Poster name is IStillLikeharv
I doubt you would get very many objective observers to agree that KSU is close in talent to KU. Sorry, but that is the honest truth. Self is a great recruiter. He is just an OK coach. He has been beaten way too often by teams with less or comparable talent in his career. Then again, recruiting is a major factor in college basketball, and with the KU aura, he can recruit with the best of them.
At UI self trended down each year -- Elite Eight, Sweet Sixteen, then Round of 32. And he did not "turn around" the program Lon Kruger left him at UI. In Self's third (and last) season his best player was Brian Cook, the Big Ten Player of the Year, who Self inherited from Kruger. All of the players Weber used to make the great 2005 run in Weber's second season were on Kruger's 2003 team, and Brian Cook besides. Recall his early phobia at KU for mid-majors starting with the letter B. Self is a top coach overall because he is a very good recruiter, particularly at KU, but his on-the-court coaching is average given the talent he has.
As I noted in both posts on Self, he is a great recruiter (particularly at KU just as Crean is a great recruiter at IU -- where you recruit matters). Recruiting is a major part of college coaching (some have said 90%, but certainly it is a big factor in anybody's book), so overall Self is a very successful coach. As a coach on the court, he is really just OK. Kruger is better, for example. Kruger doesn't recruit as well, but he does more with what he has. Hoiberg was a better court coach. Huggy Bear is a tougher call because of his unusual style, but many feel he is a top court coach. Drew is another good recruiter (and not at an elite basketball school), but he is at best an average coach on the court.
If you want to compare Weber to Self on coaching as opposed to recruiting, you can look at what each one did with the same group of players. In 2003 Self had Luther Head, Roger Powell, James Augustine, Dee Brown, and Deron Williams, PLUS Big Ten Player of the Year Brian Cook (from Kruger) and Sean Harrington (a great shooter). That team went 25-7 and lost in the Round of 32. Weber took the same players minus Cook and Harrington, and once they adapted to the motion offense, over the two-calendar-year span from Jan 31, 2004 through Jan 5, 2006 they went 66-4, including a 37-2 run to the National Title game in 2005.
In his three seasons at UI, Self went 78-24 (76.5%) finishing Elite Eight, Sweet Sixteen, and Round of 32. In this first three seasons at UI, Weber went 89-16 (84.8%) finishing Sweet Sixteen, NC Title Game, and Round of 32. If you remove the recruiting factor, Weber did significantly better than Self over a comparable span, and Self inherited some great players from Kruger (Brian Cook, Cory Bradford, Robert Archibald, Marcus Griffin, Sean Harrington, Sergio McClain, and Frank Williams). Self is a better recruiter than Weber, no doubt, especially at KU.
