Football dominates TV grid

Days after setting program highpoints for 3-point shooting, No. 3 KU seemed to have a different game plan in mind.

Facing off against a team that had excelled at defending the 3-point line, the Jayhawks instead set their sights inside, routinely driving into the paint for baskets or to create another play with a pass in the 102-59 win.

Perhaps part of the reasoning for that strategy was KU coach Bill Self giving credit to what he’d seen from his opponent. However, when Self was asked about facing a team that defended the 3 “better than any team in the country,” he showed at least some surprise.

“Were they No. 1 in the country? I didn’t even know that,” Self joked. “God, I should talk to the media more often.”

Regardless, the Jayhawks (5-0) made short work of Oakland.

Despite only hitting three 3-pointers in the first half on Friday, the Jayhawks had already poured in 55 points — 26 in the paint, 13 off turnovers and 11 off fastbreak opportunities.

“We made more of a conscious effort to throw the ball inside,” Self said.

Now contrast that with Tuesday.

The Jayhawks again got off to a great start against Texas Southern, scoring a season-high 66 points in the game’s opening 20 minutes. That time, though, nearly 55 percent of the team’s points came from behind the arc. KU hit 12 3-pointers in the first half and 19 in the game, both of which were school records.

On Friday, the Jayhawks hit fewer threes in the game (6) than in either half against Texas Southern, yet they still managed to coast their way through the final minutes and end up with more than 100 points.

“It shows that we’re not just a 3-point shooting team,” said guard Malik Newman, who knocked down only one shot from behind the arc on Friday.

True to form, the Jayhawks have been winning — at least early on — in all sorts of ways.

In the season opener against Tennessee State, KU didn’t miss a shot for nearly eight minutes. The Jayhawks decimated the Tigers in the paint to the tune of a 46-18 advantage while locking in defensively, especially in the first half.

Defense was the theme of the second game against Kentucky. Udoka Azubuike showed up offensively, but for the most part it was a grind-it-out slugfest in which the Jayhawks scrapped for offensive rebounds and hung tough despite a far-from-complete offensive performance.

“If you take 70 shots, you take six or seven bad shots, that’s not an alarming rate,” Self said. “Against Kentucky, we took a ton of bad shots.”

Now fast forward a little more.

The story of the Texas Southern game was 3-point shooting, which accounted for exactly half of KU’s points. One game later it was the interior play, as Udoka Azubuike and Mitch Lightfoot helped power KU to a win on a day Devonte’ Graham (4 for 11 on FGs) and Svi Mykhailiuk (6 for 15) weren’t at their most efficient. Really, KU did more than just feed the post.

While Azubuike (career-high 21 points) found a rhythm in the second half, the KU guards were often able to slice through the defense and get to the basket. That stuck in the craw of Oakland coach Greg Kampe, who ripped his team after the game for not valuing possessions on offense and failing to execute defensively.

“We didn’t care how many (Azubuike) got. That didn’t beat us,” Kampe said. “We talked about if he got 25, so what? It’s stopping everybody else.”

Clearly, the results didn’t line up.

Of the Golden Grizzlies’ strategy, although Self noted it was probably the right way to match up against KU, it still created space on the floor and angles for the guards to operate. In that regard, KU probably could have done even more.

In the postgame press conference, Newman pointed out that KU could build off its assist-to-turnover ratio. The Jayhawks made 39 baskets Friday, but only 14 were assisted. They also committed 12 turnovers, though those only led to two Oakland points.

“The ball could move more,” Newman admitted.

Still, the Jayhawks adapted to the plan without much strife.

And although the team may not be especially deep — “Hopefully if we can get some pieces back, then it won’t be like that (for) that much longer,” Self said — it has at least shown some early adaptability to whatever the situation calls for.

“I didn’t think we shot it great from beyond the arc. I didn’t think we did a lot of things great,” Self said. “But we made our free throws, our first-shot defense was better than it has been and we rebounded the ball pretty well.”