As I was watching Trae Young go for 22 points, 14 assists, and 6 rebounds last night against Lebron James.... and 20 points and 11 assists against Kemba Walker.... and 28 points and 9 assists against Utah... and 27 points and 8 assists against PHX.... and so on and so forth...it occured to me.... Last year wasn't his fault. Not when the same exact thing is happening this year.. And the year before TY got to Norman the team went 11-20.
Maybe I didn't want the problem to be Lon Kruger, or the problem to be systemic within the program... all the pre-season hype on this forum was "now that TY is gone we will play more team basketball", and for some of the games that seemed true but it was fools gold. It's just a different type of trash basketball, the kind being played without a star player.
Anyway... I digress.
I, too, thought it was a lot of Trae's fault. I remember reading on another site that Trae really felt like he was a good teammate, and kind of blowing it off when I read it.
But after the way this season has gone, it's becoming more apparent to me that these senior and junior classes that were supposed to lead the team last year and this year are just mentally weak and really poor leaders.
Yes, you can blame Lon for recruiting them, but at some point the players have to get some of the responsibility. When Kruger had another class that was experienced and was in the system for years, they did great (Buddy, Cousins, and Spangler). So I think that's why I don't put as much of this on Lon as a lot of people. He's shown what he can do with hard working, mentally tough, experienced players.
This senior (and junior) class is missing some of those, and that's what's killing this team. Poor attitudes. Constantly getting mad at themselves and/or each other.
I'm really anxious to see what Kruger can do with next year's class. I would give Kruger two more years. If things haven't gotten better with the class that's coming in next year, then I will say it's probably time to start looking elsewhere.
I think the most frustrating thing about Kruger's tenure is the fact that he wasn't really able to capitalize off of the Final Four run. I mean a lot of coaches could turn that into a few really good recruiting classes, and instead we got Doolittle (Edmond), McGusty, Freeman, Manek (Harrah), Polla (Project), and Lazenby (JuCo project) in the years following that run.
Some of those were decently highly rated players out of high school, but none that could really come in and be highly competitive in the Big 12 for a few years. I just would've hoped we could have gotten some players that could come in and immediately contribute on a high level in conference play.
And obviously Trae, which this years team was supposed to be built around with McGusty too. But if Trae had been here this year, we wouldn't be any better because the same Junior and Senior classes would be leading this team.
Anyway, congratulations to Trae for his success in the NBA. Glad he's proving a lot of people wrong.
