Discussion: Big 12 Tournament

As much as I love showing our dominance (again) over the conference, I’d rather have our guys a bit more rested. Three games in three days is a lot, and if it’s a strategic decision, the committee won’t penalize us for it (especially since Syracuse lost to L-ville yesterday).

The way the Big XII tournament is now, it ends on a Saturday, and our first tournament game won’t be until the following Thursday (assuming it’s in OKC). That’s plenty of time for our guys to recoup. Bear in mind, these guys are in their late teens, early twenties. They recover physically a lot quicker than Labba and I do.

That said, in the early round game, I would love to see a deeper rotation, especially in the first half. It doesn’t make much sense, though, to play a bunch of guys you wouldn’t normally play and lose an early game. What would you then have accomplished, except triggering a wave of criticism on the interwebs? I say expand the rotation early, but don’t take any chances late.

Does the 3 games in 3 days wear out our guys that much when they’re not going to play until Thursday at the earliest? Maybe it does take a toll on those guys with a few nagging pains and it would make sense to rest the guys a little bit.

Maybe 5-8 minutes for Robinson, Withey, and EJ.

that the OKC pod is a Thurs/Sat pod, and I would assume we’re headed there. Not that that really figures into the decision I guess cause like you said it’s from Saturday (at the latest) to Thursday. Just something to think about.

It does make it very unlikely that we will get the play in winner though.

It IS important to settle on a rotation and get guys used to playing with each other, etc but we have done that all year long. I think you got to start to give guys some breathers. Here is what I’d do:

Go absolutely all out in game one. I think if we get to the semis of the Big12 tournament we lock up the number one overall seed. That way we still haven’t loss to a non top 7 (likely) tourny team and don’t have a bad loss. That also means worse case scenario is we lose in the semi’s to a ranked, fairly high seed tourny bound team baring an upset along the way. I feel like getting to the semi’s locks up the overall number one seed.

I do think we need guys rested especially with the big men. Our advantage in the post alone should get us to the second weekend of the tournament. The first couple teams we will face in the big dance will likely be undersized and not ready to handle our bigs. Get the big boys healthy fast. Let Cole and the Morri play but give them a lot of spells.

Plus I feel like Withey and TRob could use some seasoning going into march. We saw how big Cole came up for us against UNC when the other towers were in foul trouble. There could be a time we need Dubs and TRob to play some minutes. TRob looked pretty good against MU, get him some more PT.

I think overall more PT for the bench is a win-win. Helps get out starters healthy and rested and gives two frosh some PT they could certainly use.

I was worried how gassed we would be after winning that barn burner against Texas to win the tourny in 2008 which followed a grind it out win against TAMU in the semis.

It is important to remember that after the final (especially since its earlier this year) you get 4-5 days of rest and if all goes to plan, your starters should get a lot of rest in the first round game and sometimes the second round game as well.

So I can definitely see both sides of the argument…

I’m afraid we’re going to need to win at least a few games in the Big 12 to get the overall 1 seed in the regional we want. You would think that being the preseason number 1, maintaining the #1 for a great pct of the season, and ending the season in number 1 would be enough…but it seems like KU always has less leeway than teams like Puke, UNC, and UK when it comes to number 1 seeds.

Having said that, If we play smart early in games, we should hopefully be able to get more guys into the rotation to help spell our starters/rotation guys.

I’ve long criticized Self for waiting until 1 minute is left to throw the backups in when we’re up by 15+. I guess its better to be safe than sorry.

I wasn’t aware that we were quite so banged up. The more we can rest guys, the better.

Thanks for the clarification.

I may be stealing this from TMQ, but I’m totally sold on the idea that keeping guys going 110% is the way to go, and letting them ease of the gas has the risk of getting the team’s collective guard down. Think the mentality of NO Saints with the “we’re playing for undefeated” vs the Colts “we’re going to rest our starters for the playoffs”; the gung-ho mentality is my preference. That doesn’t mean you can’t give more minutes to guys 8, 9, 10, 11 on the bench (and they should play more). But I don’t want Self’s attitude to be that these games don’t matter as much because that permeates down through the team and may be hard to shake when push comes to shove in the tournament.

Play all out, you start letting up now and you develop bad habits, “ohhh we can go hard for this game and try to win, but not these games, those don’t matter.” No, not how championship teams work.

All we have to do is look to 2008, after a hell of a Big 12 tournament, our guys had the confidence to roll through our region, we need that again. We’ve already had our wake up loss (OK ST.) and now it’s time to not lose another game until 2011!

Love the discussion topic btw.