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| One good thing about statistics is they are unemotional. One bad thing about statistics is they are unemotional. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Oops, I’m getting carried away. I’m sitting in my mother’s house on Thanksgiving morning and it seems the house itself stimulates these old midwestern homilies. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are looking forward to the holiday season. It is a time to receive warmly our families and friends. Come to think of it, we Jayhawks are a family of sorts. Perhaps we should think forgiving thoughts toward our brothers in crimson and blue. I know, I know, they betrayed us by looking like second rate chumps on national TV against a team we’d love to claim dominion over. But after all, this is the Thanksgiving season so let’s focus on the good. On second thought, that’s not such a good idea. If we focus on the good, I won’t be able to bring you the statistics for the UNC game. Okay, here’s the plan: let’s focus on some of the things (statistically speaking) we are thankful for in regard to the Jayhawks and then we’ll review the UNC game stats.
Milestone Update
Career Scoring: Kirk scored 13 points against UNC giving him 1161 career points and passing Billy Thomas (1152) and Rick Suttle (1156) for 29th all-time. Next up is Milt Newton at 1166 points. Nick Collison scored 19 points giving him 1459 for his career and remaining in 16th place. Next up is Tony Guy at 1488.
Career Rebounds: Nick had 6 rebounds against UNC giving him 22 for the season. He now has 785 for his career putting him 10th on the all-time list. Next up is Clyde Lovellette with 813.
Let’s take a look back at some of the things we are thankful for as Jayhawks. There are so many things we can be thankful for however, since this column is about numbers let’s limit it to Jayhawks who have made it into the record books.
Jayhawks in the NCAA Record Books
- Danny Manning is No. 1 in most double figure scoring games with 132.
- Wilt Chamberlain has the 13th best single game rebounding total with 36.
- Danny Manning is 8th in career scoring with 2951 points.
- Wilt Chamberlain is 18th all-time in per game scoring average at 29.9 points per game.
- Jeff Boschee is 16 all-time in 3-point field goals made with 338 (10 more would have put him in the top 10 all-time)
- Jacque Vaughn is tied for 21st all-time in career assists at 804.
- Five Jayhawks are in the NCAA record books for most games played in their career. They are Danny Manning (3rd with 147), Ryan Robertson (11th with 142), Kevin Pritchard and Eric Chenowith (t-18th with 138), and Steve Woodberry (t-23rd with 138).
- Two Jayhawks are among the 85 NCAA players in history to record 2000 points and 1000 rebounds. They are, of course, Danny and Raef.
- Clyde Lovellette led the nation in scoring average in 1952 with an average of 28.4 PPG.
- Twenty-nine teams have recorded 33 or more victories in a season. KU has done it 4 times, 1986 (35), 1998 (35), 1997 (34), and 2002 (33). Kentucky leads with 5 33+ win seasons and Duke and UNLV are tied with KU with 4 each.
- Last season KU scored 3365 points ranking as the 20th best season point total in NCAA history.
- In 1986 KU made 55.6% of their field goal attempts ranking them 7th all-time in single season FG%.
- In 1995 the Jayhawks held their opponents to a FG% of 37.8, ranking them 22nd in the all-time single season FG%-defense.
- In 1998 KU recorded 1682 rebounds, placing them 23rd all-time for single season rebound total.
- Kansas has 4 of the top single season assists totals in NCAA history. They are 1986 (7th with 814), 2002 (14th with 767), 1990 (16th with 762), and 1998 (17th with 746).
- The Jayhawks have two seasons which rank in the top 25 all-time single season assist per game average. They are 1990 (11th with 21.8) and 2002 (21st with 20.7).
- KU has two seasons which rank in the NCAA all-time top 25 for blocks. In 1997 KU recorded 222 blocks (24th all-time) and in 1998 we recorded 220 blocks (25th all-time).
- Since 1948 KU has led the nation in winning % three times. They were 1952 (92.9%), 1997 (94.4%), and 2002 (89.2%).
- Last season KU led the nation in scoring average for the first time with an average of 90.9 PPG.
- KU has led the nation in FG% twice, both under Roy Williams. They did it in 1990 shooting 53.3% and last season shooting 50.6%.
- KU also recorded a nation-leading FG%-Defense one time. In 2001 we held our opponents to a shooting % of 37.8% to lead the nation.
- Here’s a nice one. KU has led the nation in assists both of the last two seasons. Assists records have only been recorded since 1984.
- Of course KU ranks 3rd all-time in victories with 1771. They are 18 behind North Carolina and 46 behind Kentucky.
- KU ranks 4th all-time in winning % with an overall winning % of 70.4%. UNLV (72.0%), UNC (73.3%), and Kentucky (76.2%) rank ahead of KU.
- KU has the 10th best current home winning streak at 16 games.
- Kansas has been ranked No.1 in the AP poll in 39 weekly polls (since 1952). This ranks them 7th. Here is a piece of basketball trivia. Since 1952 (AP poll) only 47 teams have ever been ranked number 1. Ten teams have resided at the top of the polls 69.3% of the time.
- KU has 13 consensus AA’s, the 8th most of all teams. They are Fred Pralle (1938), Howard Engleman (1941), Charles Black (1943), Clyde Lovellette (1951 & 1952), Wilt Chamberlain (1957 & 1958), Danny Manning (1987 & 1988), Raef LaFrentz (1997 & 1998), Paul Pierce (1998), and Drew Gooden (2002).
- KU has 13 Academic All-Americans which ties them for 2nd with Indiana. UCLA is first with 17.
Roy Williams is forging quite a career and will finish his career very prominently in the NCAA coaching record books. Here are few of Roy’s highlights:
- Winningest active coach (80.7%)
- 3rd all-time winning % behind Claire Bee (82.6%) and Adolph Rupp (82.2%).
- Roy will finish the season somewhere around 90th on the all-time victory list. As a rule of thumb he will move up about 10 places for every 30-35 victories.
- For the last 6 seasons Roy has set the record for most wins for a coach of his tenure. He already has more than enough set the record for his 15th season, he needs 2 more victories to set the record for his 16th season, and will need to win 24 games over the next 3 seasons to set the record for 17 seasons. Basically Roy will set a new record every year he coaches.
- Roy has been named coach of the year in 3 seasons by at least one of the 7 COY voting entities.
There are many other stats we could talk about, but I’m feeling thankful enough at this point. Now that we’re basking in the glow of our wonderful heritage, let’s turn our eyes to the UNC game.
Player of the Game
This is a very easy call. Nick Collison is the only player worthy of player of the game. He actually played a decent game. The same cannot be said of any of his teammates. Nick scored 19 points on 7 of 11 shooting and 4 for 6 from the FT line. He had 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 TOs, 2 blocks and 1 steal. He finished with a team high NEP of 25.2 and a 29.6 n-NEP. No one else was even close. Take a look at these anemic stats.
Looking at the year to date stats we see some definite room for improvement. SE is Shooting Efficiency. It is the percent of points actually scored to the points that would have been scored if a player made every shot (FG & FT). It is a single number that makes an attempt to measure a players comprehensive shooting efficiency. The target is 60%. Hinrich has been sub-par on ball handling (A/TO of 0.89) and Miles has been downright abysmal shooting the ball.
| Player | NEP | n-NEP | A/TO | SE
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|---|
| Nick Collison | 84.2 | 37.8 | 0.75 | 0.621
| | Kirk Hinrich | 69.3 | 29.5 | 0.89 | 0.563
| | Keith Langford | 65.4 | 34.0 | 1.50 | 0.687
| | Wayne Simien | 60.2 | 26.4 | 0.67 | 0.506
| | Aaron Miles | 42.7 | 18.6 | 1.33 | 0.270
| | Bryant Nash | 17.9 | 14.9 | 0.67 | 0.351
| | Jeff Graves | 12.2 | 18.8 | 0.40 | 0.417
| | Jeff Hawkins | 11.8 | 24.9 | | 0.250
| | Michael Lee | 8.8 | 15.2 | 0.00 | 0.750
| | Moulaye Niang | 6.1 | 9.7 | 0.00 | 0.500
| | Christian Moody | -0.4 | -2.5 | | 0.000
| | Stephen Vinson | -1.5 | -11.9 | 0.00 | 0.111
| | Brett Olson | -2.8 | -22.3 | 0.00 | 0.000
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Significant Statistics
One statistic jumps out like a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest. T U R N O V E R S!!! The Jayhawks had 21 TOs and a %LOB of 21.4%. If you watched the game, you know that the majority of those TOs were due to plain ol' sloppy play. We were a step slow and made very bad decisions. Kirk and Aaron combined for a A/TO ratio of 0.55. That is just pathetic. Another significant stat is Keith’s normalized FGA rate of 9.66 (7 FGA in 29 minutes). Keith just kind of disappeared on offense. Part of that is that we kept giving the ball up before we had a chance to shoot. Another glaring stat was our shooting %. We led the nation last season at 50.9% and came into this game shooting better than 54%. We managed to shoot only 40.7% (22 of 54) from the field. Wayne Simien missed a slam dunk and 2 easy layups. Miles shot 1 for 6 and his attempts were makeable 15 footers for the most part. This was one of those games where everyone seemed to be entranced and completely out of sync. Here is another one of those amazing stats. The Tar Heels blocked 20.4% of our field goal attempts. To give you a perspective, last season only 6.6% of our FGA were blocked and we never came close to 20% in a game. There is no question about it, we were simply slower and less ready to play than UNC. They caught us on an off night and simply spanked our little feathered behinds all over the court. I would wager no one will come close to blocking that many shots again this year.
Is there any good news at all? Well we did outrebound them quite handily. We garnered 40% of the boards on our offensive glass and an amazing 79% on our defensive glass. Despite the gross lack of weak side help against UNC’s spread offense we limited them to 45.4% shooting overall and only 0.736 points per possession (PPP). Any time we keep an opponent under 0.75 PPP we almost always win. Last season we allowed an average PPP of 0.816 and still led the nation in winning percentage. How did we lose when we held UNC to 45.4% shooting, outrebounded them by 12, held their PPP under 0.750 and went to the line 4 more times than they did? Turnovers and blocked shots!!!!! Both are a factor of sloppy play and lack of concentration and intensity. It is either that or a gross disparity in athleticism which is not the case.
The bottom line of this game is chalk it up to an off game where we were not prepared offensively. Our heads were somewhere in Times Square but definitely not in Madison Square Garden. Look for a much more prepared team against Florida on Friday.
Stats all for now, folks.
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