Giant Killers why Oklahoma, Sooners, Arizona Wildcats are vulnerable
by John Gasaway on (original:
http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basket ... vulnerable" target="_blank)
Maybe the NCAA men's basketball committee is getting smarter, or perhaps my colleague Joe Lunardi is giving them a bit too much credit in advance. Either way, this business of picking out vulnerable "Giants" under the Giant Killers model has traditionally been more straightforward.
Not this year. Based on the 16 teams that Joe is projecting for the top four seed lines, it would be said that the committee had done, on the whole, a good job seeding the top of the bracket. There wouldn't seem to be many opportunities for Giants to be upset by "Killers" seeded at least five lines below them.
There are, however, two prominent exceptions to this rule.
Oklahoma Sooners
Joe projects the Sooners as a No. 3 seed, and based on how well Lon Kruger's men play offense and defense from possession to possession, this would make them ripe for a Giant Killers upset. Maybe that would come to pass in a second-round game against a No. 11 seed that previously defeated the opponent on the No. 6 line. Potentially, though this would be more of a stretch, it could even occur in the first round against a No. 14 seed.
If Oklahoma ends up being seeded above its punching weight, that must be a Trae Young thing, right? Maybe people, including committee members, are so dazzled by what the freshman brings to the table that they can't help overrating the Sooners. Meaning if you're not dazzled by a 44-point effort on 20 shots in a 98-96 win over Baylor, I'm not quite sure what will do that trick for you.
Anyway, "We were all blinded by Young" will be the story told if OU makes a quick exit, but I'm not so sure it's the correct narrative. Kruger's team is, after all, 16-5 and 6-3 in the Big 12. That's very similar to what we see from West Virginia (16-5, 5-3), and the hard-working analysts here at Giant Killers HQ have zero problem with the Mountaineers' being on track for a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.
No, what appears to have occurred is simply that Oklahoma has overachieved. Even with Young in full sensation mode, this offense is still merely "very good" and not "great" in terms of what nine other teams have been able to record thus far in Big 12 play. Put another way, if the Sooners had an offense as good as TCU's, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
A comparison with OU's 2015-16 Final Four team led by Buddy Hield suggests that this season's Sooners lack an identity beyond being the team for which Trae Young plays. Two years ago, Oklahoma had one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the Big 12 while being far and away the most-perimeter oriented offense in the league. That was a really effective combination.
This season, conversely, OU is again making a high percentage of its 3s. But relative to the Big 12, Kruger's team isn't attempting nearly as many 3s as it did a couple seasons ago. This, to say the least, is a curious turn of events for a team making just 48 percent of its 2s in conference play.
Here, finally, we might be looking at something of a "Trae Young effect." The Sooners are easily the fastest-paced team in the Big 12, and to be sure, Young's pushing the ball up the floor has resulted in him making a good many trips to the line. That might be Oklahoma's most significant point of difference with respect to its conference opponents (this defense carries the league's lowest foul rate), but for a Giant, it's a less reliable stylistic trail to blaze.
If Kruger can find a way to bring together "Young shooting lots of free throws" with "the team shooting even more 3s," that could be a trajectory-changing development. Until then, OU rates out as a vulnerable Giant.
Arizona Wildcats
As one who rated Arizona No. 1 in the preseason, I didn't expect to be tagging the Wildcats as a vulnerable anything before we got to February. What happened?
This is the most suspect defense we've seen in Tucson in a good many years. Sean Miller's group has been good enough on that side of the ball in Pac-12 play, but good enough isn't customarily how we describe the defense of an Arizona team on track for a No. 3 seed.
Moreover, the Wildcats' good enough defense falls in line with what has been a five-season year-to-year slide on that side of the ball in Pac-12 play, one that tracks what we've seen in full-season adjusted defensive efficiencies as well. It has been a slow-motion development, relatively speaking, but now, after five years of movement in one direction, the impacts are becoming visible.
True, Miller's guys really know how to chase opponents off the 3-point line. No defense has held Pac-12 opponents to a lower rate of attempts from beyond the arc, and that has played to this defense's strengths. Arizona is pretty fair at forcing misses on 2-point attempts, ranking No. 3 to this point in Pac-12 play.
Still, the bottom-line results aren't there the way they usually are in Tucson. Allowing conference opponents 1.04 points per possession when an average Pac-12 defense allows 1.06 is not the traditional Arizona way.
Certainly, in the preseason, it would have been difficult to envision "defense that's just pretty good" nestling so comfortably alongside "a starting lineup that includes 7-foot-1 Deandre Ayton and 7-foot Dusan Ristic." Yet it's true that, as recently as 2015, Miller achieved much more impressive results in both interior D and defensive rebounding with rotations that were, on average, a hair shorter than the current one.
In sum, laptops look at Arizona and see a team with a dangerous offense but unspectacular defense. Maybe Ayton, who, to be clear, is already outstanding, can make the laptops look silly by taking his play to another level entirely in the season's remaining 60-odd days. Certainly, he appears eminently capable of doing so. It could happen, but it needs to start soon.