Kansas 75 - Colorado 54

Game Observations

Funny thing is ... I feel better about the 25-point loss to Texas than I do about this 21-point victory over Colorado.  In Austin, we were destroyed by a team that was shooting lights out, leveraging its physical maturity, and feeding off its home crowd.  Against CU, we witnessed one of the worst stretches of offensive futility ever (1-22 FG to start the game) result in only a 17-point lead at halftime and a game that was still in doubt midway through the second half.  Careless turnovers, sloppy ballhandling, missed opportunities off opposition turnovers, poor rebounding effort, and bad decision-making were the theme of the night for the Jayhawks.  The fact that they still pulled off a 21-point victory is a testament to how poorly CU played and, to a lesser extent, how wide the talent gap really was.

Player Performance Analysis

Once again, Chalmers was the Player of the Game.  Not a superstar game by any stretch, but he made most of his shots (3-4 3FG's) and had 5 STL.  With few mistakes, he made the most contributions to victory.  But another player did even better if you adjust for playing time.

In only 23 minutes, Giles had 11 pts, 8 reb, and 2 blk.  We've seen C.J. have good games here and there in the past, but he's really had a good stretch of games for some time now.  In fact, Giles is now nipping at Rush's heels in terms of overall player ratings for the season.  If all games counted equally, Rush would have a substantial lead, but the ePSAN70 weights recent games more, and C.J. has really come on strong of late.

Julian Wright really struggled this game.  If he had hit most of his freethrows, he could have been in the middle of the pack.  Instead, he had a very bad game.  He still stays near the very top of the season ratings, however.

On Senior Night, the seniors played a hand in the early lead that set the tone for the game.  Hawkins ended up with a better-than-average game for him, while Moody and Vinson had subpar performances.

On CU's side, Osborn and Senger were the only players with decent performances.  In fact, adjusted for playing time and quality of opponent, they had the two highest efficiency ratings in the game (better than any eligible KU players).  Obviously, given their limited playing time, they didn't contribute as much in total as KU's better players.