Solid win in Ames. There were parts of our game that need work, primarily fouls and TOs. Reduce those in this game and it would have been a massacre.
Typically for this award I'm looking for guys to get down on the court and take one for the team. Last night's performance yielded a different kind of hustle. A hustle we have to view the stat sheet to fully understand.
There are 3 guys who share the FLOOR BURN AWARD in this game: Andrew Wiggins, Naadir Tharpe and Joel Embiid. All three brought hustle and tilted the stat sheet so much that the final score (and victory) would not have swung our way without all three of these guys stepping up.
The media is all over Tharpe, and his points. Funny, but wasn't that the same media that said Tharpe didn't need to score this year?
The one single stat that sticks out far above all other numbers came from Wiggins. 19 rebounds! Are you kidding me? And 5 of those on the offensive side, helping us win back some of the possessions we lost on TOs. 19 rebounds is one short of potentially helping two players reach a double-double. And the rest of Wiggins' game yielded results, too, 17 points, 3 assists, 1 steal. Wiggins continued to make finishes that let ISU know how much more talent we have over them. He dominated in all aspects except one, and we'll cover that at the end of this post.
Joel Embiid is a beast. He is starting to earn a reputation for cheap shots and I'm not so sure that is a bad thing. Of course, we don't promote cheap shots at Kansas, but suddenly Embiid has become the poster child for Wichita State's motto: "Play angry!" JoJo became a determined man in the post, and we witnessed some of his best moments as a Jayhawk in Ames. He had a couple of spurts where he took over the game (on both sides of the ball), and it was clear that ISU (and the rest of college basketball) doesn't have an answer for combating JoJo in the post. It makes me hope in every game forward Embiid doesn't commit a cheap shot when all we need is a cheap foul call go against him. It was clear that ISU had a strategy to draw fouls in this game. Sounds good on paper, but not at the expense of angering JoJo! All of college basketball beware: "Don't piss off JoJo!"
Naadir Tharpe deserves plenty of praise for this game. He did an outstanding job of controlling our tempo and running our offense. In the process, he took what the defense gave him, and in doing so he banged down 23 points, almost 1/3 of our points, off of 7-of-9, including 3-of-4 from trey. He also accumulated 4 assists, 6 rebounds and a steal! That is a lot of participation in a game, exactly what you want from your PG, participation!
The one downside to all three of these players' performance was their TOs. The three amigos shared 17 TOs amongst themselves. If they had played error-free ball it is safe to say we may have won by 20 more points. Our TOs and our fouls putting ISU to the line kept this game much closer than it should have been.
But we can never complain about going into Cyclone country and coming away with a victory, something Danny Manning and Larry Brown never accomplished back on our National Championship team.
Conference Season Tally:
Andrew Wiggins 1
Joel Embiid 1
Naadir Tharpe 1
Tarik Black 1
Wayne Selden 1
