KU's season is over...

Because the offense imploded against UCLA. The Jayhawks' 23 of 56 shooting and 12 offensive rebounds look pretty good when you compare it to 21 turnovers and 5 of 11 foul shooting.

The Bruins packed the lane, got the crowd behind them, and got the support of refs, who called just 14 fouls on them and just 33 on both teams for the game. KU opponents with this strategy were 2-0 this year- the other was Texas Tech.

Mario Chalmers registered 6 steals, 7 assists, 7 turnovers, and 7 misses to go with 2 points. In doing so he set the KU single season record for steals at 97.

Season review coming soon...

Kentucky 76, Kansas 88 and other pertinent scores

A great win, a demonstrative win. Bill Self had a play ready to go against Kentucky's press and it worked practically the whole game. Hot shooting, good 2nd half ballhandling and rebounding, and a pace that wore Kentucky down were all in play as Kansas led by 20 at one point.

Sasha Kaun had 6 points because of 3 missed layups and 2 missed free throws, but he had the play of the game when he drew Randolph Morris's 3rd foul early in the 2nd half. From that point Kansas went on a 13-2 run and never looked back. Morris scored 22 points on 14 free throws but his inability to play more minutes was critical.

Kentucky scored 20 points the last 5 minutes of the game to bump their offensive efficiency up to 115.1. However, for the weekend, KU scored 1.266 points per possession, shot 48.3% from 2, 60.5% from 3, and 65.3% from the line, and had 48 assists to just 22 turnovers. If it seems like the 3-pointer carried the Jayhawks, keep in mind that both Niagara and Kentucky played zone to limit KU's close looks and that if one excludes some misses by bench players the free throw shooting was actually quite good.

USC 87, Texas 68: The Trojans broke it open with an 18-3 run in the 2nd half. Kevin Durant and D.J. Augustin shot 12 for 32 from the field for 36 points. The Big 12 is now 5-2 in the tournament.

Virginia Tech 48, Southern Illinois 63: SIU had 11 player play but 4 of them scored 59 of the Salukis' points. VT made their 2's but missed 3's and free throws while registering only 3 assists.

Purdue 67, Florida 74: Florida has serious consistency issues. I doubt it will happen but Butler may hit enough timely 3's to beat them.

Indiana 49, UCLA 54: The only shooting that wasn't horrible in this one was the Bruins going 18 of 24 from the line.

VCU 79, Pittsburgh 84, OT: Pitt blew a 19 point lead and missed 2 gamewinning free throws in regulation but prevailed in overtime. It seems to me that Pitt lacks the killer instinct to close teams out for good. Their game against UCLA will be an ugly one.

UK-KU Preview

Number 1 seed Kansas (31-4) faces number 8 seed Kentucky (22-11) at the United Center in Chicago at 4:00 CT today.

The History

Kentucky is 19-5 all time against Kansas, but lost 73-46 last year at Allen Fieldhouse and 65-59 the year before at Rupp Arena.

Last year in a 1 vs. 8 game Kentucky played UConn and cut an 11 point second half deficit down to 2 in the last minute before losing 87-83. Many people believe that because this is Kentucky, and because this is the postseason, they will play way above their heads.

Kentucky's Offense

Raw Tempo:  67.7 poss/40 min

                   Offense
Raw Efficiency :  107.9 ( 66)
Adj Efficiency :  118.3 ( 14)     

Kentucky's offense seems to be as mediocre as Kansas's was in 2004 and then in 2006. While they have faced the hardest schedule in the nation, they have rarely broken their season average in efficiency against any good defenses.

Kentucky's Four Factors on offense:

                 Offense (rank)
Effective FG%  :   53.9 ( 30)
Turnover Pct.  :   20.9 (142)
Off. Rebound%  :   34.2 (147)
Free Throw Rate:   25.8 (146)

Kentucky tries to do a bit of everything on offense and as a result they do nothing with any great success. Their guards shoot a lot of 3's but hit only 35.4% of them. Their guards will shoot in the midrange but not with a great deal of proficiency. The bulk of their eFG% number comes from Randolph Morris, who shoots 59%. Morris is a good, strong post-up player but is at his best when he gets to the line (where he shoots just 67%) or when he gets garbage buckets. Otherwise, for a team who starts an oversized guard at the 4 and has 2 oversized point guards they are not great at ballhandling, rebounding, or shooting free throws (70%).
While Kentucky did establish 2nd and 3rd options to Morris this year in Joe Crawford and Ramel Bradley, neither of these players especially scare me unless UK does something to cause poor defensive closeouts by KU.

Kentucky's Defense

Raw Tempo:  67.7 poss/40 min

                      Defense
Raw Efficiency :   98.2 ( 78)
Adj Efficiency :   90.1 ( 24)

Kentucky's defense is mediocre and their good defensive game against Scottie Reynolds and a bunch of stiffs was their first in a long time.

Kentucky's Four Factors on defense:

                 Defense (rank)
Effective FG%  :   46.9 ( 52)
Turnover Pct.  :   18.5 (301)
Off. Rebound%  :   32.1 (101)
Free Throw Rate:   27.4 ( 13)

Kansas doesn't want to use the free throw line, so Kentucky's poor FG defense, defensive pressure, and defensive rebounding play right into KU's hands. Morris and some of the people at the end of UK's bench are good shotblockers but the loss of Rajon Rondo means they rarely steal the ball.

There's nothing that suggests this game should be close. The refs and or hot UK shooting may keep it close, but on paper it's still a large mismatch.

Kentucky 62
Kansas 75

Niagara 67, Kansas 107 and other pertinent scores

A nice blowout win; a nice showcase for all the players on the team including Brady Morningstar who surprised me with his dunk. There were a season high 86 possessions in this one, and Kansas had its best shooting day since the Nebraska game at Allen Fieldhouse.

Villanova 58, Kentucky 67: Kentucky contained Scottie the Ballhog Reynolds and held down Nova's supporting cast and then pulled away with about 10 minutes to go. Most KU fans would rather see a KU-UK game so I salute Tubby Smith for pulling this one out.

Illinois 52, Virginia Tech 54: Tech trailed by 10 with 4:37 left and scored the last 12 points of the game. Either they are ready for SIU's defense and pace, or they will be as frustrated by it as they were for the majority of this game.

Holy Cross 51, Southern Illinois 61: If you don't shoot well against SIU you're cooked.

VCU 79, Duke 77: VCU may be this year's George Mason.

Bracket Thoughts

Better than their seed: UCLA (2), Marquette (8), Texas (4), Xavier (9)

Worse than their seed: Washington State (3), Ohio State (1), Pittsburgh (3)

Can't win away from home: Georgia Tech (10), Michigan State (9), Virginia (4), Tennessee (5)

Best region: East

Worst region: Midwest

Final Four: Florida, Kansas, Georgetown, Texas A&M

Kansas 88, Texas 84

Amazing. From down 32-10 to up 65-60, from down 78-74 to up 86-81.

After making 40 of 72 2-pointers (55.6%) to power past Oklahoma and Kansas State, the Jayhawks only made 22 of 54 today (40.7%). KU made up for it with 3's and turnovers forced.

For only the 2nd time (the 1st was against Texas last week) I can remember with this group of players, there were 4 of them with huge games. Wright, Rush, Chalmers, and Collins combined for 75 points on 60 FGA's.

Julian Wright has learned how to get his points, instead of having to be set up for them. He understands how to use his shoulders as well as any player in college basketball, and his footwork is much improved.

Hopefully the 1 seeds go to Kansas, OSU, Florida, and UCLA so that Kansas can be in the Midwest regional.

Too much basketball

and not enough time to write about it.

Kansas won today by making 22 of 39 2's, being +6 in turnovers and making Oklahoma shoot 15 of 48 from the field in a 64-47 win.

In their last 4 games against OU, Kansas has made just 9 of 42 3-pointers which is 21.4%.

Saturday Update

Lots of games today and I missed most of them.

Okie State dropped 6-9 in conference when they lost at Baylor... JamesOn Curry had 40 points but it didn't matter.

#6 A&M blew out Missouri in the second half.

#4 Wisconsin needed a gamewinner with 4 seconds left to avoid losing at home to Michigan State.

#25 Virginia practically handed UNC the ACC Title in Winston-Salem.

#2 UCLA trailed at Washington 48-32 with 10 minutes left, cut the lead to 1 by making some 3's, but lost by 10.

#1 (in name only) Ohio State trailed by 5 with 4 minutes left at Michigan and finished on a 10-1 run to win it.

#11 Southern Illinois got a putback with 3 seconds left to beat Bradley.

UT-KU Postgame

Big 12 Champs!

Texas started the game 11 of 13 on 3's and scored 28 points in just 6 minutes at one point to claim their biggest lead of the game at 51-35. It was only a matter of time until Texas cooled off, after their absurd start from beyond the arc, they finished the game 3 for their last 17 from deep.

KU used a 46-21 run over 14 minutes to grab their biggest lead at 81-72 with 8 minutes left. It seemed at that point like they would run away and hide, and that they would certainly crack the century mark. Even with the lead at 88-80 with 37 seconds left, it seemed like it would be an easy finish.

It wasn't to be. Kansas made just 4 of 9 free throws down the stretch, and allowed Texas to close to 88-86 with 23 seconds remaining. Then, after Julian Wright hit a free throw, he rejected D.J. Augustin's game-tying attempt and grabbed the rebound before getting it to Russell Robinson who hit one free throw for the final margin.

There were so many heroes for Kansas in this game. Julian Wright had 17 points, 13 rebounds, and 5 assists, and while he didn't always make good decisions the production was there. Sasha Kaun had 9 points and 5 boards in just 17 minutes, and didn't turn it over or miss a free throw (he missed 3 of 6 shots). Brandon Rush was shaky but put up 15 points and 7 boards, and each of his 3 triples were of the difficult variety. Robinson and Mario Chalmers made their open looks and finished with a combined 38 points and 7 assists on 18 shot attempts, although each missed from the line down the stretch. For the game, Kansas scored 90 points on 75 possessions and made 11 of 18 3-pointers, meaning that the offense was certainly there at home in the most important game of the year thus far.

Texas used their explosive first half to surpass their usual rate of production on the road. Durant hit plenty of shots that I didn't expect him to make in the first half, but guys like Augustin, A.J. Abrams and James really chopped some wood against players who were much more capable of guarding them than anyone was of guarding Durant. Those 3 combined for 49 points and 14 assists, although I thought that Augustin's 13 assists were more of a product of UT's offense than a spark that powered UT's offense.

Kansas now has its 50th conference title in 100 years of conference association, 7th Big 12 Title in 11 years of the conference, has a conference title for the 3rd year in a row and 5th time in 6 years, and Bill Self has won one 7 of his last 9 years coaching.

Up next for KU is a game next Friday at 11:30 a.m. in Oklahoma City, by the looks of it against Iowa State or Oklahoma.