Kansas Jayhawks’ loss to Kentucky Wildcats showed this: KU has missed an opportunity
Kansas coach Bill Self is technically right, even if it’s understandable if fans don’t want to hear his message at this particular moment.
KU was drubbed 80-62 by Kentucky on Saturday night at Allen Fieldhouse — the second-worst home loss in Self’s 19 seasons — and KU’s coach tried to preach the big picture.
Kentucky was national-title good on Saturday, Self said, and KU was not. More meaningful games are ahead in March, and the Jayhawks’ setback won’t keep them from any of their potential long-term goals ahead.
Self is correct to an extent, though agreeing to a contract as a college basketball coach also means he understands the sometimes-crazy standards.
This sport is unforgiving to off-night performances like Saturday, especially when the bright lights are on and the ESPN College GameDay cameras are in town. NCAA hoops is set up with this framework, already with the most merciless postseason in the world, where one 40-minute stretch ultimately defines the entire season.
So before we get to the real issues with KU, it’s worth a deep breath and a reminder here: Basketball is random sometimes, and weird outlier performances are always possible.
Embracing this point is less of an issue in the NBA, when 82-game schedules and seven-game playoffs series ensure that small-sample stuff isn’t taken too seriously. An example: The Milwaukee Bucks — twice last season — lost by more than the 18 points KU fell by on Saturday on their way to an NBA title.
Oh, and that was in the playoffs alone. Milwaukee had four other 18-plus-point losses in the abbreviated 72-game regular season too, though by the end, the narrative wasn’t out there that it was a team that was irreparably flawed.
Sometimes it’s not your night. And it certainly wasn’t KU’s on Saturday.
Even understanding that, though, there are two more significant problems for the Jayhawks that can’t be shrugged off after Kentucky’s dominant effort.
The first is that KU — overall — is getting worse rather than better at this critical point in the season.
Sure, the Jayhawks’ résumé remains strong. Their Wins Above Bubble mark, for instance, is still second nationally behind only Auburn, which portends great things for KU’s future NCAA seed.
But while the Jayhawks might be “deserving” of a 1 or 2 seed, they aren’t playing like one of the NCAA’s best squads right now.
Advanced rankings paint this clearly. KU has fallen to 10th in Ken Pomeroy’s measure and 11th in Bart Torvik’s, making the team a likely underdog against any potential Elite Eight opponent it might play.
The goal then, for Self, is to raise KU’s ceiling. How can the Jayhawks get to a level where they can compete with any of college basketball’s elites?
That doesn’t have a simple solution at the moment. Self seems to be playing a mish-mash of players while trying to survive. KU’s defense, meanwhile, is statistically the worst in Self’s tenure, with the coach desperately going to zones and Triangle-and-2s more often than he ever has in the past.
This also leads to the Jayhawks’ other huge issue: Self either did not choose the right additions this offseason or hasn’t figured out a way to help them thrive.
One only needed to look to the other sideline Saturday to see what can happen when a blue-blood program gets immediately eligible transfers and can integrate them seamlessly.
Oscar Tshiebwe lived up to his national-player-of-the-year hype while going for 17 points and 14 rebounds. Almost as impressively, Georgia transfer Sahvir Wheeler was a calming presence at point, posting seven points and eight assists in 34 minutes, while Davidson transplant Kellan Grady made 4 of 7 threes for 12 points as well.
Those are all first-year players for Kentucky coach John Calipari from the portal. And it had to be the type of impact Self was hoping for when he went the same route to pluck Remy Martin, Joe Yesufu, Jalen Coleman-Lands and Cam Martin in the spring and summer.
The season is not over — meaning it’s not too late to change the narrative — but as of now, KU’s whole experiment going this path has failed. Remy Martin had a knee injury, then has never gotten to where Self trusts him with extended minutes. Yesufu has looked timid in his limited opportunities and mostly has sat on the bench. Coleman-Lands has little more than a pinch-hitter-type role because of his poor defense, and Cam Martin was redshirted with hopes that he could improve to be a rotation player next year.
And so while KU has gotten drastic improvement from returners like Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun, the rest of the roster has remained stagnant. A year after Self vowed to make his lineup more athletic, longer and bigger following an 85-51 NCAA Tournament loss to an athletic USC team ... things looked similar Saturday as KU once again had the team that was picked on from a Jimmys and Joes standpoint.
Again, it’s not too late to fix, but time is running out. And with a gauntlet of Big 12 games coming, it’s unlike Self to experiment much at this point, especially when a game’s result seemingly hangs in the balance on every possession.
There’s still enough here for a self-evaluation, whether now or after the season. Does KU’s offense need to be simplified more to help its new guys speed up? Are Self and staff lenient enough with guys to play through mistakes, especially if they aren’t veterans? Should KU do more diligence in the future when targeting the portal, especially looking at players that fit from both a roster and personality standpoint?
Those answers might be in the distance, but they also were part of an ugly result Saturday. It was partially variance, but also the culmination of a roster not developing enough in the last few months.
Right now — even at 17-3 — KU is in a lull. It needs to get better. And yes, there’s still time for that.
But the additions the Jayhawks brought in aren’t helping.
And whatever the reason, it’s been a wasted opportunity — with Kentucky showing KU exactly what it’s been missing.
This story was originally published January 29, 2022 at 10:28 PM with the headline "Kansas Jayhawks’ loss to Kentucky Wildcats showed this: KU has missed an opportunity."
