2013-14 Kansas: A loaded roster comes up short
One of Bill Self's most talented rosters struggled to make it all fit, ending with 10 losses and a 2nd round NCAA exit. What happened to the Jayhawks?
This is the first of 4 articles about the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks. Upcoming are:
Their best and worst performances of the season (Jan 18)
Their rotation and the impact of key players (Jan 25)
Offensive and defensive style (Feb 1)
Ahead of the 2013 season Kansas brought in one of the most impressive classes of newcomers in recent history. 4 freshmen would eventually play in the NBA: Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, Wayne Selden, and Frank Mason. So would senior transfer Tarik Black. They blended with returnees Perry Ellis, Naadir Tharpe, and Jamari Traylor to make up a fearsome college roster. They were ranked #5 in the preseason polls, and expectations were high.
The season didn’t go quite as expected, however. Kansas ended up 25-10, the most losses a Jayhawk team had suffered under Bill Self to that point. They did win the Big 12 regular season title, but were bounced in the conference tournament. They spent most of the year in the top 10 of the polls and earned a 2 seed, but lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament.
There were a lot of factors at play. This was a very young team for Self, with 1 senior and 1 junior in the rotation. Furthermore, the senior was a grad transfer, so only 1 player had more than 1 year of experience in the program (Jr PG Naadir Tharpe). The Jayhawks ranked 337th in KenPom’s minutes continuity metric, as the previous year had seen al 5 starters (4 seniors and freshman Ben McLemore) all depart. To this date, Self has still never advanced past the 2nd round of an NCAA Tournament with more than 1 freshman averaging 20 minutes per game, and his only team to advance that far with 2 freshmen starting was his very first one at Kansas. In 2013-14, 3 freshmen averaged at least 20 mpg, 1 other averaged 16, and they combined for 93 total starts.
The team also lost star freshman big man Joel Embiid for the final 6 games of the season with a knee injury that ended up delaying his NBA debut for almost 2 years. Embiid was having a monster season in limited minutes, placing in the top 100 nationally in offensive and defensive rebound rate, block rate, and 2 point FG%. Per Sports Reference, Embiid averaged 19 points, 14 rebounds, and 4.5 blocks per 40 minutes. He led the Big 12 Conference in Player Efficiency Rating, and was named All Big 12 2nd team despite playing 23 minutes per game.
Kansas also played a very difficult schedule. KenPom ranked it the most difficult schedule in college basketball that season, thanks to a non-conference schedule that ranked 11th most difficult and a Big 12 that ranked as the #1 conference per KenPom, sending 7 of its 10 teams to the NCAA Tournament. Of their 13 out of conference games, only 1 was against a team worse than 130th in KenPom’s ratings, and only 4 were against teams outside the top 100.
A roster with a lot of newcomers, a coach who succeeds with veterans, a late season injury to a star, and a difficult schedule with little breathing room combined to produce a season with many ups and downs. In my latest Hoops Hindsight, I’ll spend the next few weeks diving into the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks.
Highs and lows during the season
As you might expect with a team breaking in so many talented newcomers, Kansas had a pretty wide range of performances through the season. Among their top wins were an 11 point win over a good Duke team, a 26 point blowout of a solid Kansas State team, and a 31 point thrashing of a solid Texas outfit. They also went 4-0 in the regular season against Iowa State and Baylor, who met in the Big 12 Tournament title game. Their ledger also had some lesser performances, however. They held off a late run against a pretty bad UTEP team to win by 4, lost to a just-decent Colorado team that had only 3 other high-quality wins, and were largely not competitive in the second half of losses to Texas and West Virginia.
Shooting poorly was a big factor in their poor performances. For example, Kansas posted a 43% effective FG% in their loss to Texas (37% on twos) but rebounded a few weeks later to post a 58% eFG% (62% on twos) in their follow up rout of the Longhorns. Similarly, they had an eFg% of 59% in a win against West Virginia but just 52% in the follow up loss.
In my next article, I’ll dive into the factors that differentiated the Jayhawks’ best and worst performances of the season.
A fairly rigid rotation
Many teams with a lot of newcomers will experiment with their starting lineups to find combinations that work, but Bill Self didn’t really do that in-season. Freshmen Wiggins and Selden started every game, sophomore Perry Ellis started all but Senior Night, and junior Naadir Tharpe started 31 of 34. The center spot was manned exclusively by Embiid (20 starts) and Black (15). Even the center spot rotation was more due to Embiid injury and foul trouble than any experimentation. Tarik Black played at least 15 minutes in 13 games all season, but only 3 of those did not come due to injury or foul trouble for Embiid.
Similarly, Andrew Wiggins and Naadir Tharpe combined for only 7 games all season playing less than 25 minutes apiece, and 6 of those were blowouts. Self seemed to have an idea of the rotation fairly early in the season, and the only real change was to move Embiid into the starting lineup after 8 games. Players like Frank Mason, Brannen Greene, and Jamari Traylor were used only in complimentary roles, with some opportunities to contribute more due to injuries or in blowouts.
In an upcoming article, I’ll look at how Self managed his rotation and if there were combinations and/or lineups which would have done better with more or less time.
How effective were there offensive and defensive strategies?
Kansas was one of the taller teams in the country that season, ranking 53rd in height by KenPom (weighted by minutes played). They parlayed this into being one of the most effective teams at the rim, offensively and defensively. The Jayhawks shot 67% at the rim and allowed opponent to snhoot only 54%, ranking in the top 50 in both categories. They also took a large portion of shots at the rim (42%), ranking 51st in that metric. However, this is inflated by their ability to get to the rim in transition; in halfcourt situations the Jayhawks took more midrange jumpers than shots at the rim. They also were hesitant to shoot three pointers, ranking 270th in the proporiton of their shots coming from deep.
Kansas did a solid job of defining offensive roles for most of their players. The bigs (Ellis, Embiid, Black, Traylor) all took more than half of their shots at the rim. Ellis was the only one who took more than 1/3 of his shots from midrange, and he had a very solid 42% Fg% on these shots. Meanwhile, guards (Selden, Tharpe, Mason) all took at least 44% of their shots from three. Selden (36%) and Tharpe (38%) were solid outside shooters, to boot. The only player whose shot selection was particularly odd was Andrew Wiggins. He took only 30% of his shots at the rim, while taking 39% from midrange and 31% from three. This is despite the fact that he hit only 31% from midrange and 31% from three, compared to 60% at the rim.
Kansas was also elite at keeping opponents from getting out in transition, ranking 9th in the percentage of opponent shots that came in transition. They were also good at stopping teams who did manage to get on the break, ranking 51st in opponent eFg% in transition. If you can stop shots at the rim and you can avoid giving up transition baskets, you’re on your way to a good defense. The main weakness of Kansas was simply that they fouled a lot. Much of this was from their bigs and their aggressiveness in shutting down offense around the rim. In an upcoming article, I’ll spend more time looking at the offensive and defensive strategies Kansas employed during 2013-14.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this initial look at the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks. Over the next 3 articles I’ll get more indepth into some of what worked and what didn’t that season, and how it all blended together. In the next article, I’l focus on their best and worst performances and what made the difference between the two.