Breaking down the game for people with low basketball IQ

while i can understand some people are upset that their team lost, i mean i was upset when the K-State football team lost at home to an instate school and it took me a while to figure out the team we lost to did have better players and were better coached.  denial is a tough thing to overcome. 

now, i’m no basketball coach but i was there and i’ve watched it again on my dvr and I’m quite convinced uk played their A-game and lost to simply the better team.  here’s what happened–

1. uk outshot K-State 48.1% to 42.9% so its not like ku had a poor shooting night and kstate a great one.

2. true, K-State hit 6 more 3’s than uk.  but even if every shot counted as 2 points, K-State would still win by 3 points so that point is immaterial.

3. uk shot 20% above their normal ft percentage.  K-State only shot about 7% above theirs, so you could argue K-State should have won by an extra 2 more points if the teams shot their normal ft percentage.  uk played better than normal here.

4. K-State outrebounded uk by 4.  looking at the stats K-State averages 43.0 rebounds per game and uk 38.9 so looks like nothing out of the ordinary there (http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/ncb/leaders?groupId=50&cat=teamrbd&sort=AVG).  looks like uk played up to their potential against us on the boards. 

5. uk had 7 blocks and they average 6.5, so little better than normal there. 

6. but uk didn’t have as many steals as normal!! true, they had 3 when they normally average 10.  this is the biggest factor in the game and this you can blame coach self (pictured below with wig on) for.  its clear to me, by bill self’s choice, that when you decide to double and sometimes triple team a player down low that uk would not be able to do their usual trapping on the outside thus negating the supposed notion that uk’s guards would dominate the game.  thats a coaching decision and i guess it “worked” because Beasley did have trouble scoring inside and drawing fouls (which weren’t being called on either team inside anyway unless it was some kind of obvious reach or your name is darren kent).  uk’s guards simply didn’t rattle K-State’s guards one on one.  Pullen, by the way, will be better than any of uk’s guards by his junior year (and showed for this game that he might already be with his complete domination of uk’s senior guard and resident extraterrestrial r. robinson) 

6a. the above mentioned decision by coach self, which he never wavered from, allowed Beasley to go outside and the slower ku inside guys like kaun, jackson, and aldridge couldn’t stay with him and he went 4-4 from the arch.  lets face it, you can’t guard beasley with any strategy, you just have to hope he has an off night like he did against xavier.  this is why he’ll go #1 overall in the draft.

sorry but i dont see how uk played a bad game here.  they simply lost to a better coached and athletically superior team. 

Coach Self after the game: “K-State had us sped up” Roy Williams must be turning over in his grave.

to respond to a few other things:

i settled for giving uk their one year in football (and dealt with giving up a long winning streak) so its ok to give us ours.  and i recall uk fans getting pretty excited when you beat a 4-7 football team and you’ve torn down the goalposts against us twice in a row at home against mediocre unranked football teams. 

the big 12 is the #3 conference in the rpi http://www.kenpom.com/confrank.php?y=2008 so its not as bad as it has been the past few years when uk dominated it (7th last year, 5th in ‘06).

as for winning the big 12, KSU does have an easier road than uk…our toughest game left is probably at baylor and at uk.  we have texas at home.  uk still has to go to a&m and texas.  maybe if both teams can win out uk can play for a split title!

as for next year uk will lose jackson, kaun, robinson, stewart, and likely rush and possibly arthur.  good luck replacing all of that in a year.  uk will take a step back next year too.  a couple of 4-star top 20 at their position freshmen recruits won’t replace everything lost in one season for sure (you need 5-star nba ready studs like K-State to do that).

KSU loses stewart and young and likely beasley and perhaps walker.  but it looks like all big 12 2nd teamer hoskins will try to come back and really no one else in the country has a beasley and still teams can be pretty good. and i think we can still compete for top 4 in the big 12 and a tourney spot year in and year out.  personally, i believe KSU and uk will be pretty even next season. 

I wish i could find a ticket for that game in lawrence, but i had my fun there in ‘06 so been there done that.

KSU 2-3 last 5 reg season matchups with uk