Most Uneasy Indicator, Most Optimistic Indicator of the Season So Far...
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The Most Uneasy Indicator: its a toss up for me between how few blocks and alters we have seen, and the fact that we are shooting 47% from trey after 5 games.
Teams need to be able to block and alter opponents at least some to keep the opposing shooters from getting too confident, especially inside, and so far we just aren’t a threat this way. The more this anemic blocks stat persists, the more other teams are going to begin going inside and staying inside on us. This will lead to higher shooting percentages for them, and more fouling for us. We can afford to foul inside, because we have so many post men playing minutes for us. But it is very tough to give an opponent a lot of short threes and expect to be a big winner.
But the other uneasy indicator is that KU has shot over 50% from trey twice recently this season, if I recall correctly. And I checked the latest stats and KU is shooting 47% from trey over five games so far this season. It means we will probably be shooting back to average for awhile now. I just do not expect that this entire team can average 47, or even 45% from trey for a season. 40% is about max and 39% seems more likely, even with all of our good shooters. Another concern embedded in that fine early shooting is anecdotally speaking what seems a more than typical volatility in swings in our shooting. KU shoots 50-60% one game after shooting 20%. Again, I haven’t plotted the shooting percentages each game, nor calculated a volatility stat. But it feels more volatile than usual. High volatility makes it even tougher to win on your off shooting nights. For example, if we had shot 35% instead of 20% ag% ainst MSU, we might have won that game. And shooting 50-60% was hardly necessary to win the games we won.
The Most Optimistic Indicator: The silver lining for me so far this season escaped my recognition for awhile. But its this: versus a solid and ranked MSU team, with two fine D1 impact players in Valentine and Costello, KU lead 30 minutes and hung close in single digits at the end, while shooting only 20% from trey; that is frankly much more impressive to me than KU blowing teams out when shooting > 50% from trey. To me this means we can learn to beat some good teams on our off shooting nights, if we can just reduce our volatility a little.
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@jaybate-1.0 Solid! See, I was wondering about that in the sense that our offensive production is at a 5 year high. Twice this year we have eclipsed the century mark and I suspect that will happen another one or two times before conference play begins. Honestly, I hope KU can keep its trey shooting % up at those Curryesque numbers but, I know that is not likely to happen… They will have to come back down to earth one of these days. I just hope its not against Kensucky. I fully expect Diallo to help our rebounding and rim protection in a major way. I wouldnt be surprised if Bragg and Mick get chances to help out more in that aspect either.
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Two fine points!
I think with Diallo now able to play and the ongoing develop of Bragg, we could see more rim protection. #FreeHunter could help too.
I agree Kansas will go back to the law of averages on 3’s. I hope we can play defense like most Self teams have been able to come March, then we can stay in those games.
Vick, Bragg, and Diallo are very athletic, maybe the 3 most athletic guys we have, and are all freshman. It may take time.
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Real good stuff. I caught a blurb from the announcers at one point in the Vandy/KU game where our 3 point % was twice as high as our 2 point %. I don’t recall exactly where that was at game wise, but alarm bells went off a bit …so the same thought has been rolling around my noggin, too. Diallo, come quickly.
