Brick & Immortal: Kansas Survives Purdue Despite Putrid Shooting | Stat Geek Idol

March 21, 2012 - by C.J. Moore

This is a Sweet 16 submission in our inaugural Stat Geek Idol contest. It was conceived of and written by C.J. Moore of Basketball Prospectus and Need I Say Moore?.

Bill Self stood in a dark hallway late Sunday night in Omaha after his team escaped Robbie Hummel and Purdue, 63-60, and it looked like he had just finished running a marathon. Self’s hair was soaked, and he didn’t want to call what he felt “relieved,” but that’s exactly how he came off.

“I kept telling the guys, ‘Hey, we’re going to win the game,’” Self said, “but I wasn’t exactly believing what I was telling them.”

The Jayhawks were one shot away from the postgame conversation centering around Self and choking once again in the NCAA tournament; instead, the focus was the brilliant move Self made to go to a triangle-and-two to slow Hummel and the plays that Elijah Johnson made down the stretch.

Until Johnson gave the Jayhawks their first lead with 3:04 left in the game with a deep 3-pointer, Kansas was on its way to its worst shooting game in nine years under Self, a 36.8 effective FG percentage. Johnson and the Jayhawks made four of their final eight shots to avoid that mark, but still, the Jayhawks defied logic in pulling off the win despite such an awful shooting performance.

KU finished with an eFG percentage of 38.7 percent and somehow managed to score 1.02 points per possession, becoming only the ninth team since 1998 to have an eFG percentage worse than 40 percent, yet still score more than a point per trip and somehow win an NCAA tournament game.

What’s The Matter With Self?

This game certainly had the makings of another early exit for Self’s Jayhawks to a lower seed. In his seven previous tourney losses at Kansas, Self has only lost to a higher-seeded team once – in 2009 to Michigan State in the Sweet 16. Four of the other six losses came to teams seeded 9 or worse. Mention the team names – Bucknell, Bradley, Northern Iowa and VCU – and Kansas fans cringe.

The theory behind why this happens is that Self’s teams always seem to play tight in these games. Last year was a great example when the Jayhawks got down early to VCU and bricked 19 of 21 threes trying to pull off the comeback. They shot an eFG percentage of 37.1 that day, their worst of the season.

There wouldn’t be much substance to this argument if Self’s teams didn’t shoot so consistently the rest of the time. According to KenPom, Self’s team have been in the top 10 in eFG percentage four out of the last 10 seasons, and last year’s team led the country.

In all of the loses to low seeds, the other team gets hot and the Jayhawks don’t respond well. Before the Purdue win, Self was 0-9 in the tournament when he trails at halftime and 29-3 when he leads.

Hummel had the blueprint down, nailing 7 of his first 8 shots and putting Kansas in a 36-30 hole at half.

“Coach told us before the game that they’re going to make shots,” Thomas Robinson said. “We didn’t know they were going to hit shots like that.”

How The Jayhawks Somehow Won

“Defense and rebounding won us this game. It surely wasn’t offense.” –Thomas Robinson

KU’s star is right about how his team pulled off the win despite horrid shooting numbers; however, Kansas did do one thing right offensively: limit turnovers.

Out of the nine teams on the chart above, eight of the nine had less than 11 turnovers. Kansas gave it away only seven times, taking better care of the ball than the team that was less generous than any other this year – the Boilermakers turn it over an NCAA-low 13.6 percent of their possessions and had 10 turnovers against KU.

The other ingredient for overcoming an awful shooting night is to out-rebound your opponent, as all nine teams on the chart won the rebounding battle. The Jayhawks kept the score within reach by grabbing 15 of their 28 misses in the first half. They finished with 22 offensive rebounds out of a possible 46 available. Seven of the nine teams on the chart had 15-plus offensive rebounds and all nine finished in the double-digits.

The other way the teams on the chart made up for poor shooting from the floor was via the free throw line. Five of the nine made 20-plus free throws; the Jayhawks went 15 of 23 at the line and 9 of 11 in the second half.

As for defense, Self’s triangle-and-two certainly made the win possible. Purdue scored only 0.75 points per trip after halftime. If that were over the entire course of a game, that would have been the Boilermakers worst offensive showing of the year.

Survive And Advance

“Most of the teams that do really well in the NCAA tournament, they win one that maybe they didn’t play their best, and this was certainly our one.” –Bill Self

Self delivered this message to his players in the locker room, telling them that in 2008 the Jayhawks had a similar game against Davidson in the Elite Eight that they nearly lost because they were tight. In the next game, the Jayhawks were far from it when they jumped out to a 40-13 lead against North Carolina in the Final Four.

So what should we expect from this team?

If history is any indicator, the Jayhawks have a good shot at advancing to the Final Four. Kansas became the fourth team on the chart that was a top three seed, and all of the other top three seeds advanced to the Final Four. Stanford, who also beat Purdue, made the Final Four in 1998; Connecticut went on to win the championship in 1999; and Texas made the Final Four in 2003. USC, as a sixth seed, won another game and got to the Elite Eight.

Two more wins for Self in this tournament and his Jayhawks would tie Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV teams from 1986-1991 for the most wins over a six-year period in NCAA history – KU currently sits at 194. That would also put KU in the Final Four for the second time in the last five years. Maybe that, combined with what happened against Purdue, will finally allow the Jayhawks to loosen up and quit sweating the lower seeds.