Vulnerability in the time of Bill and Roy
UT is a good team, but as Mark pointed out, they are a vulnerable team. This strikes me as an important point and one that I should have considered more.
Last year, we were a good team, but we were an extremely vulnerable team, particularly once JR started going cold. Indeed, a lot of Roy’s teams were vulnerable - to athleticism, to cold shooting, to slobberknocking fisticuffs. I hadn’t considered it before, but Self seems to want to build teams that don’t have these vulnerabilities.
Using one primary ballhandler leaves you up a creek if he gets injured or foul prone. Self’s solution: have two to three guys who can handle and dish the rock. Not only does this work as a sort of insurance policy, but it also makes it harder for opposing coaches to prepare for you.
Having guards that can penetrate and create offense leaves you much less reliant on warm shooting. Heck, on Monday we shot 1/7 from behind the arc and still won by 15 on the road in Stillwater to a team that owned UT (and by the way, OSU may have played better on offense against UT, but I think you have to give credit to KU’s defense for that).
And in slobberknocking fisticuffs we’ve shown ourselves more than capable of knocking more slobber and cuffing more fists. Want to slow up the game and keep it ugly? Fine. You’ll be tired at about the 8 minute mark and we’ll run you silly from then on out.
I’ve been a big Self supporter, but I think that was more a result of my dovish personality towards KU hoops than any keen understanding of exactly what he was doing. But now his vision for the program is coming into focus for me, and I really like what I’m seeing. This Self team is tough, athletic and enthusiastic, and I love it.
And this team is not very vulnerable, at least not in the Williamsian sense. Our key vulnerabilities are probabably intense ball pressure at the guard spots and really hot three point shooting (but for whom is this not true?). I would add cold free throw shooting as well, but we’ve really excelled at that over the last 8 weeks, so I don’t think I can.
I just love where this team is going. I got to watch a lot of college basketball this weekend and I must echo the comments from Jayhawk fans everywhere - when national media folks ignore or denigrate Kansas, they shine a harsh light on their overpaid ignorance. The Seth Davis OU thing was perfect. We’ll probably beat OU in the league by 2-3 games and a tiebreaker, and they’re the threat?
That’s rich. This is the same guy who ELEVEN DAYS AGO called KSU - with UT, CU, OU, TT and KU still left on their schedule - a possible NCAA tournament team.
Seth, bubby! Tell me you don’t believe the things you say on TV!
KU is up to 18 in the ESPN/USA Today poll as well.
* Have the Phog Blog come to you! * Subscribe to Comments
4 Responses to “Vulnerability in the time of Bill and Roy”
Leave a Reply
Comment Policy:Be polite.You must be logged in to post a comment.
February 20th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
It’s random stats time. The vulnerability talk got me curious about what the main differences between KU’s losses and wins have been, statistically. I wondered if perhaps hot shooting by opponents had cut them down, or cold shooting by KU. Or turnovers, who knows. So I compiled some stats for wins and losses. (For any non-”regular” stats I used the definitions and formulas from kenpom.com, except for FTRate, where I used 100*FTA/FGA for both offense AND defense.)
Opponents
———-
in L’s: 47% eFG, 43% 2pt, 38% 3pt, 72% FT, 39.3 FTRate, 38% ORebRate, 21.3 TORate, 98.7 Off Efficiency
in W’s: 39% eFG, 37% 2pt, 30% 3pt, 65% FT, 27.8 FTRate, 30% ORebRate, 24.4 TORate, 79.8 Off Efficiency
Kansas
———-
in L’s: 48% eFG, 49% 2pt, 31% 3pt, 59% FT, 32.5 FTRate, 38% ORebRate, 22.9 TORate, 94.4 Off Efficiency
in W’s: 54% eFG, 53% 2pt, 39% 3pt, 71% FT, 36.7 FTRate, 40% ORebRate, 22.4 TORate, 111.4 Off Efficiency
Just for reference, an average offensive efficiency is 100. 111.4 would rank 15th, and 79.8 would be third from last.
So it looks like the main differences in the losses are:
opponents’ average shooting from 2 and 3 (instead of way below average like normal)
opponents getting to the way line more
opponents not being kept off the offensive glass
bad 3pt and FT shooting by KU (against St. Joe’s, KU shot 11/21 from 3. Take that out, and they only shot 21/81 in the other 5 losses)
Given all this, it looks like KU’s biggest vulnerabilities mya be A) a bad shooting night or B) a game where the refs are liberal with the whistles. A lot of touchy fouls would let the opponent get to the line more, and make it harder for KU to hold the other team’s shooting percentages down with smothering defense.
February 20th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
David,
How relevant do you think these numbers are given how differently the team is playing now versus 60 days ago?
If you look at our possessional outcomes for games in the early season, we had a lot of dogs, and we usually lost them. Since then, we’ve had a few dogs offensively and maybe one or two defensively, but we’ve still managed to win those games, which I think bodes well.
February 20th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
That’s a good point. I guess if the differences in the numbers are mostly just due to the natural ups and downs of young kids learning Self’s system, then the numbers don’t really matter much. It would be more of a “if everybody has their act together tonight KU will do well” thing.
As for the team playing differently, one thing I just noticed that I overlooked before is KU’s steals percentage, which is 10.9 for the losses and 14.1 for the wins. Since it seems ike this might be partially due to the team’s improving play on defense, I checked nonconf vs. conference stats and found that, yes, they are stealing the ball more now:
nonconf - 12.6%
conf - 14.1%
That is an improved steal rate against tougher opponents, which is a good sign that the team is maturing quickly and learning to play defense at a high level every game. So they should lay very few defensive eggs the rest of the way. Steals also lead to easy buckets, which help prevent us from having dogs on offense.
A couple of other things that have improved in conference play:
opp OReb%… from 33% to 30%
KU’s FTA Rate … from 31% to 41%
KU’s FT% … from 64% to 72%
The FTA Rate is huge, because it probably indicates a lot more penetration by the guards, which would be another thing that helps maintain offensive consistency. If you can get consistent penetration, you don’t need to settle for jump shots, so you’re less vulnerable to cold shooting. That would also completely turn around what I said about refs that are liberal with the whistles.
SO, yeah, you were right. The W vs. L numbers aren’t that relevant, since the team is playing very different now versus when most of the losses took place. Thanks for making me take a closer look.
February 20th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
I’ve always seen Self as a guy who coaches smashmouth toughness and lockdown defense. But until this season, the finer mechanics behind that approach were a mystery. Now, as Jeremy notes, they’re coming into focus.
“Williamsian.” I love that adjective and may have to work it into my next post.