Suppose I had a crystal ball and I told you we would play a home game against Iowa State in which we shot 50% from the field, 45.5% from the three point line, outrebound them by 4, shoot 80% from the free throw line, have two fewer fouls than ISU, have 7 blocks and better than a 1:1 assist/TO ratio. You would feel pretty good about the game. In fact if you really though about it you would probably say the only way Iowa State could in that scenario was to play a near perfect game. Well surprise. That is exactly what happened last night at Allen Fieldhouse. Now the million dollar question is this. Did Iowa State simply play a flawless game offensively or was KU's defense sloppy and weak? If you look at the numbers you really have no clue. You can see the Cyclones shot 46.7% from the field. Okay that's not too bad for the Jayhawks. It's above our opponent's season average of 37.8% but still not outstanding. They were 12 of 21 from the free throw line for 57.1%. Not much to do with our defense but you have to like the numbers. We kept them off the offensive glass fairly well allowing them to grab only 32.3% of their offensive rebounds. That is better than the 34.3 we have allowed thus far in conference play. They only had 10 assists which would tend to indicate we played the passing lanes well and did not allow effective passing. Well now, this all sounds pretty favorable. How in the world could we lose a game when just about every statistic was in our favor? It's actually very simple. There are three numbers you need to know.....11.....17.....and 25. What are the significance of 11, 17, and 25? That would be the number of 3 point field goals made, the three point field goal attempts, and the average distance from which they shot those three point shots. This was a game that simply cannot be accurately measured by the numbers alone. The shooting on the part of Iowa State was outstanding and KU's defense was not the cause. It's easy to disparage the defense since the fact is Iowa State made a high percentage of shots. Yet we can never know what the result of a more perimeter pressing defense would have been. The game plan was obviously designed to force the perimeter shot in lieu of allowing penetration and easy layups or point blank shots from the frontcourt. When you succeed in implementing that part of your plan and your opponent responds with lights out shooting you can always question the game plan but as I said the alternative may have proven worse. The bottom line of this game was Iowa State shot lights out from the arc. End of story!!

Assuming the game plan was to dig the interior and risk the perimeter shooting, let's look at ISU's season stats to see if that was reasonable. Below is a table of the shooting percentages of the Cyclones.

You will notice right off this team can flat out shoot the ball. The three main frontcourt players (Shirley, Rancik, & Pearson) all shoot better than 60%. The four key backcourt players also shoot extremely well from the arc. Notice that Power shoots much better on three pointers than on two pointers. The others are only slightly better from 2 point range. Also notice that Sullivan and Kantrail shoot about 57% of their shots from behind the arc. Overall the team has shot 43.6% from three point land for the season and they have stepped it up to 45.5% in the conference. Overall from the field they are shooting 49.0% from the season and have fallen to 46.2% in conference. From two point range only they are shooting 51.0% for the season and 46.6% in the conference. Since treys are worth 1.5 times a 2 pointer (duh) than you can make an argument shooting 45.5% from the arc is equivalent to shooting (1.5*45.5=) 68.3% from inside the arc. Therefore it seems clear you should focus on the outside shot since they are far more dangerous at and equivalent shooting percentage of 68.3% than the paltry 46.6% they shoot inside the arc. I mean this couldn't be any clearer, right? Roy really missed the boat on this one. Why in the world would we focus on interior defense and digging interior passes when they are 50% more deadly on the perimeter? Somebody should call Coach and clue him in, shouldn't they?

Well as Paul Harvey would say, here's the rest of the story. Yes it is true that Iowa St. leads the Big XII in 3 Point FG% and they are third in overall shooting %. Yes it is true that Iowa St. can kill you from the outside and that has to be considered in the defensive scheme. BUT!!!!!!! Let's look at some other numbers. Let's look at where Iowa St. really gets their points. Below is a table showing the source percentages of points for all Big XII teams.

You can see Iowa St. gets only 23.2% of their offense from the three point shot. That is middle of the pack at best. Also they shoot more free throws than all but Texas A&M. The vast majority of their FT's come from penetration and interior passing. So clearly now you are faced with a dilemma in defending Iowa St. They have a strong inside scoring and penetration game that must be neutralized but they also are very effective from the arc. After all, they are ranked in the top 15 and likely in the top 10 next week. This kind of effectiveness is exactly what makes a top ranked team. We should know. The Jayhawks lead the league in FG% and are second only to the Cyclones in 3 point FG%. We also have a dominant inside attack but can be deadly from the arc. The main difference is we depend far less on the long range bombing than do most of our Big XII counterparts. You can also see from the percent of points scored from FT's (KU is last in the league at 18.8%) that we do not have a particularly fearful penetration or attack offense. That is a broad generalization for the scope of that data but not completely without validity. Conversely we lead the league by far in % of assisted FG's. The logic is we pass better resulting in more open shots and therefore making a higher percentage. The by product of open shots, other than a higher shooting %, is these shots are less likely to result in a foul yielding FT's. So evry coin has two sides. But back to the defensive dilemma. Obviously the defensive scheme is not so simple as who do we guard....the inside or outside guys. Certainly the scheme contemplates guarding everyone to a degree. It is a reality that a team will shoot 50 to 70 times per game. Recognizing this the overall goal on defense is to make sure they take the shots the defense would prefer and not allowing them to execute their set plays. So now we are zeroing in on how to defend a team like the Cyclones. We've established they can kill you from the outside so you better be prepared for that. We've also established they get over 75% from their interior game so you surely better be prepared for that. We recognize they will inevitably shoot 60 times or so, so now we have to decide what are priorities are.

Given the above information the priorities were most likely to stop the penetration and interior passing and force them to shoot outside. Why, you ask, would we do that knowing their effectiveness is so high on the outside shot. Well think about it. Their high percentage on three point shots is largely due to the fact they only take them when they are open. We need to look no further than our own Kirk Hinrich to see this illustrated. Is Kirk a better shooter than Boschee? Unquestionably he has a better percentage. I think we can all see he has a better percentage not because his intrinsic shooting ability is superior to Bo's. He has a better percentage because he is far more selective and shoots generally with less frequency. So you see, if you force a team to shoot more from the outside than they generally do you almost always decrease their effectiveness. No defensive game plan can compensate for a team that nailed multiple 27 foot three pointers as ISU did last night. They had actually shot 12 for 18 earlier in the year against Oklahoma but that was at home. Now for my ace of spades. Guess what ISU's road 3 point FG% in the Big XII is. Through 5 games prior to the KU game they had shot 33.4% on the road and 53.4% at home. Not only that but they had scored less than 15% of their points on the road from the three point shot compared to over 35% at home. That's less than 4 treys per game on the road and right at 10 at home. This all ties in with the conventional wisdom that a hostile crowd will have the biggest effect on the jump shooter and a much less effect on the inside shooter. Now is it a little more clear why Coach would design a defensive scheme to shut down the dribble or pass penetration. Of course the plan does not include leaving open three point shots but when you dig on the inside pass you risk an open or partially open trey. Give ISU credit. They busted the odds all to heck. They had BY FAR their best road game all year.

Okay please email me now and tell me what an idiot I am or how naive or whatever. I am a shameless Roy supporter. I do not support him simply out of blind faith. I support him because he is a fine coach that generally does the right thing. Sometimes your game plan backfires when a team plays unconsciously as ISU did last night. We did not lose.....ISU very simply won. In spite of all this we had a chance to win it in the end and that's almost all you can ask. Now if we just could have hit the shot................

Okay, now for a quick review of the individual performances. Once again the player of the game is a very close call between Eric and Nick. I am going to break new ground and give it to both of them. Nick had the highest gross NEP but Eric with fewer minutes was a little more effective. Did you notice the balanced scoring. We had 6 players in double figures and Luke had 7. Had he made that last shot we would have had 7 players in double figures. As a team we shot 50% and 45.5% from the arc. We also shot a season 3rd best 80% from the FT line. We outrebounded them and blocked 7 shots (Nick had 4). Nice overall game. Our ball handling was off a little and our %LOB (% loss of ball) was 16.3%. That is below our season average of 17.8% but we had a string of 4 games below 16% (averaged 13.7%). Let's take a look at the NEP data.

Just as a general observation, it has to make you feel good to look at these numbers and see the tremendous balance on the team. Since I have been tracking the NEP data this is easily the most balanced team KU has had. Granted that only goes back three years.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your week.

Email Don