The Short Roll
Kansas's gameplan against Houston. Kentucky's defensive struggles.
Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.
This past weekend’s slate of games was loaded with elite matchups.
Kansas beat Houston. Tennessee beat Kentucky. North Carolina beat Duke. Purdue beat Wisconsin.
In today’s newsletter, we are taking a look at those first two matchups: Kansas-Houston and Kentucky-Tennessee. More specifically:
How Kansas short rolled their way to a victory over Houston
Kentucky’s defensive struggles. Including one of their players who might have misleading defensive statistics
Kansas short rolls their way to victory
Note to self: Don’t publish a video about a team’s excellent defense three days before said team plays at Allen Fieldhouse.
Last week, that’s exactly what I did. I published a 16-minute video on Houston’s stifling defense, only for the Cougars to have their worst defensive performance of the season at Kansas.
Fortunately, that hasn’t hurt the performance of the video. As of the time I’m writing this sentence, the video has 125,000 views (and counting).
The video — which breaks down Houston’s aggressive ball screen coverage in detail — is below.
Video topics include:
The math behind drop coverage… and how Houston does the exact opposite
Houston’s “line of scrimmage” when blitzing ball screens
Houston guards jumping to deflect passes when guarding ball screens
Guarding the ball screen with all five players (not just two)
The lack of college centers that can consistently shoot off the pick and pop
Adjusting ball screen coverages depending on the opponent
JoJo Tugler and Jamal Shead
So how did Kansas take advantage of the Houston blitz?
The answer on Saturday was the short roll.
Instead of over-dribbling and trying to attack the blitz off the bounce, Kansas point guard Dajuan Harris kept it simple by hitting his big men right away on the short roll.
Normally, Houston is elite at getting deflections when teams try to pass the ball to the roller. Here’s an example of what their defense is supposed to look like from the Kansas game.
#21 Emmanuel Sharp gets a deflection on the pass into #24 KJ Adams, then #25 JoJo Tugler gets another deflection on the next pass as well. More often than not, that’s what it’s been like playing Houston’s defense this season.
However, the Kansas big men are very good passers and playmakers for their size. Fran Fraschilla noted on the ESPN broadcast that — in his opinion — KJ Adams is the best short roller in the country. That may very well be the case, but it wasn’t just Adams who did damage in that role.
The video below shows three Kansas players (Adams, Hunter Dickinson, and Parker Braun) all having success when short rolling or popping against the Houston blitz.
Kansas ended the game scoring 1.22 points per possession with a ridiculous 75.6% effective field goal percentage.
I’m already excited to see what Kelvin Sampson does with his team’s ball screen coverage during the rematch on March 9th.