2020 Kansas Jayhawks

The 2020 Kansas Jayhawks finished with a record of 28-3 (17-1), winning the Big 12 Regular Season. The team’s Sports Reference link is here.

OFFENSE

We’ll first focus on the 2020 offense. Devon Dotson was spectacular at scoring on his own play (84% of points off were unassisted). He was the team’s most productive player by a long shot, and quite efficient for how involved he was on offense. Udoka Azubuike used his size and positioning to great effect, allowing him to have the team’s highest true shooting percentage in spite of poor free throw shooting. A majority of his points (54%) were assisted, the highest of all rotation players. David McCormack actually produced more points per minutes than Azubuike, but did so with less efficiency. Marcus Garrett was the only other rotation player having positive value on the offensive end, doing so by being the team’s leading assist-man and finding a niche at scoring the ball on his own play. The team’s jump-shooters struggled to shoot the ball, leading to negative value on that end.

DEFENSE

Defensively, Marcus Garrett had the program’s best year (since 1997), giving up only 7.2 points per 60 possessions played while winning 7.2 possessions per 60. An efficiency score that far below 1.00 for a guard/wing is unheard of. But the biggest defensive surprise of the year was Isaiah Moss on the wing, who actually performed better than Garrett on points allowed. One area he did a good job in was staying home on shooters and not over-helping. He played textbook position defense for a wing. Opposing teams wanted to space the floor and bring Azubuike out, which neutralized Doke’s defensive dominance inside the paint. It was this stylistic difference in opponents’ offense that made Moss score higher as a defender than Azubuike. Note that this stylistic difference often hurt opponents on the other end, where Doke could dominate inside. That’s the thing about trying to extract a competitive advantage in one area of basketball. It often comes at a cost. Silvio De Sousa, when he played, showed excellent footwork for a post and hit the glass hard. Last, Devon Dotson’s defense declined from his freshman year, but this was probably due to how much energy he expended on offense. To reframe what was previously stated, when team’s get value from one area of the game it often comes at a cost. Relying so heavily on Dotson on offense almost certainly hurt the PG’s ability to play his best defense.

Total Adjusted PPG +/-

When we put offense and defense together, we see that Dotson, Azubuike, and Garrett carried the team. Moss and Agbaji’s sub -1.0 offensive scores really stand out, so it should be noted that each only shot around 33% from 3 while generating relatively little offense for others off the bounce. These low shooting percentages are somewhat surprising given how much attention other teams paid to Doke and Dot. They should have gotten quite a few open looks to be nearer to 40%. Agbaji may have been overworked, he finished with the second-most minutes on the team and took tough defensive assignments. He was a better talent than his value score suggests.

Freshman Christian Braun proved to be a solid defensive rebounder and shooter. He didn’t create much offense, but took care of the ball and won enough possessions to finish the year on the positive side. The back-up bigs each showed promise, and each were positive contributors albeit in limited minutes behind Doke.