The House of Blue

Dude, we won. . . that is all that matters. . . lol

I've been wondering myself. I've come to the conclusion that playing only 6 guys the majority of the minutes he was afraid we'd run out of gas. He did the same thing in the Baylor, Louisville and Kansas games. I think he found a way to conserve our energy but also keeping our best players in the game. When you think about it like that its genius IMO. Still I'm not sure I would have done the same.

Think about it though its not only Cal its human nature to a degree. The 96 team is the only college basketball team I've ever seen that wanted to kill you. When they had the other team on the ropes they went for the kill. But they also had unlimited depth and played a style conducive to that. In other sports Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are the only guys I've seen that wanted to take your heart. At that point your not just competing against the opponent but your competing against yourself. It takes unbelievable heart and desire to not only beat somebody but to set records and personal bests in doing so.

Too soon brother...too soon. Lol. Lets just marinate on it a little longer.

In terms of answering this silly post. The only way for Kansas to come back against us was to give up easy baskets in bunches. By running our half-court motion offense inside of 15 or 10 seconds on every posession once we got the lead back up to 16 (KU cut it while we were running up and down the floor in the first 8 minutes of second half) Cal decided, rightfully slow, to GRIND it out. Why? Because if you take the clock inside 15 or 10 seconds every time you limit the # of posessions that your opponent has. The few posessions they have the more they rush and the better they have to execute. it's nearly impossible to execute well against our defense. We also limited our turnovers greatly by slowing things down.

The plan worked to perfection. Yes KU cut the lead, but it was a 6 point lead with 1 minute left. I'd take that every time.

I trust cal more than you. Sorry if that hurts your feeilngs.

I know hw said that after the game, but go back and watch and that's not what it looks like at all in the Championship game. Looks to me like the kids started feeling the pressure and freezing up, as they were still driving, but missing shots they normally would hav emade. IMO, cal just said that as a deflection.

Huh? The last 12 minutes of the game we ran the shotclock down inside 15 seconds on nearly every single posession. We ran our motion "baseline screen" offense for 20 seconds and then went screen and roll in the last 10-15 seconds. This was 100% by design and it 100% worked.

but for 8 minutes prior to that, we were driving and trying to score but nothing was going down. If anything, Cal "called them off" cause they were neither scoring nor running clock. Maybe he figured if they weren't going to be able to score, he'd at least get them to run some clock, but if you don't think that team was tight and pressing to score, I don't know wha you were watching.

Seems like that was the formula pretty much all season: get out to a comfortable lead and then ease off.

It's tough, especially for a young team at times, to play from ahead. The definition of what a good shot is completely changes and running clock can take you out of your offensive rhythm.

Tough thing to balance.

Did you see the interview after the game? Cal said, "they were telling me 'let us go! let us go!' but I wanted to slow it down". Something to that effect. And hop he slowed it down the entire 2nd half. He didn't let em run the first 8 or 9 minutes.

Isn't it a contritiction to say you can't argue with the record yet at the same time that's what you are doing. Just proves that even winning isn't enough for UK fans. You have to win every game by 30. Cal is all about the win and also about preparing his team to win the NCAA. Blowing out every team doesnt always prepare your team for success in the NCAA. These guys were ready for close games and every style. I've got zero interest in ascetics. I want wins and that is what Cal delivers.

As I mentioned in a post above you ease off and conserve energy for the starters yet keep them in the game. To much dropoff between our starters and our bench this year. Our bench outside of Miller and Wiltjer was horrible. The only guy that you even consider playing outside of Miller and Wiltjer is Vargas and he's not a good option by any means. Even then Cal put him in a couple of times.