Recap: Northern Arizona at Kansas

November 12, 2006

Kansas 91 - Northern Arizona 57

My Observations

And they're off.  Maybe that's the wrong word.  The Kansas Jayhawks were anything but "off" in their season opener.  This was about as good a debut as the team could have dreamed.  Pressure defense, hot shooting, strong rebounding, acrobatic alley-oops ... you name it, KU did it ... very well.  The game was never in question.  And as the doubts about this game fizzled, so too did many anxious Jayhawk fans' doubts about whether this team could live up to its hype this season.  We got a glimpse of what is possible when everything is clicking, but we still need to see that it can happen against tough opponents and on a regular basis.

In any event, Jayhawk Nation breathed a collective sigh of relief last night, followed by uproarious applause and jubilation.  The best, it seems, is yet to come.

Player Performance Analysis

It was fairly obvious that the top players in this game were Julian Wright and Brandon Rush.  The question of who contributed the most probably depends on some dynamics of the game, because they put up impressive numbers.  The edge in PSAN ratings goes to Julian Wright.  Why?  Simple.  Both of them were roughly equal in the shooting categories combined.  Rush's higher number of made shots was somewhat offset by the fact that Wright shot an even better percentage.  The key in this game was that KU had an incredibly efficient offense ... about 1.2 pts per possession.  Any actions that kept possessions alive for KU (O-Reb), created possibility of new possessions (STL or BLK), or loss of possession (TO) were extremely important.  Rush and Wright were equal on STL, but Wright was superior in all the other categories.  But obviously, both had terrific games by any measure.

There were also some grumblings about Robinson on the KU message boards, presumably because of his continued habit of driving into the lane and failing to finish.  Of course, that weighs down his rankings.  But look at what else he does.  He made all four of his FT's, stole the ball three times (previous paragraph explains why this is so important), made some assists, didn't foul or turn it over much, and his eFG% was actually over 50%.  Hall of Fame worthy?  No, but when you combine those with his great leadership and on-the-ball defense, RR clearly contributes.

The much-heralded McDonald's All-American freshmen showed up to play.  The slight edge in their debuts goes to Darrell Arthur.  The edge in the shooting categories goes to Sherron Collins.  But Arthur wins out in rebounds (especially since three of them were O-Reb's that kept alive a very efficient KU offense) and BLK.  Similar to the Rush vs Wright comparison, a very efficient KU offense benefited from Arthur's actions slightly more.  But it's not really a significant difference.  Let's just say that both freshmen came to play and did so beautifully in their Jayhawk unveiling.

Mario Chalmers unfortunately didn't have a great game.  But it's understandable given his strained toe.  Much of Mario's game revolves around his explosive movements on defense.  It was clear that he was not into the game as he usually is, so I'll give him a pass.  Unfortunately, I can't really do anything about the numbers, so this game will be chalked up as a relatively poor one for him.  Given KU's dominance though, even a poor performance didn't end up being terrible.

For UNA, only Geiser and Taylor had games worth mentioning.  Wilson might also have had a decent performance if not for his 4 TO's.

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