Posts Tagged Travis Releford

Travis Releford needs to be more offensive

Posted on: February 28th, 2013 by jayhawktalk No Comments

Editor’s note: The following is brought to you by Jayhawk-Talk contributor, @pay_heed. Great follow and twitter, so give him a shout. Rock Chalk.

Travis Releford needs to be more offensive.

Not like Anthony Jesselnik offensive, but more aggressive on offense. If you have watched much Kansas basketball this season (and since you’re reading this blog I think that’s probably a safe bet) you have probably heard commentators like Fran Fraschilla and others praise Travis Releford for his great perimeter defense. And while his defensive contributions cannot be discounted, he is much more than just a stopper on that end.

Carrington Harrison of 610 sports radio likes to point out that KU is 43-1 all time when Trav scores in double figures, which might just be a coincidence, but during the 3 game skid this season Travis scored 8, 1 and 8 respectively. So why do I think that Travis needs to be more offensive (or maybe just aggressive)?

Because the numbers back me up.

DISCLAIMER: If you don’t like advanced statistics just skip down to the last two paragraphs.

At a glance, it might be easy to mistake Ben McLemore as the most offensively efficient Jayhawk, but the numbers don’t back that up. According to KenPom.com Travis has an Offensive Rating (ORtg) of 129.8 (good for sixth in the Nation) to McLemore’s 120.1 (80th).

So why am I making a big deal about Travis being more offensive? The problem is that Travis, while playing the most minutes per game of any Jayhawk, uses the fewest number of possessions of any starter. Not only that, he actually has only the SEVENTH highest usage of any KU player.

Let that sink in for a second.

The sixth most offensively efficient player in the nation uses fewer possessions (by percentage) than six of his teammates.

Ben McLemore

ORtg – 120.1
% Possessions – 22.2

Elijah Johnson

ORtg – 96.4
% Possessions – 22.0

Jeff Withey

ORtg – 112.5
% Possessions – 21.7

Perry Ellis

ORtg – 105.4
% Possessions – 20.9

Naadir Tharpe

ORtg – 96.2
% Possessions – 20.0

Kevin Young

ORtg – 110.8
% Possessions – 19.3

Travis Releford

ORtg – 129.8
% Possessions – 15.7

Adapted from KenPom.com

Travis’ offensive numbers cannot be overstated. He leads the nation in True Shooting percentage, which is the new fancy way of saying points per weighted shot, at 71.3%. After starting the season 0-11 from deep, he now leads the team in 3pt FG % at 46.2%. In addition to his ridiculous ORtg, he has a very impressive 60.63 Floor Percentage, good for third in the Big XII, behind only Corey Jefferson and Romero Osby. He also is second in the NCAA in effective FG% at 69.1% and has the second highest free throw rate of any KU player (with a qualifying number of field goal and free throw attempts) at 41.2 (Jeff Withey leads at 63.4).

In other words, Travis has a multifaceted offensive game from a numbers perspective. While his offensive numbers are certainly helped by a high number of transition baskets, he not only can be, but needs to be, more assertive in the half-court. He is too valuable and too efficient to defer to the likes of Perry Ellis and Naadir Tharpe.

The necessity of another efficient scorer to emerge has never been clearer since the mysterious disappearance of Ben McLemore in both Stillwater and Ames the past two weeks. Not many teams have the luxury of a fifth year senior with the abundance of experience to call on in a time of need. For Kansas to have a successful March, Travis needs to become more aggressive and finish more possessions for the Jayhawks.

Releford, transition buckets key to KU’s offensive woes

Posted on: February 8th, 2013 by jayhawktalk No Comments

Editor’s Note: Following post brought to you by Taylor Erickson, new contributor to Jayhawk-Talk. Follow him @tc_erickson and find his work on his blog, Rock Chalk Thoughts. We’re excited for him to join the JHT team and look forward to reading more from him.

Let me begin by saying I’m not a college basketball coach.  I have no basketball coaching experience outside of a youth YMCA team.  I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.  I have, however, played quite a bit of basketball in my life, and like probably everyone else reading this post, my mental stability relies heavily on the ability of KU to get their offensive woes straightened out.

This is my attempt to solve KU’s dreadful offense, and offer a solution for how this team can get back on track.

If you’ve read some of my previous ramblings, you know I’ve mentioned several times the correlation between Travis Releford’s point output and our team record.  Prior to last Saturday’s game against Oklahoma State, KU was 38-1 when Releford scored in double figures.  Against OSU, he scored eight points.  Wednesday night in that debacle against TCU, Releford scored one point.  Go back to mid-November & December, when we were playing really well.  During that nine game stretch beginning with Washington State at the Sprint Center, and ending with the game against American U on December 29th, Releford averaged 15.7 points per game.  KU’s average margin of victory during that stretch was 22.6 points.  During conference play, Releford has averaged 10.2 points per game, while our margin of victory has dropped to 6.0 points per game.  Obviously the level of competition has increased significantly during conference play, but there were difficult games during that November-December stretch, and the Big 12 isn’t exactly filled with good teams.  Colorado could beat several teams in the Big 12, Belmont is probably a tournament team (more than what TCU and Texas Tech can say), and that win at Ohio State continues to look better and better.

I put together the chart below to show Releford’s average points in relation to our average margin of victory throughout the course of the season.  I separated the season into three segments based on Releford’s point totals: 0-10 points scored, 10-15 points scored, and 15+ points scored.

From the graph you can see as Releford’s point production increases, our margin of victory increases accordingly.  Common sense says that conclusion is obvious. If we’re routing a team, everyone is going to score more.  I agree completely, however, I think there’s a different conclusion to be drawn.  When Releford is scoring at a higher rate, most of his points come in transition where he excels at finishing plays.  He doesn’t key our offense by knocking down a ton of jumpers in a half court game. Against TCU Wednesday night, KU had zero points in transition.

So what’s the conclusion I’m trying to draw?  KU has been awful at getting out into transition recently.  It feels like we haven’t seen a typical KU run fueled by easy transition buckets in weeks. I don’t recall seeing a dunk by McLemore or Releford for quite some time. The thing I’m struggling to wrap my head around is how a team that is so good defensively has such trouble generating steals and getting easy transition buckets. I’ve read a few columns this week that mention we get into trouble when we get sped up and try to play fast. In my opinion, I think that’s precisely what we need to do more of. Think back to most of Elijah’s turnovers. A good majority come while running our sets in the half court offense.  Elijah, McLemore, and Releford are all at their best in transition, so why not try to encourage more of that?

I find myself thinking back to December when we were a dominant basketball team, trying to figure out what we were doing then that seems to be lacking now. This is the best explanation I can come up with, and one I truly believe has a big influence on our success moving forward. There’s no better way to boost the confidence of this team than easy buckets and few dunks, and it’s apparent this team is struggling for confidence right now.

Listening to national media this week, you would think we’ve lost five or six games in a row.  I’ll be the first to admit, I was awfully down on this team Wednesday night.  It felt like the sky was falling in Lawrence, and we were doomed for the remainder of the season.  I’d love to see us get out and run on Saturday, and get back to how we know we can play.  If we take care of business in Norman, and smack K-State on Monday, ESPN will be preparing a segment for Gameday in a little over a week explaining how the TCU loss was a turning point in our season.  I’m looking forward to that.

Here’s to hoping for a great game tomorrow to get us back on track.

Rock Chalk.

TE

Kansas, Baylor by the numbers

Posted on: January 19th, 2012 by jayhawktalk 1 Comment

Robinson rises for the alley-oop. This eventually goes into the basket for 2 of his 27 points.

By @HailToOldKU

First things first, sorry I’ve gone missing over the last couple games. Kansas wrecked some fools, I have a real job, things got a little hectic. Is what it is. But when Kansas wrecks some highly ranked fools? Time to come back out of the woodwork. No more slacking.

I’m going to break this up a little bit differently than I have been, because putting stats on there for the bench guys would be completely irrelevant. So I’m going to ignore those guys – because Kansas is essentially a 5-man team anyways – and do numbers for the starters, and then some game stats that I thought were the key. Without further ado:

Thomas Robinson: 1 foul
Baylor can run out five guys with the size and ability to frustrate most posts. All of them, except maybe Quincy Acy, are stretch-fours who can get a traditional post into trouble by dragging him out to the perimeter and either drawing fouls or getting by them for a bucket. Robinson did an incredible job of staying out of foul trouble. With the Jayhawks’ lack of depth, he needed to stay on the floor for 30-plus minutes. He played 35. Oh, and he had 27 and 14. Which doesn’t suck.

Tyshawn Taylor: 10 points
I know Taylor finished with 28. The 10 I mention are the 10 that came during KU’s 13-0 run to end the first half. Taylor’s run entering the break gave the Jays all the momentum entering the second half and put his team up a dime at half. He came out and played a brilliant second half, hitting 10 of 14 shots in his most efficient night of the season.

Jeff Withey: 9 offensive boards
This number just makes me laugh. Seriously? NINE? That’s insane! Here’s the best part, though. The Bears, with all their ridiculous length, combined to get eight offensive rebounds as a team. Man, if it weren’t for the fact that Thomas Robinson is the Greek God of Thunderdunking, we’d all be going nuts about how much Withey has improved. As it stands, I’m going nuts about it anyways. He’s the most improved player on the Jayhawks roster by far.

Elijah Johnson:  1 three-pointer attempted
We’re getting dangerously close to having Good Elijah and Bad Elijah nights just like we do with Tyshawn. The bad Elijah isn’t out of control or turnover prone or anything like that, he just jacks up an insane amount of threes with little regard for Bill Self’s offense.  Self’s offense usually works. Let’s just stick with it. Elijah was great Monday because he played within himself, didn’t do too much and let the two best players on the team be the two best players on the team. Johnson has the talent to be the star, but so did Thomas Robinson last year. Sometimes you have to know your spot, and EJ’s is as the third option, at best.  Great night all-around from him, though, as he embraced the role. 11 points, 5 boards, 3 assists, 4-of-7 shooting. Did it all well.

Travis Releford: 36 minutes
Releford had the biggest challenge of any Kansas defender last night. Not because he was guarding the Bears’ best player (that honor went to Withstar who D’d up on PJ3), but because he was outmatched by five inches and didn’t have much, if any, advantage in quickness against freshman Quincy Miller. Miller went for 17 points, but needed 12 shots to do it and only pulled down a couple boards. Releford played the most minutes on the team because he’s as good as it gets defensively for the Jayhawks right now, and he should be an all-conference defender by the time the season ends. Startling how similar Releford’s numbers (11 points, 3 boards, 4 assists, 5-of-7 shooting) were to Johnson’s.

Key Team Numbers

48-34, 39-24, 17-8: The Jayhawks worked Baylor in the paint, outscoring the Bears 48-34 in the lane and outrebounding them 39-24. Withey and Robinson deserve much of the credit. Also, the Jayhawks won 17-8 on second chance points, courtesy of Withey’s nine (seriously! NINE!) offensive boards. Love that number. Baylor has one of the best frontcourts in the country (I’d put them behind Kentucky and North Carolina only), and the Jayhawks shredded them.

114+: I wasn’t in the building, so I don’t know the exact number, but the highest I saw was somewhere over 114 decibels in the Fieldhouse Monday night. I’m going to toot our own horn here for just a minute: The best fans in college sports live in Lawrence, Kansas.

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