Whew What a game

I feel like the guys really turned up the D on the last possession. If we can get all of them to commit to defense like that all game we could be good. Malik continues to struggle to shoot the ball but he doesn't force many and is working hard on the floor. A pretty quiet game for Legerald. Hopefully we continue to improve.

Didn't see any of the game, but looking at the box score this morning, was underwhelmed by HCBS's use of Cunliffe, especially given how poorly Newman has played recently. See OSU beat previously undefeated FSU in Sunrise Fl and OU whipped WSU in Wichita's Intrust Center (a jinxed place for Kansas teams - KSU lost to Tulsa there a week ago).
Think the Big 12 is a lot tougher than some think - WVU, TCU, & TT are all rolling.

Yes Cunliffe did not get a lot of time on the floor. Malik and Marcus were terrible at shooting the ball. A combined 0-10 is not going to cut it. They did have combined 9 rebounds 3 assists 3 steals and only 2 turnovers.

I agree, our defense just doesn't have the intensity right now that we seemed to have at the beginning of the year. My
son's comment on the Jayhawks during the game last night... 'They just can't seem to consistently get [defensive] stops. Makes it hard for us to go on scoring runs"

This one felt like a classic Big 12 conference game. Great experience, but man a team we should have been able to pull away from for a fairly comfortable win..

Omaha should give us a chance to get our mojo back I hope!

kj

Something is missing chemistry wise in this team. As I watched the last three games I keep thinking, "Something is terribly wrong in Jayhawkland" and I am not a negative nellie kinda gal. I know it isn't a deep team and maybe they are just tired but there is a cohesiveness and a fire missing.

We had 2.5 guys show up last night. Malik did nothing, and Svi was horrible for 37 minutes. Vick showed spurts where he'd show off his amazing talent, and then disappear for long stretches. Devonte played great and Dok had a good game.

When I saw Svi get the ball to launch up what was eventually the game-winner, I cringed. Looking at the box score before that shot, he was 1-6 from three. Very ballsy call for HCBS to call on Svi to take that shot with as poorly as he was shooting it prior to that. Luckily it went in, but I was hoping that Devonte could get to the rim and tie the game with either a layup or at the foul line. At that moment, overtime looked like a better option than Svi taking another 3.

Let's think about this for a moment: Say Svi misses that shot and NU gets the ball. It's pretty much over at that point, and Svi would have undoubtedly felt like he cost us the game. So that shot was not only important for the game, but even more so for Svi going forward with confidence.

Glad we're playing a cupcake at home next. We need to get our heads right.

The roughest part about the season so far is that there's no backup plan. In any other year, if Svi or Newman are having an off night, you can go to your backup guys. If Dok's in foul trouble, you'd typically have another big to sub in for him. To me that's the toughest part of this team: if things are going in the wrong direction, there aren't many alternatives available.

Gonna be growing some grey hair if we don't get some more guys eligible AND ready to play (obviously HCBS didn't like what he saw from Cunliffe and yanked him pretty quick).

I agree it was a gutsy call but if you have faith that Svi is a good shooter you make that call. I think it will do his confidence a lot of good to have made that shot. Conversely, as you point out, if he misses that shot he could have blamed himself for the loss and it could have made things far worse. I think Bill felt he knew his guys and that was the right call.

I do not know what the future holds for this team right now. We really need to get better at creating easy shots. Hopefully that will happen but I am not seeing how at this point.