More like Michigan as the 1 seed and Kansas as the 8 seed
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Kansas did show a lot of red flags last night. It took a miraculous shooting performance from Dajuan and a triple double from McCullar to keep KU in a game against no centers and a young injured team. Also Nick Timberlake doesn’t look like an impact guy at all, but I’m also a KU hater
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That is kinda my point too. I mean 8 seed is probably a bridge too far but they are going to have some defensive deficiencies with Hunter/Kansas Center. That is pretty well established. They have the offensive talent to bail them out a lot of nights but I just don’t see where they are going to coast to a 1 seed.
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Kansas will be a 1 or 2 seed. You can take that to the bank
Why are we suprised that Harris played well?? Senior he shot it 47% last year, 40% behind the arc, 3 to 1 assist to turnover ratio.
Hunter’s not supposed to transcend the problems around him with a great performance and finish with 27 and 21 though he’s supposed to finger-point at Nic Timberlake and say “this isn’t the CAA anymore”
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I’m not surprised Harris played well I’m surprised he attempted shots at all. Guy just goes like a week at a time without even trying to score then flips a switch like last night and dominates. I don’t get it
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The gameplan of “don’t guard him from three” pretty obviously plays a part.
He’s an awesome player, but it isn’t like he flipped a switch and became a go-to scorer. Kentucky made a conscious decision to let him shoot wide open threes and it backfired.
Thought Kentucky doing nothing to get the guy Hunter was guarding involved in the ball screen game was also a big mistake.
Self > Cal last night, for sure.
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Hunter is gone; I don’t miss him. I expect him to have a big November; it remains to be seen whether it’s a fresh start for him or a different place to do the same thing.
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Kansas is going to be really good, extremely controversial take
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There’s so many opportunities for UK to target Hunter on defense and they don’t do it. It’s mindboggling considering they don’t have a big on the floor. Make Self go small against them.
That’s the difference between NBA and college. NBA will ruthlessly target the weakest defender while college, it’s all about running the system. I’m generalizing it, but that’s what I’m seeing on both levels.
Are there any Bacots and Cockburns on Kansas’s schedule? Or UCLAs and Villanovas that can guard him with shorter but physical centers that force him to initiate his post moves from further away?
Hunter has kicked the ever loving crud out of any smaller guy that gets thrown at him
I don’t see how going small helps.
I know we all hate him now but I think the degree to which he’s a poor defender is getting extremely exaggerated, and some of his strengths forgotten.
He absolutely limits defensive scheme but he’s a totally ok drop defender.
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He had bad games against UCLA and Villanova in the tourney. They seemed to use similar game plans.
They could potentially play Edey in Maui
Don’t think small is always the right matchup, but any sort of undersized big with some skill and toughness is a good matchup. The EJ Liddel/Eric Dixon mold.
The key to making Hunter struggle defensively is more about your guards than your bigs though. A shooting big helps for sure though.
There are definitely the bigs that just out-physical him too, the Edeys/Cockburns/Bacots/etc.
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I don’t recall UCLA having small centers
Nwuba is 6’11”, 255 and played over half the game
My recall is that it’s the huge guys that have smoked him
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Cockburn and Bacot have absolutely destroyed Hunter in every single game he’s played against them. He’s actually fared quite well against Edey, mainly because that’s the one guy he’s actually more athletic than imo.
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You definitely need to be long and physical to slow him down, if that’s what you mean.
Just comes back to: physical enough to make him work hard for his touches but skilled enough to make him guard out to the perimeter.
You can accomplish parts of that with other guys – PSU used Henn to shoot and then just spammed triple teams, IIRC – but there’s a pretty wide range of guys who have been effective with some blend of that.