🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Also see our Daily Threads, March 22, and the News Digest for Yesterday, March 21, as well as Daily Threads for Yesterday, March 21

NCAA Tournament 2014 Schedule: Times, Dates, Live Streaming and TV Info ↗

BRACKET: PDF ↗ | Check out the Leaders of the KU Buckets Group on ESPN ↗

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Bedore: Unleashed energy: Sub Jamari Traylor’s double-double pushes Kansas to next round ↗

St. Louis — Kansas University senior Tarik Black was the first Jayhawk to greet his big buddy, sophomore Jamari Traylor, after the final horn sounded in KU’s 80-69 victory over Eastern Kentucky on Friday in an NCAA Tournament opener in Scottrade Center.

“I just told him, ‘Thank you for the win. Thank you for extending my senior season.’ That’s what I told him, because he was a major reason I have another game to play and my season is not over, my college career is not over,” Black said after a game in which the 6-foot-8 Traylor scored a career high 17 points and grabbed a career-best 14 rebounds in 22 minutes.

Newell: KU basketball notebook: Teammates wowed by Andrew Wiggins' dunk; KU makes no 3s ↗

ST. LOUIS — Kansas guard Andrew Wiggins rose up to receive an alley-oop pass from Frank Mason with 6:09 left in the first half, catching it before extending his arms as far as he could toward the rim for a highlight-reel dunk.

The slam left his teammates amazed afterward.

Keegan: Column: Mistake-free play of Conner Frankamp just what KU needed ↗

St. Louis — Wichita State fans wearing gold didn’t have to check their programs to learn the identity of the little guy wearing the white No. 23 jersey entering the game off the bench.

Conner Frankamp scored more points in high school than anybody in the history of basketball-rich Wichita. Shockers fans didn’t forget that and cheered him on Friday in the Scottrade Center while they waited for their team to take the floor in the next game.

** Andrew Wiggins moves to top of KU freshman scoring list ↗**

Andrew Wiggins is the highest scoring freshman in Kansas University basketball history. Wiggins, a 6-8, 200-pounder from Ontario, Canada, totaled 19 points off 7-of-13 shooting in KU’s 80-69 NCAA Tournament opening victory over Eastern Kentucky on Friday in Scottrade Center.

Dodd: Kansas beats Eastern Kentucky 80-69 in NCAA opener ↗

ST. LOUIS — Inside the Scottrade Center, the temperature was rising. The upset watch was turned up to 10. Tensions were rising.

For the second straight season, Kansas was in a first-round dogfight with a low-seeded directional school from the state of Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky kept splashing in three-pointers, the sort of recipe that can lead to all-time upsets in the madness of March.

ESPN Box Score ↗

CJOnline Live Blog ↗

Also see our Daily Threads, March 22, and the News Digest for Yesterday, March 21, as well as Daily Threads for Yesterday, March 21

Survive and Advance!

Thank you Jamari and Connor.

Niang got hurt lost night, bad news for ISU.

I didn't know who I'd cheer for in Kentucky, KSU until I started watching but I very quickly found myself pulling for KSU. I was disgusted both by Weber, the refs, and the entire Kentucky nation. Being in the same building as those arrogant hillbillies at the final four two years ago turned them into my most hated team. I know some of you don't care much for Wichita, but I sincerely hope they blow them right into decrepit East St. Louis.

At the half of the UCLA-Tulsa game sideline reporter Otis Livingstone made a report. I looked it up and he's the same Otis Livingstone who played at KU in 87-88 and was dismissed from the team before the tourney. He has turned himself into an Emmy winning sports reporter for WCBS in NYC and is moonlighting for CBS in the tourney. At the end of the half it was kind of interesting to watch him interview his old KU teammate Danny Manning!

We play tomorrow at 11:15. Hmmmm that is church you know. I can go to the old folks service at 8:30 so I'm home in time. I could go at the regular time and DVR it, but that's relying on technology too much on such an important game. Plus if I do that there's no live blogging with @JNewell. OK, early service it is.

I think it stinks that Niang got hurt. They are a really really good team. I had them beating UNC tomorrow. Now, Im not so sure. I hope they can rally around their injured guy and get it done. Go Big 12! Got into a pissing match with Andy Glockner on twitter last night. He says the Big 12 is weak. I strongly objected. I accused him of having an East Coast bias.

Not sure how to add a headline to the thread so will do it here:

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/96908/unlikely-freshman-helps-rescue-ku ↗ ↗

Another article giving Conner credit for settling the team down and carrying us through. Loved it.

@eastcoasthawk nice article, thanks!

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/03/21/4906379/halftime-report-kansas-32-eastern.html ↗ ↗

I must give prop to CBS and the techno advancement for making all the games available online. Now I was able to watch the replay of yesterday's KU game on my computer after missing out on all the games yesterday.

http://www.ncaa.com/march-madness-live/ ↗ ↗

Good scrappy win. Survive and advance.

Major prop for Traylor and Frankamp who stepped up big time at a crucial time. Bright futures ahead. Wonderful!

This says a lot!

ACADEMIC CHAMPS

For the third time in the last five years the Kansas Jayhawks have been crowned the champions of Inside Higher Ed's NCAA Academic Tournament, the publication's annual academic showdown. KU's men's basketball team has reached the final four in each of the last five seasons and has been to the title game in four of the last five seasons, including additional crowns in 2012 and 2010.

The publication uses the actual NCAA Tournament bracket and declares winners based on the schools' Academic Progress Rates (APR). KU's men's basketball team boasts a perfect multiyear APR of 1,000, as it has for the past seven years. The Jayhawks beat Eastern Kentucky, New Mexico, Dayton and Florida to reach the 2014 "Final Four," then topped Memphis and Texas to win the championship.

The APR rewards teams whose players stay in good academic standing and remain enrolled from semester to semester. Inside Higher Ed broke ties by using the NCAA's Graduation Success Rate (GSR), a variation of the graduation rate that considers transfers and does not punish teams whose athletes leave college before graduation if they leave in good academic standing. If a further tiebreaker is needed, the publication uses the Federal Graduation Rate, which deducts points when student-athletes, for any reason, do not graduate from the school at which he originally enrolled.

The NCAA tweeted this week that KU is the only team in the NCAA Tournament field of 68 with a perfect APR and a 100 percent Graduation Success Rate. Last year KU was one of only three schools in the tournament field (Belmont, Notre Dame) to achieve those numbers; no other tournament teams have accomplished that feat in the five years the NCAA has tracked those statistics.

Someone wrote that Andrew was peaking at the right time. Here are his stats to support that. WOW!

Freshman G Andrew Wiggins has scored 112 points in his last four games. Included were a Kansas freshman-record 41 points at West Virginia (3/eight), 30 points versus Oklahoma State (3/13) and 22 points against Iowa State (3/14). In his last four games, Wiggins is averaging 28.0 points on 50.7 percent shooting with 6.8 rebounds, 2.3 steals and 1.8 blocked shots per game.

Wiggins' 17.4 scoring average for the season would break the KU freshman record (15.9 ppg by Ben McLemore in 2013). Wiggins has 11 games of 20-plus points, including seven against Big 12 competition.

@Crimsonorblue22

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/03/21/4906379/halftime-report-kansas-32-eastern.html ↗ ↗

“All the teams in the tournament are good,” Wiggins said. “Even to put a seed on them — a one-seed, two-seed, a 15-seed, all the teams are good. Any team is capable of beating any team at any given moment, so that’s why every team has to bring it.”

It really shows Wiggins' growth in maturity and respect of the game over this season. Somehow I have a hard time picturing these words out of his mouth at the beginning of the season when he didn't even know how good Kevin Durant was at Texas. I'm very proud of him.

Scouting report and thoughts for the Stanford game tomorrow 3/23 at 1115.

More than 5 minute Scouting report on Stanford. Kenpom is giving KU a 69% chance to beat Stanford 75-70. According to Kenpom, Stanford’s pace ranks right at the D1 average. Right on par with KU’s So we shouldn’t expect a slowed down, grind it out type of game from them. That being said, Kenpom doesn’t have them locked down as a zone or a M2M team, which says to me that KU can expect many different looks on defense from them. They might press full court because they should know we are vulnerable to that type of defense and they will show us different zones and they will play some man to man. They shoot the ball well as their Offense EFG% is 51.7 to KU’s 54.7 and their Defense EFG% is 48.1 to KU’s 47.2 Stanford doesn’t seem to turn the ball over much as their % per 100 possessions is 16.7 to KU’s 19.1 D1 ave is 18.3 but Stanford doesn’t force a lot of turn overs either.
Stanford is ranked 254 in offensive rebounding %, Way below KU’s rank of 20. So Stanford doesn’t crash the offensive glass to hard.
Stanford’s defensive rebounding is ranked #22 and KU’s is ranked right behind at 62. Their bigs can clean up our misses pretty good.
I might be reading the stats more but Stanford appears to foul more on defense than KU. This is good because KU plays up to 9 guys in a game where as Stanford uses 7 most of the time.
What concerns me most about Stanford is the matchup problems they pose. Randle, their PG is 6-2 and it seems that his Assist/TO ratio is worse than Naadir’s I expect Randle’s length to bother Naadir.
Powell is a 6-10 240lb SF, He can’t shoot the 3 but his height and weight may bother Wiggins especially if he gets into the post. He has a pretty good rank for Defensive Rebounding. Nastic is a 6-11 C. He is their rim protector. His block % per 100 possessions is 5.3%. Embiid’s block rank is much higher but we don’t have him for this game.
So far we have 3 match up advantages to Stanford. Randle their PG and Brown their 6-6 SG can both shoot over 40% from trey.
Stanford relies more on the 3 ball than KU does. Stanford is more experienced and taller/bigger than KU in effective height. What I don’t know is how we are going to beat Stanford. In Stanford’s losses, they have not shot well which implies tough defense on the part of the winner. KU’s defensive rating is nearly identical to Stanford’s per Kenpom. KU scores about 80 PPG and allows 70ppg. Stanford scores 73.5 PPG and allows 68ppg.
IF KU is going to win this game, they need to get Stanford’s bigs in foul trouble early and they need to not turn the ball over. They need Tarik and Jamari to play bigger and stronger than their match ups. I know Coach will start Wiggins at the 3. But Powell has 2 inches and 40 lbs on him. Will Perry be able to help him? I think Traylor is a better choice to bring in. Can Naadir keep Randle in front of him? I think Frankamp and Mason will have to play more minutes as well.