Here is my response to an editorial (by the Husker fan editor) from last weeks local paper that I am sending. Well see if they have the guts to print it. His name is Freddie Arnold and he began his rant with Slow down Jayhawk fans... If he hadnt put his name on it, I woulda thought it was Jack Harry! ************************************************* Slow down, Fast Freddie. You made a couple of valid points in your editorial about Jayhawk basketball last week. However, the majority of the points made were inconsequential, disingenuous or flat-out incorrect. It read like the musings of an antagonist who didn’t do his homework. I agree that this team is not playing to its potential. Very few teams ever do. This is not to be unexpected from a team starting 3 freshmen while having just 2 upperclassmen averaging more than 6.3 minutes per game. All while facing the toughest schedule (by a wide margin according to the RPI) in all of college basketball. Of KU’s now 8 losses, 5 of them came at the hands of teams unranked at the time of the game. All of those losses came on the road and West Virginia is the only team that has not been ranked at some point in 2014. For example, Villanova was unranked. They are now 28-3 and #3 in the polls. With regard to “nearly a third of (KU’s) wins have been won only by single digits.” This is negative spin of no consequence what-so-ever. A win is a win is a win. If you want to talk about margin of victory, KU’s average scoring margin on the season is +10. Their scoring margin in the best conference in America was +11 while the next closest team was a +3. Yet, their scoring is “teetering at the edge of mediocre.” Seriously? The total rebounds, assists, steals and points figures you mentioned are all but meaningless. What matters is what you do against your competition and the tournament is all about match-ups, not numbers next to names. Rebounding margin, assist to turnover ratio, shooting percentage, points in the paint and points off turnovers are infinitely more telling stats and the Jayhawks were better than their overall opposition in each of those areas. Assist to turnover ratio was their poorest area but KU was still better on average than their competition. KU held opponents to 41% shooting which is among the highest in the Bill Self era. This is balanced out by their 49% shooting which is currently #1 among potential NCAA tournament teams going in. Declaring Kansas “the most inconsistent tournament team ever…” is laughable and, in fact, the polar opposite of correct. At the end of the 2013 season, cbssports compiled a list of the best performing teams in the NCAA tournament since the turn of the century. Kansas was #1 based on black white numbers including appearances, wins and average finish rather than assumption and opinion. They are the most consistent performing tournament team over the last 14 years at the very least. They have never lost twice in the first round as a #1 seed as you stated. In fact, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round. That is common basketball knowledge. Additionally, no Kansas team has ever lost a first round game as a #2 seed. The only 2 seeds to ever lose in the first round are Missouri, Iowa State, South Carolina, Arizona, Syracuse and Duke. To suggest Andrew Wiggins is some kind of flop is disingenuous at best. The media overhyped him as a college player, plain and simple. This hype was fueled by the evaluations of NBA scouts looking at his pro potential. What the media and casual fans fail to realize is that the NBA and the college game are two very different brands of basketball. Great college players don’t always make great NBA players. See Christian Laettner, Tyler Hansbrough and J.J. Reddick just to name a few. Wiggins’ game is much more suited for the NBA than the NCAA. Great NBA players aren’t always 1st Team All-Americans or Wooden Award winners. The first name that comes to mind as an example is Vince Carter. Last summer, Coach Self said that if Wiggins were to average around 16+ per game and develop as a defender as the year progressed he would be “doing a great job.” Wiggins averages just under 17ppg and is the team’s best on ball defender. I’ll take Bill Self’s opinion over a talking head any day. The editorial states that he “disappears under pressure and lacks the determination to take over games.” When in fact, Wiggins has been at his best on the biggest stages or when his team has been at its worst. Those are the text book definitions of pressure. For example, Wiggins was brilliant down the stretch against Duke, sinking multiple daggers into the Blue Devils at both ends of the floor. At Florida, he was by far the best player on the court facing the nation’s best defensive team in leading a furious second half comeback. He fully took over the game at West Virginia scoring 28 of his 41 points in the 2nd half and simply ran out of time. Wiggins has lived up to the expectations of knowledgeable college basketball enthusiasts and he has shown multiple flashes of having the ability to live up to the stratospheric hype at the next level. If he stays healthy, Wiggins will be a perennial NBA all-star. Write it down. Joel Embiid’s health will play a factor for Kansas but he is not the most important player for the Jayhawks in the NCAA tournament. Neither is Wiggins and neither are “dark horses” like Perry Ellis or Wayne Seldon. The prospects of how deep the Jayhawks can go in the NCAA tournament ride squarely on the shoulders of PG Naadir Tharpe. There has been one universal truth in every single loss for the Jayhawks this season. Tharpe did not play well in any of those 8 games. When Tharpe plays average basketball, Kansas wins. When Tharpe plays good basketball, Kansas is dominant. When Tharpe plays poorly, Kansas loses. It’s really that simple… and IF they play to their potential, they will cut down the nets in Dallas. Respectfully, Chad Hallack
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 04:11:56 +0000
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