I wouldn’t look to Andy Katz for tactical insight or high-level critical thinking, I think he understands this about himself as his ESPN blog (Insider) reads as a transcription of what people have said to him (no matter how ridiculous) in the last day or so.

From today’s blog (Insider):

Kansas coach Bill Self is still confident that Brandon Rush can return to play in games by Dec. 1 after having ACL surgery. He’s hoping to have him practicing by Nov. 1.

It may be plausible. It may or may not be true, but I’m confident that Bill Self said that to Andy Katz.

He may just be trying to make (very slight) amends to those of us for whom this game (It took me a good 15 minutes to come up with even that link. NCAASports.org appears to have a policy against providing useful information and I don’t believe you can link to particular page of the KU Media Guide.) still represents an instance of youthful trauma in advance of his arrival in Lawrence this weekend, but here’s what Mr. Bilas signed off with today:

• Kansas is better than people choose to believe, and so is Bill Self.

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I can recap that game in five lines:

1) Bradley, points per 100 possessions vs. DePaul: 121
2) Northwestern, points per 100 possessions vs. DePaul: 109
3) Kentucky, points per 100 possessions vs. DePaul: 127
4) Purdue, points per 100 possessions vs. DePaul: 106
5) Kansas, points per 100 possessions vs. DePaul: 90

…from the unfamiliar mood swings caused by rooting for a talented but slightly underachieving football team.

UNABASHED PRE-SEASON OPTIMISM ABOUT KANSAS BASKETBALL

SI.com’s Luke Winn supports his claim that “at only one place in the country does a truly great backcourt reside: Kansas” with a brief interview of Bill Self.

Most interestingly, Self mentions Julian Wright as his first choice to play on the wing when Brandon Rush is out of the game.

Look out world, this team just learned what it takes to win in a big-time environment.

The win is great, but I think it’s the lessons learned in the last few weeks that will prove the most important.

How about Julian Wright tossing down two of the sickest in-game dunks I’ve ever seen in the last 5 minutes.

I tell you, I screamed the Rock Chalk Chant all over Fairway and Westwood.

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK, KU!

Now throw us a 4 seed selection committee. 9-1 over the last 10.

If you missed Bill Self’s interview with Jim Rome today, you can catch it here. I didn’t do most of the work to put this together, so no promises as to quality, but it should work pretty well.

Let me know if you have any issues.

Or download here.

And if you’re into national attention, Andy Katz’ latest is a must read:

How many teams are led by two freshmen in scoring — Rush (14.2 ppg) and Chalmers (10.7 ppg) — and have a legit chance to reach the Final Four? How many have only two double-figure scorers and have that shot? Only one: Kansas (although in Big 12 games, Rush, Chalmers and Robinson are all in double figures).

READ THE WHOLE THING.

UT is a good team, but as Mark pointed out, they are a vulnerable team. This strikes me as an important point and one that I should have considered more.

Last year, we were a good team, but we were an extremely vulnerable team, particularly once JR started going cold. Indeed, a lot of Roy’s teams were vulnerable - to athleticism, to cold shooting, to slobberknocking fisticuffs. I hadn’t considered it before, but Self seems to want to build teams that don’t have these vulnerabilities.

Using one primary ballhandler leaves you up a creek if he gets injured or foul prone. Self’s solution: have two to three guys who can handle and dish the rock. Not only does this work as a sort of insurance policy, but it also makes it harder for opposing coaches to prepare for you.

Having guards that can penetrate and create offense leaves you much less reliant on warm shooting. Heck, on Monday we shot 1/7 from behind the arc and still won by 15 on the road in Stillwater to a team that owned UT (and by the way, OSU may have played better on offense against UT, but I think you have to give credit to KU’s defense for that).

And in slobberknocking fisticuffs we’ve shown ourselves more than capable of knocking more slobber and cuffing more fists. Want to slow up the game and keep it ugly? Fine. You’ll be tired at about the 8 minute mark and we’ll run you silly from then on out.

I’ve been a big Self supporter, but I think that was more a result of my dovish personality towards KU hoops than any keen understanding of exactly what he was doing. But now his vision for the program is coming into focus for me, and I really like what I’m seeing. This Self team is tough, athletic and enthusiastic, and I love it.

And this team is not very vulnerable, at least not in the Williamsian sense. Our key vulnerabilities are probabably intense ball pressure at the guard spots and really hot three point shooting (but for whom is this not true?). I would add cold free throw shooting as well, but we’ve really excelled at that over the last 8 weeks, so I don’t think I can.

I just love where this team is going. I got to watch a lot of college basketball this weekend and I must echo the comments from Jayhawk fans everywhere - when national media folks ignore or denigrate Kansas, they shine a harsh light on their overpaid ignorance. The Seth Davis OU thing was perfect. We’ll probably beat OU in the league by 2-3 games and a tiebreaker, and they’re the threat?

That’s rich. This is the same guy who ELEVEN DAYS AGO called KSU - with UT, CU, OU, TT and KU still left on their schedule - a possible NCAA tournament team.

Seth, bubby! Tell me you don’t believe the things you say on TV!

KU is up to 18 in the ESPN/USA Today poll as well.

Premature you say?

UT has underperformed, especially in Oklahoma, and nobody has outpaced expecations like KU.

You can give Self the nod right now, and he deserves it.

Feb. 15, 2006
Weekly Men’s Basketball Press Conference Quotes

Head Coach Bill Self

On Missouri guard Thomas Gardner:
“We have to guard Gardner this time. Last time he only got about three or four good looks that he made, and the other times we were there. He just played unbelievably well. I’m not sure we’ll change a lot. I think we’ll try to force him to take bad shots and limit his touches. Hopefully, we’ll do a better job collectively on him than we did last time. Last game, he was as good as anyone in America that particular night.”
(more…)

Well, that was pretty ugly. Really ugly. Really really really ugly.

But we won.

Why is it that teams from Oklahoma play so ugly?

I’m miffed. I thought our defense was good, but I thought we really had trouble executing for such a long part of the game. That had a lot to do with the fact that Robinson and Wright were out for the end of the first half when we let them back into the game.

Curry had a good game and I’m betting that Hoopinion’s stats will show that he was more productive than usual.

Speaking of productive, Brandon Rush had 9 shots in 39 minutes. Marcus Dove is a good defender, but I’m betting he could have gotten more shots.

It’s really nice to be able to see KU’s scores on ESPN’s scoreboard without having to dig through the (almost entirely subscription) site to get to the Big 12 scores.

We outrebounded them 40-25.

We had 16 steals.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with this win. Once again, this team has shown that over the course of 40 minutes, we’re very hard to beat. We just pulled away in the end once they got worn down. I think we’ll see at least one tournament game when a team tries to make it ugly - and succeeds for 32 minutes -but loses by 10. Another solid win for the Baby Jays. Vegas and all the Power Ratings were suggesting a 3-4 point win, and we pull away by 15.

Despite how ugly the game was played and how much the referees sucked the momentum right out of the game, I’m smiling like a guy who just watched the Jayhawks win by 15 in Stillwater.

I mean seriously, if I had told you we won by 15, would you be happy or not?

Can I get a Witness?

I didn’t think this game was that dangerous, but we really let off the defensive intensity for the first 12 minutes of the second half. We cannot afford to do that moving forward if we expect to make a run in the NCAA tournament.

Check out the line on our three freshmen: 52 points, 23 rebounds, 10 assists, 7 steals and 4 blocks. Best class in the nation? I think you could make argument.

Nice to see DJ and CJ have good games as well.

We looked really good against a zone in the first half, but I was disappointed with our ball handling and poise for most of the second half.

Chalmers is really coming into his own. Before the season, I was hoping he could be a Daniel Gibson figure for us. I wouldn’t trade Chalmers for Gibson right now. That floater is just remarkable and it makes our whole offense so much more efficient.

Maybe it’s just my crimson and blue aviator goggles, but it looked to me like Blalock and Co. were throwing some cheap shots during the second half. I like how Iowa State makes our point guards (see Aaron Miles and Russell Robinson) get juiced up to throw down.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the continued emergence of Julian Wright and Brandon Rush. Those guys are so tough when they’re on the court together and they really do everything. They make KU very difficult to prepare for.

If we can play disciplined basketball and keep up the intensity for 40 minutes, there’s really nobody in America we can’t beat. I’m hopeful that Self can fire up the Baby Jays to give the proverbial 40 minutes of Hell. If so. Look out March, and keep an eye on April.

On a side note, Mike Davis didn’t coach Indiana today, and his team (or former team) managed to lose at home. Very concerning for me was the ‘black-out’, a grass-roots protest against the fact that Davis was still the IU coach.

Shame on you IU fans. If I had any say in the matter, I’d yank the season tickets of any deadbeat fan that participated in the black-out.

Lucky for you, IU doesn’t ask me.

A few interesting notes from the game:

# Kansas is shooting 76.5 percent (114-of-149) from the charity stripe over its last six games.
# Kansas shot 50 percent from the field for the sixth time in its last eight games and 10 of its last 14 (11 times overall).

As many have anticipated, at least according to 810 WHB, Micah Downs will be a Gonzaga Bulldog. More as I get it, but if there are any legs to this story, I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it soon enough. In the fullness of time as it is said.

Paint me naive again regarding those personal problems that weren’t basketball related if this is true.

UPDATE: I added this to the comments section, but I thought others might be interested:

I don’t thing enrolling is tantamount to playing for them immediately. It may, at this point, be a hedge bet to enroll to try to preserve eligibility. And naturally, it would make sense to enroll at a potential destination.

Don’t know if you read this article in the LJW that discussed the complications that Downs would face regarding his impulsive departure:

Should KU release Downs, he won’t lose his sophomore season. From there, the best-case scenario is that Downs could suit up and play second semester of the 2006-07 season. However, given the unusual timing of Downs’ departure, he likely won’t be able to suit up in an NCAA game until the 2007-08 season.

Downs has to sit out two semesters, and unless he goes to a junior college, his down time has to be while enrolled full-time at his next school. Current KU sophomore and USC transfer Rodrick Stewart did this when he began taking classes last January and became eligible to play last month — after his second semester at Kansas wrapped up.

By enrolling now in a likely destination, I believe he’ll be eligible a year from now. I think he’ll have to jump through some hoops though with KU in order to be granted a release.

As I understand it, he left without dropping his classes or even picking up his room. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think he’ll end up a Zag if he has indeed enrolled there).

I can’t tell if it’s too late for him to have enrolled. This link provides some insight as to that and I welcome any insight that anyone cares to provide.

UPDATE 2:

A moderator from a Gonzaga message board confirms (to the extent that you can confirm such meaningless speculation):

There are conditions that Micah will have to stick to before he gets a scholarship at Gonzaga, and he has agreed to them and understands them. If he proves himself to the conditions, he’ll get a ride for next year and beyond. Fwiw, David Burgess is not on scholarship, either, until he proves himself, albeit a different kind of proving himself than Micah.

In short, the law has been layed down and must be abided by, or else…..

His personal issues make it understandable that he wants to be closer to home and away from Kansas. I can’t and won’t divulge details but it’s safe to say that he has left behind a major piece of baggage that followed him to Lawrence.

Micah will be eligible mid- to late-December if everything works out here. You’ll see him Saturday in K2.

UPDATE 3: Hate to rely so heavily on message boards for more information here, but the latest twist in the increasingly strange story of Micah Downs comes courtesy of BobZag, the same above-mentioned moderator who provided our last update. Color me a litte tired of all of the “damn drama” to borrow *natty*’s words, but I’ll just put this on your plate and you can decide if you wants to eat it.

Re: Micah Downs - a silly question He’s here and we’ll all see him Saturday at the game.

A couple things:

His transfer had NOTHING to do with his girlfriend.

His transfer had NOTHING to do with PT.

If what happened to his family happened in your family, many of you would want to leave, too, and be closer to your Mom. Most know that his Dad was a problem and moved to Lawrence to be with Micah. Well, Dad is still in Lawrence, he’s the only one. Now Micah is free of him which is a good thing.

So what appeared once to be a Micah pendulum, swinging somewhere between no PT and lonely for girl, is now a Micah triangle.

UPDATE 4:

The Star is saying Gonzaga as well (with the caveat that it’s just a rumor), as are a few other journo-sources who haven’t yet gone to print with it. Here’s the Star’s blurb:

The scuttlebutt on Wednesday was that Downs is attempting to transfer to Gonzaga, where he’d probably be eligible to play beginning in January of 2007. Meanwhile, Robinson has the place all to himself - again. Robinson’s roommate last season, Alex Galindo, transferred to Florida International over the summer.

UPDATE 5: The Seatte Post-Intelligencer quotes Micah’s dad as saying Micah’s looking at either Washington or Gonzaga.

UPDATE 6: The PI is getting much closer to saying that Micah’s going to be a Zag, but that he must walk-on at present, as Gonzaga has no free scholarships.

My question: how can a kid who has evidently struggled for money afford a school that costs over $30,000 a year to attend?