Inside the Numbers - Loyola

by CorpusJayhawk

Rebounding - We outrebounded Loyola by 7 grabbing 38% of offensive boards and 71% of defensive. Both are above the standard goals of 35% offensive and 70% defensive but this was a small team. I rate this a relatively poor rebounding performance based on the competition.

For the season we are still an anemic 30.8% of offensive boards. Self has to be frustrated with that. Selden has been a culprit but not tonight. This was the bigs. If we want to compete in the Big 12 we are going to have to get much better on the boards. Mark my word!!

We shot 51% for the game although it seemed like we missed about 75% of the shots around the rim. I don't care that we shot 51%, with the shot selection we were able to get we should have shot 60%. Again, 51% is good on a normal night but not tonight. This needs to tighten up. Ellis needs to consistently hit 60%. We continue to hit 3's at a nice clip, 40% in this game. 46% or 12-26 from the FT line. Pathetic. Against weak competition we hit 54.7% FG efficiency. Not very good. We should average for the year over 54% so that puts this game in perspective. We have to shoot better in tougher games. For the season we are still shooting 45.7% from the arc. Hooah!! I love it. Keep it up. But we are hitting 54.5% for 2's. Do the math. 45.7% from 3 is a FG efficiency of 69%. We should be running way more plays for 3 point range. If we are going to shoot under 60% from 2 then we need to focus far more on the 3. Actually we need to get much better around the rim.

Opponent Shooting - We held Loyola to 36.1%. That is decent. Overall a good defensive game. We are allowing our opponents to shoot 42.8% from the field for the season. NO BUENO!! I am getting pretty frustrated with this poor defense over the last 2-3 years. In Self's 1st 10 seasons the Jayhawks held the opponent to about 38% FG%. So 43% is not good. Tighten it up.

KU went inside a lot more tonight shooting 73% of their shots inside the arc. I understand given the smaller competition. They better hit those shots at a better than 54% rate though.

Ball Handling - A pretty average game all in all. We actually did not move the ball as well tonight as we did in Maui. Not sure why. We were a lot more freelance tonight. Only 46% of FG's were assisted. But the A/TO of 1.31 is okay at best. We continue on a pace for the best ever A/TO ratio which is 1.64 on the year. Outstanding. The guys were just not fully engaged tonight. I guess the lower level of competition.

Overall - We held them to a PPP of 0.76 which is pretty decent. I would expect such a number against this level of competition. KU had an offensive PPP of 1.16 which is also decent in the big scheme of things but again not considering the opponent. COnsider this, we are averaging a PPP of 1.21 on the year so we actually did worse than average against Loyala and they are the weakest team we have played.

All in all this was a disappointing game from a numbers standpoint. Against Iowa St. or Oklahoma these numbers would be amazing. Against this team they are ho-hum.