I had spoken to my best friend at length before the game yesterday about the likelihood of getting obliterated due to Self's success against this particular style of play - the pressing, defense oriented, trapping, contest everything and overplay the passing lanes to create turnovers style.
We had that under Mike Anderson. Bill Self went 9-1 against CMA's Mizzou teams, many of them blowouts. And in the one game Mizzou did win, we had a team that won 31 games but yet trailed Self's team at home by 16 in the first half before rallying to eke out a 2 point win.
Self also obliterated Mike Anderson's pressing, running UAB team in the Sweet Sixteen in 2004 by a score of 100-74.
The reasons why were on display last night. Yes, ku has more talent, always does because they are one of the best teams money can buy. But Self pinpoints the areas where Mizzou is overplaying the passing lanes and backdoor cuts the living hell out of you. Then if you rotate in time to prevent the layup, he's got a spot up three point shooter flared out to the wing who is now wide open under your scrambled defense. The result is a player we know is a three point specialist like Dick just getting wide open threes repeatedly. If the cut isn't open, the primary ballhandler for ku dribble drives straight at the rim to take advantage of the overplaying defense then hands it off for dunks or layups when we rotate, which we also saw over and over.
Defensively in the scrambled game, his teams do a good job of enticing the guy leading the break into trying to take it to the rack or pull up himself and focuses on not allowing the easy dish off to the second or third guy on the break. Our team fell into that over and over last night and it was ugly.
It isn't coincidental. We had a hall of fame coach in Norm Stewart who was well known for not being afraid to run with the Nolan Richardson Arkansas and Billy Tubbs Oklahoma teams. Sometimes it got messy, but he also had way more success against them than most teams. Had a winning record in Fayetteville for quite awhile, and those highly ranked Tubbs OU teams simply could not win in Columbia to save their lives.
We had a coach who played this style already in Mike Anderson, and honestly his was a better version of this than the Gates style. We also know what to expect. With Mike Anderson, this style helps you feast on weaker teams and avoid random upsets to UMKC etc at home because the less talented players can't overcome that sort of pressure D. But against superior talent that has the speed to blow by your overplaying defense and the shooting/scoring ability to capitalize on the open spots the style gives up, you can get obliterated in a hurry.
Is this style the right move to get us back in the NCAA tourney? Maybe, but I mean for as bad as Cuonzo's team was last year, we are only 2 years removed from having made it to the Big Dance as a 9 seed. This style really boxes you in to certain outcomes and I don't know if we really are the type of program that needs to marry ourselves to it. We already did it once under Mike Anderson, it was nice and all, but even Frank Haith was able to take the same players and immediately show how much better they could be in a more traditional system.
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