Defensive ability is the key to putting games away. To put a team away you have to get multiple stops consecutively. Let’s say you’re up 10 with 8 minutes left. With today’s game, as noted above, that lead can disappear in less than two minutes. But if you can get four consecutive stops while getting scores on three of those possessions, the lead all of a sudden has ballooned to 16 or more.

On the other hand, if you can’t get consistent stops, maybe the lead only goes from 10 to 12, or maybe even stays at 10 because you just trade baskets.

I can’t remember the last time KU had a really, really good team defensively. They have had good defensive players, but I’m talking about a team of strong defenders. The type of team that could take a team out of their offense for a half a dozen possessions at a time. KU hasn’t had that in a while, so teams can hang around unless KU hits them with a huge scoring flow (scores on four or five straight possessions) while the other team only scores on one or two in that stretch. We don’t see many 12-0 runs from this team. It’s more like 10-4 or 12-4, and its usually sparked by scoring rather than defense.

It’s hard to get a read on a lot of teams so far this year. I don’t think I have seen anyone that I was really impressed with so far. Teams that have looked good have looked good against very weak teams. Those that have played strong opponents have generally looked fairly shaky, even in wins. Lots of bad basketball all around so far.

The grind it out defensive game has its benefits, but also its risks.

Because it creates low possession games, you are vulnerable to inferior opponents that have shot makers. That’s how Virginia lost to UMBC. It’s not that they were bad in that game. UMBC shot the ball very well, and when you play UVA, if you make shots, you will probably win because their defense is designed to keep you from getting easy shots, but if you shoot well from three (UMBC was 12-24 from three) the defense doesn’t really work. That high of a 3Pt%, plus limiting turnovers (just 12) put UMBC in perfect position to upset UVA because UVA’s style doesn’t translate to just scoring more points if the opposition is hitting shots. They can’t just speed up their pace because that is not how they are built or designed to play.

UVA is locked into that style, even if a team comes out shooting well. You can win a lot of games like that, because defense travels, but you also have the risk that the rug gets pulled from under you at any moment, especially now with so many teams capable of hitting 12-15 threes in a game.

It makes those games so hard to watch, though.

Azuibuke is a very unique player for a lot of reasons.

The positives:

1. He’s one of the strongest players at the D1 level in some time.
2. He’s big, but not a statue, so he can outrun opposing bigs if they do not hustle
3. He cannot be forced off his spot offensively.

The negatives

1. He does not handle the ball well, so anything more than a drop step dunk carries significant risk.
2. He rebounds with “short arms” so he doesn’t get nearly as many rebounds as you would hope for someone with his size and strength
3. For his speed and mobility, he does not have good lateral quickness, which makes him very vulnerable defensively away from the basket.

There will be games where Azubuike will be outright dominant, 11-13 from the field, 25 points, 10 rebounds. There will be games where he’s solid, but has turnover issues. 5-7 from the field, 12 points, 7 rebounds, 4 turnovers. And there will be games where he is a net negative because he isn’t getting the ball where he needs it - 2-4 from the field, 4 points, 4 rebounds, 6 turnovers, 5 fouls.

The challenge is, you don’t know which of those lines you will get pregame. You would take either of the first two, despite the turnovers. It’s that last one that really scares you, but what can you do about that. You can’t really just bench a guy like Doke because he is such a matchup problem at the college level. But that last line is a killer, and we know its coming at some point.

If this team cannot stretch the floor with the threat of three point shooting, there is no way to enter the ball into the post because sagging defenders destroy the passing windows.

Since none of our big men is really a threat to knock down 15 footers with regularity, they are non-threats away from the block. Agbaji is the only three point shooter that other teams respect right now. Enaruna could be, and Braun will be if he plays enough, but that remains to be seen. Until Garrett starts shooting (and making) consistently, no one has any reason to guard him out there. Same with Dotson. He has to take (and make) some threes to open the floor up.

We have a huge problem of just not having enough shooters to space the floor. We have spacing problems that we cannot solve without getting some shooting from other guys.

My questions for Braun were never on the offensive end. My concern has always been on the defensive end. I need to see him be able to hold his own on that end. If that’s the case, I don’t have any doubt that he can play in the NBA as a reserve shooter. But he needs to show at least average defensive chops in order to capitalize on that.

Having seen him play in HS, he always had a good looking shot and was a very good athlete, but needed to round out his game. That was what probably kept a lot of P5 schools off him out of HS. He was a wing shooter that didn’t have much size (only about 6-3 or 6-4 at the time) and wasn’t in a position to be a secondary ball handler, which is a must if you aren’t at least 6-5 or 6-6.

Fast forward to now and he’s about 3 inches taller and he has improved his ball handling. Like I said in an earlier post, he has basically done everything that he was told he needed to do in order to make himself a P5 player, while also growing a couple of inches. That, I think, speaks to his work ethic and character. He got into the gym and did the work he needed to do in order to be ready to move to the P5 level after a couple of years at JuCo. He took the constructive criticism and the coaching and made the improvements that scouts were looking for. That says more to me than the scouts saying he’s hitting 28 footers.

@Woodrow

Basically, Matheny allowed veteran players to harass and haze younger players to an extent that he lost the clubhouse. On top of that, he was tactically poor as well.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/07/15/cardinals-fire-mike-matheny-tactical-errors-clubhouse

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/15/17573628/mike-matheny-fired-st-louis-cardinals-manager

Basically, Matheny is probably as questionable as Yost when it comes to tactics (maybe moreso), but he is also bad about building clubhouse dynamics, which Yost was excellent at.

For a team that will be bringing up a ton of young players that represent the future of the franchise to turn that process over to a guy that got fired from his last job for allowing veterans to bully younger players to the point that it divided his clubhouse is just absurd.

The Royals may have set themselves back 10 years with this move if Matheny ruins this group of prospects.

The Cardinals ran Matheny out of town because he was not having success developing their young players. What do the Royals have? A bunch of young up and coming players. This was not well thought out.

This was the first year in almost fifteen years that I had not attended a Royals game. Next year may be the second in a row.