Related pages Coach's comments Box score Season stats Possession analysis Explanation of NEP

It's been a couple games since the last Inside the Numbers report and you can sum up these games with, "Hallelujah!!" I was able to attend the Oklahoma game with third row seats. It certainly gives you a different flavor of the game than the Lazy Boy in front of the 36" TV. The Jayhawks looked really solid. It is no secret the last couple of years they have struggled with poise and execution all too often. The Oklahoma and Nebraska games were certainly not perfect but they definitely looked like a contender in talent, execution and poise. The way the Jayhawks are playing has to bring a smile to a Jayhawk fan's face. They are solidly dominating good teams yet clearly have room for improvement. They have, in fact, been improving quite nicely this year. The last two years they would look like world beaters one game and high schoolers the next. They never could sustain their improvement. When you look at the numbers for the last couple games it validates the assessment they are indeed accelerating. The biggest numbers to know right now is 3 and 0. Those are the wins and losses of KU in conference play. Let's recap where KU stands in the Big 12. Scoring Offense 83.9 3rd Scoring Defense 68.1 6th Scoring Margin 15.8 2nd Free Throw % 65.3% 8th Field Goal % (Offense) 52.0% 1st Field Goal % (Defense) 37.3% 2nd 3 Point FG % (Offense) 41.4% 2nd 3 Point FG% (Defense) 31.8% 4th Rebound Margin 10.5 2nd Blocked Shots 5.00 2nd Assists 20.79 1st Steals 6.93 8th Turnover Margin -1.93 8th Assist/TO Ratio 1.21 2nd Home Attendance 16,050 1st Road Attendance 12,896 1st Neutral Attendance 11,673 1st Overall Attendance 13,986 1st Here are the Jayhawks who rank in the top 10 in the Big 12. Scoring Kenny Gregory 16.9 PPG 5th Rebounding Eric Chenowith 9.4 RPG 1st " Drew Gooden 8.1 RPG 6th " Kenny Gregory 7.6 RPG 10th Field Goal % Nick Collison 63.3% 3rd " Kenny Gregory 62.0% 4th Assists Kirk Hinrich 6.79% 3rd Free Throw % Kirk Hinrich 87.8% 2nd 3 Point FG% Kirk Hinrich 57.9% 1st Blocked Shots Eric Chenowith 1.64 BPG 6th " Nick Collison 1.36 BPG 7th " Drew Gooden 1.07 BPG 9th Assist/TO Jeff Boschee 3.11 1st " Kirk Hinrich 2.02 6th Additionally Kirk is ranked 11th nationally in assist per game, Nick is ranked 10th nationally in FG%, and Kirk is 8th nationally in 3-point FG%. As a team the Jayhawks are 18th in scoring offense, 13th in scoring margin, 5th in winning %, 1st in FG%, and 12th in 3-point FG%. There is no question this team is being fashioned into a serious contender. As a subjective assessment the defense against the Sooners and the Cornhuskers was very good at times and great at other times. We held Oklahoma to 31.9% from the floor which is 15% below their season average. We held the Cornhuskers 10% below their season average of 51.0%. Even more impressive we held OU to a PPP (point per possession) of 0.678. Only SMS and Washburn have had lower PPP's against KU this season. Nebraska was only slightly better at 0.705. Our average opponent for the season is 0.765 and the three Big 12 opponents have averaged 0.775. Conversely KU had a PPP of 0.831 against OU's smothering defense and 0.903 against Nebraska. For the season the Jayhawks are averaging 0.940 and 0.922 in Big 12 play. The one problem that is persisting is ball control. Against Oklahoma we lost the ball on 20.5% of our possessions and 18.3% against Nebraska. This is right at our season average of 19.1% but that number should be closer to 15.0%. The main reason this has not hurt us is because our offensive efficiency is very high (PPP=0.940). Actually we had our second worst ball-handling game of the year against OU with an Assist/TO ratio of 0.76. Only the 0.55 meltdown against Wake Forest was worse. On the season we are at an A/TO ratio of 1.23 good for second in the Big 12. OU really played great defense and it showed in the assist numbers. Only 56.5% of the FG's were assisted. This is 10% below the season average of 66.5%. We did much better against Nebraska with 69.7% of our FG's assisted. One major stat against Nebraska was blocks. Nick had 6 alone and the team had 9. This equates to 16.4% of Nebraska's FGA's. In other words we blocked 1 out of 6 shots the Cornhuskers tried. That is almost double our season average of 8.4%. Our defense was tougher against Nebraska where we stole the ball on 9.1% of their possessions compared to 7.9% on the season. Another standout statistic in the Nebraska game was the offensive rebounding. Now don't miss this one because it is truly impressive. KU grabbed 48.7% of the rebounds on the offensive glass. Considering our season average is a decent 37.7% this was an outstanding effort. Unfortunately we didn't do nearly as well on the defensive glass. We only grabbed 59% compared to a season average of 72.6%. Over the whole season we have scored 63.1% of our points from 2 pointers, 17.9% from treys and 19.0% from FT's. That has fluctuated pretty wildly. Aginst OU we bombed from 3 point land with 26.1% of our points from the arc but against Nebraska we only scored 10.7% from the arc. Our team FG% leads the nation at 51.9%. It has been slowly coming down. Hopefully we can keep it up over 50%. Free throws are definitely an Achilles heel at 65.1% on the season. If we continue to average about 24 FT's per game and hit 65% that means we will lose about 2 or 3 points per game. As for the NEP the team has been very consistently up over 100. For a frame of reference last year we averaged just over 90. We are definitely an improved team this year. On the season we are averaging 99.7. Our three worst NEP games were Wake Forest at 37.8, Ohio State at 72.6, and Oklahoma at 77.8. Now for individual stats. Nick wins player of the game honors against Nebraska and Kenny ran away with player of the game against OU. Nick's 23.39 NEP against Nebraska was the 5th best individual performance of the year and Kenny's 25.67 against Oklahoma was the 3rd best performance of the year. Considering the competition these may have been two of the very best performances of the year. Here are the top 10 individual performances so far this year. BOISE STATE Gregory 33.24 TULSA Chenowith 30.22 Oklahoma Gregory 25.67 DePaul Collison 25.62 NEBRASKA Collison 23.39 BOISE STATE Chenowith 22.60 DePaul Gooden 22.37 BOISE STATE Gooden 22.26 St. Johns Gooden 21.95 Texas Tech Gooden 21.89 Looking at the norm-NEP tells a similar story. BOISE STATE Gregory 49.25 TULSA Chenowith 40.30 BOISE STATE Chenowith 39.30 NEBRASKA Collison 35.99 BOISE STATE Gooden 35.62 SW Missouri St. Gooden 35.45 SW Missouri St. Collison 33.38 M. TENNESSEE ST. Chenowith 33.32 TULSA Collison 32.93 Texas Tech Gooden 32.43 If you look at these numbers you notice something very interesting. Specifically the absence of a guard. That is largely due to the KU focus on frontcourt scoring. Kirk actually leads the team in NEP but has played substantially more minutes than everyone else. Hence his norm NEP is below theirs. Here is the season-to-date gross NEP's for the team. Player Gross NEP Norm NEP Min Hinrich 262 21.6 485 Gooden 247 23.9 413 Gregory 239 27.1 353 Collison 225 24.3 371 Chenowith 196 23.5 335 Boschee 158 13.6 467 Axtell 74 17.9 166 Carey 44 14.6 120 Kinsey 24 7.4 131 Zerbe 21 44.3 19 Nash 18 10.6 68 Kappelmann 6 16.2 14 Ballard 4 4.5 35 Harrison 4 25.4 6 You can see Kirk leads the team in gross NEP but has played quite a bit more than anyone else. Fourteen wins against 1 loss is another very nice statistic. Roy has 343 wins in his career which places him only 373 games from breaking into the top 10. If he can win 29 games per season he will need to coach 13 more years. 14 seasons would move him into 6th and 15 seasons would move him into 3rd. His 0.805 winning % puts him atop the active coaches list and 2nd only to Adolph Rupp among the top 15 winningest coaches. He is 15 in all-time tournament wins and with 3 wins per year for 15 years would easily move into the top 4. He is currently 10th all-time in winning % in the NCAA tourney. A good run this year could move him up to 7th and possibly 6th. We have much to look forward to in Jayhawk land.

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