FLOOR BURN AWARD: KU @ TCU - Jan 25
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This wasn’t an easy game to pick out one big play where a Jayhawk left some memorable skin on the court, so I’m picking a player who left the biggest mark on this game; Joel Embiid.
I’m not sure I ever remember a Jayhawk team fighting so hard to feed the 5 during the Bill Self era at Kansas. Finally, we are getting a better taste of what Joel can do on offense. Finally, we are able to experience our offense execute a real plan, and the plan is what we’ve all come to expect with Bill Self; feed the post. Run our offense through the post and open up our perimeter after establishing the post. That is exactly what happened, and I’m not sure we’ve seen our offense run this well all year! At times our offense looked effortless.
It seems that Joel Embiid leaves a bigger mark on every additional game he plays in. Against TCU it was obvious when Joel was on the court and when he wasn’t. The game always made a huge shift every time he entered or exited it.
His stat line was solid; 14 points off of 4-of-8 shooting, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, 3 blocks and perhaps 3 dozen shot adjustments by TCU… all in only 19 minutes of play!
Because of the light switch impact Joel had on this game (on and off), he deserves to win the FLOOR BURN AWARD! And it didn’t hurt that Joel played with enough basketball IQ to draw Shepherd’s 5th foul on a charge call!
And kudos to Andrew Wiggins for finally figuring out where his scoring opportunities exist… mostly somewhere between the 3-pt line and before the rim. His pull-up jumpers were flawless! This is where his future bread-n-butter is and he might as well start garnering the benefits from it now!
And a shout out to Landen Lucas who, once again, gave us solid minutes that didn’t require him “knocking off the rust” first. He represents so much of our future because he’ll be involved for 5 years!
Conference Season Tally:
Joel Embiid 2
Wayne Selden 2
Frank Mason 1
Andrew Wiggins 1
Naadir Tharpe 1
Tarik Black 1
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@drgnslayr great choice and I also like the shout out for Wiggins and Lucas. Also liked Greene, he just needs to quit pouting after a mistake. Conner also had some good minutes. I hope they have a chance to see more PT.
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@drgnslayr can we get an honorable mention to Jamari for stumbling out of the lane, falling and spinning on his back like a turtle, then getting right up and setting a screen in one motion?
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@approxinfinity good choice too! I love his hustle, he’s pleasantly surprised me w/his offense too!
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Yes we can… I’m asking everyone to post in here the players’ positives… so everyone can be recognized!
Jamari deserves plenty of accolades for how much he has lifted his game this year! I don’t think he receives enough praise since he isn’t a starter… but he’s lifted his game as much as any of the players coming back.
And look how much he is helping us just by deciding he would create Kevin Young-style energy into games! That was just a mind thing where he decided to take on that role. Amazing how much of this game is played with the mind!
@Crimsonorblue22 - also thumbs up to Greene and Frankamp. We are going to need those guys to play solid in March. I loved the Greene pass to Ellis for the finish on the break. We need guys to get out and hustle up more open court offense. That is one area of our game we could improve and see huge gains between now and March!
Conner is getting more comfortable with his shot. He’s at that point of his development where he is becoming a solid scoring threat. We can’t have enough guys who can bang 3s!
