Kansas basketball’s defense has been good. But Bill Self is concerned by this area
Kansas’ defense, the same one that allowed 91 points on 51.5% shooting and was torched for 14 3s on 36 attempts in Tuesday’s 34-point loss to BYU, actually entered the Big 12 men’s basketball battle as one of the country’s top units on that end.
“Our defense has been great statistically,” KU coach Bill Self said before a crushing loss — one that tied for the biggest margin of defeat in the 22-year Self era.
Here are the stats that support what Self’s saying. …
KU entered the BYU annihilation first in the Big 12 and 10th nationally in field-goal percentage defense (38.6%) and second in the league and also 10th nationally in 3-point percentage defense (29.2%). Also, the Jayhawks entered the contest leading the Big 12 and ranking 26th nationally in blocked shots per game (4.9).
No. 23 KU (17-9, 8-7) ranked fourth in the conference at 68.7 points allowed per game entering the day.
So what was the problem on defense Tuesday — and in some other games during a stretch in which KU has gone 3-5? (The Jayhawks are also 6-6 in their last 12 contests.)
“We don’t quite create havoc. We don’t create turnovers and we haven’t in a long while,” Self lamented. “We haven’t all year long. That hasn’t been our expertise.
“You’ve got to have active hands when you are in help position and you can do different things to try to create some offense from our defense. That’s something that hasn’t occurred,” Self stated. “We are a team that doesn’t get near as many easy baskets as what teams that we’ve had in the past get, and there’s reasons why, but, but I think that we are far better at doing that than what we’re displaying.”
KU this season has forced the opposition into 10.9 turnovers per game, fewest turnovers per game caused by KU’s defense in the entire 22-year Self era. The Jayhawks have forced 10.1 turnovers per game in 15 Big 12 contests. That ranks 15th in the 16-team league. Only Utah (9.3 turnovers per game) has forced fewer opponent mistakes.
KU’s defense has accounted for 6.1 steals a game in all games, worst rate since the 2013-14 season when KU registered 5.8 steals per contest. KU has 5.3 steals a game in 15 league games, which is tied for lowest average in the conference with Utah.
In looking at the turnover count in some of the recent losses … Utah committed just seven turnovers in a 74-67 win over the Jayhawks on Saturday night in Salt Lake City. Kansas State had 10 turnovers in an 81-73 victory on Feb. 8 in Manhattan; Baylor 17 turnovers in an 80-71 victory (one in which the Bears settled down in overcoming a 21-point deficit) on Feb. 1 in Waco; Houston five turnovers in a 92-86 double-OT win on Jan. 25 in Lawrence and Iowa State 13 turnovers in a 74-57 win on Jan. 15 in Ames.
ISU coincidentally had seven turnovers in a 69-52 loss to KU on Feb. 3 in Allen and K-State only five turnovers in an 84-74 loss to KU in Allen. BYU had 10 turnovers Tuesday.
West Virginia, perhaps in a sign of things to come, turned it over just six times in a stunning 62-61 victory on Dec. 31 in Lawrence.
“I’d like to be able to pressure some but not at the expense of getting beat (on defense),” Self said. “We don’t have a great pressure team. That’s not who we are and haven’t been that way all year long. But we can be sounder and certainly be in position that when a team makes a mistake, we can take advantage of the mistakes. And we’re not doing that as well as what I think we can.”
Of allowing some wide-open 3s against BYU, Self said: “A lot of it was probably some mistakes (on switches). When you’re switching five, you don’t have to help, and we helped when we’re switching five.
“Though they (Cougars) made some open shots — I won’t look forward to watching the tape, but when I do watch the tape — I’ll bet you some of those shots that they made were probably not the highest percentage shots that they could get. They just made them
“When you leave Knell (Trevin, 4-of-7 from 3 vs. KU) or Saunders (Richie, 4-of-8 from 3) open, you can bank on them making one or two, but they even shot it better than that, Self explained. “When we didn’t switch ball screens, we weren’t effective either, because they were so good and so big and so long that they could get into the inside of the arc and then find an open guy when we had to guard the roll man.
“So we tried to switch. We still didn’t eliminate that when there’s absolutely no reason to help because we’re switching. The other thing is, they were so good in transition and so fast. We played on our heels the whole night. We never felt like we were on our toes and we had them on their heels. They played downhill the whole night, and especially in transition.”
KU big man Hunter Dickinson, who had a tough two-game trip to Utah on offense (12 points, 5-of-13 shooting vs. BYU; 12 points 4-of-12 shooting in 7-point loss to Utah), had this to say about KU’s defensive woes vs. the Cougars:
“I think if you had to point to one thing, it would probably just be communication and being tight around our switches,” Dickinson said. “That’s something that we emphasized going into the game, and that was kind of our game plan with the switch. They are so deadly from 3 and they do a really good job of spacing you out and making you guard a lot of areas. So when they set screens, we weren’t as attached as we needed to be.
“And so that kind of gave them a lot of space to come off and shoot cleanly. And then I would say in transition, those two things are probably the reasons why they got so many (points).”
KU has five-games remaining in the Big 12 season, including home games against top-25 teams Texas Tech and Arizona and road contests at top-25 squad Houston and at Colorado (a team that played KU tough in a 71-59 loss at Allen Fieldhouse on Feb. 11). The Jayhawks will now try to regroup in all aspects heading into Saturday’s 3 p.m. home game versus Oklahoma State.
KU obviously will discuss a game plan in depth, but as far as soul-searching team meetings regarding the mental aspect of the game? Those may — or may not — be on the agenda.
“One thing about being here (in Utah five days), you can get everybody together. We’ve had talks and all that stuff but, you know what, there’s a point in time it’s enough talk,” Self said. “And I think you could say that, and I think the players would probably agree, we’re about talked out. They’re tired of me telling them the same things all the time and and that kind of stuff. We just need to go out and do it because we want to do it.
“I mean, there’s nothing that says that we’re not trying to do it, but we need to. We need to go out and make our own breaks, as opposed to kind of hoping something good happens.”
