Lessons Learned From Kansas' Victory Over Baylor
No matter how you look at it, from a Jayhawk's perspective, the blowout victory over Baylor Saturday afternoon was a lot of fun. Kansas jumped out to an early lead, albeit after a brief rocky start, and just took off from there, never looking back. It felt like this one was over by halftime, with a 39-21 lead. As it turns out, it was, with Baylor never even making this one fell at all close in the 83-59 route.
So how did KU put this win together? When you see a team as good as Baylor blown out like this, regardless of opponent, it's always a good idea to immediately look at 3 point shooting, to see if something really flukey happened. Not the case here. Yes, Baylor attempted 27 threes and hit just 26% of them, but they were only shooting 32% in conference play anyway, so it wasn't a huge departure from the norm,even if it was subpar. They also attempted 44 twos, so it's not like they were relying that heavily on the three in the first place. Also, KU shot well below average from behind the arc themselves, just 25% on 20 attempts, so it's not as though the Jayhawks just got hot from deep to take advantage of Baylor's poor shooting.
The big answer here lies in those 44 two point attempts Baylor took. They made just 31.8% of them (14). This is a team that shoots 54% from inside arc on the year. Kansas put together their best defensive performance of the year, pressuring Baylor for nearly three full 40 minutes and making sure nothing came easy. This is a hallmark trait of Bill Self teams, and one that's been noticeably missing from this year's squad. It will be interesting moving forward to see if Kansas, who has been rapidly climbing KenPom's defensive efficiency rankings, can keep this up, or if the last two games since the Kentucky blowout aren't something this group can sustain.
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