Anaheim, Calif. ? Officially, it was the 10th anniversary of the John R. Wooden Classic. Unofficially, it was the college basketball equivalent of a root canal followed by a wisdom-tooth extraction.
Kentucky’s 52-50 victory over UCLA was the root canal, and semi-skilled Stanford’s 64-58 second-game triumph over No. 1-ranked Kansas University was the tooth pulling.
Bricks were flying so often in the Arrowhead Pond Saturday afternoon it made you ask the question: Can’t anybody shoot the rock anymore?
As poorly as Kansas shot, for example, the Jayhawks had the best shooting percentage of any of the four teams here at a lowly and uncharacteristic .367.
Look at it this way: If Friday someone had told Stanford coach Mike Montgomery his team would shoot 32.7 percent against the top-ranked team in the country and win by six points, do you think he would have regarded the questioner as goofier than Mickey and Minnie’s dog?
At the same time, if anyone had told me Kansas would lose by six points to a Stanford team playing without its best player — Josh Childress, who is out until January with a stress fracture — I would have told the guy he had spent too much time in Tomorrowland.
At least we know now that the Jayhawks’ last outing against TCU was not the watershed three-point shooting game everybody thought it was. KU had made only nine of 39 threes before drilling 10 of 21 Monday against the Horned Frogs.
Saturday the Jayhawks made only three of 20 shots from beyond the arc. Add the numbers, and after four games Kansas is shooting a mere 27.5 percent (22 of 80) from three-point range. Now it’s safe to say KU never will see No. 1 again if the treys don’t start landing in the net.
“We shot it,” KU coach Bill Self said, “miserably.”
Later, though, Self said something that may surprise you. He mentioned that the Jayhawks passed the ball worse than they shot it. Self might have been right. Kansas’ assist-to-turnover ratio (18 giveaways, six assists) was one of the worst in recent memory.
Still, it was a chicken-or-egg thing. Do you have to shoot well from the outside to open the passing lanes, or do you have to make pinpoint passes inside in order to free the outside shooters?
Self credited Stanford for playing “smart” defense, which you would expect for a school famed for its academics, and yet a junior-high coach wouldn’t have too much difficulty mapping a defensive game plan for the trey-challenged Jayhawks.
“We thought they were more of a mid-range than long-range team,” Montgomery said. “We knew they were strong in the post and wanted to play high-low. We felt we could give them the three.”
Not only did the Cardinal collapse on post players Wayne Simien and David Padgett, Stanford focused on preventing point guard Aaron Miles from slipping inside and wreaking havoc with his passing.
“Miles will go until you stop him,” Montgomery said, “and we had 10 eyes on him all the time.”
Nevertheless, Miles was credited with four assists — not great, of course, but not bad if his teammates are tossing in an assist now and then. Instead, it was one teammate, and one only. Keith Langford had the Jayhawks’ other two assists. In other words, of the 11 Jayhawks who logged court time Saturday, nine of them had zero assists.
Hmmm, maybe the Jayhawks did pass it worse than they shot it.
Throw in the fact the Cardinal always sprinted back on defense and prevented the Jayhawks from building momentum with a transition game, and it’s easier to see why Stanford could shoot 32.7 percent and still knock off the No. 1-team in the nation.
Does Kansas need to improve its outside shooting first? Or do the Jayhawks need to practice more on their passing game?
That’s no chicken-or-egg question.
KU must do both.