Preview: Texas A&M at Kansas
I don’t think there’s much, if any, separation between Texas A&M and Kansas in terms of quality as their play in Big 12 games demonstrates:
| Team | Record | OffEff | DefEff | Diff |
| Kansas | 6-1 | 109 | 90 | +19 |
| Texas A&M | 6-1 | 109 | 91 | +18 |
The difference between these teams through 7 conference games might well be down to rounding. Though it could be that Texas A&M has been a bit unlucky with their opponents’ free throw shooting. Then again, they could be fouling the wrong people.
KANSAS OFFENSE v. TEXAS A&M DEFENSE
(Big 12 games only)
| Team | eFG% | OR% | TO% | FT Rate | FT% | PPP |
| KU off | 54.7 | 33.3 | 21.3 | 21.8 | 69.7 | 1.09 |
| A&M def | 42.4 | 25.4 | 21.8 | 45.1 | 75.8 | 0.91 |
However, I don’t think that Texas A&M matches up especially well offensively against Kansas. Joseph Jones is the type of undersized post player (see also: Boggan, Mario) against whom Sasha Kaun can be an especially useful defender. Effectively guarding Acie Law (31.7 Pts/100, 9.7 A/100), Josh Carter (25.8 Pts/100), and Antanas Kavaliauskas (27.9 Pts/100) simultaneously will be the real test for Kansas. (No disrespect to Dominique Kirk, who makes the majority of the few shots he takes and rarely turns the ball over but is clearly the Aggies’ fifth option unless he’s on the court during the brief appearances of Donald Sloan or Marlon Pompey.)
Perimeter defense is generally a strength of this Kansas team, especially so when the opponent tends not to shoot that many three-pointers. On the year, Texas A&M takes 28.8% of its field goal attempts from beyond the three-point line. In Big 12 play that’s down to 24.9%. Of course, limiting Jones’s shot attempts may force Texas A&M to shoot more threes as their big man is not turnover-prone (3.9 TO/100).
TEXAS A&M OFFENSE v. KANSAS DEFENSE
(Big 12 games only)
| Team | eFG% | OR% | TO% | FT Rate | FT% | PPP |
| A&M off | 51.2 | 29.6 | 19.8 | 40.8 | 77.5 | 1.09 |
| KU def | 44.9 | 28.7 | 23.8 | 35.2 | 64.1 | 0.90 |
If the game isn’t decided at the free throw line (and one team is almost assured to have an abnormally positive or negative night at relative to their respective averages in league play) then I suspect that frequency with which Texas A&M turns the ball over will be the key factor. The Aggies don’t turn it over very often and Kansas needs to force turnovers to complete an effective defensive performance. To illustrate this, I present the Rhode Island and Missouri games. Both of those teams shot 45 eFG% or worse in the Fieldhouse but neither turned the ball over more than 19% of the time resulting in the Jayhawks allowing 100 and 97 points per 100 possessions, respectively. I think we can all agree that Texas A&M presents a more threatening offense than either of those teams.
Thus far, Kansas has been slightly better than A&M against their three common opponents (efficiency margin per 100 possessions):
| Opp | KU | A&M |
| Oklahoma St | +38 | +26 |
| @Baylor | +36 | +19 |
| @Texas Tech | -9 | -6 |
I doubt we learn much about either team unless Texas A&M wins by a substantial margin. With teams as evenly matched and defensively adept as these two, I don’t expect substantial margins to enter into it.
Prediction: Kansas 68 Texas A&M 64
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14 Responses to “Preview: Texas A&M at Kansas”
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February 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
KU gets up for big games.
KU - 77
A&M - 63
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
KU 70
AM 61
I have a hard time thinking AM will get beat by much more than 9-10 all year.
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Seth Davis, whose prediction means next to nothing given that he just this week called Oregon a 1 seed and Duke a 2, has the following to say:
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
KU - 68
A&M - 54
Julian Wright goes into “Beast Mode.” Much like the Florida game, he will fluster A&M’s big men, Jones and Kavaliauskas.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
http://chalmersfan.blogspot.com/
I’ve written my own multi-part preview of the game kind of in the style of the ones Hoopinion wrote last year before the Texas game. I tried to look at how A&M does on the road, and I’ve found that their efficiencies on the road are that of an NIT team.
Right now I’m thinking:
KU 71
A&M 59
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:59 am
Chalmersfan- That’s a great preview. Thanks for linking to it.
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
I agree with Chalmersfan -
KU 74
TAMU 61
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:46 am
I predict a very quick start for KU and a complete game. Score wise, KU will lead by 20 at one point, with KU up at the end by 13. Wright has a BIG DAY, and so does Chalmers. They won’t have an answer for Mario!
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Here are the computer and Vegas predictions for tonight’s game, ordered by how accurate they have been since Jan 15. As always, game scores are rounded, so may not match score margins. And I used Sagarin’s “pure points.”
Mean: +2.7 … Median: +3.1 … My prediction: KU 66 A&M 59
February 4th, 2007 at 1:53 am
After some deep thought, I have come to realize that I don’t think I want Kaun playing so much, at least not at the end of the game like tonight. He is a huge liability at the freethrow line and absolutely poops the bed when he is double teamed in the post. I would much rather have Arthur in the game (see Florida), or, in tonights case, I thought Darnell Jackson was playing well. Why not leave him in the game. What did Kaun do all night? What has Kaun done at all lately? Let Arthur learn now, because he will be the only way Kansas can go if they want to be a serious threat come March.
Also, why take Sherron Collins out of the game at the end? I said earlier that I’m beginning to think he should be in in late game situations. Now, I’m beginning to think that he needs to be in the game AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!!!! I don’t care who has to sit, but somebody needs to, because this kid is special and I think the biggest reason KU has a chance to win it all. He creates for himself and his teamates and is a deadly outside shooter. He pushes the tempo of the game and creates more possessions in doing so (which is a good idea in trying to avoid upsets). I don’t know about anybody else, but I feel very comfortable when he has the ball. I know he will push the ball up the floor and look for a good early shot but will also pull it out if there is nothing there, something I think the rest of the team could learn from.
Back to Kaun, when he is in the game, please don’t try to feed it to him like he’s Wayne Simien! I know it’s good to establish something on the interior, but is it really necessarry? Why not play primarily with your perimiter players? That is the strength of the team. Let them get the bigs involved by creating easy shots for them, because outside of Aurthur (who has shown flashes like against Florida but is in a big slump as of late) and Kaun on very rare occasion, Kansas doesn’t have a legit back to the basket threat. I would take a high screen and roll or clear out for Sherron Collins over a Sasha Kaun jump hook or freethrow any day.
Also, where has Mario Chalmers gone? He has to be the player he was last year and this year around Christmas time.
On the other hand, give A&M credit. They are for real. Kansas is more talented but this just goes to show what senior leadership can do for a team. Hopefully, KU will get some in the next couple of years.
Keep the faith!
Rock Chalk!
February 4th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Living in Council Bluffs and working in Omaha, I had the great displeasure all football season to hear about how great the Hucksters were and how they were well on their way to returning to their former glory, in spite of the fact that they lost to every semi-competent team they played all season!
Kansas has a good record and a high ranking, but it’s reminding me of Nebraska’s delusions of grandeur. In the Big 12, KU has beaten only one opponent with a winning record, and apparently it isn’t much of a task to beat OSU, as Colorado demonstrated yesterday.
KU is fortunate, as was NU during the football season, to be in the weaker division with only one other team (who KU hasn’t faced yet) with a winning record. It’s usually a lot easier to look good against crap opponents. The bad news for KU is that half of their remaining games are against opponents with a .500 or better record.
February 5th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I agree with RockChalk - where was Collins at the end? The kid comes off the bench to ignite the squad and gets 18 points and is on the bench at the end of the game (until the final seconds)? I hope that was Self giving someone their last chance at the end of the game and will now stick with who is hot rather than go with his “top guys.”
Also, if Kaun’s free-throws are so suspect, why is he in the game with 1:30 left while Shady (68%) and Jackson (71%), who are much better from the charity stripe, were left to watch Kaun miss the front end of a 1n1.
Questionable floor coaching again.
February 5th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Sherron is the difference between us and the Aggies. Without him, A&M is as good or better than we are, even at AFH. With him, we are better. We were up 10 through 35 minutes because they had no answer for Ron.
I hears someone suggest that Ron was not in the game much of crunch time, when A&M was catching up, because of a problem with his ankle. If that is why he was not on the court, so be it.
If he was sitting on the bench because he made some mistakes–including trying to force a pass inside to K (always a bad idea)–then I disagree with that tactic. What you do in that situation is take Ron out of the game for a few seconds, say, “Stop that shit,” and send him back on the court with the directive to “Get out there and win a game.”
My philosophy, is that Darrell Royal had it right when he declared that you “dance with who brung ya.”
Yes, you take the bad with the good, but I’ll take my chances with the missing piece of the puzzle on the court with the game on the line. Especially when we are trying to protect a 6-10 point lead.
Who else do we have who has shown a propensity to step up at crunch time?
With Ron on the bench, our offense is not dynamic. With him on the court, the opponent’s defense is always on the defensive. And although the preferred method of closing out a game is to keep the opponent from scoring–they can’t catch up if they don’t score, right?–holding them at arm’s length by continuing to score points yourself also works. And, sometimes, the opponent is going to score, especially when they have a gamer like Acie Law. The 15 points A&M score to go from 52-62 to 67-66 would not look nearly as bad this morning had KU scored more than 4 points during that time. As my son will attest, I turned to him when the score was 62-54 and said “First to 70.” Little did I suspect that we would somehow avoid reaching that mark.
Our best gamer is Ron. Our best offensive weapon is Ron. He will create something for himself or opportunities for his teammates. As others have noted, he is a singular player, the type we have not had in a long time. In my opinion, he needs to be on the court when the game is on the line and the other team is threatening to go on a game closing run. You stop runs by scoring yourself. Ron is a run-stopper.
Fran is fond of comparing Ron to Tim Hardaway. For those of you who remember him, I prefer to compare Ron to Butch Lee, a stocky combo guard who ran the show when Marquette won the NC for Al McGuire (beating UNC in the championship game). Whenever the game was on the line, it was what McGuire called BLT: Butch Lee Time. And Lee invariably made good things happen.
Because of the talents and personalities on this team, I want Ron on the court the maximum amount of time–even if he has made mistakes and needs to be pulled aside briefly and told to “stop that shit and get your head in the game.” If his whole body is not in the game but on the bench, our offense stagnates and places us as much at risk as if he is on the court actually making a mistake. Even if he fails once or twice as a freshman, we will have gone down taking our best shot–and in the process taken a step in the learning process that will prove invaluable in the coming weeks and years.
If Ron is at KU for 4 years, we will win a NC during that time–because he will make plays that win games that look, to the uninitiated, as if they could go either way. Similar to when Vince Young was at UT and was down by less than a TD with time remaining on the clock, the game won’t be one that can go either way. The game is already over. It is ours.
It is SCT.
“You got to dance with who brung you, swing with who swung you,
Life ain’t no forty-yard dash,
be in it for the long run,
’cause in the long run you’ll have more fun,
if you dance with who brung you to the bash.”
–Ray Benson
February 6th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
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