Just about every team has one game where it plays well above and the opponent well below their averages; the OU game this season that KU won by 30 comes to mind. I have no doubt KU is a better team than OU but, is it 30 points better? Can we keep Young to 3-13 and 11 points considering that in the first game he was 7-9 in route to 26 points? Probably not. The other game that comes to mind is against UNC in the NCAA in 2008 when KU led by as many as 28 points in route to an 18 point win. Was KU 28 or even 18 point better than UNC? Probably not. KU had to hang on for dear life the previous game against lowly Davidson and there was no reason to believe it would blow out UNC, and we know how the next game went…OT win over Memphis.
Last year KU put together and impressive streak of 38, 20 and 32 point wins against UC Davis, Michigan State and Purdue only to take a 14 point loss to Oregon, this is a 46 point swing between the previous win and the final loss. It happens.
The Clemson-Auburn game was one of those games, “Perfect Storm Good” for Clemson and “Perfect Storm Bad” for Auburn. If these teams play more games, I would bet the rest are all within 5+/- points. There is no reason or precedent to believe Clemson will repeat what it did against Auburn or that KU will play dead for most of the game like Auburn did. In fact, it is more likely that Clemson will have a let down and KU will win big.
Analysts love to make outrageous predictions because there is little downside to it. Seth Davis predicting Penn would beat KU had zero downside for him, if Penn would have won he looks like a friggin’ genius and it KU wins nobody really remembers his prediction because KU was supposed to win anyway. I read that more people took Penn over KU than any other 16 over a 1 seed ever and I understand that Clemson is now the trendy pick over KU as well… A lot of the disrespect is no doubt fueled by the East Coast MSM that cannot believe good basketball can be played outside of the East Coast. Funny how Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, that are NBA analysts and have not done a college basketball this season before the tournament that I can remember are now the experts on teams they do not follow and at times seem to be grossly unfamiliar.
In short, you can get better information about KU and the conference here than you can from just about any other source…of course Trae Young being the exception since ESPN is his official publicist.
