of it. This staff has to do some real work this year, which will be fun to watch. We’ll see if all the “genius” accolades were warranted. And in some ways, could see the team better off backing into the tourney with slow growth being a better position than as a high seed as perhaps a healthier narrative for this group.
I'm sure Big Jim had a word or two with Danny. Like, hang tough and pick your spots carefully when you challenge the Little Caesars with the striped shirts.
 
I don't think we're bad, and I don't think there's any reason to overreact. I do think everyone needs to readjust their expectations. 48 hours ago I thought we were one of the national title favorites. Now I think it's clear that the overall goal for the season should be making the tournament. Maybe we improve and get back into that title hunt, but from what I've seen our defense needs to drastically improve before we can even think about making a tournament run.
 
On offense there is no leader of the team right now. Everyone is trying to get it done but it's a mishmash of lineups. The 19 turnovers vs A@M Commerce were concerning. Memphis disrupted our offense and we almost survived it. Colorado came back as we misfired often and had to finish without our 2 centers. Tonight is a chance to get some confidence back. Need to play all out.

This is true. I think it will take time for guys to get their roles defined, and that ONLY happens by playing, learning, and sometimes losing.
 
We will be ok. It was pretty easy to see this coming. The Memphis loss at least. I was ok with it. I admit the Colorado loss left me a tad surprised. We can't play worse. If we continue to play like this we will continue to lose to really any team in the top 125 , but we can't play worse. It's been a while since I remember feeling like we can never get a stop. It just looks so easy (and is so easy) for other teams to score on us. They are able to get whatever they want. They want to run a set for an open 3? They get it. They want to isolate down low and bang to the rim? They get that. We offer little resistance other than fouling. We are totally lost on the defensive end, I haven't seen a worse high major defense in all the teams I've watched this year. The effort is there. The intelligence isn't. Everything is a scramble.

Speaking of fouling. I don't want to hear anything about the refs, including, and especially, from Hurley. I love coach Hurley, but if he doesn't realize that he made his bed with referees I don't know what to tell him. Were there bad calls in these games that could've gone the other way? Sure. It still isn't in the top 10 reasons for either loss. We were out played.

Our offense isn't quite as atrocious as our defense but that isn't very good either. We are getting some good looks. But it's often disjointed. I'm afraid the staff is a little too in love with the deserved lauding of our offense the last couple years, and it seems this particular team at this particular point with these particular pieces is not ready to run the advanced calculus equations needed to get a hoop. Sometimes (as our opponents have proven) the best play is the simplest one. We look like a monkey trying to hump a football when teams switch 1-5, and if that is all it takes to blow up our fabled sets, and we dont have a counter, it is going to be a long year. the counter to that is to have guys take it off the bounce and make them pay for the overplay, but we continue to try to run through sets that are already blown up. That needs to change NOW. And you can't spell NOW without NOWell ;) . I understand the complicated reasons why it isn't happening, but I do believe that any team that is sitting their best PG on the bench (and a top 35 in the country recruit) is possibly making a mistake. If we are getting this type of play out of our PG spot: Mahaney has been atrocious on both ends, and Hass has played with a lot of heart but is making some head scratching turnovers. Nowell being the PG of the future might as well be now because while he will have some growing pains too it wont be any worse than what we currently have, and the upside of who is as a player is much higher than what we've been doing or what we would get.

This can (and I believe will) absolutely turn around. We will be a force by the end of February. We have too much talent. In fact right now at this point in the season I think that is actually a big part of the problem. We have too much talent. Too many pieces. Trying to mix and all of them together to this point as brought on a "jack of all trades, master of none" scenario. The staff is going to soon need to settle on some definitive rotations and let them meld together so we can have some floor cohesiveness on both ends. Especially the defensive one. There is a lot of room for improvement. Luckily we have players that will improve and the best staff in the country to make it happen. Lets hope it starts sooner rather than later.

Well said! I’ve been saying versions of this for 2 days now, but haven’t had the time to express it so eloquently.
 
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We will be ok. It was pretty easy to see this coming. The Memphis loss at least. I was ok with it. I admit the Colorado loss left me a tad surprised. We can't play worse. If we continue to play like this we will continue to lose to really any team in the top 125 , but we can't play worse. It's been a while since I remember feeling like we can never get a stop. It just looks so easy (and is so easy) for other teams to score on us. They are able to get whatever they want. They want to run a set for an open 3? They get it. They want to isolate down low and bang to the rim? They get that. We offer little resistance other than fouling. We are totally lost on the defensive end, I haven't seen a worse high major defense in all the teams I've watched this year. The effort is there. The intelligence isn't. Everything is a scramble.

Speaking of fouling. I don't want to hear anything about the refs, including, and especially, from Hurley. I love coach Hurley, but if he doesn't realize that he made his bed with referees I don't know what to tell him. Were there bad calls in these games that could've gone the other way? Sure. It still isn't in the top 10 reasons for either loss. We were out played.

Our offense isn't quite as atrocious as our defense but that isn't very good either. We are getting some good looks. But it's often disjointed. I'm afraid the staff is a little too in love with the deserved lauding of our offense the last couple years, and it seems this particular team at this particular point with these particular pieces is not ready to run the advanced calculus equations needed to get a hoop. Sometimes (as our opponents have proven) the best play is the simplest one. We look like a monkey trying to hump a football when teams switch 1-5, and if that is all it takes to blow up our fabled sets, and we dont have a counter, it is going to be a long year. the counter to that is to have guys take it off the bounce and make them pay for the overplay, but we continue to try to run through sets that are already blown up. That needs to change NOW. And you can't spell NOW without NOWell ;) . I understand the complicated reasons why it isn't happening, but I do believe that any team that is sitting their best PG on the bench (and a top 35 in the country recruit) is possibly making a mistake. If we are getting this type of play out of our PG spot: Mahaney has been atrocious on both ends, and Hass has played with a lot of heart but is making some head scratching turnovers. Nowell being the PG of the future might as well be now because while he will have some growing pains too it wont be any worse than what we currently have, and the upside of who is as a player is much higher than what we've been doing or what we would get.

This can (and I believe will) absolutely turn around. We will be a force by the end of February. We have too much talent. In fact right now at this point in the season I think that is actually a big part of the problem. We have too much talent. Too many pieces. Trying to mix and all of them together to this point as brought on a "jack of all trades, master of none" scenario. The staff is going to soon need to settle on some definitive rotations and let them meld together so we can have some floor cohesiveness on both ends. Especially the defensive one. There is a lot of room for improvement. Luckily we have players that will improve and the best staff in the country to make it happen. Lets hope it starts sooner rather than later.
Agree with all of this.

Hass has been solid/good, he had 5 turnovers against East Texas A&M but that was a throwaway game they were all disinterested in. He's averaging 8 points and 5 assists and he's been our best defensive player.

Hurley's Midas Touch from the last couple years is finally showing chinks in the armour. He turned down the best three point shooter in the country Koby Brea who was begging to come here and instead went with Aidan Mahaney who Hurley was going to turn into a point guard. Brea is shooting 68% from three and scoring 15 points per game as we wasted preseason and the first 5 games on the Mahaney starting point guard experiment. Fortunately it's not too late to go with Hass/Ahmad or Ahmad/Hass at point but this hurt our early season development of team chemistry, it's got Mahaney seemingly questioning everything right now and we didn't take a stud who wanted to come here.

It's now the 7th game of the season with a bunch of big boy opponents coming up. The starting 5 and 8-9 rotation should be locked down by now and it's not yet locked down.
 
You filled out the ESPN Pizza Hut Challenge with Duke beating UConn in the finals.

You were, always have been and always will be a yellow bellied traitor.
St. Peter has already given me a pass. In Heaven, there is a pair of custom-made satin pants waiting for me.
 
Honestly it's much better to find out who you really are early in the season then late.

I would have preferred the wine, but sometimes a team can lose it's edge by being complacent.

We need to find a way to win today.

Hopefully the team regroups and does some soul searching.

There's enough talent to go the distance despite the recent losses.
 
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99.9% of coaches yell at the refs and some go over the top occasionally, as Dan Hurley did the other day.

I don't think he's suddenly forgotten how to coach, the Huskies will be fine.

Now, the reason I'm on this forum in the first place, Aidan Mahaney, I'm a little worried about. But the Huskies as a whole will be fine.

As pointed out by many, opponents aren't going to shoot the lights out every night, but we should expect top effort from all opponents. The target is squarely on the Huskies' back.
 
Everything so far has been an anti-mojo kick to the scalitos:
  • Alex calling out fans for attendance, that aged like fine wine.
  • AD raising ticket prices and removing Forever Seats
  • Hurley and the fouls
  • People trashing Big East for its ineptitude, begging to be open-face slapped by the Big 12 again
To Coach Cooley’s point ( @Dove and @August_West too) we have most definitely become arrogant and spoiled as a fan base and as a program. This team needs serious fine tuning, like most non-wagon teams. Will Hurley adapt or be a stubborn/arrogant coach?

Things I know:
  • If you’re trashing the team out of spite because you’re a bandwagon fan, leave. We don’t need you, and neither does Dan and the team.
  • @temery is right - stop overreacting. Dig in, this is gonna be a sicko year that requires the mojo.
  • This team will perform better as an underdog.
Post of the week.

To add to the anti-mojo list:
  • players over-celebrating everything this early in the season
  • constant flexing during open practice (looks great for promos, but literally any D1 team can do this)
  • Extreme hyper-focus on 3-pt shooting as if it were all that's needed to dominate
To Do List:
  • Dump the attitude that expects this team to be a perpetual Kansas every year. We are not, have never been, and never will be that.
  • Coach + Players + Fans all digest the humble-pie, return to underrated underdog status where we thrive.
  • Find the team's identity on defense and offence
  • Let the staff do what they do and outwork the competition on playmaking
  • Outwork the competition in practice
  • Learn how to win close games, cause we have the talent and heart to do it
  • Qualify for the tournament
  • Win the conference
  • Win the conference tournament
  • Win the last 6 games in a row
 
Post of the week.

To add to the anti-mojo list:
  • players over-celebrating everything this early in the season
  • constant flexing during open practice (looks great for promos, but literally any D1 team can do this)
  • Extreme hyper-focus on 3-pt shooting as if it were all that's needed to dominate
To Do List:
  • Dump the attitude that expects this team to be a perpetual Kansas every year. We are not, have never been, and never will be that.
  • Coach + Players + Fans all digest the humble-pie, return to underrated underdog status where we thrive.
  • Find the team's identity on defense and offence
  • Let the staff do what they do and outwork the competition on playmaking
  • Outwork the competition in practice
  • Learn how to win close games, cause we have the talent and heart to do it
  • Qualify for the tournament
  • Win the conference
  • Win the conference tournament
  • Win the last 6 games in a row
Completely disagree with your To do List first and second bullet points.

It's nonsense and the little engine that could from some in this fanbase drives me nuts.
 
How can we teach Samson to rebound

He's had (IMO) the best rebpunding coach in D1 for 3 years. He isn't going to get it. The issue is between the ears.

We know who he is. We've been very successful with him having a role on the team before. Now it's time to make a plan for that to happen again.

Samson's play style is simply not built to be a starting 25mpg big. He's a sparkplug, a very good one.
 
.-.
My first year teaching I had a student with special needs that had been in the bathroom for a long time. So our special ed teacher popped in the bathroom to make sure everything was ok. He called into the stall asking if the boy was alright and the boy called back “I’m draining my emotions.” Some people on the boneyard need to step back, take a few minutes to drain their emotions, and then maybe see the world with a different perspective.
 
Completely disagree with your To do List first and second bullet points.

It's nonsense and the little engine that could from some in this fanbase drives me nuts.
It's not about being the the ones who punch above their weight. It's about having a non-entitled attitude.
 
I had the highest of hopes for him, but he just doesn't have the hands. He has everything else really, just not the hands. I wonder if it impacts his shooting as well. It affects the passes to him, rebounding, he simply cannot grab a basketball cleanly on a consistent basis. It's baffling.
The puzzling part of this is Samson handles most of the lob passes to him cleanly so not sure if it’s his hands. Perhaps it’s more of a concentration focus or trepidation on this part rebounding in traffic.
 
Post of the week.

To add to the anti-mojo list:
  • players over-celebrating everything this early in the season
  • constant flexing during open practice (looks great for promos, but literally any D1 team can do this)
  • Extreme hyper-focus on 3-pt shooting as if it were all that's needed to dominate
To Do List:
  • Dump the attitude that expects this team to be a perpetual Kansas every year. We are not, have never been, and never will be that.
  • Coach + Players + Fans all digest the humble-pie, return to underrated underdog status where we thrive.
  • Find the team's identity on defense and offence
  • Let the staff do what they do and outwork the competition on playmaking
  • Outwork the competition in practice
  • Learn how to win close games, cause we have the talent and heart to do it
  • Qualify for the tournament
  • Win the conference
  • Win the conference tournament
  • Win the last 6 games in a row

Why do we need to change the offense? Our offense is fine when we have the right lineups.
 
Always seemed likely to be a bumpy road early. One returning starter and big minutes from guys that were either riding the bench or limited role players last year.

I would like to see Hurley adjust the lineups a bit. Bring Samson off the bench. Maybe getting back into that role will help him a bit (unfortunately I think the likelihood of his fouling improving is very little at this point).

I still think Nowell ends this season as our starting PG. He’ll have some growing pains but he looks way more comfortable running the point than Mahaney or Diarra. Get Mahaney back into an off-ball scoring guard role that he’s more accustomed to. If he gets back to what he does best, then you think about expanding his role more but I think you need to get his confidence back.

And for the love of god, get JStew more minutes!

I still have faith. This team needs to gel offensively and reign in the aggressiveness on defense. We can’t be jumping at everything, going for every steal, etc. A lot of mental mistakes leading to the early defensive woes.
 
.-.
We will be ok. It was pretty easy to see this coming. The Memphis loss at least. I was ok with it. I admit the Colorado loss left me a tad surprised. We can't play worse. If we continue to play like this we will continue to lose to really any team in the top 125 , but we can't play worse. It's been a while since I remember feeling like we can never get a stop. It just looks so easy (and is so easy) for other teams to score on us. They are able to get whatever they want. They want to run a set for an open 3? They get it. They want to isolate down low and bang to the rim? They get that. We offer little resistance other than fouling. We are totally lost on the defensive end, I haven't seen a worse high major defense in all the teams I've watched this year. The effort is there. The intelligence isn't. Everything is a scramble.

Speaking of fouling. I don't want to hear anything about the refs, including, and especially, from Hurley. I love coach Hurley, but if he doesn't realize that he made his bed with referees I don't know what to tell him. Were there bad calls in these games that could've gone the other way? Sure. It still isn't in the top 10 reasons for either loss. We were out played.

Our offense isn't quite as atrocious as our defense but that isn't very good either. We are getting some good looks. But it's often disjointed. I'm afraid the staff is a little too in love with the deserved lauding of our offense the last couple years, and it seems this particular team at this particular point with these particular pieces is not ready to run the advanced calculus equations needed to get a hoop. Sometimes (as our opponents have proven) the best play is the simplest one. We look like a monkey trying to hump a football when teams switch 1-5, and if that is all it takes to blow up our fabled sets, and we dont have a counter, it is going to be a long year. the counter to that is to have guys take it off the bounce and make them pay for the overplay, but we continue to try to run through sets that are already blown up. That needs to change NOW. And you can't spell NOW without NOWell ;) . I understand the complicated reasons why it isn't happening, but I do believe that any team that is sitting their best PG on the bench (and a top 35 in the country recruit) is possibly making a mistake. If we are getting this type of play out of our PG spot: Mahaney has been atrocious on both ends, and Hass has played with a lot of heart but is making some head scratching turnovers. Nowell being the PG of the future might as well be now because while he will have some growing pains too it wont be any worse than what we currently have, and the upside of who is as a player is much higher than what we've been doing or what we would get.

This can (and I believe will) absolutely turn around. We will be a force by the end of February. We have too much talent. In fact right now at this point in the season I think that is actually a big part of the problem. We have too much talent. Too many pieces. Trying to mix and all of them together to this point as brought on a "jack of all trades, master of none" scenario. The staff is going to soon need to settle on some definitive rotations and let them meld together so we can have some floor cohesiveness on both ends. Especially the defensive one. There is a lot of room for improvement. Luckily we have players that will improve and the best staff in the country to make it happen. Lets hope it starts sooner rather than later.

Pretty fair assessment.

I look at our offense as mainly needing some "fine-tuning". if you look at the stats and metrics, they still look pretty darn great:
  • 52% FG%, 38% 3pt, 126 assists on 188 made FGs (67%), 1.85:1 Ast/TO ratio. These all are similar/better than last years team (and yes, I know sample size is small and level of competition for the sample is low)
  • We are getting a ton of great 3pt looks even though our cutting/PnR offense is not even close to clicking yet...but we're seeing some signs

Most import for short-term turnaround is gonna be shoring up the defense. I think this happens with a combination of personnel changes/minutes allotted tweaks, maybe some different approaches, and practice, practice, practice

It's year #7 of the Hurley era. One thing that we can be comfortable saying is that his teams have always gotten better as the season progresses, There's no reason to expect anything different this year.

The biggest difference is we're coming off back-to-back titles and a generationally-talented team with unrealistically high expectations.
 
People forget that a team with Tristen, Andre Jackson, Hawkins, Karaban, Sanogo, Clingan, etc lost 6 of 8 much later in the season than this, including 3 double digit losses (and even one at home to St. John's). That team was able to right the ship and win a national championship.

There's clearly a lot of work to do, and I'm not saying the expectation should be a championship, but this isn't abnormal. A team hasn't gone undefeated and won a national championship in just about 50 years. We're ironing out the rotation, and the guys who aren't ready to step up will see their minutes reduced. Hopefully by the start of conference play, things are really clicking
 
I'm so glad both Maui games were during my working hours, so I couldn't watch them live.

Based on reading the post game threads describing both games, no doubt profuse profanity and flying foreign objects would have manifested if I had watched both games.


Sounds like Danny lost his cool. With a coach as intense as Danny, we have to accept the good and bad. Of course, if the bad devolves further, he has to take a step back.......whether this be relayed to him by the administration, his assistant coaches, or even Andrea.


The frustration is palpable, which is understandable, as we reached heights our program (actually few programs) have experienced, exacerbating the pain of these duo of unexpected body blows.


The hovering specter of a 3-peat seems to either have our team tense or over-confident.


Only Danny and his staff know which one is the fact.


Let's trust they can learn and adapt.
 
Agree with all of this.

Hass has been solid/good, he had 5 turnovers against East Texas A&M but that was a throwaway game they were all disinterested in. He's averaging 8 points and 5 assists and he's been our best defensive player.

Hurley's Midas Touch from the last couple years is finally showing chinks in the armour. He turned down the best three point shooter in the country Koby Brea who was begging to come here and instead went with Aidan Mahaney who Hurley was going to turn into a point guard. Brea is shooting 68% from three and scoring 15 points per game as we wasted preseason and the first 5 games on the Mahaney starting point guard experiment. Fortunately it's not too late to go with Hass/Ahmad or Ahmad/Hass at point but this hurt our early season development of team chemistry, it's got Mahaney seemingly questioning everything right now and we didn't take a stud who wanted to come here.

It's now the 7th game of the season with a bunch of big boy opponents coming up. The starting 5 and 8-9 rotation should be locked down by now and it's not yet locked down.

Hass, no matter what, will still have a huge role on this team. From the bench or starting. And we will need every bit of it. He's up for the task. But he cannot be the only "on the ball" guard on this team. There is a point where increased usage with him leads to decreased efficiencies. And yep, Mahaney is not him. I'm not out to bash this kid. I like him. I still think he has a good contribution to this team in him, but the envisioned role the staff had for him will not pan out. I keep hearing, seeing, and thinking about the comparisons to Tristen's start here. Everyone would love to believe that it is just an adjustment period from player and staff like we had to go through with Tristen before everything clicked on both sides. I wanted to believe that myself at one point. But it is not the same situation. We will see improvement from him, I don't doubt that in the slightest, but other things just are what they are. He will never not be the 1st point of attack on every teams game plan against us. He's just not a great defender. Not individually and not from team D principles either. The latter may improve a little. More importantly I just don't see him thriving as an on the ball guard. It's just not there. The vision, passing, timing, all are just a step slow. He would be much better off ball. The problem there is even if he is better off ball, is he better than Ball? Ross? Stewart? McNeeley? We have a glut of off ball guards/wings . Some real tough playing time decisions are about to be made, there is no choice, we can't keep up this, the rotation needs to be set or it will be disjointed mess still, and we are going to have some unhappy campers. Nowell needs 20mpg. Probably more, but that is a decent starting point. Even yesterday, in 13 minutes he had 5 assists and zero turnovers. The kid is a dog defensively and despite his height he won't be punked. Our guards were punked 2 days in a row. Especially the Memphis game.

We have 2 games now before we get thrown to the wolves with Baylor Texas, Gonzaga and Xavier. 2 games to set something up and get these guys feeling like they have a plan. I hope we see one.
 
You can blame me. After getting my picture taken with Big Red before the Purdue game in Glendale in April (7 months ago!), I did not toast the post-game victory with sacreds (is that still a thing on here?).
 
The only really experienced player on the team is Karaban. Diarra was a sixth man and played significant but not starter minutes. Solo Ball had a run early last year until Castle returned, then rode the pine. Stewart got minutes late in the year, but bench minutes. Johnson spelled the best rookie center in the NBA and mainly was a target for lob dunks and provided additional fouls to use.

Growing pains to be expected. The team needs to find it's identity, particularly on defense. On offense there needs to be a balance of individual creation and team movement. I'm not seeing the same efficiency running the offense yet, we would hope it will develop.

There will be tests coming, take lessons from these losses and get ready for those.

And, oh, by the way, Dayton is pretty darn good, get ready for tonight.
Someone argued that we cannot use the excuse that we are a young team but as you point out we really are
 
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