Cold shooting dooms KU in Elite Eight loss to Oregon

Josh Jackson has only spent one year in college, but that has been enough time for the Kansas freshman to come up with a thesis on NCAA Tournament success.

“Everybody gets one crappy game,” Jackson said Saturday. “You can play as good as you want throughout the whole tournament, but you are going to have one crappy game. You are going to have a game where stuff just doesn’t go your way.

“If you can win that game and get over it, it is going to be a special run for you. Today was our crappy game and we just didn’t come out on top.”

No, the Jayhawks did not. One of the nation’s hottest shooting teams went cold against Oregon and lost 74-60 in front of a friendly crowd at Sprint Center, falling in the Elite Eight for the second straight season.

Kansas entered the day averaging 83.9 points on 49.2 percent shooting. It was particularly impressive from three-point range, where it shot 41.1 percent this season.

But the Jayhawks lost their touch in this game, going 5 of 25 from the outside and 16 of 35 within the arc. At times, it seemed like the rim was shrinking. Kansas missed its first nine three-point attempts in the second half, making it nearly impossible to rally from an 18-point deficit.

Everyone on the roster struggled.

Frank Mason scored 17 points in the first half, but went 2 of 9 in the second half before finishing with 21. Devonte Graham, fresh off a scintillating 26 points against Purdue, went 0 for 7. Lagerald Vick went 2 for 8, Landen Lucas went 4 for 9.

The only player on the roster that made more shots than he missed was Svi Mykhailiuk, who went 4 for 7 and hit a big three-pointer late to cut Oregon’s lead to six.

Making shots was difficult after seeing so many misses. Not good for a team that mastered the art of transition threes during big runs this season.

“If you’re cold you have got to drive the ball more,” Mykhailiuk said. “You have got to go to the free-throw line, anything you can do to see the ball go through the hoop. We needed to find other ways to score.”

KU coach Bill Self agreed.

“There were numerous times,” Self said, “where I thought, especially when we got to the bonus relatively early in the second half, that we could have done a better job of trying to draw fouls driving the ball as opposed to shooting so many semi or guarded threes that we came up empty on.”

Nothing came easy for Kansas on offense the way it played, especially with Oregon forward Jordan Bell blocking eight shots. He also had 11 points and 13 rebounds.

The opposite could be said for Oregon. Everything seemed to be going the Ducks’ way when Tyler Dorsey shot the ball. He made back-to-back three-pointers at the end of the first half, including one that banked in at the buzzer. Then he made another after Kansas played 30 seconds of defense and couldn’t secure a defensive rebound.

The Jayhawks pulled to within 66-60 with 2 minutes, 50 seconds remaining, but trailed 69-60 a minute later.

“It was real frustrating and kind of deflating when they throw up something with one second left on the clock and bank it in,” Graham said, “or get an offensive rebound off it and then hit a three. That was the stuff that killed us.”

Kansas made shots and steamrolled opponents in the first three stages of this tournament.

But when things turned ugly in the Elite Eight, the Jayhawks’ season came to an end.

“We felt like we had all the pieces to the puzzle to get to the Final Four,” Graham said, “Today, we just came up short.”

This story was originally published March 25, 2017 at 11:31 PM with the headline "Cold shooting dooms KU in Elite Eight loss to Oregon."