Nothing good can come of tonight’s game other than someone who usually spends his time on the far end of the bench using the time between 8:40 and 10:00 pm CST (approximate) to set a career high in various categories.

On the other hand, the vast gulf of talent and athleticism that separates the Univeristy of Kansas men’s basketball team from the Winston-Salem State men’s basketball team renders everything that happens on the court meaningless while the very existence of this game highlights the most unpleasant realities of 21st Century college basketball. What progress is made tonight is not in pursuit of a conference or national championship in 2007 but in pursuit of narrowing the gap in Athletic Department revenue between the University of Kansas and the University of Texas at Austin.

If anyone wants the particulars as to Winston-Salem State’s easily purchased incompetence, check Ken Pomeroy’s wonderful content here and here.

Updated team and individual stats for the Jayhawks are after the jump.

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A few weeks back, Calipari said he wasn’t going anywhere. Now, the tune on the old Coaching Carousel changed and got a little louder as Calipari is said to be in a dangerous flirtation with NC State University according to Gregg Doyel.

Calipari, the Memphis coach, is in serious negotiations with North Carolina State about becoming its next coach, according to a source close to the Wolfpack.

Texas coach Rick Barnes should send a fruit basket to NC State, because by simply dropping his name out there, they got the folks that our beloved flesh eating death machine of Texas Athletics a little motivated, such that Barnes is now making 1.8 million a year, despite potentially losing Tucker and Aldridge.

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes is staying. But LaMarcus Aldridge, his star sophomore forward from Seagoville, is leaving.

According to two sources, Barnes will see his annual base salary jump from $1.3 million to $1.8 million with a $125,000 incentive for reaching the NCAA Tournament.

While Barnes will remain at Texas , he’ll be without Aldridge. The 6-11 forward averaged 15 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.97 blocks per game and has told teammates and the coaching staff that he’s headed for the NBA, according to three sources.

Zone busters. Spark plugs. Pit bulls.

I’m looking for the right words, help me.

The Kansas Jayhawks are rolling as the NCAA tourney looms, and it’s hard to do justice to their offensive tenacity and smash-mouth defensive mentality.

After the Jayhawks beat down the Texas Longhorns, making me look good for having called the win and predicting key stats, the whole state of Kansas started jumping up and down. Out in the prairie, ground hogs thought a minor earthquake was hitting the Midwest.

Nope, it was just the ‘Hawks and their fans, celebrating a pay-back smack-down. Everyone told them not to do it, including the Longhorn cheerleaders, but KU went on and defied the Lone Star curse. They messed with Texas, but the dirt didn’t stick. If anything, NBA lottery pick LaMarcus Aldridge (4 points, 5 rebounds, no blocks) is looking a little dusty now.

As the week progresses, I’ll post some thoughts on KU’s first-round match-up with the Bradley Braves. Bradley features a couple of NBA-caliber players, one of them a 7-footer. Needless to say, the services of the Jayhawk big men will be required once again.

For the moment, I’m simply thrilled with the tough, tough, in-your-face intensity I’m seeing from the Jayhawks. This team appears sold on Bill Self’s strategy, and as a result has a toughness that Roy Williams KU teams always seemed to lack. This concerted aggression is embodied by PG Russell Robinson, whose stat line in the Oklahoma State game included 7 steals, 7 assists, 7 stitches. No problem. Against the Longhorns, Robinson’s stat line resembled a Trophy assembly line: 14 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals.

Gutsy.

UT evidently didn’t like what was written on their championship trophy on Sunday, so they called on the PhD hotshots at their sekrit embossing lab to make a quick replacement, and it was the replacement that got fans and such all excited.

So what did UT choose to place on its trophy? Check out the photo evidence below…

Curiouser and curiouser…Mizzou will probably call for an investigation.

I won’t take anything away from UT. Both defensively and offensively, they played great. If they play like that, they will be in the Final Four.

They just couldn’t miss and I think that demoralized us over time.

A brief rant: It’s time for Dick Vitale to retire. I used to enjoy his enthusiasm, but he’s become an absurd caricature of himself. ESPN should have higher standards for their in-game analysis. Seriously Dick? Talking about the square footage of Shaq’s house? What a slap in the face.

How much are they paying you to ignore the game? ESPN and its viewers ought to demand more.

UT beats anybody in the country tonight, and while 25 points is much much worse than I expected, the season’s not over and our Baby Jays are going to grow up.

Here’s my Saturday Night Special Guarantee: Brandon Rush will be a Jayhawk next year.

Here’s my Saturday Night Wish: Dick Vitale gives up the mic for color commentary. He just doesn’t add anything to the game for anyone. He doesn’t provide any special insight into what’s happening *on the floor. Indeed, he only masks his ignorance of the game by blabbering endlessly about every imaginable topic except that which he should be talking: what’s happening between the baskets.

I’m really not that down about this game. We hit Texas on a blistering night and we really had no chance. Bill will teach these guys a lot from the game and our boys have already shown that they can rebound.

They’ll wake up smiling tomorrow and they’ll rebound strongly.

Have a good night everybody!

 Basketball Shrink^TM is Ken Pomeroy’s little toy that allows you to click on a team’s name on one of his stat pages and see teams that are similar, according to the stats being viewed.  For example, the KU defense is most similar statistically to Florida.  To make a long story short, I rigged up an Excel file that does something similar, but using ALL of the stats listed on Pomeroy’s site, instead of just those from one page.  Also, if a team is particularly good or bad in a category, that category is given more weight.

“Why did you waste your time doing this?” you ask.

My original reason was that I wanted to look at the teams Texas had lost to, to see how similar they were to eachother and to Kansas, but that didn’t prove to be too fruitful.  Along the way, though, I ran across something interesting.  Take a look at the teams Texas is most similar to:

1. Kansas
2. Connecticut
3. Pittsburgh
4. LSU
5. North Carolina

Now look at Kansas:

1. Texas
2. Connecticut
3. LSU
4. Bradley  (not as ridiculous as it first seems - statistically they’re like “Kansas Jr.“)
5. Syracuse

Now, as soon as you WATCH the teams you can see they’re not that similar.  As mentioned earlier today, Texas plays a lot of zone (softies!), while Kansas plays (hard-nosed) man-to-man.  But the results are pretty similar.

Anyway, I just thought I’d offer up what I thought was an interesting little coincidence.  If this is any indication, tomorrow’s game should be a good one.  I guess I should throw up a prediction.  I think KU will hang close but fall in the end.

Kansas 67

Texas 72

Click here for Part One (Team Stats and Backcourts)
All stats are from conference games only.

stats glossary

Rush v. Tucker

One’s essentially a guard, the other’s essentially a forward. They’re both arguably the best players on their respective teams. If forced to make one overriding, potentially foolish prediction, I’d say that the player who makes this matchup of disparate types a mis-match will lead his team to victory.

Brandon Rush is a little more efficient from the field than PJ Tucker…

…but Rush takes a lot more jump shots even though less than a quarter of his field goal attempts are three-point shots. Tucker’s free throw rate is solid in conference play, but well below his season rate.

Brandon Rush is a good rebounder for his size. PJ Tucker is a good rebounder for anybody’s size. The degree to which both players have an advantage on the glass over a typical college small forward is masked to some degree by playing alongside two good rebounders at all times.

Tucker is a better passer and ball-handler than Rush. Both are good defensive players, though Tucker has quicker hands and plays the passing lanes better. Rush has become an effective on-the-ball defender, using good lateral movement to keep smaller players in front him and his long arms to challenge their jump shots. When guarding his man off-the-ball, Rush can still get caught ball-watching and be slow to react.

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Caveat Emptor: my thoughts in an email from early this morning, fraught with speculation and hearsay.

I have concerns about Russell or Mario getting in foul trouble or Gibson/Paulino being hot from the outside.

Texas will have less fouls, but they should - they play a zone.

Their zone has some issues though:

1. UT will likely try to pressure our guards far away from the basket - our guards have shown vulnerability to this pressure and I’d be surprised if they don’t see it. However, that extends the center of gravity of the zone out as well, and opens up some alley-oop lanes along the base line. We’ve done a very good job of exploting those lanes this year and we may be able to pull them back a little bit.

2. Not unlike a delicious donut, there is a hole right in the middle of UT’s 2-3 zone. Rotate JW into that hole and we might see more dunkin and less donut.

3. UT isn’t rotating as well as they were in the beginning of the year, or people are getting better at executing against them.

Here’s my theory there:

UT’s zone was successful at the beginning of the year because it was a new look and people really couldn’t prepare for it. As B12 coaches got more and more game film on them, their zone began to show its weaknesses and B12 coaches played to those weaknesses. The same thing happened to us last year - we struggled late in the year not only because we were complacent, but also because teams began to understand the proper game plan for us - pack it in the lane and force us to beat you from the perimeter. Once Keith lost a step due to injury and JR went cold, it was very hard for us to win.

UT’s a lot better team this year than we were last year, but they are very vulnerable. Their limited depth forces them to play a zone, and since Barnes is a man to man defensive coach, their zone is perhaps more porous than a team like Temple or Syracuse which plays it every game and has players selected to fit into it.

This is where KU has a major advantage - it’s very hard to prepare for KU because you don’t know what to look for. You can’t isolate us offensively because we’ve got a lot of weapons. You really can’t simulate our defensive pressure either, so you just hold your nose, jump in and hope that you can take the icy blast that hits you when Mario and Russ start tightening the screws.

If UT’s zone looks like it has over the last 5 games, KU should be able to handle it.

I could have saved everyone a lot of reading if I had just said this : UT’s zone is like a video game level boss - extremely difficult at first, but once you discover its vulnerable points, it’s merely a matter of attacking them until the giant flesh eating death machine shrivels up and expires into a cloud of gas and leaves you a shiny golden heart.

Am I wrong here?

I’ve got too many tables for a single preview post, so here’s the breakdown:

Part One: Team stats and Backcourts
Part Two: Rush v. Tucker and Post players
Part Three: Prediction

All stats will be from conference games only as the teams played significantly different non-conference schedules and I’m not near clever enough to adjust for quality of competition faced. (Nor am I clever enough to thoroughly cut-and-paste my introduction on the first try.)
Stats glossary

Team Stats

Kansas has almost closed the efficiency gap with Texas. The Jayhawks are more reliant on their defense while the Longhorns have the best offense in the conference by a considerable margin.

There’s not a lot of difference between the two teams in terms of field goal offense and defense or rebounding.

Texas has more of the possessions in their games end with a shot attempt than does Kansas. The Jayhawks and their opponents are more likely to turn the ball over.

It will be incumbent upon the Jayhawks to force Texas into more turnovers. An average Texas possession in conference play is worth 1.18 points to the Longhorns. Over a 67 possession game (Kansas plays at about 70 possessions a game; Texas plays at 64.), there’s a difference of 3 turnovers between the turnover rate Kansas forces on average and the average rate at which Texas turns the ball over. That’s three-and-a-half points the Jayhawks could gain on Saturday.

On the other hand, Texas will likely do a better job of keeping Kansas off the free throw line (their lack of depth forbids them from getting into foul trouble) than the typical conference opponent and could pick up an equal number of points versus the season averages.

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Very, very good.  Ken Pomeroy’s defensive efficiency stats only go back to 2004, but if they keep it up for the rest of the year, Kansas will be the best defense of the past 3 years by a wide margin:

The difference between Kansas and the second best team, Louisville, is as large as the difference between Louisville and the 12th best team, UConn.  How are they doing this?

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That’s the number of warm bodies who watched the Texas Lonhorns’ drubbing of the lowly Baylor Bears last night. KU could probably get 16,000 to watch the team fold laundry on the court, and Texas can barely field a jury.

Until UT can fill the Erwin Center for non-marquee games, and until the Erwin Center no longer plays host to Elephants, Clowns, motorcycle daredevils circumnavigating the innards of a meshy globe, and other circus-related beings, Kietzman’s nonsensical arguments that UT is a superior basketball program ring as hollow as the hearts of the oil-rich UT alumni.

And all the money in the world will do nothing to change that.

That’s why Texas is the flesh eating death machine.