PDA

View Full Version : Weekend Observations...



cheezyq
3/17/2008, 02:47 AM
After watching the games this weekend, a few things jumped out at me about OU and the rest of the Big XII.

1. We only have one player that has enough talent to perform consistently enough and start for either KU or Texas. Capel's strung a decent system together using what few talents the rest of our roster has. No need to go into too much analysis here, it is what it is.

2. KU and Texas are light years ahead of the Big XII (Duh). Why? Aside from talent, it's because of the length of their coaches tenures at their respective school. The rest of the Big XII has talent and decent coaching. But other than Drew, Self, and Barnes, no other coach at the other schools has been here more than 2 years.

Watching KU and Texas (*&^*%$^ bastards), their players know exactly where to be on the court at all times. Everything is instinctual and there is no hesitation. I sat there watching KU and Texas play, and KU would go through a stretch where they started scoring well. Their spacing was impeccable and they were getting open shots, passing the ball with ease, instinctively knowing where their open teammate would be. Almost without thought, the Texas D switched up and closed all those open lanes, and sure enough, KU would go through a short stretch where it was difficult to score. After another trip or two down the floor, KU would switch their offense yet again, and pretty soon, their spacing was again perfect and they were getting open shots.

Texas did something very similar during much of the game when they were on offense. During the sequence above that I described, there were no timeouts taken. The teams knew their offense and defensive schemes so well, and it was so ingrained that there was no hesitation in their execution and switching. And they didn't need the coaches to take a timeout to explain what they needed to do to be successful.

That's where teams like OU and the rest of the Big XII struggle. Their players haven't been in their systems long enough to have that comfort level. It shows up the most on offense, where any hesitation will ruin a chance for an open shot.

3. Big XII officiating is a joke, and could possibly ruin any chance for a Big XII team to advance very far in the tourney. Pac-10 officials take the heat for the Big Mac-sized blunders, but Big XII officials for their consistent misunderstandings of the NCAA rules.

a. A player that keeps his hands and feet in a perpendicular line to the floor cannot be called for a foul. The officials consistently call fouls on defenders that have perfect straight up/down positioning, leading to lots of ticky-tack reach-in fouls. In contrast, they will often let players grab, hold, and drag down other players under the boards with no penalty whatsoever.
b. A player cannot use their body to displace an opposing player out of their position. Joe Jones is the worst about this, especially in a blockout position. As an opposing player is jumping straight up to grab a rebound, he will back up into that players landing space and undercut them. That's a clear foul on Jones, but it never gets called. Even worse, the commentators rave about Jones' tactics. The NCAA rules are clear that it's a foul, and even worse it has a high potential for injury (Blake's 2nd knee injury came on one of these types of plays), yet no one pays attention to it.
c. Hooking. Longar did this a couple of times this year, and was called for it every time. Maric? Not so much. White dude from Texas? Not so much.

The problem with such bad officiating is that these teams will probably feel that they can get away with it come tourney time, and will struggle with foul calls when some of the better officiating crews call those rules correctly.

Anyway, that's my $.02 from this weekend's Big XII games. Personally, I think we have a strong chance to pick off a couple of games, but I'm just excited that we engendered enough respect from the committee to get such a nice seed.

Boomer!

OKC-SLC
3/17/2008, 09:02 AM
good post

soonervegas
3/18/2008, 12:45 PM
Don't let NickZepp see this assault on reason. I think he is under the impression that talent level is equal amongst OU, Texas, and Kansas. It's the coaching that is the main variable.