Unfortunately for them, Colorado had the dubious honor of being Kansas's next opponent after each loss. Fortunately for everyone in attendance at Allen Fieldhouse, the Jayhawks did a much better job of taking out their frustrations today. Kansas got exactly what it needed: a 70 possession game played at nearly exactly the pace they wanted it played at, which resulted in a 1.24 efficiency for KU and just .88 for Colorado.
Our offensive output is probably masked a bit by shooting 11-22 from beyond the arc, but both Morningstar and Reed have the ability to get hot like that so I wouldn't call it an anomaly so much as a bit above what would be expected from us from beyond the arc. It's not why Kansas won but it certainly helped. Roughly a third of the team's shots were from three, a bit above our season average, though I would like to see that climb even higher given that we are shooting 38.9% from three in Big 12 play (which somehow is only 5th best in the conference).
If there was anything troubling out of this game it was that Kansas allowed Colorado, the 11th best 2 point shooting team in Big 12 play, to shoot 50% from two. Granted that has a lot to do with Alec Burks and Cory Higgins having good games, and I don't think Colorado got a ton of Grade A looks, but it would be nice to shore that up a bit.
The other semi troubling thing was the free throw shooting (again). Marcus and Reed both shot well, but Tyshawn was just 1-6. Still, he is 77% from the season so I am not terribly worried about the free throw shooting in this game.
I'm also not worried about turning it over on 20.8% of our possessions, but more on that Monday when the Big 12 power rankings are released*
*in the bis we call that a teaser
- Let's start with Markieff. The man who didn't grab a rebound against K State ripped down 15 of them today, 8 on the offensive glass. He also had 26 points with a nice and tidy 85% eFG to go with it.
- Marcus had 16 and 9, good numbers in a raw total sense, but just a 50% eFG.
- Josh Selby didn't have the greatest game scoring wise, going 2-9 from the field, but he got into the paint very effectively and dished out 5 assists. If he stopped taking ill advised threes he would be a much more effective player. I mentioned this in the OGT but if he can get into the lane like that consistently this offense will be unstoppable.
- Speaking of unstoppable, Brady Morningstar was 4-6 from three and had 16 points, 4 rebounds and 5 assists. It's not a stretch to say that he's been playing like a first team All Big 12 guard.
- Speaking of, Tyrel Reed had 13 with a 91.6% eFG which included going 3-4 from three.
- Here's an odd one: Tyshawn was 0-3 from two and 3-4 from three. My #1 hope for this coming summer is that he goes and shoots about 1,000 floaters and pull up jumpers per day.
- Mario Little managed to play 10 minutes without taking a shot. Color me shocked.