Means nothing, I know. But nice to see the Ta and the Kaw getting some love from LOOOK Winn at SI.

Julian Wright has his own bowling ball.

The Shockers have beaten half of last year’s final four, one the road!

Link.

Luke Winn interviews Julian Wright at SI.com.

LW: If the night before the Florida win was serious, what was the night after like in Vegas?

JW: We actually left right away. People were happy, but they were tired, too — it was a high-intensity game. We watched the tape on the way back, and even though we won, we knew we still had work to do, that it’s just a stepping stone to getting better.

LW: So you’re telling me no one wanted to pull an all-nighter on the Strip.

JW: I think a lot of guys wanted to stay a little bit longer, but it was a tiring trip. We didn’t even get back into our rooms until sunrise. Had we gone out [in Vegas], I would have been more scared for the staff than the players. (Laughing.)

Ed. UPDATE: Got to pull out this quote from the comments (thanks Harger):

My name is Tad and I love Julian more than anything in the world. Words can’t describe my passion
-Tad

I came across this post by Ken Pomeroy detailing how Oral Roberts might beat Memphis in last year’s tournament and some of what he says was eerily clear when ORU beat KU.

My friend Creighton also emailed this to me earlier and I thought I might share it. There’s less hand-wringing about ORU given the Florida win, but all of the Self Bashing that has gone on might stand to take a little historical scrutiny. Feel free to disagree, but I thought Creighton offered some good thoughts:

With all the discussion about the possible ramifications of the team’s mindset because of the loss to Oral Roberts I thought I would look back at our last 5 Final Four teams and see what happened to them in November/December. Here’s what I found:

The point of all this is that 3 of Roy Williams’ 4 final four teams lost in the non conference to a team that did not make the tournament. At this point in the season we don’t know whether or not Oral Roberts will make the tournament. Based upon their performance against KU and the conference they are in there is a pretty high probability that Oral Roberts will make the tournament again this year. I don’t recall fans questioning the mindset of any of these previous final four teams. With Roy’s four teams the only one that was a real surprise was the 91 team. The talent was there it was just a matter of putting it together. The 91 team was 0-1 against ranked non-con opponents. The 93 team was 1-1 against ranked non-con opponents with an impressive win over #2 Indiana. The 02 team was 2-1 against ranked non-con opponents with an impressive win over #4 Arizona. The 03 team was 1-3 against ranked non-con opponents. This year’s team is 1-0 against ranked non-con opponents with an impressive win over #1 Florida. IMO, this puts us in just as good of a position as any of our previous Final Four teams and obviously Roy was not immune to having teams not playing up to their capabilities. Do we want to be perfect now or do we want to continue to improve as the season goes along? I am very happy that we are raw enough to have a lot to work on and yet still play well enough to beat a team like Florida. So is the mindset question being overplayed a bit - my answer is yes.

Thoughts?

Dean Oliver was, I believe, the first to posit that there are “four factors” to offensive or defensive success: shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and free throws. Dartmouth is poor in each of those areas whether they or their opponents (@UMass, @GW, Colgate, Siena, @Hartford–all losses) have the ball.

Dartmouth shoots under 42% from the field and they allow their opponents to shoot over 57%.

They turn the ball over on 23.6% of their possessions and they force turnovers on just 20.2% of their opponents possessions. That’s actually not terrible but my larger point here is that the best you can say about Dartmouth’s basketball team is that there’s an area in which they are not terrible, merely below average.
They get just 29% of possible offensive rebounds and 65 % of possible defensive rebounds.

The Big Green can shoot free throws–they’ve made 73% of their attempts–but they rarely get the chance. They make one free throw for every 7.4 field goals they attempt. Their opponents shoot one free throw for every 3.3 field goals they attempt.

Kansas is going to win this game going away whether they play or they play poorly, whether they play with passion or just go through the motions. Dartmouth’s bad and they’re decimated by injuries. More than half their roster has missed at least one game so far. I think the most we’ll learn tonight is how many shots Jeremy Case can get up in garbage time.

Behind Ohio State, UCLA, Pitt and Florida.

Link to poll here. Somebody ping me when the new AP poll comes out. I think we might be in the top 4 there.

We’ll be in a great position to be entrenched in the top 10 for the rest of season if we can match enthusiasm moving forward.

UPDATE: KU is also 5th in the AP poll.

So pretty much everything I predicted on Friday turned out to be wrong. Kansas won, for one thing. The game was a shootout, albeit a slow paced one. Julian Wright was the best big man on the court by a significant margin. Darrell Arthur, in the few minutes he was allowed to play, was more effective than either Noah or Horford. Robinson and Chalmers had decent games but were outshined by Taurean Green. Sherron Collins looked very much like a freshman and Sasha Kaun looked very much like someone still getting over a knee injury.

And every Jayhawk not named Jon Cornish laid an egg in Columbia.

The good news is that Kansas beat the best college basketball team in the country (and one that posed several difficult matchups for them) without fully correcting many of their obvious and ongoing weaknesses. The bad news is that Kansas still has several obvious and ongoing weaknesses. Chief among them is the complete inability to handle end-of-game situations with much composure. Brandon Rush’s maddening passivity, the team’s penchant for committing unforced turnovers and guards providing needless help defense and leaving shooters open beyond the three-point line all deserve mention as well.

This team is obviously pretty good when they play hard. I still don’t think they’re close to tapping fully into their potential.

stats glossary

For comparison’s sake: 2006 and 2005 individual and team stats from kenpom.com.

TEAM OFFENSE

There weren’t many turnovers committed against Florida, they just tended to be unneccessary ones (Chalmers and Robinson committing carrying violations twenty-five feet from the basket or Julian Wright attempting to dribble through the Florida zone along the baseline). Overall, though, it was an outstanding (and coming on the heels of Friday’s putrid offensive displaye against Ball State a thoroughly unexpected) offensive performance.

TEAM DEFENSE

Keep in mind that opponents’ FT Rate counts the number of attempts the opposition gets per 100 field goals. Still, there’s been a lot of fouling in the last three games. Tangentially, I’m still waiting for ESPN to show a replay of Sasha Kaun’s foul on Al Horford in the final minute of regulation so I can determine whether that was the early leader for worst play of the year or worst call of the year.

Updated individual stats after the jump.

(more…)

If I have to be in the office today, I might as well be productive. Therefore…

Ball State

KU OFFENSE vs. BALL ST. DEFENSE

KU DEFENSE vs. BALL ST. OFFENSE

Ball State won their first two games of the year, beating Northern Colorado and Prairie View A&M at home. They lost at home to Chattanooga on Tuesday night. Ball State’s offensive numbers are inflated and their defensive numbers deflated due to their 39-point blowout of Northern Colorado.

The Cardinals have not shot 50% from the floor in any of their three games, though their solid offensive rebounding and free throw shooting (plus an atypical reluctance to turn the ball over against Northern Colorado) have helped them to achieve offensive mediocrity overall against very marginal competition.

Ball State’s defensive success is predicted on forcing turnovers which may keep them in the game for awhile against the Jayhawks.

SO #23 Jalon Perryman comes off the bench but leads Ball State in scoring (31.3 pts/100 possessions) through three games.

Perryman, SO #32 Anthony Newell, JR #2 Micah Rollin, and FR #34 Rashaun McLemore (in limited minutes) all sport offensive rebounding percentages over 10.

JR #5 Steve Horton has shot poorly from the field (25% on two-point attempts, 31.6% on 19 three-point attempts), but enters tonight’s game with a 6.9:1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Florida

KU OFFENSE vs. FLORIDA DEFENSE

KU DEFENSE vs. FLORIDA OFFENSE

These numbers are through Florida’s Tuesday game against Prairie View A&M. The Gators’ stats should be slightly less imposing after their game against Western Kentucky tonight in Vegas as Florida has thus far played Samford, Northern Florida, Jacksonville, and Chattanooga at home.

I doubt that will matter as Florida is a terribly difficult matchup for Kansas. As you can see above, Florida will attempt to slow the pace of the game and their adept at forcing turnovers and rebounding on both ends of the court.

The individual matchups along the frontcourt don’t favor Kansas at all. Noah and Horford are superior to any combination of Kansas big men. Both are excellent passers (Noah averages 8 assists/100 possessions, Horford 7.1, and both have assist-to-turnover ratios better than 1:1) capable of exploiting Kansas’s double teams in the post even if the defensive rotations have improved (and they couldn’t be any worse) since the Oral Roberts game. Corey Brewer, himself an excellent passer and efficient scorer, is probably Florida’s best defender and should be expected to expose the limitations of Brandon Rush’s offensive game.

Kansas’s guards will have to outplay their Florida counterparts for the Jayhawks to be competitive. It’s not at all a remote possibilit but Green, Humphrey, and Hodge all shoot the ball well from the three-point line and don’t turn the ball over. Robinson, Chalmers, and Collins need to force the Florida guards to have to score off the dribble. That may be difficult due to the likely constant double-teaming of Florida’s post players. On the other end of the court, Robinson and (especially) Chalmers need to start making some shots while Collins must continue to shoot well.

Thus, to win the game, Kansas will need an excellent team defensive effort in what figures to be a relatively low-scoring game. Plus, the guards will have to score more efficiently than they have thus far, Brandon Rush must not be a complete zero offensively, Julian Wright and Darrell Arthur will have to match the performances of players who are bigger and better than they are, and the Jayhawks can’t afford to get into foul trouble such that Rodrick Stewart or Matt Kleinmann enter the game. I’m not optimistic. I am, however, very much looking forward to the game tomorrow night. It will be especially fun coming on the heels of the football team’s invasion of Columbia.