Here’s what should sting KU Jayhawks most after NCAA Tournament loss to USC Trojans
This is all difficult to sort out, because the way Kansas lost 85-51 to USC on Monday night in the men’s NCAA Tournament ... well, it simply isn’t that easy to do.
Teams don’t lose by 34 — or have the result go 33 points away from the Vegas spread — without some combination of randomness, poor shooting luck and bad overall play.
KU had the trifecta going Monday night, and because of that, there will be no storybook ending that coach Bill Self had hoped for a few weeks ago.
But here’s the most disappointing part for the Jayhawks: They weren’t who they thought they’d become in the most important game of the season.
Self was most encouraged late in the year because KU had bought into an identity he’d desired. The Jayhawks hounded you defensively, and even when their shots didn’t fall, they weren’t afraid to play ugly basketball to keep things close for a while before finally pulling away when the lid came off the basket.
Players repeated this mantra in press conferences. Marcus Garrett led the charge as last season’s national defensive player of the year, and the rest of the Jayhawks followed his lead by switching and talking and making it ridiculously tough to score those easy baskets that Self hates to surrender.
Knowing all that ... KU lost this USC game in the final eight minutes of the first half.
The Jayhawks — uncharacteristically — completely lost their way. And it wasn’t just one guy either.
Christian Braun got confused in transition defense to allow an and-one, with teammate Mitch Lightfoot not helping him while failing to protect the rim. Ochai Agbaji was beaten on a straight-line drive, then shortly after was caught napping on a backcut for another two.
Later, Braun got switched onto Evan Mobley — the likely No. 2 pick in this year’s NBA Draft — then simply left him before a shot attempt, allowing the 7-footer a free run at the rim for a putback dunk. The next time down, USC point guard Tahj Eaddy picked up a transition basket — after KU had just made a shot on the other end — when Lightfoot hedged a ball screen before abandoning Eaddy to give him a free path to the bucket.
That was basically it. USC made 10 of 12 shots in the final eight minutes of the first half — six of those on layups and dunks — while extending an eight-point lead to 19.
“They just went on a big run and stretched the lead out at halftime,” Garrett said. “To start the second half, it felt like we could never get the game back from ‘em.”
On the list of “controllables,” this is at the top. KU wanted to be known for its defense, and it entered as a top-10 team nationally in that area thanks to an ability to keep teams away from the rim.
That didn’t happen Monday ... though USC obviously was helped by much more than that.
The Trojans shot way over their heads from three — a pattern that has repeated itself now for four consecutive Jayhawks’ NCAA Tournament losses under Self. At one point, USC was 10-for-15 from three while led by Isaiah Mobley, who had doubled his career-high for threes while making each of his four attempts.
Listen, this part was lucky. USC probably gained at least 20 points in three-point variance based on its 11-for-18 outside shooting compared to KU’s 6-for-25, and while shot selection plays some part, most of this is simply the basketball gods not smiling on the Jayhawks at the most unfortunate time.
There’s also this statistical nugget: KU had seven turnovers to USC’s 14, a stat line that had happened 31 times previously in the 2020-21 season. In those games, the teams that had seven turnovers went 22-9, with the worst loss coming by 24.
KU, you’ll notice, just lost by 34.
College basketball is a volatile game. Making one’s whole season come down to 40 minutes just adds chaos to chaos, and obviously, the Jayhawks’ final game didn’t come close to reflecting what it had been for the 29 before that.
Here’s what will sting most for KU, though: It had a chance to be itself late in that first half. It could have locked in, buckled down defensively and grinded its way to a six-point halftime margin that it had overcome many other times before.
The Jayhawks, instead, lost their composure. They got rattled. And in the process, they gave up the one quality that had become their identity over the past 10 games.
Bad luck played a part, sure. But KU’s fortunes, in the end, weren’t dictated by misfortune.
They were sealed by a USC first-half layup line — created only by mistakes the Jayhawks believed were in their past.
This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
