Self Imposed Victory
Rock, chalk, championship.
I'm not sure if that was the best call ever. I suppose it could have been worse, though.
Congrats to Bill Self, for taking it to the next level. I've always been a fan, so like Roy Williams' Jayhawk sticker, I was rooting for Coach to get it done.
As an Illini fan, watching that game was interesting. It was familiar, in a strange way. The Bill Self offense has evolved a bit. Part of it was that stronger guards that Kansas had (remember, Dee and Deron were only freshmen under Self, and Luther was always drifting on D, doing mystifying things, and jacking up outside shots, essentially being Warren before Warren got there), and the non-dominant bigs (you'll also remember that we had Brian Cook out there in the post). So, less of the high-low. More of an emphasis on the perimeter motion. And anytime that happens, you have the risk of going into a lull, offensively, which is what happened to Kansas for about 8 minutes in the 2nd half.
But some things never change.
Right after timeouts, Kansas was superior to Memphis because they had plays coming out of the huddle that worked well. The same was true for in-bounds plays, where Kansas seemed to be more efficient than Memphis. A couple alley-oops. A couple layups. A press that seemed to surprise Memphis that resulted in the 3 that really gave Kansas something to believe in. The net result is that they steal maybe 4 points off of easy buckets off of dead balls. In a close game, those points are huge. This was something that we got used to at Illinois.
I think that's a part of what I've not liked about the Weber regime. For as much talk about FT shooting that we had about the Illini this year, I didn't hear anyone (other than me) complain about how much we surrendered our in-bounds plays... Really, we had 2 plays that tried to run. 3 if you count the high lob toward halfcourt where we give up any chance of attacking. We had the interior lob to Pruitt, which teams caught on to quickly. And then we would run a high screen that we'd send two guards curling off of. The first guard through would be a decoy, and just run through. The second guard would be Trent, who would jack a 3. Sadly, that was our best in-bounds play all year. The thing is, let's say that you're on offense. With about 22 seconds left on the shot clock, the ball gets knocked out of bounds. If you just surrender the play and lob it back toward half-court, you automatically lose 4 seconds, taking you down to 18. It's easy to guard for 18 seconds. It's even easier when the offense doesn't get into an attacking set for another few seconds. Often, you'd see possessions just evaporate when we'd not attack the in-bounds, and then try to set up a sloppy motion attack with 8 seconds left on the clock. If we had better sets off of the in-bounds, and could have turned just 2 of those into easy layups, we would have been a pretty different team. For us, part of it is teamwork...
...which was the other thing that Kansas did beautifully. Most of the time, people will catch on to the notion of team defense. And that's crucial. Just ask Bobby Knight, who refused to answer some mundane question about what player would be the X factor. He said bluntly. Defense will be the X factor. Playing defense isn't just shutting your guy down. It's understanding that it's a team goal. Your head has to be on a swivel, and you have to be ready to help when your teammates get beat. Kansas did a marvelous job of that against both UNC and Memphis. But where teamwork often get overlooked, particularly away from the ball, is on offense. The slow-motion replay of the weakside alley-oop shows that it's not just a guy that's faster, stronger, and jumps higher than his defender. It shows that it's a teammate (in this case, Brandon Rush - their superstar, NBA prospect) setting a great back pick on 2 guys that opens up the entire play. Again, advantage Kansas.
This is in comparison to watching the Illini set screens (and run off them) like little girls afraid of contact. Part of that is the mentality. It looked like we were coached to slip screens, so as to keep the motion faster. That sort of results in a soft mentality on offense, especially when you're down on the blocks. It also makes you easy to guard, since defenses don't have to foul and don't have to run nearly as far as you do (they're jogging around the perimeter of a smaller circle). Teams that impose their will by setting great screens will wear down the other team. Watch the play against Wisconsin where Randle separated his shoulder. That was a great screen that was set by Wisconsin, where the offensive player punished the defender.
All day, Kansas' bigs set nice screens on the ball out high, which forced Memphis' bigs to come high and play defense, opening up the weakside for cuts. Those alley-oops don't happen on accident. Compare that to watching Pruitt come out high for a pseudo screen that our guard doesn't run off of particularly well, and you see why we didn't open up much on offense.
How you win in basketball is by playing defense, boxing out, sharing the ball on offense, and helping your teammates at all times. Everything else falls in place. This is why a group of 5 guys that aren't particularly great individually can show up to the gym and hold court for 2 hours over a bunch of guys that are better, but have never met their teammates before. Kansas looked like the highly skilled version of the former. The Illini often look like a version of the latter. Who's that on? To some extent, the individuals involved. But also the leader. Can this change? Of course. Sometimes things just get away from you. I think that's what happened after those bad home, non-conference losses this year. But changing the culture of the team is harder, after you've let it slip away.
-Chairman
