Here’s your weekly dive into what we took away from the last seven days of college hoops.
Alongside plenty of conference hoops, college basketball fans were greeted this week with the Big 12-SEC Challenge and a big-time non-conference matchup between Villanova and Virginia. Between Luke Kennard’s game-winner, Michael Buffer’s appearance in Lexington and Donte DiVincenzo’s buzzer beater, there was plenty of fun around the sport this week.
Here’s what we learned from it.
1. Kansas finds a new way to use Josh Jackson
In the midst of his team’s toughest stretch of the season — a three game gauntlet at West Virginia and Kentucky before hosting Baylor — Kansas head coach Bill Self announced the indefinite suspension of one of his most important bench players. Carlton Bragg, a former five star recruit, was expected to have a breakout season in his sophomore campaign, but now his status is uncertain.
In the short-term, that meant that the Jayhawks would face Kentucky and its imposing big man, Bam Adebayo, with just one frontcourt piece who had played significant minutes this season. Kansas would no doubt require a special performance to knock off the Wildcats at Rupp Arena.
The Jayhawks delivered. Self threw out all the stops in the team’s 79-73 win, including frequently playing a zone defense to help slow down one of the country’s top offenses by limiting post touches to Adebayo and forcing Kentucky to find shooters that it simply doesn’t have on the perimeter. Self, though, also broke out some new offensive sets.
This is the first time in Self’s career that his team has consistently played with four guards and the growing pains have been obvious at times with the Jayhawks sometimes becoming reliant on National Player of the Year candidate Frank Mason to dominate his one-on-one matchup. Against Kentucky, Mason got some help in the form of high ball screens from freshman Josh Jackson.
It started late in the first half when Jackson set a screen and popped out, confusing Wenyen Gabriel and giving Jackson an easy drive in the lane where he delivered an acrobatic finish:
Kansas went back to the well frequently to start the second half. Here are three of those possessions where the Jayhawks used Jackson either to set a ball screen directly or in dribble hand-offs:
On the first action, Adebayo has to step up to cut off Jackson’s drive. He tries to recover after the ball is dumped down to Lucas, but commits a foul. In the second instance, Jackson pops to the 3-point line and nails a catch-and-shoot jumper. He’s been improving as a 3-point shooter lately and has now made 32.7 percent of his triples this season. Finally, on the third play, Jackson drives on De’Aaron Fox before finding Lucas over the top for a dunk.
These actions put opposing defenders in a tough spot because they involve the Jayhawks’ two best players and emphasize Jackson’s ability to create offense for himself and others. If you attempt to cut Mason off as Kentucky did in the first half, Jackson gets space to operate and he can drive to the rim. If you switch, as Kentucky did in the second half, Jackson can attack the mismatch and pass over smaller players as well. Add in the option to have Mason go one-on-one against a bigger defender and you’ve got a really potent offensive attack.
Kansas’ defense may be lagging behind Self’s standards this season, but its offense has been excellent. The Mason-Jackson pick-and-roll adds another wrinkle that will make the Jayhawks tough to defend come March.