How will Kansas defend Caleb Swanigan and Purdue, the team built to beat it?

KANSAS CITY — The thought crept into Bill Self’s mind long before it required attention; long before the name “Purdue” flashed onto a TV screen six lines below Kansas on Selection Sunday. Self didn’t need to see the Boilermakers jump out to a 19-point lead against Iowa State in the second round of the NCAA tournament. And he definitely didn’t need to see the big black and gold “P” on a promotional board outside the Sprint Center on Wednesday, one day before his Jayhawks will take on Purdue in the Sweet 16.

“They had my attention back in January,” Self said of the Boilermakers roughly 30 hours before tipoff.

That’s because, as a coach, and as someone who watches college basketball, Self thinks about possible matchups. He thinks about intriguing ones. He says to himself: “Okay, what teams out there are a little bit different that could potentially be a contrast in style?”

Self didn’t just ponder the question. He had an answer. “Purdue was the first one that came to mind for me,” he said Wednesday.

Now it’s no longer January. Now it’s March, and the squad that Self took notice of two months ago is staring him in the face. Caleb Swanigan, the most dominant big man in college basketball, is sitting in an adjacent locker room. The team that stands between the Jayhawks and the Elite Eight is one that might as well have been constructed by basketball engineers trying to answer a pressing question: How do you beat Kansas?

Now Self, his players and his staff must answer a separate question about that very team: How do you stop them?

It’s a dilemma with a few different complex solutions, none of which are guaranteed to work.

The dilemma is this: Kansas, which lost 7-footer Udoka Azubuike to a wrist injury in December, is thin up front. Starting center Landen Lucas is very solid on both ends of the court, but behind him, consistency is scarce. Because it is, Self, after years of high-low success with two true big men, has turned to small-ball. The Jayhawks now spend more than 80 percent of their minutes with 6-foot-8 wings Josh Jackson or Svi Mykhailiuk at power forward.

Purdue will attack that frontcourt with Swanigan, a menace in every basketball sense of the word. If Self tasks Lucas with playing Swanigan one-on-one, Swanigan will likely score, and fouls will likely pile up. If Kansas gives Lucas help, Swanigan will detect the double and kick to one of four shooters who drain over 40 percent of their 3-pointers. Or he’ll drag Lucas out to the perimeter himself and knock down 3s at a 43 percent clip.

“He’s a challenge all the way around, no matter how you choose to guard him,” Self said of Swanigan. “Because if you double him, he’s got over 100 assists. He’s a great passer. If they isolate him one-on-one, obviously, he’s as good a low post scorer [as there is] in college basketball.”

Purdue coach Matt Painter expects Kansas to send big-to-big doubles — to bring Jackson across the lane or down from the high post when Swanigan catches to get the ball out of his hands.

“That’s what they’ve done in their league against people that have quality bigs,” Painter said.

Indeed, it’s what Kansas did more often than not in two games against Baylor and Johnathan Motley, the best big man it faced all season. Watch how, in the first two clips below, the Jayhawks rotate and recover well, but in the latter three, they leave open shooters:

The big-to-big double, with the weak-side wing sliding down to the offense’s second big, is neither infallible nor futile, regardless of opponent. But it’s a more viable strategy against a team like Baylor, which shoots 35.6 percent from 3, than against one like Purdue, which shoots 40.4 percent, the sixth best mark in the entire country.

Purdue’s best route to an upset is a lights-out night from beyond the arc, and doubling on the catch is asking the Boilermakers to have just that. If Kansas does double, its rotations must be sharp, and its close-outs must be hard. What Purdue has in shot-makers, it lacks in off-the-dribble threats, so when the Jayhawk guards scramble to recover to Purdue’s perimeter threats, they must make players like Dakota Mathias (46 percent from 3) and Ryan Cline (41 percent) put the ball on the floor.

But there’s another issue that Kansas must consider as well. That issue is 7-foot-2 mammoth Isaac Haas, who plays roughly 15 minutes per game, with 10 of those 15 coming alongside Swanigan in a twin-towers lineup. That would put Jackson on either Swanigan or Haas — though Self did mention the possibility of playing Dwight Coleby, a more traditional power forward, alongside Lucas to match Purdue’s size.

Self also said it’s easier to double when an opponent has two bigs crowding the paint. “When you spread four shooters around one, it’s harder,” he said.

On the other hand, with its jumbo lineup on the floor, Purdue passes big-to-big extremely well. Fifty-two percent of Swanigan’s assists (53 out of 102) this season have led to shots at the rim, per hoop-math.com, and a good portion have been to Haas when the two are in the game together. Motley had some success finding fellow frontcourt players against Kansas; Swanigan could have even more.

So the answers for Kansas are anything but straightforward. For Purdue, and for the vast majority of teams, a spot-up 3-pointer is a far more valuable shot than one that comes off a post-up. But not all kick-outs yield spot-up 3s, and Swanigan has had a tendency to turn the ball over when put under pressure. Plus, early foul trouble for Lucas would strain Kansas’ defense even more.

There are variants to the double/no double conundrum too. Some teams have had intermittent success denying Swanigan in the post and keeping the ball out of his hands. Kansas did that at times against Motley. Self has also gone to a zone against teams like Kentucky and Baylor that have strong big men that can score on the block.

There is much more to Thursday’s contest than this single matchup. Kansas’ stable of athletic guards will give Purdue fits on the other end, especially if Painter goes to a Haas-Swanigan lineup with Jackson at the four for KU. Kansas is the best team in the tournament, and remains the favorite in the game.

But as Self recognized months ago, Purdue presents him and his team with a unique problem that no other No. 4 or 5 seed would have. The Jayhawks have drawn the one player that could single-handedly derail their title hopes in the Sweet 16. They have drawn the one team built to beat them. How will they cope with that team?

Only Self and his players know the answer. And not even they know whether or not it will work.

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