Kansas guard Kevin McCullar Jr. places up a shot through the first half of an NCAA school basketball sport towards Oklahoma Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
No. 9 Kansas Jayhawks (19-5 general, 7-4 Big 12) at Oklahoma Sooners (12-12 general, 2-9 Big 12)
Time: 12 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023
Location: Lloyd Noble Center, Norman, Oklahoma
TV: CBS | Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network through Learfield
If you’ve adopted this Kansas basketball workforce for even half of the present season, you’ve seemingly heard quite a few KU gamers and coaches emphasize the significance of vitality on sport nights.
Makes sense. Basketball is a quick sport, usually performed at an up-tempo tempo all through and it may be laborious to maintain up in case you’re caught within the mud.
While pinpointing the vitality challenge as a key has not been an issue for the ninth-ranked Jayhawks, bringing it constantly has been.
Kansas coach Bill Self mentioned Thursday that each workforce in America faces that challenge at some level throughout just about each season. And he went into higher element about what bringing vitality to the ground truly means.
“To me, it’s feet and hand activity, always bluffing at the ball, always digging at the ball, (explosive) first two steps in transition,” he started. “There’s a lot of things that go into it. And when you don’t do that — which very rarely do you do it all the time — things get exposed.”
The Jayhawks have survived a number of of their low-energy nights this season. One of them got here within the first assembly with the Sooners, who led by 10 with just below 5 minutes to play however watched Kansas flip up its tenacity to shut the sport on an 18-4 run for the victory again in January.
Other instances, the Jayhawks haven’t been so fortunate. All 4 of their losses in Big 12 play featured Kansas beginning sluggish and by no means having the ability to absolutely make up for it. And the KU coaches and gamers have mentioned routinely that this workforce is at its greatest when it performs with urgency and fairly bizarre when it doesn’t.
“We’ve got really good athletes that need to be turned up to become great athletes,” Self mentioned. “And when we do that we’re pretty effective.”
When they don’t?
“We get real average,” Self added.
Part of the rationale the vitality equation has been so key for Kansas this season is due to how tough it may be for gamers and groups to flip the swap as soon as the sport is underway. Self mentioned a variety of having correct vitality at tipoff begins with preparation — the way you follow, how nicely you lock in, how motivated you might be to begin quick through the pregame warmup.
“If you don’t have it to start you’re usually not going to get it back,” Self mentioned. “Everything’s about momentum in sports.”
On Thursday, Kansas senior Kevin McCullar Jr. was requested to pinpoint one thing aside from vitality that might be key for this workforce each on Saturday towards OU and for the remainder of the season.
He tried to do it with out saying the magic E phrase, however couldn’t fairly get there.
“I would say just trusting each other, depending on each other, going out there communicating,” McCullar started. “You said (don’t answer with) energy, but that’s really what it comes down to. We’ve got to create our own energy and just go out there and have fun.”
That will likely be notably essential in a single particular matchup towards the Sooners. In the primary assembly with Kansas, OU guard Grant Sherfield obtained just about no matter he needed in tallying a game-high 25 factors in a four-point loss to the Jayhawks.
And that was with only one 3-pointer (off of 4 makes an attempt), on an evening when the Sooners made simply two of 17 photographs from 3-point vary.
“We didn’t do a good job on him the first time,” Self mentioned. “He scored three points from behind the arc and he still gets 25. He’s a guy that can go get his own, he got his shoulders past us, he elevated over us. There’s a lot of things that he did really well in the first game that we’ve got to be much better at this game.”
Sherfield enters this one seventh within the Big 12 in scoring at 16.8 factors per sport. He’s the one Sooner within the Top 20, nevertheless, and he’ll should be at least nearly as good on this one as he was in Lawrence to be able to assist the Sooners decide up their first convention win in practically a month.
OU has misplaced six of its final seven video games, with the one win in that point coming in a 93-69 beatdown of then-No. 2 Alabama within the SEC/Big 12 Challenge on Jan. 28.
The Sooners are ranked 54th within the newest KenPom.com rankings, with the nation’s 54th most effective offense and fifty fifth most effective protection. While these marks put the Sooners within the higher tier of Division I, there aren’t many different issues they do exceptionally nicely.
They’re not notably good at forcing turnovers or caring for the basketball. They don’t block photographs. They’re a below-average offensive rebounding workforce. And they have a tendency to play at one of many slowest tempos within the nation.
That final half is by design due to second-year coach Porter Moser’s need to power opponents to defend half-court units.
The Jayhawks have received 4 in a row over the Sooners and lead the all-time collection 155-69. Self’s workforce is a two-point favourite on this one in line with KenPom, which provides Kansas a win chance of 58%.
Probable starters:
No. 9 Kansas
G – Dajuan Harris Jr., 6-1, 175, Jr.
G – Kevin McCullar Jr., 6-6, 210, Sr.
G – Gradey Dick, 6-8, 205, Fr.
F – Jalen Wilson, 6-8, 225, Soph.
F – KJ Adams, 6-7, 225, Soph.
Oklahoma
G – Grant Sherfield, 6-2, 201, Sr.
G – Milos Uzan, 6-3, 183, Fr.
F – Jalen Hill, 6-6, 218, Sr.
F – Jacob Groves, 6-9, 216, Sr.
F – Tanner Groves, 6-10, 235, Sr.
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