Kansas struggled with BYU scouting report

It was an all-around rough night for Kansas as they conceded their first home loss of the year to BYU. The 76-68 defeat shined a light on a poor defensive performance in which head coach Bill Self was not pleased with his team’s ability to follow the scouting report.

The Cougars have a clear identity, which is that they will shoot a lot of three-pointers, and they did just that with 34 attempts from deep. Self had a pretty good idea of what their approach would be.

“I would say when you look at most teams when you scout them, you pretty much know by this time of the year what most teams are going to do,” Self said. “I said they'd shoot 35. They didn't, they shot 34. I said if they made 12 or 13 then it would be hard because we only average making five a game. We got to ask for 30 points from behind the arc.”

While the Cougars were still very successful from deep, Self knows it still could have been way worse.

“They didn't shoot the ball particularly well,” Self said. “They're capable of making 17 out of 34, but they did shoot it well late and they had some guys step up and make some shots.”

One of the biggest problems of the night was how the Jayhawks reacted to the ball going inside, as BYU had plenty of chances to make threes after they kicked it out.

“If you switch and you're guarding a guard and the ball goes inside, you can't help all the way down and go trap the post,” Self said. “It's going to throw right out to your man for an uncontested look.”

It was always going to be a tough game for Hunter Dickinson, but with that, Self used him as the biggest example for a team-wide struggle.

“Hunter's not used to guarding out there but he went to trap the post twice when we're not doing that and they threw it right back to his man off switches and made a couple,” Self said. “There was more than that. The right-hand drivers getting to the right hand. There's a lot of things that we could have done.”

Since Kansas had trouble with the game plan, Self thought that a player for BYU that did not take a three might have been the most impactful. Fousseyni Traore had six assists on the night.

“Traore to me was their most effective player,” Self said. “He scored six points because he created more confusion off of ball screens and dumping in. They scored some threes when we went to help on him and stuff like that.”

Even with the threes that BYU made, Self still believes that his team had numerous chances to come out on top and did not take advantage.

“Our switches weren't good. Our scouting report defense wasn't good. But even with that being said, we're going to screw up. You got to make your free throws. You got to be able to score in tight. “You got to do some things when you don't shoot a lot of degrees. And we didn't do that very well at all.