Before last Saturday this was gonna be a much more positive post. You see KU has been playing really well lately. After two straight overtime games against K-State and Colorado Kansas started to hit their stride and was beating teams they were supposed to beat the way they were supposed to beat them.
Xavier Henry has started to play like he did in the beginning of the season and is finally putting up the big numbers again. With the emergence of Marcus Morris, if Henry continues to excel then that leaves four legitimate scoring options on this team (with Sherron and Cole). That is a scary reality to face for opposing teams come March.
Throw on top of that the fact that Tyshawn Taylor has cracked the starting lineup again and has gone from "maddeningly inconsistent" to just "loses focus sometimes." This is big news as Kansas needs Taylor to show up and show up big time come March. This team has relied too much on Sherron and if they are gonna go undefeated in March (or at least the part that matters) they need to have other players step up. Alrdrich, Mc. Morris, and Henry have showed they can if needed, and if Taylor joins that group then there really is nobody who can match up with the Jayhawks. The problem with Taylor is he plays with the ebb and flow of the game. It seems his skills are moreso dependent on his teams momentum than any other player.
So what have been the problems these last few weeks (prior to OK State)? Even though KU has been playing very well there are still a few issues. For one, the team needs to keep focus for an entire game. KU held big leads against both Texas and Oklahoma but their lack of focus late in the second half, feeling they had the game in hand, led to those teams sticking around a lot longer than they should have. Come tournament time you cannot lose focus for one instant because it could cost you the game. This has and will continue to be the biggest challenge for Coach Self this year, finding a way to coach his team to keep focus. He doesn't need to coach the talent, he's knows he's got that, but focus is something that is the coach's responsibility.
As part of their lack of focus this team has had way too many turnovers. This is something that I have noticed during the Bill Self era. Even when KU won the National Championship they had a lot of turnovers. I cannot remember the numbers right off hand but I believe they had the most turnovers for a National Champion in something like 20 years or so, not a good stat (although I will take it if it means a Championship, but that is not the point). I wonder at times if this means that Self pushes his offensive system too hard and it causes his players to force the issue which creates unnecessary turnovers. If the offense is run as it should there are little turnovers and KU is as good as anybody (see 2008 National Championship), but occasionally it can lead to a lot of turnovers. Am I reading too much in to this? Possibly, but I think, as always, turnovers are a huge concern.
Now I have to discuss the elephant in the room, the dreadful performance at OK State. This had trap game written all over it, I sad as much before the game started. Tip off came and before you knew it KU was in a 36-20 hole. Really? The best team in the nation down 16 with 5 minutes to go in the first half? Yes, this was not good news. KU went on to mount a slight comeback but ended up losing by 8 in a game that they were truly never really in to begin with. Their focus was lacking, offense was inconsistent, defense lacked intensity, overall, it was just a poor showing. Now, in KU's defense, there is no team in the country that would have beaten OK State on Saturday. They shot an astronomical 60% from the field and over 50% from beyond the arc!!! Those are video game like numbers, I mean, that just doesn't happen in real life. This is the equivalent of me randomly picking up Brooklyn Decker at a bar and taking her home. Fun to think about, but it could never happen, right? Well at least I now have some hope next time Brooklyn Decker comes to KC...
What does this all mean for KU now that it is finally March? There are a few implications to these recent events. The re-emergence of Taylor and Henry can only mean good things at this point in the season. However, at different points in some games and throughout the whole OK State game, some weaknesses of KU have been exposed. They can be lax on defense and lose focus. The ultimate hope is that this is just because the team knows tournament time is coming and is just waiting for that to explode. I look to UNC last year when they won the National Championship, they had a lot of losses that made you do a double take. Virginia Tech? Miami? Florida State? UNC lost to all of them and didn't even win their conference tournament. However, they did not win a game in the tournament by less than 10 points. They knew what part of the season truly mattered and they were focused for the tournament. I feel that ultimately that is what is conflicting this KU team. All the talk of Final Fours and National Championships can make a team antzy to get to the tournament just go through the motions at different points during the season. I don't think anybody has quite the certainty that people did about UNC last year, but you would have to be nuts to think KU isn't going to make one hell of a run at this. Whether they will actually win their second National Championship in three years remains to be seen, but if they can keep focused, keep the intensity up, and players like Marcus Morris, Henry, and Taylor continue to step up, there are few teams who can play on the same level as KU.
No comments:
Post a Comment