Baylor 80 Kansas 70

Game Summary:

The road Jayhawks got off to a nice start, before allowing Baylor to get back into the game at halftime. The second half was back-and-forth until Baylor took control down the stretch. Kansas had trouble limiting the pick-n-roll options of Baylor and didn’t finish well at the rim on offense.

The wings were great again. Christian Braun’s 17 points and 4 assists produced far more than the 9 points he gave up on defense. Ochai was even more productive with 27 points and 4 assists, with 11 allowed on defense. CB gets the slight advantage in overall value this game due to his far higher offensive and slightly better defensive efficiencies.

On the other end, the two main posts had dreadful defensive outings. David McCormack gave up 25 points due to poor positioning on ball screens, slow recoveries, overhelping, and fouling. Mitch Lightfoot finished with 4 fouls in 3 1/2 minutes, giving up 7 points without even registering a shot on the offensive side. Dejuan Harris had a questionable defensive outing, but it was his offensive game that was worse. Given 7 assists in the official box score, upon closer examination it was clear that most of these were too generous, leaving him with even less of an offensive impact than he might have had otherwise.

The return of Remy Martin was accompanied by nice offense (5 points on 3 shots) and poor defense (5 points allowed). He drew a charge and almost a second (that was called a flop warning instead).

Fatigue seemed to set in down the stretch, as all 5 KU starters played 30+ minutes. Remy was the only bench player with more than 10 minutes, at 11. Despite solid performances either in this game or in recent weeks; Yesufu, Coleman-Lands, Adams, and Clemence combined for only 12 minutes total. The attrition battle showed. KU finished 7-28 from 3 and 17-42 (barely 40%) from inside the arc. Kansas had a 1.27 offensive rating at the 5:30 mark in the 1st half, and then went 0.89 the rest of the way.

The TEAM performance of 2.59 was lower than it otherwise would have been aside from the fouling in the final minute. Still, KU had a chance to keep the game close in the final 4 minutes and could not. Once again, fatigue is a plausible factor. With Martin back and KU at 11 healthy scholarship players, the bench is something that needs to be used.