Awesome for him. I’ve been watching his games when on tv. He’s really active on defense and just has more confidence. He used to get happy feet when he had the ball down low. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore and he just goes strong to the basket.
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Super happy for him, but why wasn’t he practicing his free throws at Santa Clara??
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Happy for JB, improvement is often not linear and guys do have breakthroughs/breakouts…glad it’s happening for JB.
Big guys in particular can take longer to develop…some never do.
That said, as LetsGo asks, why wasn’t FT shooting improvement a bigger priority while at SCU.
And this is kind of an eyebrow raiser: “I’ve never been in the gym this much,” he said. …ummm, why not?
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I think it just depends on the player. Some players are in the gym constantly, some need to be pushed into doing it, some actually take every day off that they can. I still remember seeing select players in at the Malley fitness center during the offseason. Obviously their schedules will vary, but you knew which players loved the grind. Brandon Clark and Nici Gilday come to mind from when I was there. It wasn’t a surprise to see them play overseas; they were constantly grinding.
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Being from the East Coast and having a kid grow up playing East Coast ball this is SO ON PAR! It has backfired going from East to West - but happy for JB it benefits going West to East.
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hmmmmmm… wonder what, if anything Herb had him doing in terms of basketball at SCU?
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Nash and Jake Sedlock had the key to the gym and were there into the morning hours, practicing specific moves over and over again. I also saw Podz there by himself practicing all the moves that took him to the NBA. Not too difficult to predict who might have a possible great run in basketball.
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With the Athletic Excellence Center, this should only be easier since there are fewer scheduling issues that would prevent players from getting shots up and working on moves in their own time. Hopefully the guys are taking advantage of it.
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Stewart was ready to leave after his freshman season. Herb had to fly down to Baton Rouge to personally recruit him to comeback.
The allure of all that NIL money from LSU was too much to pass up a second time.
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You’re thinking of Shaquille Walters. He left SCU during the season cuz his father was murdered back in London.
Came back to the States & had a nice lil career at Northeastern. Playing in Europe now I believe
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I can vouch that those guys are in the gym A LOT. I’d say the entire team takes it on themselves to put up extra shots all the time. I know Cam stays with Ludwig after every practice for an additional 30-45 minutes of work. He also goes in for extra lifts and gets shots up every day (above and beyond practice). I know on Sundays when they are off, most of them are in the gym getting shots up.
Braun on the floor for extended minutes for the Jayhawks against Texas. He’s playing solid D and had a nice aggressive drive to the basket for a layup. Pretty cool that he was able to go from SCU to KU and get lots of PT as basically the sixth man on one of the best programs in the NCAA.
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Still amazes me that Sendek couldn’t figure out that Braun is a guard.
Moronic to try and make him into a back to the basket post player.
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To be fair, he’s listed as a forward when recruited out of high school and is even still listed as one on Kansas’ website. And when he was here we had Pipes/Jalen and Stewart/Podz taking up most of the guard minutes, so hardly an issue.
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Betterer, I’ll bite.
I definitely don’t think he was a five, which was where he was deployed frequently, but I think he was better served as more of a 3. I just don’t know if he has the handle to play two.
When I’ve seen him on the floor for Kansas I think he’s been playing primarily at the four. Could be wrong.
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bro really just sat here with a straight face and said a 6’10 235 LBS guy who couldn’t shoot or be physical enough needs to be playing guard
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Braun is a good outside shooter. Sendek just had him stapled to the key when he needed to be 20 ft away from the rim and facing the basket. He needed to be utilized like SCU’s current O’Neil.
He’s a career .298 3pt% shooter. Last year for us he shot .246 on 57 3’s.
This year he’s only taken 8 3’s… I’d say Bill Self clearly doesn’t want him shooting outside.
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His efficiency metrics are also slightly lower overall at KU than in his last year at SCU (which was already a step back from his first year as a Bronco). I wish Parker success, but I think we are cherry picking some good games he has where the whole is much more mixed. Bediako looks like a player who really blossomed in a new system. That hasn’t happened for Braun while buried on the bench at KU.
bb loves bigs with handles and wanted Vrankic to be a 3 as well, as I remember. As someone who also fantasizes about the kind of lineups Gonzaga uses with the flexibility of Watson and Gregg who can dribble and shoot outside, I’m sympathetic. But O’Neil is a pretty rare find as a 6’10" slasher and shooter who is coming into his own right now. Vrankic was the best back-to-the-basket big man at SCU since Trasolini and probably one of the best at drawing fouls in SCU history. Parker was much closer to the Vrankic mold than to O’Neil, but not quite as developed as either in their respective skill sets.
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Vrankic was an outstanding low post player, with a well stocked bag of moves around the basket. He shot 29.9% from 3 for his career, with just over 2 attempts per game. Say what you will about how Herb used him, but a third of his 3pt attempts came in his Freshman year (out of 5 seasons). He was far more effective in the paint than operating in space out by the 3pt line.
Yes, Parker had (has) some similarities in his game, and was closer to Vrakic than to O’Neill in that sense, but he wasn’t ever going to be as impactful in the paint as JV. I’d agree with others who noted that Parker’s ball handling isn’t well suited to the guard position. I have a visual image of too many times when he gave up his dribble with no place to go, or dribbled into a trap.
Having said all that, I’m glad we had Parker in the program. He was definitely a net positive!
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