Defensive Score Sheet: Texas@Kansas

Better late than never, right? Being a Kansas fan, this wasn’t a fun one to score. Here’s the chart, notes are after the break.

In Search of: The First Six Minutes Of Texas@Kansas

[EDIT: I’m no longer searching. Huge thanks to Luke Winn, who probably has access to some super secret SI footage vault, for sending me video of the first half. I should get this game scored tonight, just in time to watch Kansas@Colorado.]

Here on the west coast, CBS preempted the beginning of the Texas-Kansas game with 10 minutes of UCLA shooting free throws to close out their win over Stanford.  I don’t really want to post the defensive charting for a partial game, so the Project Defensive Score Sheet stats will be delayed until I can find a source for the opening 6 minutes.  Or until I give up.  If anybody has a link to an online replay stream, or if you want to take a video of the beginning off of a DVR recording, let me know in the comments (or drop me an email).  Thanks!

Similarity Scores: Big 12

I introduced team similarity scores yesterday (summary at UFR, complete description here), and today I’ll be applying them to the Big 12.  If you’re here via UFR, you’ve already seen the lists for Kansas, Kansas State, and Missouri, so you can skip down to Texas.  Everybody else, dig in.

2010 KANSAS

2010 Kansas - Historical Comps

SCORE	YR	TEAM	NCAA W's
94	2007	Kansas	3
94	2005	Louisville	4
93	2008	Kansas	6
93	2004	Cincinnati	1
93	2004	Connecticut	6
92	2008	Memphis	5
92	2007	Texas A&M	2
92	2004	Gonzaga	1
92	2009	Gonzaga	2
92	2006	Florida	6

The 2004/9 Gonzaga teams are on this list partly because they have great raw stats from beating up on the WCC.  Ditto for 2004 Cincy, as they were in Conference USA back then.

As you'd expect, there are a couple Kansas teams on here, as Bill Self has a distinct style that he's installed in Lawrence: great interior defense with lots of steals and blocks (see 2004 UConn, 2008 Memphis) and great shooting and good rebounding on offense (see 2006 Florida, 2005 Louisville).  What may be surprising to some is that last year's 2009 Kansas not in the top 10.  That's because this year's team has improved almost literally across the board.

Also, it's nice to see 3 champions and 2 other Final Four teams on there (and 2005 North Carolina was close, at 91).  You might think any team rated this highly will automatically have a bunch of great comps, but that's not quite true.  One of the closest teams in that dataset to 2010 KU, by Pythag rating, is 2005 Duke: