More postgame thoughts

I'm not overly surprised by Friday night. Bradley shot 32% from 3-point range all season long and 16% in the MVC tournament. Of course, against KU they go 11-21 and the tradition of running into a hot shooting team or player continues for KU. How interesting that McNamara doesn't score a FG in his last NCAA tournament game, but goes off for 6 threes against KU.

Additionally, KU hasn't had 2 players foul out of a game the entire season, but it "magically" happened Friday night. In fact, I don't think we've even had 1 player foul out in some 25 games. I don't typically get too involved in blaming officials, but Bradley did have 13 more FT attempts than KU and KU was whistled for 8 more fouls. While not the only reason for the loss, things like that add up in a tight game.

It's frustrating, but I'm not entirely surprised. This was the youngest team in KU history and they still accomplished a lot.

Bradley is peaking. We just happened to get the most underrated 13 seed in this year's tournament as our first round game.

I trust Bill Self. I have to believe there were reasons for what happened defensively, or perhaps players weren't executing. I tend to think it's the latter. He said later that it was the worst they had played defensively all year, so I tend to believe that players were making defensive mistakes. I think that was, in large part, due to how the officials called the game and the ensuing "tightening up" that occurred throughout the team.

One Bradley player said "they didn't adjust to how the game was being called". I think that is true. I also think our players didn't know how to adjust to that type of officiating. We led the nation in FG% defense. They only know how to play one way. Aggressive. When the officials blew the whistle every time down the court (and there were some highly questionable calls...I believe we were called for something like 5 offensive fouls and Chalmers was called for PALMING, which hasn't been called hardly at all in the tournament). Those calls took away momentum from KU and gave it to Bradley, who then took even more momentum by being unconscious from the 3-pt line. I believe their 3-pt outburst was more 3's than they had hit in a game all season long. We can overcome hot shooting. But we can't overcome hot shooting AND lopsided, momentum-killing officiating

I think Chalmers was tight on both sides of the ball because of the early foul trouble he was in. I believe Rush, Chalmers and Robinson all had 2 fouls fairly early in the first half. Again, this is something that rarely, if ever, happened all season long.

The missed FT's in the last couple of minutes hurt, but when you combine that with a banked 3 to end the half, well, it turned a close game into a 10 point halftime lead

Bradley looked good against Pitt, but Pitt didn't impress me. And, at this point, any team has a chance. I don't think there is any team that is heads and shoulders above the rest.

I had been saying all along that I wouldn't be surprised if we lost in the second round or made a run to the Final Four. We went out in the first round and I guess I'm just a little surprised by that, but not too surprised. We played a good Bradley team that played their best game of the year by far. They hit all of the threes after hitting an avg. of 3 a game over their last 3 games and being a 32% 3-pt shooting team. KU overcame Bradley's hot shooting, but the poor officiating gave Bradley more opportunities at the line and they hit their free throws.It reminded me of the game in Austin. Texas hit everything and we couldn't hit anything. And we were out of sorts. We threw TWO inbounds passes away. We never do that. We had 2 guys foul out. That hasn't happened all season. Bradley hit more threes in the first half than they have in their last couple of games. Mario and BRush disappeared, particularly in the first half. We turned the ball over like we did early in the season when our freshmen were actually playing like freshmen. All of the 3's Bradley were raining in took an emotional toll on this team and while they were valiant in trying to come back, they just couldn't overcome the officiating too. Bradley "careered" us tonight.