If you like offense, last night's game was for you. Kansas scored 1.26 points per possession and the Buffaloes were right behind them with a 1.2 clip. After the offensive disaster that was the Texas game it was nice of us to come out and score, especially on the road. I am not terribly worried about the defensive effort as, although there were instances where Alec Burks got to the rim at will, 1. he is Alec Burks and 2. Colorado shot 9-13 from three, which is pretty ridiculous. Fortunately, we had some sharpshooting in our back pocket as well, shooting 10-24 from beyond the arc.
One thing that was awful about this game however is the turnovers. Colorado only turned it over on 9.2% of their possessions. Fortunately Colorado didn't rebound well (13/8% offensive rebounding), but if we don't force turnovers we're not winning a national championship, or going to the Final Four. It's as simple as that. But for as worried as I had been about our rebounding early in the year we appear to be stabilizing as a good but not great rebounding team. Looking at a matchup against a team like Pitt, who lives off offensive rebounding, if we can just keep them a little bit below their average I think we can beat them.
Another problem of course is that once again we fail to put away an opponent. Colorado is a good team, especially at home, and the guys are still grieving for Thomas Robinson's mom, but at some point enough is enough. I'm really not sure what the answer is, but that's why I'm a blogger and not a national champion head coach.
- Yay Josh Selby! 4-8 from two and 3-6 from three for a handy dandy 60.7% eFG. He had a much better first half than second, but I liked how he played tonight. I do think he was worse defensively this year than most of his other games but on the flip side I liked how he took it to the rack a lot more. He also had a team high 5 assists.
- Jeff Withey gave some nice big man relief. Only 8 minutes but 4 rebounds and a nice put back dunk and a block.
- Brady had another nice game, scoring 14 points in 25 minutes. He also was 4-7 from three and picked up Tyrel Reed's slack. Maybe he and Tyrel switched jerseys.
- Tyshawn Taylor made a three, which was cool. I didn't watch him too carefully last night but he had 9 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists. Not bad.
- After yelling at him for being inefficient, Marcus Morris came back with 15 points on 5-6 shooting. He also went 5-6 from the line and had 5 rebounds.
- Markieff wasn't efficient scoring wise, but he grabbed 11 rebounds in just 26 minutes of playing time.