Well that's a huge bummer
I really don’t know where to start. The ten-second call? The endless-seeming missed front ends? A bad block-out that gave Arkansas a critical two? Jalen Wilson only took nine shots—when’s the last time that happened? Why did Udeh and Adams sit for ten minutes—they didn’t even foul out! God, the photographer foot….. BAAAAHHHHHHH
I don’t feel the need to bludgeon readers with any more reminders—flubbed details we now get to carry around forever, I love basketball!—and I didn’t ask the biggest hypothetical of all, the one you’ve been thinking about for 48 hours now. We are the defending champs for another few weeks. I’m trying to live in that memory forever.
We’re standing at the beginning of one of the most important summers in KU Basketball history. Dick, McCullar and Wilson will be out the door—while Dick seemed genuinely unsure of what he would do next, there’s no way he turns down his lottery-grade valuation, which gets the clock ticking toward the life-changing money of NBA contract #2. That’s, erm, a lot of production to replace.
Even with two engines of our offensive and defensive systems—Dajuan Harris and KJ Adams—on board for at least one more season, newcomers (portal or otherwise) will have to contribute right away. Harris and Adams will flatten the learning curve for them a little, but that’s a tall ask, especially with so many other big questions floating around the program.
Bill Self’s health is the program’s priority. He should take all of the time he needs to get well and get back to coaching comfortably. That he missed these games was just brutal luck. The two Texas games had exposed obvious flaws in our approach, which gave everyone in the tournament a blueprint how to stop us—face-guarding Dick to deny him any easy three-point opportunity, and therefore damaging our spacing. We needed to find a counter, and we didn’t come up with anything particularly productive. While I think every KU fan on the planet knows we should have still won that game, it’s time to leave the world of the shoulds, because we will all go even more insane.
Welp. Add this one to the list, guys—you know the one. Speaking of lists, when’s that transfer portal ranking drop??? Marcus Adams Jr. has reclassified and will be on campus in the fall. Who’s up next?
I’m very grateful for your readership on this wild, weird thing we all love. It’s a lot of fun and it’s been really awesome to chop it up with the Streakers. Thank you for everything. We’ve got some good offseason #content coming up during what should be an interesting summer! I hate that I have to say that on March 20th!