Many more baseball posts will be coming once the spring revs up a bit more and the story lines get established. But for now, March Madness has set in upon us, my friends! A little K-State, a little Kansas today. We’ll start with the Wildcats.
Just a few weeks ago, some buddies and I were throwing around names as our early favorites to land on the All Big 12 first team. There were, of course, the usual suspects (Marcus Morris, Jordan Hamilton, Alec Burcs) along with a couple guys who were tearing it up early on before their teams faded a little (Marcus Denmon, Diante Garrett). A few other names came up, and I was VERY pleased to see that LaceDarius Dunn wasn’t amongst them. But also universally absent was Jacob Pullen.
And with good reason, too. At the time, Kansas State was sitting at about 2 and 5 or something like that, and while Jake was scoring a ton of points, he was also hurting his team by his Dillard’s excursion, pathetic shooting and overall lack of leadership. Unlike a lot of media outlets who are changing their tune (and despite what Frank Martin NOW says in praise of his comments), in my opinion, Jake talking about sitting out the NIT were authentic representations of his feelings—he truly felt his Wildcats were NIT bound.
And now, it seems unfathomable that ANYONE with a vote could leave him off of their first team ballot. His play in the second half of the season (on both ends of the court) has been nothing short of inspiring. I dare say that, should Kansas lose to Missouri and end up in a tie with Texas for the conference crown, there’s no real reason to object to Pullen being named the Conference Player of the Year (that is to say, if KU is the outright champion, there is no excuse for anyone other than Marcus Morris getting the nod, but otherwise, Jake’s a fair pick).
Think about how ludicrous that sounds. Has anyone ever been picked as the pre-season Player of the Year, from the team picked to win the conference, and then have him actually hold on to win the honor, even though his team has grossly failed to live up to expectations? I’m not dogging the Wildcats or Frank Martin—what he’s done to turn this around has been nothing short of amazing, and I applaud him. It’s just that what Jake very well could pull off is highly, HIGHLY unlikely.
But let me share what I heard on 810 earlier this week. Although he may be a Missouri alumnus (nobody’s perfect), Jon Sundvold is a guy whose opinion I respect. He generally tells it like it is, is fair to all parties involved, and he genuinely seems like a pretty good dude. On 810 the week, I heard Sundvold say that he felt Jacob Pullen was THE BEST defender in the league. Sunny had no reason to blow purple sunshine you-know-where. So that point resonated with me. I mean, I know what good perimeter defense looks like, but I don’t watch it as closely as Sunny does.
Then you have to think—you know what Pullen means to the Wildcats—take away, and they’re done. And now you start thinking about him as a potential defensive MVP of the league, to go along with the fact that he’s one of the best pure scorers in the conference. Hard to argue that he doesn’t at least belong on the short list for POY.
REALLY QUICK ON BILL SELF AND THE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP….
Obviously, Bill Self has seen his share of post-season successes and failures. It doesn’t get any higher than cutting down the nets in the final game, and it doesn’t get any lower than bowing out to Bradley and Bucknell in the first round. All-in-all, Self has been a very solid post-season coach, and all but a select few would trade for his successes in a heartbeat.
But when it comes to regular season play….Bill Self is the UNDISPUTED champion of men’s college basketball today.
Self has been a NCAA Division One head coach for 18 seasons. Only 14 of those have been with schools that play for a regular season conference championship (Oral Roberts was a D-1 independent in the Self years). Of the 14 seasons has coached in a conference, his teams have won or tied for the conference championship ELEVEN TIMES. He’s 11 for 14!
That’s pretty good, but there are guys like Mark Few at Gonzaga who are gonna say, “Big deal….I’ve won 11 in a row at my school.” True, but look at in terms of BCS-level conferences. Self has coached 11 seasons in the BCS—three at Illinois, and now eight at Kansas. Out of those 11 seasons, Self has won or shared NINE conference championships. What coach today can say he only goes out and wins his BCS conference’s championship 82% of the time? That’s an unreal number, just unreal.
On top of that, Self just became the only BCS conference coach to win as many as seven consecutive conference championships since John Wooden won his 9th consecutive league crown in 1975. In fact, even before this year, Self was alone as the only coach since Wooden to win as many as six consecutive conference championships at a Big 12 school.
It all gets a heck of a lot harder next year, with the 18-game schedule. It’s difficult for me to imagine Self or anyone else experiencing this kind of prolonged conference success. But what he has done has been simply amazing, and I wanted to take a moment to step back and admire it.
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