The Big 12’s leading scorer once again has been named the conference player of the week.
Kansas sophomore Devon Dotson earned the honor for the second time this season after averaging 20 points, six assists and 2.5 steals in wins over Milwaukee and Kansas City last week.
Dotson is currently averaging 19.6 points per game for the season, and his big week included 22 points against Milwaukee and 18 in the runaway win over Kansas City at Sprint Center on Saturday. He also recorded a career-high nine assists against Milwaukee last Tuesday while dishing out three more against the Kangaroos, giving him a weekly assist-to-turnover ratio of 6-1.
Self last week called Dotson’s status as the Big 12’s leading scorer “a shocker to me,” which spoke to the rapid improvement the point guard has made from his freshman season to now.
“To be honest with you, I see him continuing to score at the same clip,” Self said. “He’s almost averaging 20 a game, and I think that even though that’ll probably drop — all stats drop when you get into conference play — I think that’s the thing that I would say he’s improved at the most is just some intangibles and then his confidence to try to score the ball.”
The 6-foot-2 sophomore from Charlotte, N.C., also earned Big 12 player of the week honors earlier this season after his stellar showing during the Jayhawks’ run to the Maui Invitational title in which he scored 31 points in the championship-game victory over Dayton.
Dotson now has received three Big 12 weekly honors during his KU career. He also was named Big 12 Newcomer of the Week on Dec. 31, 2018.
In addition to leading the conference in scoring, the KU point guard currently ranks among the Big 12 leaders in field goal percentage (fourth at 50.4%), assists (sixth at 4.8 per game), free throw percentage (fourth at 85.3%) and steals (third at 2.2 per game). Dotson has scored 10 or more points in 16 consecutive games dating back to last season and has scored 17 or more points in nine of 10 games so far this season.
KU No. 2 in the NET
————-
Now in its second full season as a ranking tool, the first NET rankings of the 2019-20 season were released Monday, with Kansas sitting in the No. 2 spot behind Ohio State.
San Diego State, Butler and Baylor round out the Top 5 in this season’s initial NET rankings.
Introduced in 2018 as the newest way to sort and evaluate college basketball teams, the NET (NCAA Tournament Evaluation Tool) incorporates many of the same measurements previously used by the RPI rankings but also adds some of the modern-era efficiency numbers to create a more complete ranking of the nation’s Division I basketball programs.
The most visible components of the NET rankings are game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency and the quality of wins and losses.
Based on those metrics, teams are divided into Quadrants and the teams with the most Quadrant 1 and 2 wins typically rise to the top of the rankings.
Kansas is currently 3-1 against Quadrant 1 and 2 opponents and has the potential to play more than a dozen more the rest of the way.
Streaming apologies
————-
Last Saturday’s broadcast of the KU-Kansas City contest on Big 12 Now/ESPN+ featured several moments where the picture cut in and out or the images on the screen were hard to view.
KU and ESPN on Sunday each released statements explaining the glitch.
“Our production of the Kansas City vs. Kansas game on Saturday night from Sprint Center experienced isolated intermittent transmission issues that occasionally impacted the audio and video feed,” ESPN explained in its statement. “We apologize for the issues and their impact to fans.”
Kansas Athletics followed up with the a similar apology, pinpointing ESPN’s hiring of a “production truck” as part of the problem.
“We consulted with ESPN who confirmed the issues were isolated to this particular game production,” KU’s statement read. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
