On a day when Iowa State took Oklahoma to the wire, K-State managed a win against Texas and Colorado put forth a valiant effort against Kansas, we are once again reminded that the conference season is where a great team separates themselves and earns their stripes.
This matchup again wasn't what many of us expected and hats off to Colorado and Jeff Bzdelik. Twice this year they have managed to make Kansas play poorly enough at times and make both games against the Jayhawks much more competitive than any had given them credit for. Vegas was giving 21.5 and both Rock Chalk and myself were calling for 20+ point margins, so with that out of the question let's look a little deeper into some of the stats.
First off the gameflow tracker. Things were on the up and up for Kansas until the 19:20 mark in the 2nd half. From there Colorado slowly crept back in this one and a once fairly safe lead disappeared.
More Stats, Charts and Breakdown after the jump...
In the four keys to the game Kansas once again overcame their struggles in securing the ball to win this one. Unfortunately in this one we struggled from the field and defensively we allowed a pretty stellar shooting night for Colorado as well. This is the type of game we won on talent alone. The Jayhawks will need to polish things up if they want to grab a win at Baylor.
A quick look at the team stats shows the obvious in that Kansas shot much worse than normal from the field. What it also shows is that Colorado once again probably played a little above their normal level of play against us. I guess that's what a drought since 1983 will do to your motivation level.
Final thoughts...With about two minutes to go in this one I reminded myself that what is most important is a win. It doesn't matter how pretty it is, if people are impressed with the margin of victory or any of that, all that matters is we win. Bill Self once again has us in the game and this time with a very young team that has a lot of development to do. At times things looked really good but if we can continue to pull the games out in the end we'll be in a position to make a run at the conference and that is and should be the goal this year. It was a win and that's about all you can say, but at the same time that's about all you really have to say at the end of the day.