M-KU tonight: Some weird psychology at work here

We (and our chances) are getting a surprising amount of love from the media and so-called prognostication experts.
Meanwhile, on the flipside of the coin, Withey is talking very confidently about their ability to handle us inside...and in particular, his ability to handle Big Mac.

Something has to give...

I want to see wither leaning over with his hands on his legs gasping for oxygen- I think running him ragged is they key- can we do it?

'shoes

I think we might be able to, Shoes. Someone else here posted having seen----as I also did---in their game vs. Carolina, he was always the last one downcourt on defense; not much speed. If our speed (and I mean our bigger "guards", like Junior and III) gets us downcourt on breaks quickly, he won't be near them in the paint...and if he pushes himself to get downcourt quickly too often, he'll run out of gas.

Not to minimize his effect, though; any 7-footer who's within 7 blocks of the NCAA tourney record has to be doing something right; Big Mac will have to bring the same "A" game he did against SDSU and VCU...and most importantly (IMO), we have to be hitting a healthy percentage of our outside shots when they're open.

michmike wrote:

...and most importantly (IMO), we have to be hitting a healthy percentage of our outside shots when they're open...

+1

If someone would have told me Mc Gary was have this kinda night I say Michigan by 12 where are the guards

the artist formally known wrote:

If someone would have told me Mc Gary was have this kinda night I say Michigan by 12 where are the guards

Funny because one of the guys I was watching the game with said "McGary is the leading scorer and we aren't up by ten, who would have thought that".

Our Strategy was excellent. We did not challenge Withey one on one but forced him to move a lot and help on Trey and it opened things up for Mitch who took full advantage. Kudos to the coaches.

'shoes

wshoes wrote:

Our Strategy was excellent. Kudos to the coaches. 'shoes

AMEN, AMEN, AMEN, Shoes. JB and Co. deserve as much credit as any coaching staff
in the tournament thus far for getting us to the E-8.

For minimizing the effects of our weaknesses while optimizing the advantage of our
strengths. First, their uber-successful strategy (extra guard in Albrecht, more ball-
handling by Junior and Nik) to break VCU's "Havoc", and now, how to neutralize, as
best we could, Jeff Withey (whose mouth seems to match his height at times...)

But as the Kansas City Star pointed out, probably the least-enviable shoes on earth
to be in (at least now, until he signs his 8-fig contract) have to be Elijah Johnson's.
From that low-blow* shot to Mitch-Mac's nuts, to those two turnovers in the last 90
seconds (even against the best PG in college ball he could have brought it across
in 10 seconds, when our other four guys were on the other end!), to of course that
missed 1-&-1 front end with 12.6 seconds.

And one last (28-foot three-point) shot: About Withey's mouth. Or intelligence. I quote
(K.C. Star): "Yeah, I think we can dominate them inside. I think I will dominate [McGary].
We can use my height advantage. He's not very tall."

(Then again, when you're 7-foot, maybe it's habitual to call a 6-10 person "shorty").

*-speaking of that low blow, why oh why wasn't he tossed at the time? He went on
to score 16 points as well as making the aforementioned gaffes. So we could argue
we'd have won comfortably without him...or we could argue no other Jayhawk would
have made those bone-headed boners to save it for us.

Man oh man, how right the adage is: "When a superior team [or at least the team
playing like one] has a team down, but lets it hang around..."
Which they precisely did in the first half. Had they really asserted themselves, as
they did on most possessions then, it would have been 14-15, not 6, at the half...
and their runs that pushed their lead to 14 in the second half would instead have
pushed it to 25, making our comeback totally impossible.