Nutcracker

What a kick in the groin. What an absolute freaking kick in the groin.

How on Earth did the Jayhawks lose their first round match up to the Bucknell Bison? Let me count the ways:

1) National championship contenders generally have an offense. This team did not. Feeding Wayne Simien the ball as much as possible is a good start. But you have to have something in place when the other team makes that very difficult. To be honest, our offense looked a lot like Missouri's, but slowed down a bit. Missouri would race down the court and jack up the first shot that looked halfway open without making a concerted effort to find their big man, Linas Kleiza. Kansas was a bit more patient. They would walk the ball up the court, pass the ball around the perimeter 10 times, looking for the perfect entry pass into Simien. When that didn't materialize, they would panic as the shot clock wound down and jack up a low percentage shot from the perimeter, Missouri-style. Which wouldn't have been quite so bad if we had more than one player who could rebound the basketball. Which brings me to point #2,

2) We had no consistent rebounding because we had no set rotation for our big men. Christian Moody is a serviceable player, but he doesn't rebound. We brought in three freshman big men this year, but none of them ever got consistent minutes. Maybe Bill Self didn't want to discourage two of them by giving one of them the bulk of the playing time. But he ought to have figured out by March who would add the most value to the rotation and stick with him. But he never did this, as evidenced by the fact that C.J. Giles, Sasha Kaun and even Alex Galindo got minutes last night. Which, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. But the minutes were few, sporadic and at very strange times. Alex Galindo was inserted into the game at crunch time, but not at the offensive end where he has knocked down shots. No, Self put him in when the 'Hawks were on defense and in need of a stop. To be fair, we did need some shooting. Which brings me to point #3,

3) For the past month, the obvious prescription for beating Kansas has been to employ a zone defense. The zone defense makes it difficult for a team to get the ball inside and makes that team prove it can shoot from the outside. Alex Galindo is a good shooter from the outside. In the sporadic minutes he's received this year, he's shown that he can knock down the outside shot. Yet he was glued to the bench for the majority of these games. With J.R. Giddens not able to make a shot and Keith Langford obviously slowed by the flu, why was Galindo left to rot on the bench? Is his defense really that bad? I can't imagine it's any worse than Giddens'. Maybe the idea was to get Michael Lee in the game. After all, he's a senior, has big game experience and can shoot from the outside. Lee didn't have much impact from the perimeter, but he played as well as anyone, consistently attacking the defense and taking the ball to the rim. Which leads me to point #4,

4) Good teams attack on offense. Even if a zone is being played, good teams find ways to penetrate the zone by the pass or the dribble. We couldn't seem to pass the ball inside, so where was the dribble penetration? We have one of the best slashers in the game in Keith Langford. Aaron Miles has shown that he can get to the hoop and draw a foul, even if he doesn't finish as well as Langford. Even Russell Robinson would take the ball to the hole. There was very little of this against Bucknell. When you drive the ball to the basket, you put the defense on their heels and create opportunities to get to the free throw line. Which may or may not have been a moot point given the atrocious officiating. Which brings me to my last point,

5) I watched the majority of eight games and parts of several others over the first two days of the tournament and found the overall quality of the officiating to be satisfactory. To be honest, I didn't really notice it. Which is exactly as it ought to be. The officiating in the Kansas/Bucknell game was nothing short of embarrassing. Don't get me wrong; this is not the reason Kansas lost this game. But the Jayhawks could have delayed their misery another round or two had even half of the missed and/or bad calls gone their way. I realize that the NCAA and CBS rake in the cash because of the nature of unpredictability of the tournament, the fact that even a #2 seed can occasionally be eliminated in the first round. But the officiating in this game deserves close scrutiny and harsh consequences. Kansas did not play well. But Bucknell played worse and still won the game.

Plain and simple, this has to rank right up there with Jayhawks loss to Arizona in 1997. This team was not as powerful as that one, but it had four seniors who had been to three Elite Eights, two Final Fours and one championship game. It had a legitimate player of the year candidate in Wayne Simien. It had one of the greatest assist men in the history of the college game in Aaron Miles. It had one of the best slashers and a guy who had hit clutch shot after clutch shot in Keith Langford. It had a sophomore shooter that had nearly enough potential (and hype) to be drafted by the NBA in J.R. Giddens. It had a highly touted freshman class to fill in the gaps of the senior-led team. And it had a coach who had taken three different teams to the Elite Eight and seemed to have his teams peak in March. Yet, all it added up to was a first round loss in the tournament, something that hadn't happened to Kansas in over 20 years. Like I said before, what a kick in the groin.