2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks: Offensive and defensive style
How did the Jayhawks establish their dominance on each end of the court? What let them down?
This is the fourth of 4 articles about the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks. Read the intro article to the team here, my overview of their best and worst games here, and my analysis of their rotations and lineups here. Next week I’ll begin a series on the 2017-18 Gonzaga Bulldogs!
As I wrap up my series on the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks, I turn my eye towards the offensive and defensive styles used to establish themselves as a top-10 team through the season. Specifically, what were their strengths and weaknesses? Was there anything unusual they did? Did their style contribute to their ultimate early tournament exit? What I found was that Kansas leveraged their tremendous athletic advantage into a top-notch offense, but they needed that offense to be firing because they really struggled to establish a defensive identity.
Explosive on offense, but dependent on it
In the 2013-14 season, Kansas had a very strong offense to say the least. Per KenPom.com, the Jayhawks were 6th nationally in offensive efficiency. They were turnover-prone (as they tend to be under Bill Self), but were 32nd or better in effective FG%, offensive rebound %, and free throw rate. In fact, this is the only time under Bill Self that Kansas even ranked in the top 75 in all three of these categories.
Their offensive brilliance showed up in the Synergy points-per-possession stats, too. Kansas was rated in the 91st percentile nationally on offense, and were in the 84th percentile or better in 5 of their 7 most common play types: transition, post-ups, cuts, putbacks, and isolation. They ranked “only” in the 74th percentile on their most common play type, spot-ups.
The biggest weakness Kansas had was outside shooting. Per hoop-math.com, Kansas was 20th in FG% at the rim, 69th in midrange, but only 189th from three. Synergy concurs, with Kansas ranked in the 67th percentile against zone defense…a far cry below their 91st percentile against man.
When Kansas’ offense wasn’t clicking, they were highly vulnerable. They had 7 games where they scored less than 1 point per possession and went 1-6 in those 7 games. This includes their worst offensive performance of the season in their NCAA Tournament loss to Stanford. This performance was especially odd, however. Stanford did try to attack a Kansas weakness by playing zone for half of their defensive possessions, but that really wasn’t the problem. Turnovers, a relative weakness of Kansas annually, wasn’t the issue either. Instead, one of Kansas’ strengths betrayed them. The Jayhawks were 20th nationally in FG% at the rim for the season at 67%, but they were a ghastly 41% there against Stanford. This was a classic “strength on strength” matchup, as the Cardinal were 19th in FG% defense at the rim, and Stanford came out on top in this one.
A lack of identity on defense
Kansas ranked 22nd in defensive efficiency per KenPom in the 2013-14 season, but for such a well rated team Kansas didn’t do a lot extremely well. They were an excellent team at defending two pointers, almost entirely due to their shot blocking; otherwise, Kansas didn’t rank in the top 50 in any stat category on defense. Synergy largely concurs, with Kansas rated in the 63rd percentile on defense and not rating particularly good or bad in defending any type of play.
Kansas was able to limit transition opportunities for opponents. Less than 18% of opponent shots came in transition, the 10th lowest rate in the country. They also ranked 53rd in limiting opponent FG% in transition. However, the Jayhawks were only 102nd in opponent FG% in halfcourt offense. This seems odd given their deep and athletic big man rotation, but that’s how it shook out.
The biggest area of weakness for Kansas was their propensity to foul. They ranked 279th in opponent free throw rate, the lowest a Bill Self team at Kansas has ranked in this stat. This seems to have been driven by a two things: the lack of standout perimeter defenders to stop dribble penetration, and the aggressive shot-blocking approach of the big men in help defense. All of Kansas’ big men who were good shot blockers were also foul prone during the 2013-14 season.
This led to an extremely strange stat: Kansas allowed more free throws than they took during the 2013-14 season. No Kansas team since has done this, and since 2014 no team earned a top-2 seed in the NCAA Tournament with as bad of a ranking in opponent free throw rate (279th). Usually when a team allows a lot of free throws it’s a product of trying to force turnovers; West Virginia has used this approach for several years under Bob Huggins. That wasn’t what happened here, as Kansas was 292nd in opponent turnover rate. Kansas’ fouling was the product of defensive breakdowns and going for blocked shots, period.
This led to some bizarre losses. For example, on March 8th Kansas lost 92-86 to West Virginia. The Jayhawks has a 52% effective FG%, committed only 11 turnovers, but lost in part because they gave the Mountaineers 40 free throws! I mean, come on!
Kansas put together an explosive offense, and were maybe the most well-rounded offense Bill Self has had. Despite their talent, they didn’t really have a strong defensive identity, and their propensity for fouling was a crucial flaw. This was a talented yet strangely inconsistent team that never quite seemed to gel into a unified group more than the sum of its parts.
In my next series, I’ll look at a different type of team, the 2017-18 Gonzaga Bulldogs. Maybe the best mid-major team since the early 90’s UNLV, this group came agonizingly close to bringing a title home to Spokane.