Let’s get weird
Things always seem to get weird in March, but everything going into Wednesday’s quarterfinal in the Big 12 Tournament between Kansas and Cincinnati is unusual. For Cincinnati’s part, the fact that they’re playing at all on Wednesday took a strange turn of events.
The Bearcats played West Virginia on Saturday at home, and drubbed them 92-56. As fate would have it, they turned around and played the Mountaineers again in Kansas City on the opening day of tournament play. This time West Virginia got the jump on Cincinnati and appeared to be cruising toward a win that would have extended their season by at least one day. West Virginia was up by 16 points with just over 12 minutes to go in the second half, and I came close to starting my preview article about the Mountaineers.
Thankfully I’m not that kind of a go-getter, and ended up seeing West Virginia squander that lead, thanks in part to three technical fouls. If you’d like to know how WV feels about that, feel free to do a quick Twitter search and count all the threats against referee Kip Kissinger. Cincinnati, a typically defensive-minded team (i.e. a Big 12 basketball team), ended up winning a barn burner, 90-85 in KC.
My focus for this preview won’t actually be Cincinnati, though. Kansas already played them, and we’ve been through an entire regular season with them in the conference. They’re KenPom’s 42nd ranked team with the 70th ranked offense and 23rd ranked defense. They’re almost certainly headed to the NIT with a 19-13 record pending Wednesday’s result, after going 7-11 in league play. While in league play they shot horribly from three, making just 29.6% of their outside shots, they shot a respectable 51% inside the arc.
Cincinnati does turn the ball over a lot, but that doesn’t matter much against this Kansas team. They do hit the offensive boards hard, finishing 1st in Big 12 play in OReb%, which could be a huge problem without Hunter Dickinson gobbling up defensive rebounds, but more on that later.
Defensively, Cincinnati blocks and pressures shots about as well as anyone in the conference, and does it without a lot of fouling. They force a solid amount of turnovers, on 18.5% of defensive possessions against Big 12 opponents, and are pretty average on the defensive glass. They’ll look to take advantage of what will likely be a small Kansas lineup, and try to find as many easy shots near the basket as possible, since their outside shooting is unlikely to lead them to many wins.
What I’m far more interested in headed into this game is what the Jayhawks will look like. We already know that KU’s two best players, Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar, won’t be on the court due to injury. It would seem that four of the five starting spots are filled. Dajuan Harris, Johnny Furphy, and KJ Adams will continue to start as usual. Nicolas Timberlake has filled in for McCullar each time he’s had to sit with injuries down the stretch, and with the lineup extra thin one can reasonably assume he’ll be out there for tipoff as well. That leaves one open spot, but it’s a spot that could drastically alter KU’s entire gameplan as they try to get a win under difficult circumstances.
There are only two realistic options for the fifth starter. The first option is Parker Braun. I’ll admit that Braun, while never really jumping off the screen or the statsheet this year, has generally been better than I expected. He lacks the length, athleticism, and skill around the basket to be a true difference-maker, but he generally holds his own defending the post, and though sample size no doubt plays a role in this, he actually leads the team in block rate by a fairly wide margin over Dickinson.
Offensively, Braun doesn’t have the post moves to create scoring opportunities when he gets the ball down low, but he’s hit 75% of his 36 twos this year simply by finding occasional opportunities to seal off his man and get a quick easy bucket. He’s not going to go out and get you points in the paint the way that Dickinson does, but he’s been a bit better than I expected headed into the season.
The other option is Elmarko Jackson, who spent the first half of the season as a starter. Jackson, obviously, is a guard. That means that if Self puts Jackson on the floor to start the game, Kansas will be down a guard/wing and a center, and will have filled both spots with off-ball guards. Jackson has showcased the level of athleticism that earned him the honor of being a McDonald’s All-American, but here we are in mid-March and he’s yet to translate that athleticism into anything resembling a complete set of skills needed to play basketball at this level. Jackson doesn’t seem comfortable as an off-ball guard next to Harris, has shot the ball poorly, turned the ball over at horrific rate (34.4% in Big 12 play…wow), and generally hasn’t done a lot to positively affect most games outside of short stretches where he makes a couple of impressive plays.
Unless Bill Self taps into the very end of the bench, KU will be using seven players in this game. Harris, Timberlake, Jackson, Furphy, Adams, Jamari McDowell, and Braun. Though Jackson has had a lot of issues this year, playing Adams and Braun together may create just as many problems. Braun isn’t afraid to shoot threes (3-8 this year), but he’s not exactly a guy who’s going to draw the defense out to the perimeter should Kansas want to get him a few looks.
Of course, KJ Adams is no threat to shoot at all, meaning that opponents have been able to swarm the paint defensively to limit Dickinson without having to leave KJ Adams much room. If you have Braun and Adams in at the same time, this problem only gets worse, because Braun doesn’t have the ability to fight through the swarm to get buckets and draw fouls the way Dickinson can. This would effectively erase any chance of Braun and/or Adams becoming a meaningful contributor while they’re both in the game.
However, Adams can defend just about any position, so under the circumstances I don’t hate this lineup when Cincinnati has the ball, but it’s hard to see how the Jayhawks score points with a Braun/Adams combo, outside of the guards just letting it fly early and often, hoping for a good shooting night. That seems unlikely.
If I had to bet, I would absolutely put my money on Elmarko Jackson getting the start, pushing KJ Adams to a small-ball center role (which is frankly his ideal role anyway). Yes, this will mean playing a small lineup that can’t shoot, which is suboptimal for obvious reasons. Theoretically, Harris, Timberlake, and Furphy are all capable three point shooters, but Harris has been abysmal from three since his ankle injury several weeks ago, Furphy seems to have hit a hard freshman wall after scorching the nets early in Big 12 play, and Timberlake, brought to Lawrence almost entirely for his shooting, has just never gotten comfortable playing at this level and is hitting just 30% from three this year, without any meaningful bump in efficiency since getting some starting opportunities down the stretch.
Since Cincinnati doesn’t typically win with offense, KU’s strategy with this lineup may be to up the defensive pressure, get more aggressive in trying to force turnovers, and push the pace at every opportunity. If Harris, Jackson, and Adams can fly down the court and use their athleticism to pressure the Bearcats’ defense by cutting and running downhill toward the basket before Cincy gets into their halfcourt defense, there might be some sliver of a viable strategy there.
My main interest in this game has a lot less to do with the result, and more to do with seeing what Bill Self can cook up against a scrappy team in very, very tough circumstances. I’ve been rambling for paragraphs now and still may not have hit on how Self will try to navigate this game. This is a game where coaching and strategy are going to make a massive difference, and while KU is in a tough spot, there are few coaches I’d rather have trying to make this work than Bill Self.
Prediction
I don’t have a clue how this game will turn out. Despite being the 11-seed, Cincinnati is not a bad team, and unfortunately their strength is defense, while KU’s glaring problems Wednesday night would be on the offensive end no matter who they play. Most sports books haven’t put out a line on this game yet, but I’ve seen some early ones giving Cincinnati a one or two point advantage. I can’t really argue with that.
My gut says that Self finds a way to frustrate Cincinnati, even if KU doesn’t have the skill (or at least the right types of skill) on the court to just go out and win. The Bearcats only lost by five in Allen Fieldhouse the first time these teams played, largely because they grabbed 41% of their own misses. Adams, for all his length and athleticism, is a horrible defensive rebounder, so if he does find himself on the court without Braun for the most part, there’s real reason for concern, as Cincinnati will likely steal some extra possessions by grabbing their own misses.
I can’t articulate a good reason for why Kansas, with the players they have available, would win this game. Nonetheless, they’re playing in KC, they’ll be rested while Cincinnati had to put everything they had into a second half comeback just one day prior, and they have the advantage of knowing how they’re going to attack Cincinnati, while the Bearcats can only guess. I’m getting weird with this one and picking a win.
Kansas 71, Cincinnati 67