Sports and Numbers

Temple at Kansas (Lawrence, KS)

PSAN-Related Player Ratings - Cumulative This Season

(PSAN-O = Offensive impact, PSAN-D = Defensive impact.  For PSAN-D, lower ratings are better.  PSAN70 ratings are just PSAN expressed as "per 70 possessions" to reflect efficiency.  The difference between ePSAN and PSAN is that "e" is enhanced and weighs recent games more - used for Kansas only.)

Player Analysis:

(largely in context of ratings above)

Cole Aldrich stands head and shoulders above the rest of the players this game.  But Temple's top two players in efficiency are better on paper than anyone other than Aldrich for KU so far this season.  Five days before his own personal holiday, Dionte Christmas will try to snap KU's 29-game home winning streak with the help of Lavoy Allen and Ryan Brooks, primarily.  The thing to remember about Dionte Christmas is that he takes a TON of his team's shots and uses more of their possessions than anyone else, and he still manages to shoot nearly 59 eFG%.  Probably the one thing holding back his offensive efficiency numbers is his utter lack of offensive rebounding.  Of course, it's hard to grab your own offensive rebounds when you're a wing taking plenty of jumpers.  That's probably the primary factor, as evidenced by his tenacious defensive rebounding skills (17% of available DREB).

While KU's Aldrich is an outlier (in a good way), the rest of KU's team is quite balanced in terms of efficiency.  None of them are tearing it up, but no one is stinking it up either.  The lowest-rated player is Tyrel Reed, who still clocks in at 2.27 (vs NCAA average player of zero).  Still, it must trouble KU fans that so much of the contributions (impact) are coming from players who are rated much lower on the efficiency chart.  Taylor and Reed, for example, are playing lots of minutes but somewhat inefficiently.  It's a young team, so it is hard to say anything definitive just yet other than "the Jayhawks are struggling" for now.

Last 7 Game Analysis

Here, we look at the last seven venue-appropriate games to see how the teams are performing.  If the game takes place on the road for Kansas, for example, the analysis looks at the five most recent non-home games for Kansas.  In addition, the two most recent games, regardless of venue, are added.  That way, we get a picture of the how the team is performing of late.  This season, the analysis also splits offense and defense.  Teams often are more or less consistent on one side of the court than the other.  This analysis will reflect that.  Based on the strength of the opposing offense and defense they've played over the last seven games, each team's offense and defense is evaluated based on strength and consistency.  Those numbers are then plugged into a simulation of 5,000 games.  The results are what you see below.

Down to the Wire?

 Margin of game was less than 1 point in 4.7% of simulated games from "Last 7 Game Analysis."  Many of these would be "overtime" games.

Opponent Four Factor Analysis

Based on the cumulative season boxscore for the opponent, we can look at the Four Factors to see where the team has derived the bulk of its (dis)advantage in terms of scoring margin versus its opponents to date.  Here is the breakdown for KU's opponent this game:

ANALYSIS:  It's a good thing the Owls are shooting so well compared to their opponents, otherwise they would really be struggling.  Opponents are really doing a number on Temple at the FT line, where they are attempting about 20% more FT's than the Owls each game.  But it's the eFG% advantage, particularly the 50.3 vs 45.3% on 2FG's that is driving Temple's winning record so far.

Game Projections

(Not a prediction.  Read more details in "FAQ & Terms" section.)

No manual adjustments to projections were made for this game

Projected Boxscore

Projection Summary