Ah, that’s the good stuff!!!
Mike Woodson has steered IU basketball to a place of relative stability after years of disaster, and they’ve rapidly ascended the recruiting rankings during his time. That didn’t matter Saturday. Bill Self flattened IU and Woodson with his endgame, his uncanny ability to inspire poised, borderline cruel execution in games that KU might not have any business still being in. This is what Bill Self does, and I will never get tired of it.
For 34 minutes of Saturday’s game at Assembly Hall, a juiced-up Indiana beat up Kansas. But then KU found something. KU’s four key guys—Hunter Dickinson, Dajuan Harris, Kevin McCullar and KJ Adams—extended plays, fought under the goal and created more opportunities, and made shots at high leverage moments. IU was shook. I’m not sure what the commuting situation is in Bloomington, but that was a long ride home, even if you were just going to campus, or whatever.
Who’s in KU’s rotation? I have no idea. When those four play well together—and Harris actually acknowledges scoring is an option—KU will be hard to beat by anybody. That took some pluck.
THE CORE FOUR
More on our core four: These four are experienced—McCullar is 22, Dickinson is 23, Harris is 23 and KJ is 21. They’re playing guys who are sometimes four years younger than them, and it shows. This is the game now, and deep experience at the highest level of the sport matters, full stop.
All four are somewhat—give me a little wiggle room here—known quantities. Hunter is a massively skilled offensive big, a savvier rebounder and passer than I ever expected, but he’s a little flat footed—you can’t switch everything with Hunter is out there. McCullar is doing the vintage senior-season leap that Self has perfected, a jack-of-all trades who is averaging 19 7 and 5. He can be a bit of a streaky shooter, and it took him a while to get it going Saturday (but he did get it going and that’s the story of the ballgame).
Adams isn’t a shooter, but he’s the beating heart of the team, a player who stitches together the other four and also lets KU play however they want on defense. Harris is having a truly strange season so far—he is averaging almost 3 turnovers a game and shooting 45.3% from three percentage, but he’s still the trigger man he always was. For all the trouble we have figuring out what this teams strengths are, we know what these four guys bring. That sets a very high floor.
SO WHO’S THE FIFTH GUY?
Who is KU’s fifth best player? McDowell has earned Self’s trust with poised play, direct decision-making, and a little je nes se quois. However, you get the sense that there’s something untapped in both Elmarko Jackson and Johnny Furphy, players KU will need to form a more well-balanced attack on offense. I have hope for birth—they are both teenagers playing at the level for the first time. There’s just that much demand for a fifth guy to emerge as a starter that their ups and downs feel increasingly frustrating. It’s something to watch going forward.
Who else? Despite a truly nightmarish beginning to Nicolas Timberlake’s KU career, he will continue to have the green light, assuming he can minimize mistakes on the other end. There’s just that much space at the wings of the offense. I wish we could see Jank—let. Jank. cook—but I fear it’s not to be.
My guess is that fifth guy is almost certainly Jackson, and Furphy adds scoring punch and length off the bench. Opposing offenses target Furphy, and Jackson has looked more stout on D as of late. In a Bill Self system, that’ll get you PT. McDowell will be in the mix too—I love that dude, and love the comments he made after the IU game. I am almost positive that IU fans had no idea who McDowell was before the game, though to McDowell, he was the center of attention. It’s main character energy and it’s giving me life!
WILL ANY OF THIS ACTUALLY BE FUN TO WATCH AT SOME POINT
It’s very hard to say. I’m confident that shooting the rock will never be our strength, and that’s a quality that opens up a little more of a fun and fast-paced floor game. It’s not happening. Sets, sets and more sets, and a flow fully in the control of Bill Self. We’ve lived with that before, and we’ll live with that again.
Maybe…. the fun is at the margins? KU has never had a personality like Hunter Dickinson, an 80-grade in DGAF. Scrappy dudes like McDowell and Parker Braun make for a likable bench brigade. They should let Jank cook imo—I might have mentioned that before.
Not a great deal of basketball coming up on Winter Break, so run back some classics and chug the nog. Rock Chalk.