Critical Stat

KU is 5th nationally with an assist to turnover ratio of 1.67. To show the importance of this stat, 21 of the AP top 25 teams are in the top 50 nationally of A/TO. There is no other stat that corresponds this closely to the top teams.

....hmmmm.... I wonder what these stats would be if we had talent and not just coaching?

ha, love the sarcasm but seriously the data i think support my point. a teams assist to turnover ratio is probably the best offensive measure of how good a job the coach is doing. it means he has them in the right schemes, optimizing strengths, mitigating weaknesses. having the ball in the right players hands. having them prepared for matchups. rotating and substituting appropriately. especially on this team where i wld argue only one of the seven has exceptional handles ( devonte); the rest average to above average ( excluding asu where svi was plain awful in this regard). again, let me repeat, i love our players as much as any fan on this board. we have over the 14 self yrs had very good players, some of whom we thought wld be very hard to replace. he did. we had some great asst coaches and there was concern on this board that we might not be as successful when they moved on. we have been. the constant has been self. he has won with nadir tharpe ( omg) and elijah johnson ( ugh) as point guards. he has won with brady morningstar and tyrell read dominating the ball ( i love them too but certainly not top of the heep talent wise). he made landon lucas a stud when everyone on this board had given up on him. he made freakin frank mason player of the year for the entire country. frank mason who when recruited was an afterthought to the fans but self warned us he wld be special. and then when he kept driving the lane as a freshman and sophmore without future mason success the board was frustrated but self said just wait. so frank worked harder on his game than any jayhawk ever i think. but he had a partner who knew exactly how to use him and what he needed to work on and what kind of players to put around him. so i take nothing away from frank but would he have been poy for any other coach than self? i think not. so while we have had very nice players we have a coach who is exceptional at every element of his profession- talent evaluation, x’s and o’s, game preparation, recruiting, motivation, teaching, learning, changing, etc, etc. more and more he reminds me of larry brown without the negatives and that may be as good a package as has ever existed. if he stays long enough -and i sure hope he does - when he passes phog in wins we will need to put up another statue outside AFH. i just think its important for as many fans as possible to realize what we are living thru while we are living it as opposed to after the fact. this is just my small contribution to that. dont mean to be a bore on this. g

Another factor here is that we're playing a lot of "small ball". 4 of our starting 5 are guards, and 3 of those have (or could) play PG at some point. DG, Newman/Garrett(whoever is starting), and Svi have all had experience in a position where A/TO is probably the most important stat, and being able to handle and distribute the ball without making mistakes is enormously important. Throw in Vick, who while playing the 4 is actually a more of a natural 2 guard and you've got a lot of guys who have had to handle the ball well in order to get to this point in their basketball careers.

It would also be interesting to see an "average ranking" of our defensive SOS compared to the other top teams to see if our A/TO has been bolstered by scheduling Texas Southern, Toledo, and Omaha.

The truth will come out soon enough. We play at WVU on Monday 1/15, and with the combination of Thuggyball and the typical home-friendly refs in Morgantown, it will be interesting to see how well we take care of the rock in probably the most adverse conditions in the nation.

Nevertheless, as obvious as it seems, NOT handing the ball over to the other team is a solid first step for winning games. Funny how teams only seem to score when they have the ball in their possession, isn't it?!?