Kansas 77, Baylor 85. Who'd a thunk it? Was this just an example of a team getting super-heated and playing out of their mind or was this just an abortion on the part of the Jayhawks? Well my contention it was a little bit of both. Check that.....it was a lot of one (you guess) and a little of the other. In my candid opinion this is the worst defensive effort on the part of the Jayhawks this year. I do not say that lightly. I have actually reviewed the past games just to be confident when I make that assertion. I make that assessment not simply from the numbers alone. Watching the game I was astonished at the number of missed assignments on defense, the seemingly cavalier attitude, the sleepwalking enthusiasm, and the outright lack of response to an urgent situation. I will make a case from the numbers this was the worst defensive effort of the year. If you watched the game you have likely made that assessment already in your own mind. In that case I will give you plenty of ammunition to justify it. I can not sugarcoat this. It was a total defensive meltdown. What effect did Drew have? We can only guess. Clearly Drew is a key part of the offensive scheme. Does he have that much of an affect on the defense. The answer is NO! He has turned into a decent defensive player and definitely lends a degree of enthusiasm. Eric is supposed to be the defensive stopper and he was non compos mentos last night. In the last 6 possessions Eric was grossly out of position on three. Jeff has been a steady defensive performer this year but seemed incredibly preoccupied last night. He missed a number of assignments. Greenleaf lit him up when he was guarding him. Even Kenny was more than challenged by Black. My hat goes off to Black. He is a great player. As for the rest of the Bears they are not slouches but they are not a good team. They are not a bad team but I will demonstrate beyond a doubt they are not a great team. Given their mediocrity a loss to them by the Jayhawks is even more indication of dreadful execution by the Jayhawks. Even though Baylor played above their heads we should have won with a mediocre effort. Our effort was far from mediocre.

******GRATUITOUS STATEMENT******
Having said all the above let me aver vociferously, I am a believer!!! I believe in this club and in Roy. They may not be the best team in the country and they certainly are not without flaw. Those of you who know me know I am relentlessly optimistic. I realize the odds are long for a final four but it is possible. Trashing the team with ad hominem attacks serves no good purpose. Therefore I will assess the performance as objectively and honestly under the banner of love for the team.
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Why did we lose? As I mentioned above we lost primarily because of horrendous defense. Let's look at my support. First of all I watched the game. As I said there were too many missed assignments to count. They were not just getting open perimeter shots, they were getting open dunks and layups. What do the numbers tell us? For starters the We allowed more PPP (point per possession) than any other game this year other than the UCLA game. Considering this team is nowhere near as talented as UCLA this was clearly the most inept job we did at stopping them from scoring.

We allowed Baylor to shoot 51.9% from the field. That is the highest anyone has shot against KU this season. Better than the lights out shooting of Kapono with UCLA and better than Wake Forest. Baylor has shot 45.6% at home this season and 42.7% on the road. Bear in mind these percentages come against the likes of Arkansas -Little Rock and lesser foes. They couldn't average but 45.6% against one of the 30 worst schedules in the nation. Then in marches the 6th ranked Jayhawks and they go lights out. No matter how pumped up they are talent counts for something. We should never have allowed them to shoot this well. Maybe even worse than the overall shooting is their 3 point shooting. They shot 41.2% from the arc. This compares to a home average (once again against very poor competition) 30.4% and an overall 3 point shooting % of 30.2%. For you information this rankd second to last in the Big 12. Convinced yet?

How well did we defend on keeping them off the offensive glass? Well they pulled down 36.7% of the offensive rebounds against us and they have been averaging 30.4% at home. They did 20% better than their average against very inferior teams. We are supposed to be one of the best rebounding teams in the country. Not against Baylor. Heck, we have been allowing 33.7% of the offensive boards. They even did 10% better than our average opponent on the road. Are they 10% better than our average competition? Not!!!!

Several good measures of the intensity of the defense are the FG's made divided by the possessions. This sort of incorporates the steals, blocks and shooting % all in one. A high number here means pretty rotten defense. You can see Baylor is the third worst of the season for KU. Only Iowa St. and UCLA were worse. They are unarguably much better teams. Convinced?

Well I could go on but what's the point. We played a team that is ranked in the Big12 as follows:

Not much to brag about. They are in the bottom four in just about every offensive category. Yet they looked like the 1996 Chicago Bulls against us.

Well other than the defense how did we fare? Baylor does have a solid defense. They rank as follows in defensive categories:

We had a PPP of 0.865 compared to our conference average of 0.919 and a Baylor opponent average of 0.818. Right about in the middle of the two averages. Our %LOB was 16.9% compared to 16.3% in conference games. Below average ball handling. How about offensive and passing execution? Well we had an assist to FGA ratio of 0.4 against Baylor. That is beyond pathetic. As you can see it is by far our worst showing of the year. That tells us the passing and set play execution was extremely poor. Either that or Baylor is an offensive dynamo. They are a good defensive team but not that good. They are also only the fourth team to hold us under 1.00 for an Assist to TO ratio. They held us to 0.80, well below our season average of 1.31 in conference games.

We also shot only 43.5% from the field and 29.0% from the arc. Here is a recap of our shooting percentages this season;

If you weight the three point shots and adjust the overall shooting % for that weighting than the Baylor game is our second worst shooting game this season. Only the Wake Forest game was worse. As far as other stuff, we only had three blocks (3rd lowest of the season) and 5 steals (3rd lowest of the season). Just not a very good game.

You might be inclined at this point to think every person on the team stunk up the joint. Not so. No one had a really stupendous game but Kirk had a pretty solid game overall. Kenny and Nick were satisfactory. Surprisingly Nash had a very solid game. Eric and Luke basically were liabilities and Jeff Boschee was a non-factor. Here are the NEP's for the Baylor game.

In closing my analysis of the Baylor game I will venture into uncharted territory. I am loathe to question Roy's coaching. He has forgotten 6.465 times as much about coaching as I will know assuming I live to my actuarially predicted age of 83. However, here is an assessment of the game plan. We have used the perimeter motion offense for years with a few modifications. The main idea is get the ball into the big guys and get a high percentage shot. If they collapse kick it back out and pass around the perimeter until you get an open shot or another opportunity to get it back inside. The vast majority of our points are scored on the inside. Last night it appeared to be business as usual. The first two possessions we pounded it in only to get a TO or a very poor shot. With Drew on the bench we are left with Eric. Eric has not shown he can be the consistent offensive force Drew is. Therefore the game plan has to be a little suspect without Drew. They were effective at sealing off Nick and Eric just wasn't up to the task on offense last night. Hence our game plan was basically not working at all. Yet we kept it all the way through the first half and for about the first 4 or 5 minutes in the second half. You'll notice with about 15 or 16 minutes to go in the game Kirk looked like he was cut loose to play more aggressive with penetration and pull-up's. The result was a 26 to 6 run. I felt like Kirk could be very effective penetrating against the Bears and he has shown a nice ability to score or kick it out to Bo. We scored 55 in the second half largely due to Kirk's penetration and more one-on-one aggressive style of play. Plus Nash came in and picked up the defense a little. Until the last 6 or seven possessions when our defense completely broke down (probably fatigue) we were making a strong move. Just a thought.

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