What about the Game

I think we have started becoming like the commentators, talk extensively about the broadcast, but not discussing the game. I think there is good reason for that. Not just the poor game analysis by the commentators but that lack of quality by the opponent makes it tough to analyze where the Hawks are by that game. On the bright side Mr. Braun was over 50% from 3 but Mr. Garrett was 0-4 from 3. Mr. Wilson being 1 -7 inside the arc is troublesome but Mr McCormack was 9-14. Winning by more than 20 against a Big XII team is never easy though it may look it sometimes. Hopefully we can continue to improve and as I heard mentioned somewhere, get our swagger back.

I had not noticed this before but KSU was able to make more free throws than KU attempted. It seems to me that no matter how many times the Hawks drive to the hoop they get the foul call very rarely this year. Maybe it is just the finishing technique is not good but I do not know.

I for one like to play a patsy every once in a while. Letting the guys get their shots and makes in a lower pressure game isn’t a bad way to get some confidence back. We’re not as good as the score would indicate, but maybe we shook loose some gunk and some funk.

Loved Mac’s attitude last night on the boards. His scoring game is coming along, but man did he go after the ball.

The only negative - can we please limit Garrett to one three per game?

A hoops win, a new FB offensive coordinator, and a 4 star receiver inked, not a bad week.

I am always happy to talk about the game and I do an extensive blog after every game. Be careful what you ask for for here is my take on the game, since you asked.

Part of me always wants the Jayhawks to stomp on the neck of the opponent and grind them into oblivion in a 50 point blowout. Metaphorically speaking, of course. But the game against Kansas St last night was a quite satisfying and solid performance by our Jayhawks. Now you know that I put stock in the eye test and I also lean heavily to the statistical analyses. Both led me to my conclusion of a solid performance. It was not flashy and not without plenty of room for improvement. The bench was lackluster and underwhelming but the starters were energetic and consistent.

Let's start with defense. The first thing I noticed about the defense last night was consistency. Now of course it you want to nitpick, there were plenty of defensive lapses, but compared to most of the season up to this point, they were pretty consistent. And consistently decent. We held them to 34% shooting and 24% from the 3. We didn't give them too many easy looks. We switched smoothly and never let them get too much separation. We grabbed 76% of the defensive rebounds which is not off the charts against a poor K-State team but I'll take it. This was not a strong rebounding game, but we did outrebound them overall 41-34, 76% of defense and an acceptable but not overwhelming 34.2% on offense. The one thing I will mention on defense that they need to look at film and fix (and it should be fixable) is TOO MUCH BALL WATCHING!!! Marcus is about the only guy that does not doe this pretty regularly. And the way it is manifest is you will see a guy watching the ball and sag off his man just enough that when his man receives a pass, if he can get up a shot quickly enough, our guy can't effectively get a hand in his face because he is just a sag step away from where he should be. And poor Jalen Wilson just cannot keep anyone in front of him, to the right or left. Surely there are some footwork drills they can have Jalen work on to increase that speed on sliding with his man. Jalen is just one slow dude.

Let me show you the cool new graph I have. What it shows is one of the sources of my sanquinity (not actually a word but I like it better than sanguineness). Just by way of reminder, the blue bar is my cool new player rating. The red marker is the rating that player would need for the team to play at a championship level (more or less a top 10 level). This game is one of the few this season where all 5 starters are at or above the level of performance needed. Not only did all 5 starters meet the expected rating, they all exceeded it. Now unfortunately, the bench was not up to snuff, which means some of the points gained by the starters will be lost for the few minutes the subs are on the floor. Tristan was okay but still below what we need. David had another of his great games, leading the team with 18 points and 10 rebounds. This is exactly what I was hoping we would see this game, namely, at least the top 5 guys all performing consistently well. If we continue to see this, we will have a much better chance at the fairy-tale ending Coach Self speaks of.



There were some fun highlights in this game. The bouncy dunk from Christian was quite impressive. There were a number of attempts to get to the rim, or at least into the paint with floaters. As I have said many times, good things tend to happen when you attack the paint. Christian attacked the paint at least 4 times that I can remember off the top of my head. Jalen always is prone to attacking the rim, but a little too often out of control. Marcus is back to his surgical precision in attacking the rim after getting blocked 150% of the time in the first 8 or 9 games. It is good to see Marcus rounding back into form. Dajaun had 5 assists and zero turnovers. That is a nice line. But he also missed his only 2 shot attempts. Of course Dajuan is coming to be known as a non-scoring guard. But the numbers show how true that really is. Dajuan puts up 4.22 FGA per 40 minutes. That is the lowest of any player averaging 10 or more minutes per game under Bill Self. And not just barely. The next lowest is Mitch Lightfoot in 2019 when he put up 5.65 shots per 40 minutes in 11.9 minutes per game. And just in case you are interested who is on the other side of that spectrum it is David McCormack in 2021. Davis is putting up 18.56 FGA per 40 minutes. That exceeds Dedric Lawson in 2019 (17.46), Sherron Collins in 2009 (16.96) and Udoka Azubuike in 2019 (16.83) and Thomas Robinson in 20212 (16.66). David should have no complaints that he isn't getting plenty of looks. Perhaps a few too many.

Well, any mystery there was in the Big 12 race evaporated last night when Baylor dismantled Texas. Baylor now calculates out to pretty much a 100% probability to win the Big 12. But the race for 2nd got very interesting with Texas' loss. It is realistically a very close 5 team race with dark horse Oklahoma St. not out of the hunt. OSU hosts Texas this weekend, An OSU victory (lets hope) will make this race for 2nd a true and very close 6 team race. That is kind of fun. It also makes the game against West Virginia this weekend in Morgantown, a pretty huge game. Right now I have Kansas as a 3.4 point underdog with a 37% probability of winning. If we can get our top 6 guys playing at or above the red marker, we will win this game.

With the games last night Baylor moves back in to 1st place overall in my DPPI. To listen to the talking heads the race for the NCAA is down to two teams. I do not see it that way. I think people are too quick to discount Houston. Houston is by my calculation, the best defensive team in the NCAA a small notch ahead of Baylor. And defense wins championships. And Kelvin Sampson has demonstrated over his career that he can coach defense. I think Houston is a serious contender at this point. It does drop off pretty radically after that. In fact, here is my projected NCAA field and probabilities by round. This may be a little hard to read. I have Baylor with a 24.8% probability of winning it all followed by Gonzaga at 19.5% and Houston at 19.0%. Then it drops down to 7.6% for Michigan and 2.6% for Iowa. I would not be quick to ignore Houston in the discussion for NCAA glory.



Since the Big 12 race is essentially a forgone conclusion. lets look at the race for 2nd place because that is super exciting. It is also one in which our Jayhawks are in the thick of the hunt. Below is a graph of the probability for 2nd place. You can see that Oklahoma has the inside track but it is really anyone of 5 or even 6 teams who can rise up. Every round of games from here on out is going to have a huge impact on this race. You can see that KU is a bit on the outside looking in. A win against West Virginia this weekend will change the face of this race in KU's favor. This is going to be fun to watch down the stretch.

After Corpus' great and exhaustive post above, these comments will be buried in oblivion, but I will offer a few observations.

The thing that stood out to me was improved ball movement, side to side and inside and out creating better shot looks that were more open than usual. Maybe those more open looks were due to ksu's lack of ability. In many games it has appeared that we are rushing our shots, either because the defense is closing on the shooter more quickly than anticipated or the movement is not as effective, or we're failing to make the extra pass, or two. In this game, when the offense flowed, the shots appeared more in rhythm and not rushed.

The offense looked a tad different to me and hopefully it will yield similar results moving forward.