Kansas 72, North Carolina 69

Allen Fieldhouse has been redecorated. The 2022 banner has now been raised, so it seems like a good time to review the National Championship games in terms of player value.

Game Summary:

David McCormack was the game MVP for the Jayhawks. His value above bubble was added in the final two minutes. He made a put-back off his own miss to put KU up 70-69, walled up Armando Bacot to force a turnover, and then made the final basket of the game over Brady Manek to extend the score to 72-69. These three possessions made the difference.

Remy Martin was just below McCormack in terms of player value. He hit 3 huge second-half 3’s as well as a driving layup, with each shot answering Carolina runs which had brought the Tar Heels closer to the lead. Martin was KU’s best player in the tournament, adding 4.11 PPG above bubble during the 6 tournament games.

Christian Braun shook off a tough first half to finish in the black. His tough contest on the final shot made it impossible for Carolina to hit a miracle 3 to tie the game. Mitch Lightfoot fouled a lot, but when he was in he did enough to add value. He made his own shot, grabbed an offensive rebound, and forced a turnover to balance out the 3 FT’s he gave up. Ochai Agbaji didn’t record a counting play after his missed layup with 5:53 to play. but throughout the game, he did more good than harm, particularly in the first half when other Jayhawks were struggling. K.J. Adams contributed one play, forcing UNC into a turnover in the first half. Jalen Coleman-Lands grabbed a rebound for his contribution.

Jalen Wilson turned away from a dreadful first half to contribute to a comeback for the ages. Although he finished below bubble, he was very close to neutral. Dejuan Harris had the worse game of any Jayhawk, with his best stretch coming at the beginning of the second half. His worse blunder was stepping on the sidelines with 4 seconds left to give the Heels a final shot to tie. But by only scoring 2 points on 5 shots, he was KU’s weakest link in the game.

The TEAM score of +7.29 was KU’s 11th consecutive positive, above-bubble performance. While not the best overall game of the season, it was enough to get the win and with it KU’s 6th banner.

Kansas 87 West Virginia 63

CB earned his 9th team-MVP of the season, thanks to a balanced performance.

Game Summary:

KU won its quarterfinal match-up with solid performances from Christian Braun, Mitch Lightfoot, Ochai Agbaji, Jalen Coleman-Lands, Jalen Wilson, and Dejuan Harris. The team will play again tomorrow night against TCU.

Kansas 70 Texas 63 (OT)

Christian Braun about to finish on an and-one. He earned his 8th team-MVP thanks to excellent defense on Saturday.

Game Summary:

Kansas won a defensive slugfest on Senior Day, and it was Christian Braun who played the best defense of anyone. He only gave up 3 points, while filling up the box score with a steal, a block, and multiple rebounds. The best offensive players for Kansas were David McCormack (1.34 PPP_af) and Jalen Wilson (1.80 PPP_af). They each got big buckets and made clutch free throws when points were limited.

Seniors Jalen Coleman-Lands and Mitch Lightfoot each had positive performances as well. Although there were only 4 points between the two of them, they each defended well. K.J. Adams had an offensive rebound and 1/2 FT to add nearly a point of value after adjustments. Neither Zach Clemence nor Chris Teahan recorded a stat in their few minutes of play.

Dejuan Harris had a neutral game characterized by excellent defensive plays (blocks, steals), some great passing (had 5 of KU’s 10 charted assists with 0 turnovers); on the other hand he only scored 3 points and did give up some easy baskets due to his slight frame. Remy Martin had good activity on offense to start, but lost his man a few times and gave up Texas’ first 5 points. Joe Yesufu didn’t do much in his few minutes of play.

Ochai Agbaji is officially slumping, as he recorded his third consecutive negative-value game. He seems to be pressing, forcing bad shots on offense while reverting to forgetful moments on D. He’s now down to 41.1% from 3 on the year. On the plus side, he is rebounding better than he did to start the year. This shows he is playing hard. Once the shots start to fall again, he will be someone who can carry this team far in the Tournament.

The TEAM score was helped by KU getting to overtime. But its still indicative of the Agbaji slump. Thankfully; Braun, Wilson, and McCormack all had solid outings to help get KU a win for the 39th consecutive Senior Day/Night game.

Baylor 80 Kansas 70

CB had his 7th team-MVP of the season at Waco in a loss

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.

Kansas 102 Kansas State 83

CB had his 6th team-MVP game, and his first of conference play

Game Summary

An offensive explosion pushed the Jayhawks to 102 points in a 78 possession game (1.31 PPP). Accounting for opponent, location, and tempo; it was the team’s fourth-best outing (Missouri, Iona, St. John’s). The total score of +14.69 was KU’s third consecutive +10 or greater game score. For the season 16/27 games have been +10 or better for KU.

On the individual side, the best overall performance was from Christian Braun, who played solid defense on a night where Kansas gave up 83. Lightfoot and Yesufu were also good on both ends. Other positive performers included Wilson, Agbaji (who outscored a poor defensive game), and Coleman-Lands.

Kansas 88 Nevada 61

NCAA Basketball: Nevada at Kansas — *Christian Braun produced his team-leading 5th MVP game. He has produced positive value in all 11 games so far.*

Christian Braun: Produced over 17.5 more points than he allowed, while playing efficiently on both ends by limiting turnovers and winning possessions through rebounds, blocks, and forced TO’s. His opponent-adjusted score of +12.94 was the second-best on the season of any Jayhawk, only slightly behind his season-leading St. John’s performance.

David McCormack: Produced over 8.5 more points than he allowed, while winning more possessions back on defense than he used on offense. This high efficiency allowed him his second-best game of the season at +8.49.

Ochai Agbaji: Despite giving up 9 points on defense, Ochai came away with 10 possession winners (including 4 steals and 1 TO forced) to produce an overall value score of +4.54.

Dejuan Harris: Produced over 15 points, a career-high, but also gave up 12 points on defense against Nevada’s scoring guards. He turned it over twice, but forced five turnovers and grabbed two defensive rebounds, so was possession-positive. His value was +3.67.

Remy Martin: Produced over 4 points more on offense than he allowed. He forced a few turnovers and grabbed few rebounds to finish with a value of +1.96.

K.J. Adams: Assisting on a Braun 3 and a nice pitch-ahead to Agbaji on a fast-break (which the box score missed), Adams produced more points than he allowed despite not scoring himself. He had a miss and a rebound, netting to zero on possessions. His value was +0.61.

Jalen Wilson: Jalen scored 7 points and gave up 7 points, but since he scored two of his baskets on assists his point produced – allowed was negative. However, he made up for this by winning possessions from rebounds (8). His value was +0.24.

Michael Jankovich: Had one miss and one rebound, netting to zero. The slightly-negative score of -0.05 was due to opponent adjustment.

Chris Teahan: Had one miss. Value score of -0.51.

Jalen Coleman-Lands: Made 1 shot of 4, producing 2 points on offense. However, he didn’t give up any points on defense, making up some ground for his poor offensive efficiency. Value score of -0.60.

Zach Clemence: Gave up 3 more points than he produced, fouling three times in his 5:11 of floor time. He grabbed a couple boards as well. Value score of -1.21.

Mitch Lightfoot: Gave up nearly 4 more points than he allowed in 10:16 of floor time. Possessions were also on the negative side, with his 3 turnovers driving his score down. Value score of -4.35.

Joseph Yesufu: Gave up 6 points in only 5:20 of floor time, while turning it over twice on offense. Value score of -5.68.

TEAM: Offensive efficiency of 1.14, Defensive efficiency of 0.79. Value score of +20.05 was the second-best on the season (behind the Missouri game).

Kansas 80 Stephen F. Austin 72

*Christian Braun had his 4th MVP game of the season*

Although it was closer than expected, KU’s talent shown through at crunch time, and the Jayhawks held on to win, 80-72 over Stephen F. Austin. With Kansas being about a 22 point favorite from the computers (Vegas had it at 23.5), the 8 point win meant this was KU’s second-worse performance of the season. Below are the value scores:

Christian Braun has now produced positive value in all ten games this season. He was the most valuable Jayhawk against SFA with a value above bubble of +6.76 points. As in most games, he filled the stat sheet. Along with being the leading point producer, he won 9 defensive possessions Saturday night, the most on the team.

Ochai Agbaji did not have his best game finishing scoring chances (two missed dunks), but played solid defense in 39 minutes, only giving up 7 points defensively. He produced +3.12 points above bubble, showing that his improvement in the off-season has brought up his “floor” immensely.

Jalen Wilson had a nice night off the bench in about 20 minutes. His one 3-point attempt didn’t fall (making him 1-15 on the season), but he made some shots in the midrange. His defense has remained steady in 7 games this year, and it helped provide value for his team last night.

Zach Clemence didn’t play much but scored on a put back attempt following an offensive rebound. His defense wasn’t great in the few minutes he played, but still managed to produce an overall positive value game.

Remy Martin was clutch, making a late 3-point basket to give Kansas a more comfortable 6 point lead during the final minute of play. However, he gave up a quick lay-up soon after. He struggled to get going and had some defensive lapses, leading to a slightly negative game.

Jalen Coleman-Lands made a couple free-throws in a few first-half minutes (he didn’t play in the second half), but also played poor defense.

Joseph Yesufu gave up two buckets in his few minutes of play, once on a mismatch inside and once giving up a drive to a guard.

Mitch Lightfoot played the bulk of the minutes inside, giving up some scoring to SFA’s skilled big Gavin Kinsmil. However, he hit the offensive glass to the tune of 4 boards.

Dejuan Harris only took one field goal attempt, a missed dunk. He did put in four FT’s to ice the game away. While he struggles to produce points aside from assisting, his defense last night was as good as it could have been.

David McCormack had a very poor game, finishing with only 2 points and battling foul trouble all evening. Still, you need more than 10 minutes out of him.

TEAM was at -3.70, meaning a similar type performance against a bubble team on a neutral site would result in a 3-4 point loss. Kansas is getting very consistent positive performances from Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun. The team normally gets at least an okay game from Martin and Wilson. But it is the others; in particular McCormack, Lightfoot, Coleman-Lands, and Harris; who mix good to great games with bad ones.

Note that K.J. Adams was out sick and was unavailable. Bobby Pettiford is also still recovering from his injury, so KU only dressed 10 scholarship players (all of whom played) for this game. Agbaji, Braun, and Martin all played season-high minutes (39, 36, and 35), which resulted in a game which saw the least amount of bench-play so far this season. Using the HHI player rotation metric (higher means less substitution), the SFA game was at 0.73, well beyond the range of 0.50 – 0.66 that the season’s first 9 games had seen. The rotation is being tightened as conference play nears.

Best Duos in Recent KU Basketball History

This blog post was inspired by a discussion that Matt Tait and Nick Schwerdt had recently. Tait always has a refreshingly positive look at the team, and Schwerdt’s assessments are always quite reasonable. If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend watching the short video located here. In it they discuss how well Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun have been playing. Schwerdt goes as far to posit that this might be one of Bill Self’s best duos he’s had, something Schwerdt admits he wasn’t expecting to say at the beginning of the season.

This prompts both to think of other pairs at KU. Schwerdt comes up with Frank Mason and Devonte’ Graham, who played together for three seasons (2015, 2016, 2017), and which had their best collective season in 2017. Tait brings up Devon Dotson and Udoka Azubuike, who mostly played together in the 2020 season (Azubuike missed most of 2019). Another duo mentioned was Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk, although this seemed to be chosen more for stylistic reasons.

If there’s one thing Charting the Hawks seeks to do, it’s to answer questions such as these using an objective statistical-scoring system which assesses player value. The value-metric of choice will be Adjusted PPG +/-, the proprietary system developed here. This will be a one-number metric, expressed in points per game, which shows the value a player provides over that of a KU-level replacement player (or “bubble” player).

In order to see which duos have performed best, I simply separated the two best players of each season, and combined their scores. For instance, for the 2021 season, I took Marcus Garrett and David McCormack’s value scores and combined them to arrive at +7.32. I went back to each year since 1997 and then ranked the duos in terms of highest to lowest. The results are below.

*The 1998 team was carried by Raef LaFrentz and Paul Pierce*

Through nine games, the duo of Agbaji and Braun have been the second-best of any season since 1997, closely behind LaFrentz and Pierce. Of course, this is only through nine games. The season is about 1/4 of the way complete, so there’s reason to think both players will see their value scores revert down somewhat. (Note however that these numbers are schedule-adjusted, so they aren’t arbitrarily high due to opponent quality. Agbaji and Braun have truly been that good). The current leaders in the Bill Self era (years highlighted in blue) was the 2005 version of Wayne Simien and Keith Langford. Simien’s 2005 season is currently the highest of any player since 1997, barely nudging out Frank Mason’s 2017. Langford had a solid senior season, but the reason that due is so high on this list is because of Simien. With the Agbaji/Braun combo, it’s the case that both have been elite that is so interesting.

The next question I had was to see how rare it was for any one team to have two or more players with a value score as high as Agbaji and Braun. Without being arbitrary, we can select +5.00 as the cutoff…how many Jayhawk teams since 1997 have had two players with a value score of at least +5.00?

Since 1997, there have been 356 player-seasons (for instance Devonte’ Graham’s has 4 of these 356 player-seasons seasons since he played at Kansas 4 seasons). Only 15 out of 356 have been above +5.00. So this is a rare feat for any individual player. Rarer still is the occasion of this happening for multiple Jayhawks in the same season. In fact, it has only happened twice; in 1998 with LaFrentz and Pierce, and in 2011 with the Morris twins. Agbaji and Braun would be only the third duo if they keep this up.

In closing, Agbaji and Braun have been playing at elite levels even by KU standards, comparable to the LaFrentz/Pierce duo or even the Morris twins. But it is the vast improvement of both players which is so surprising. In a future post we will look at the largest improvements year-over-year and see how these two compare.

Kansas 102 Missouri 65

No.8 Kansas Jayhawks Demolish the Missouri Tigers 102-65 — *Christian Braun throws down 2 on his way to his third team MVP game of the season*

After nine seasons without the rivalry being played, Kansas destroyed Missouri with a balanced attack led by incredibly efficient offense. The win moved Kansas to 8-1 on the season.

*Beating Missouri by 37 was the team’s best performance of the season thus far*

Dejuan Harris, Joseph Yesufu, Jalen Coleman-Lands, and Chris Teahan had their best outings of the season against Missouri. Braun and Agbaji also produced solid value scores in keeping with the excellent basketball they have been playing. David McCormack played his fourth positive-value game in a row.

Kansas 95 St. John’s 75

KU defeated St. John’s by 20 in New York in the Big 12 / Big East Challenge game, improving to 6-1 in the non-conference. Below are the value scores for each player.

Christian Braun recorded the best game of any Jayhawk this season at +13.39. David McCormack had his second consecutive good outing, and both Ochai Agbaji and Remy Martin performed at a level we’ve been accustomed to seeing. K.J. Adams actually won 6 possessions from rebounds (5 offensive) in only 6 minutes, two more than what the official box score gave him. Despite only scoring 8 points so far in 7 games, K.J. is actually adding offensive value this season because of his rebounds.