Five bold predictions and a March projection for the KU Jayhawks basketball season
One can still understand why so much is expected of this Kansas men’s basketball team.
Coach Bill Self has compiled a loaded roster, featuring a rare blend of experience (Lagerald Vick and Udoka Azubuike), high-end transfers (Dedric and K.J. Lawson and Charlie Moore) and talented freshmen (Quentin Grimes, Devon Dotson, David McCormack).
The Jayhawks will be challenged with a tough nonconference schedule and could experience some growing pains early. That doesn’t change the fact that this team will be the heavy favorite for a 15th straight Big 12 regular-season championship ... with national-championship aspirations coming soon after that.
Here are five bold predictions for the upcoming season.
Five bold predictions
Dedric Lawson will win Big 12 Player of the Year: The coaches picked Kansas State’s Dean Wade in the preseason, but it’s likely they’re not going to get this one right. Dedric Lawson, a transfer who averaged 19 and 10 during his sophomore season at Memphis, is going to be the best player on the league’s best team, which should give him a leg up in the race for individual honors. It should help that his raw averages should be impressive this year too. Lawson, as he showed in KU’s two exhibition games, can fill it up in points, rebounds and assists. Even if Wade has similar production, Lawson will likely have the momentum thanks to the team he plays for.
KU will be the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 overall seed: KU’s nonconference schedule is ridiculous, ranked as the top of any Power Five school according to Bart Torvik’s advanced stats. Not only do the Jayhawks take on high-end opponents like Kentucky, Michigan State and Villanova, but they also don’t bottom out, as they’re unlikely to play any bottom-half NCAA team. What does it mean? When all teams are judged by the quadrant system later this season (Jordan Sperber explains well here why there are better ways, but I digress), KU will easily have the most “quality” victories of any team, which is an aspect the committee seems to overvalue. In other words, the Jayhawks — thanks to smart scheduling — are likely to have and end-of-season résumé that will lap the field.
40 percent of KU’s shots will be threes: Self had a history of shying away from three-pointers ... until the last two seasons. Here are the percentage of shots KU attempted from three in Self’s first 15 years at KU: 29, 32, 28, 26, 29, 31, 31, 32, 30, 29, 29, 28, 33, 36, 41. It would reason that the Jayhawks, with all their frontcourt depth this season, would shy away from perimeter shots while trying to pound it inside. Still, it seems like Self came to appreciate how spacing the floor helped his last two offenses, and at least early, KU has looked more comfortable running its 4-out, 1-in offense over everything else. It would be unexpected for this team put up the volume of threes that last year’s roster did. Still, I could see the Jayhawks firing away a bunch from out there, especially if it helps to create more room in the paint for guys like Lawson and Azubuike.
40 percent of opponents’ shots will be threes: Teams playing against KU attempted 39 percent of their shots from the outside last year, and there’s no reason to think that number will go down. The Jayhawks should have solid rim protection with their big men inside, and the additions of Grimes and Dotson should only make it tougher for teams to get where they want to off the bounce. Self’s primary defensive emphasis is keeping teams away from the rim with strong help, and because of that, foes should quickly learn their best chance at beating KU will be launching any and all open looks from deep.
This will be Self’s best defensive rebounding team: It would be quite a feat after last season. KU, while playing a primary four-guard lineup, ranked 283rd in defensive rebounding percentage — by far the worst mark in Self’s 15-year tenure. With the additions of Dedric Lawson, McCormack and Grimes, though, this facet should immediately become one of KU’s greatest strengths. Self’s best defensive rebounding team was the 2010-11 team (15th nationally), and I think this roster has a higher ceiling than that.
Regular-season projection: 26-5 overall, 15-3 Big 12.
It’ll be tough to escape the nonconference slate with only two losses, but Self’s teams always have a knack for winning more close games than you’d expect. The Big 12 offers no gimmes again this year, which means KU should drop a few ... but likely not enough to be seriously challenged in the league.
March projection: National championship game
It’s a fool’s errand to predict how far a team will advance in the one-and-done NCAA Tournament, but as of this moment, whose chances do you like better than KU’s? The Jayhawks shouldn’t be expected to make the national title game, but they definitely should be among a handful of favorites to cut down the nets in April.
Jesse Newell
Jesse Newell covers University of Kansas athletics for The Star.
