Jayhawks take on Dangerous Texas A&M team Wednesday

March 2, 2011

This is an important but dangerous time of the year for top seeds. As we have all seen over the last couple of weeks, it’s hard to stay on top of the college basketball rankings as most unranked teams look forward to and put all of their efforts into games against ranked opponents. Ohio St, Duke, Texas, Pittsburgh and the Kansas Jayhawks have all lost recently as the overall number 1 seed for the NCAA tournament still looks to be up for grabs.

The Jayhawks are statistically the best all-around team in college basketball. Despite the fact that they are currently second in the standings to Ohio St, Kansas ranks 4th in points per game, 1st in assists and filed goal percentage and 30th in rebounding. The top ranked Buckeyes for instance are 23rd, 20th, 3rd and 208th in those categories respectively.

Kansas played what turned out to be a fairly tough pre-conference schedule as they took down Arizona, UCLA, Memphis and Michigan. All of those teams have exceeded expectations this year, yet the Jayhawks had little trouble disposing of each of them. Their only 2 losses of the year came at the hands of Kansas St and Texas. We all know how good the Longhorns are, and the Wildcats were expected to do extremely well prior to the start of the season by the majority of basketball handicappers. Wins against Colorado, Oklahoma St and Oklahoma have regained momentum for Kansas, but their final 2 regular season games will be a challenge.

The 24th ranked high flying Missouri Tigers are the final game of the year for the Jayhawks, but first they will need to get past a very good Texas A&M Aggies squad that has taken down 4 top-25 teams already this year. As always, the game plan for the Jayhawks will run through Marcus and Markieff Morris. The Morris brothers are combining for 31 points, 15+ rebounds and 3 assists per game, and have been instrumental in the Jayhawks success for the 2010-11 season. Josh Selby and Tyrel Reed are a better than average guard duo that can score from the perimeter to offset the Morris’s inside game. Selby is slowly increasing his minutes as he is on his way back from an injury, and will be an important part to the Jayhawks success in the NCAA tournament.

Outside of 3 consecutive losses to Nebraska, Texas and Baylor earlier this year, the Aggies are an extremely consistent team that can play with any team in division 1 when they’re on defensively. There are just 2 players on the Aggies roster that score over 10 points per game, but they get plenty of production from their bench to make up for it. Khris Middleton and David Loubeau may not be at the same level as the Morris brothers, but they will certainly make it hard for them to score and rebound in the paint.

The way the NCAA basketball year has gone, we should expect the unexpected. Tune in Wednesday night as the Jayhawks try to stay perfect to end the season against a feisty Aggies team!

Related posts:

  1. Jayhawks & Tigers Battle in Big-12 Showdown
  2. Texas vs. Kansas: Big-12 Conference Championship
  3. Jayhawks fight for Number 1 against Oklahoma St
  4. Texas A&M tries to stop Red Hot Texas
  5. Kansas St takes on Kansas for Bragging Rights

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