Kansas vs K-State: Player Ratings to the Theme of Colors

Kansas lost to Kansas State in a terrible game but the player ratings march forward

Author:
Derek Noll
Publish date:
Feb 6, 2024 11:50 AM EST

In this story:

Listen, I’m bitter about this one. Kansas has now failed miserably in three road games that they should have won. First, there was UCF, but maybe you could argue that the Knights were playing their first ever marquee game and the environment was tough. Sure. I'll rationalize that one away.

Next came West Virginia. But Kansas has a history of failure in Morgantown so that one stung, but didn’t sting too terribly badly. Plus, the Mountaineers shot ridiculously well in that one.

But this one? Kansas State wasn’t even good. This is the worst loss of the year.

But if there’s one bright side, it’s that the Kansas Jayhawks don’t wear purple.

There are so many colors out there, and everyone has their favorite color for one reason or another but some are clearly better than others. So today we examine the best and worst colors out there (I think you know where I’m going with this).

The criteria for the ratings are below, but you can skip them by using the table of contents.

5 Stars: Out of this world performance. This is a hard to achieve rating and is only reserved for the most impressive or impressionable performances.

4.5 Stars: Very strong performance, packed the stat sheet, provided undeniable intangibles.

4 Stars: A strong performance that falls just short of the standards above.

3.5 Stars: Above average performance, perhaps stands out in one category or one aspect of the game.

3 Stars: Average performance. Also could be a very strong game in one aspect but a very poor game in another such as 15 points but seven turnovers. Could also be that the player played, did their job, but didn't do much spectacularly.

2 Stars: Below average performance, or we simply have higher expectations for the player on this particular night.

1 Star: Rare, but if a player has a stinker in all aspects.

Memorial No Star: Named after former KU walk-on Chris Teahan and is awarded to the player(s) who didn't have enough playing time to contribute or whose performance isn't worthy of a rating for another reason.

5 Stars: Blue

The greatest color and the identity for the University of Kansas. Until BYU joined the conference, Kansas was miraculously the only team in the Big 8/Big XII to ever wear royal blue. KU football looks close to perfect wearing blue and white pants and KU hoops always looks stellar in their road blues.

No one was a five star.

4.5 Stars: Crimson

KU’s secondary color even though it comes first in the official press releases, red is the perfect accent color to blue and that’s where it works best for Kansas. When KU football wears red components or when basketball wears all red, it looks weird to me. But when it accents the whites and blues? Perfect.

No one lands in this spot either.

4 Stars: Colors by Beck

Not the best record by Beck, but certainly one of his more upbeat in recent times with more than a few standouts. Dreams and Wow are some of the best and most singable Beck songs to come out in a long time.

Hunter Dickinson was easily the best Jayhawk, to the point where it was a mystery why Kansas didn’t just give him the ball every time. He finished with 21 and 12 but it could’ve and should’ve been a lot more.

Dajuan Harris scored 15 and had eight assists and I’m not sure there was too much else he could do. He only sat briefly and the lack of any options off the bench is going to hurt this team in the long run. It’s not that they need anyone else, it’s that these guys are going to be exhausted.

3.5 Stars: Powder Blue

This color is amazing on teams that use it as one of their actual team or school colors. Kansas, however, sneaks in light blue every so often even though it isn’t an official school color. For baseball, it’s perfect and give the team an old school 1908's look. For football, it seems a bit far fetched, but I will say that it looks great and KU does have a history of light blue on the gridiron. I just couldn’t put this non-school color above blue and red.

Is it just me, or does it seem like half of the fouls that are called against KJ Adams are not even fouls? Might’ve been nice to have KJ in there at the end, but hey, Kansas gets all the calls, it’s always eight against five, blah blah blah. Anyway, KJ was the third best Jayhawk in this one and had 14 points, four steals, and four assists.

3 Stars: Yellow

KU wore yellow uniforms for one game in 1987 and even though they were hideous, I want to see them one more time as an alternate although it's a million times better as an accent color. Yellow is not an official school color but maybe it should be, especially as an accent color.

Parker Braun played ten meaningful minutes and grabbed four rebounds in the process.

2 Stars: Orange, Green, Pink, Brown, etc

They're not colors that the University of Kansas uses, but they're better than the choice below.

Johnny Furphy was basically invisible in this one. He missed all four attempts from deep and scored only four points to go along with four assists. This comes immediately after Bill Self declared how good he was.

Kevin McCullar is not a good enough shooter to be the dude that you let try to win the game for you single handedly. Kansas doesn’t have that dagger player, so they need to set up those last second plays with the team in mind, not a particular player.

Two more observations about McCullar:

One, he sometimes tries to force things and when that happens, you get 6-18 shooting performances like you saw against the Wildcats. He finished with 15 points but it took forever.

Two, he gets fouled a lot when driving. In the last few games especially, there have been some obvious fouls that went as no calls. Kevin has complained (rightfully!) about many of these blatant offenses, and to me at least, it appears that the officials are allowing play to continue because he has questioned their calls. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what it seems like.