The two words Bill Self used to spark his team ... after KU’s first plan didn’t work
All week, Kansas coach Bill Self was worried about defending Iowa State’s ball screens — so much so that he and the KU coaching staff came up with a new defensive strategy to stop them.
There was one problem: In the early part of KU’s 79-53 road victory over Iowa State, that game plan flopped.
“So we just stopped that the first timeout,” Self said with a smile.
The message after that: Don’t overthink. Go back to the defensive principles that KU has played most of season.
Meanwhile, Self also emphasized a two-word mantra — one he repeated five times during a first-half possession so loudly that it was clearly heard on the ESPN+ broadcast:
“Load up.”
Doing that resulted immediately in a long missed three from Iowa State. Then a Devon Dotson spinning transition layup. Then a Cyclones timeout.
Then Self roaring “Load up!” to his players in exuberance as they ran back to the bench.
“I thought we did a pretty good job on defense,” KU forward Silvio De Sousa said, “and that was the most important thing with this game.”
Let’s start with the big picture, as KU’s defense continued a run of ridiculous success.
In the last five games, no Jayhawks opponent has scored more than 57 points. Iowa State’s 0.83 points per possession Wednesday was its worst offensive mark since 2018 — in other words, the lowest output of the Tyrese Haliburton era.
And that was the second part of the impressive outing. Haliburton — a future NBA lottery pick — was coming off a triple-double in his previous game while also emerging as one of the Big 12’s top scoring threats. Here was his point total in his previous eight contests: 25, 23, 19, 19, 17, 22, 22, 22.
Against KU, he had five points on 2-for-7 shooting. The point guard’s final basket came on a three in a garbage time too, with 6:03 left and the Cyclones trailing by 25.
“They did a really good job with their middle pick-and-roll coverage,” Iowa State coach Steve Prohm said. “They ice it. They’re big. They’re physical. They really pinched in.”
That last sentence was especially important and goes back to Self’s roars from the sideline. Whether you call it “pinching in” or “loading up,” KU’s defense certainly worked together to make it difficult on Iowa State’s guards.
Let’s go back to the moment when Self screamed five times to his team. Notice KU’s defensive positioning when Haliburton is coming around the ball screen.
The important ones to look at here are Tristan Enaruna and Christian Braun. Both are crowding the middle of the court, playing well off their men to “load up” in help position in an attempt to clog up that initial Iowa State action.
“The only really thing we had was in the corner,” Prohm said.
And when Iowa State started missing those corner threes and eventually became hesitant to take them ... KU’s defense won out over the next 20 minutes.
Over that period of time — the eight-minute mark of the first half to the eight-minute mark of the second — Iowa State scored 14 points.
“We wanted to load up as much as possible, have active hands, high hands at all times when the guard’s coming off the screen,” Dotson said. “We had a pretty good gameplan coming into it, and for the most part, we executed.”
Following the effort, KU’s defense improved to second nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, with only a rounding error is keeping the Jayhawks behind Virginia.
It’s well deserved. This KU defense has quickness and size, wingspan and athleticism, and now appears to be showing an ability to adapt on the fly.
“We’re just learning every day,” De Sousa said, “and we’re getting better.”
That was evident Wednesday.
Some great defenses have players with natural gifts that can make up for mistakes. Others have players who focus on the nuances to take opponents out of what they do.
KU, in this moment, appears to have both.
And it’s that characteristic, more than any other, that should make Self optimistic about this team while preparing for the months ahead.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 12:23 AM.
