Week six of college basketball has come and gone. Here’s a look at what we learned.
Week six of college hoops meant finals week for universities across the country and that, in turn, meant very few interesting games during the week.
Luckily, Saturday gave us one of the best days of the season featuring matchups between Arizona and Texas A&M, UCLA and Ohio State and Kentucky and North Carolina.
To get you all caught up, we’ve put together our biggest takeaways from the week that was.
1. The interesting efficiency of Josh Jackson’s assists at Kansas
Kansas wing Josh Jackson has been one of the best shot creators in the country from that position this season.
So, inspired by Luke Winn’s tracking of Lonzo Ball’s assists over at Sports Illustrated, I decided to take a look at where exactly Jackson’s 4.8 assists per 40 minutes are going. Below is a radar chart showing the distribution of the 6-foot-8 guard’s 37 assists this season.
Diving a bit deeper gives us some even more interesting information. In basketball, the most efficient field goal attempts are either shots at the rim or 3-pointers. In general, teams tend to want to avoid taking too many mid-range jumpers as they are worth fewer points than a 3-pointer and usually aren’t as likely to go in as a layup or a dunk.
Jackson, either intentionally or simply by chance, has helped the Jayhawks produce efficient scoring chances by dishing off most of assists this season either for a shot at the rim or a 3-pointer:
| Jackson’s Assist Locations | Layup/Dunk | Other 2s | 3-pointers |
| Total | 20 | 3 | 14 |
| % of Total Assists | 54.05% | 8.11% | 37.84% |
In Kansas’ 89-71 win over Davidson on Saturday, Jackson doled out another three assists — two to Landen Lucas for shots at the rim and one to Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk for a 3-pointer in transition. Here’s a look at all three:
What’s noticeable is how good Jackson is at facilitating at all levels. His first assist comes on a designed play to Lucas. The 6-foot-10 big man isn’t an excellent post scorer, but he’s a smart one and does a nice job angling off his defender to create an opening for Jackson to deliver an entry pass on the money.
On the second, Jackson’s defender simply slips, giving him a driving lane and an open pass to a cutting Lucas. The third assist might be the most impressive one, though. Jackson has the ball in transition and rather than pass ahead early to Mykhailiuk, he waits until he can get into the mid-range and forces the defense to commit away from the shooter before kicking it out for the open look.
As of Sunday afternoon, Kansas has the fourth ranked offense in the country in terms of adjusted efficiency. The Jayhawks already benefit from having a pair of stellar point guards to help create shots for others. Adding Jackson to the mix is a plus that most other teams simply don’t have.
2. De’Aaron Fox’s halfcourt scoring woes continue
I wrote a bit about this on Saturday after Kentucky’s 103-100 win over North Carolina, but it’s worth diving a bit deeper into the halfcourt scoring woes of De’Aaron Fox. The 6-foot-3 point guard has an effective field goal percentage of just 40.4 percent in non-transition offense this season, according to Hoop-Math.
The biggest problem is rather noticeable. Of Fox’s 78 field goal attempts in the halfcourt, 32 of them (41.0 percent) have been 2-point jumpers. Not only are those shots the least desirable field goal attempts in basketball, but Fox struggles to make them. He’s converted a meager 28.1 percent of his 2-point jumpers in the halfcourt this season, per Hoop-Math.
The issue for John Calipari and his coaching staff is to figure out how to make Fox productive in these halfcourt situations when team’s encourage the point guard to shoot those jump shots. Take a look at how North Carolina defended Fox’s three misses on Saturday:
On every one of them, the Tarheels’ pick-and-roll coverage is designed to force Fox to the elbow, giving him an open, but low percentage field goal attempt. On the third shot, though, Fox does something slightly different by opting to take on the big man defending him with a little bit a shimmy. The move opens up a look at a floater for the point guard, a shot that Fox will need to improve on to make the attack more threatening.
As I wrote on Saturday, this isn’t a make or break situation for the Wildcats, but when games are single-elimination in March, even the smallest moments can make a difference. For Kentucky, that may be Fox’s decision-making from the elbow.
3. Debating who’s the second best team in the Big East
Big East basketball is back! Or so it would seem. After several years of seemingly lagging behind the ACC and the Big 12, the new Big East appears ready to compete on a national stage. That, of course, is a bit of an exaggeration given that the league’s best team, the Villanova Wildcats, won the NCAA Tournament last season, but the conference appears to be much deeper in 2016-17.
The biggest question that remains is which team is the league’s second best behind Villanova? Three schools — all ranked in KenPom’s Top 25 — have an argument.
Entering the season, the mostly likely answer was the Xavier Musketeers. After struggling to start the year, though, it’s not clear just how good the Musketeers are. Sure, Xavier’s two losses — on the road at Baylor and at Colorado — are excusable, but its performances on neutral courts against Missouri and Clemson and at home against Wake Forest are more concerning. Sophomore point guard Edmond Sumner will need to take a leap in conference play for the Musketeers to compete for a Big East title.
The team with the best resume to date is the Butler Bulldogs. After picking up wins over Arizona and Cincinnati earlier in the season, Butler knocked off Indiana at a neutral site on Saturday. Kelan Martin has led the way for the team, averaging 18.6 points and 4.3 rebounds per contest, as the Bulldogs have succeeded by playing with a methodical but efficient offense that doesn’t turn the ball over. That may be enough to do battle against the league’s best.
The most untested, but perhaps most intriguing option is the Creighton Bluejays. Although the team has a home win over Wisconsin, the Bluejays have played against the 218th best non-conference schedule in the country, according to KenPom.
Creighton has one of the nation’s most dynamic backcourts now that junior Marcus Foster appears to have found his form after transferring from Kansas State. If Foster and teammate Mo Watson can continue to operate at a high level, they’re my pick to finish second in the league.
4. It’s time for Texas A&M’s Robert Williams to play starter minutes
The Aggies had an opportunity to pick up a resume-building win over the weekend with a neutral site meeting against Arizona, but like most times this season, they came up short. After the 67-63 loss, Texas A&M is now 7-3 with just one good non-conference win (Virginia Tech).
With only a home meeting against Tennessee and the SEC schedule left to help build an NCAA Tournament case, the Aggies need to maximize their chances of winning by playing their best players.
That starts with getting freshman Robert Williams on the court more often. The 6-foot-9 forward is currently averaging 20.3 minutes per game, but his production would seem to justify a bigger role. Williams is posting 21.3 points, 9.9 rebounds and 4.7 blocks per 40 minutes, statistics that put him up there with some of the country’s most valuable big men.
The Aggies’ loss to Arizona presented a microcosm of why Williams is so valuable. The big man finished as a plus 11, the highest mark on the team, in defeat as he scored 15 points on 10 shots, grabbed three rebounds and blocked a shot.
The Texas A&M frontcourt is certainly crowded. Tyler Davis is an excellent post scorer and Tonny Trocha-Morelos gives the team a floor-spacing big man, but if the Aggies want to to have a chance at making the NCAA Tournament, it starts with putting Williams on the court more often.
5. Texas may already be destined to miss the NCAA Tournament
Outside of the traditional blue bloods of college basketball, there are few teams who can boast a roster as talented as the one helmed by Shaka Smart at Texas.
Of the nine players currently averaging double-figure minutes for the Longhorns, seven of them were top 100 recruits. Four of those seven were ranked in the top 50, according to 247 Sports. The other two rotation players — Jacob Young (105) and Kendal Yancy (109) — fell just outside of the top 100 in their respective recruiting classes.
That makes Texas’ start to the season even more perplexing. After losing to Arkansas on Saturday, the Longhorns are now just 5-5 and in real danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. According to Team Rankings, Texas currently has a 2.5 percent chance of playing in March Madness, which makes sense when you look at their remaining schedule.
The Longhorns have two remaining non-conference games, both at home, against UAB and Kent State. After that, they’ll being Big 12 play where they are project to finish with a 5-13 league record, per KenPom. Of the 10 teams in the conference, Texas ranks as the worst with an adjusted efficiency margin of just +8.30.
Next: Can Gonzaga make the Final Four?
There are fundamental problems with the Longhorns’ ability to produce enough points to win games — namely, their lack of a true point guard and their inability to shoot — that deserve more space, but for now, it’s enough to know that Smart seems destined to miss the NCAA Tournament in his second season at the helm in Austin.