Kansas falls at West Virginia, 91-79: ‘We won’t be ranked next week,’ Bill Self says
Bill Self isn’t a voter in The Associated Press basketball poll, thus he has no say in what’s going to happen on Monday when the latest Top 25 rankings are released.
Self, KU’s 18th-year hoops coach, was more than willing to offer a prediction, however, after his No. 23-ranked Jayhawks, who have been included in the rankings since the 2008-09 season, dropped to 12-7 overall and 6-5 in the Big 12 Conference following a 91-79 loss to No. 17 West Virginia on Saturday at WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia.
“We won’t be ranked next week, nor do we deserve to be ranked next week,” Self said after the Jayhawks committed 18 turnovers and were torched on defense by guards Miles McBride and Taz Sherman, who both reached career highs in scoring with 29 points and 25 points respectively.
“Now we’ve got a chance to be back in there if we start to do some consecutive things well,” Self added.
The Jayhawks, who have lost five of their last seven games — the losses have all been on the road — have been ranked an NCAA record 231 straight weeks. In late November, KU surpassed the UCLA Bruins who were ranked for 221 straight weeks from 1966-80.
“It’s a great accomplishment, even though it doesn’t mean anything now,” Self said after the loss to the Mountaineers (13-5, 6-3), who avenged a 14-point loss to KU on Dec. 22 in Lawrence.
“It’s a great deal. It’s sad it’s going to come to an end, those sorts of things. All we can do is hopefully play well enough to start another one (streak),” Self added after a game in which his Jayhawks missed a batch of inside shots that helped West Virginia grab an early 12-2 lead and 44-34 halftime advantage: “It’s a great accomplishment to have good enough players — so many players that made so many sacrifices over the years in the good and bad runs. Guys were always able to minimize the negative and maximize the positive. That’s what’s kind of frustrating. We have not been able to do that with this group consistently at all,” Self added.
KU did have five players score in double figures for the game and used a 13-3 run to tie it with two minutes into the second half before McBride, Sherman and Derek Culver (19 points, nine rebounds) responded.
Marcus Garrett scored 18 points, while David McCormack had 17 points and nine boards, Jalen Wilson 16 points and 14 boards, Ochai Agbaji 13 points and Christian Braun 11 points.
KU’s bench accounted for four points. Tyon Grant-Foster was unavailable because of an ankle injury (he’s listed day-to-day), while Mitch Lightfoot picked up two early fouls and wound up playing just five minutes. Tristan Enaruna had four points in nine minutes.
Speaking of fouls, Self picked up a technical foul late in the first half with KU down 10 points. He seemed especially upset not only at a pair of fouls called on Lightfoot, but a traveling call on Braun, who was called for the infraction while sliding for a loose ball.
“I deserved a technical. I wasn’t very happy with the officiating the whole game at all, but that didn’t have anything to do with the outcome,” Self said. “But I thought there was inconsistency all across the board, and yes I deserved the technical.
“To be honest with you, the technical was over a call that happened about five minutes earlier (when Braun traveled). I probably could have got another one today. I was pretty short-fuse with those guys today. I didn’t think it was near as consistent as what I think maybe we should have had, even though the consistency … we got some favorable calls out of that as well,” he stated.
Overall, Self said the difference in the game was KU’s poor performance on defense. West Virginia hit 11 of 21 threes to KU’s 7 of 20. The Mountaineers hit 50% of their shots overall from the field to KU’s 45.3%.
“I thought I saw some things offensively where some guys did some good things,” Self said. “I told our guys if we put up big numbers offensively and give up 91 on the road, you’ll get your butt beat every time. I didn’t see much defensively I would consider very positive about it. I didn’t think anybody guarded. Nobody guarded.”
No KU players were made available on Zoom for the print media after the contest.
The Mountaineers, who have won four straight league games (they did lose their SEC/Big 12 Challenge contest to Florida last Saturday) prevailed in their first game of a grueling stretch of games against six ranked opponents.
Next up after this game against KU, West Virginia will meet No. 13 Texas Tech in Lubbock, No. 9 Oklahoma in Morgantown, back-to-back games against No. 2 Baylor with the final game of the gauntlet at No. 6 Texas. It’s the first time in school history West Virginia will have played as many as six in a row versus ranked squads.
KU has played four consecutive games against ranked teams five times in history, most recently in 2014-15.
The Jayhawks on Monday will meet Oklahoma State (12-5, 5-5) at 8 p.m., at Allen Fieldhouse. Oklahoma State, which beat Texas 75-67 on Saturday, defeated KU 75-70 on Jan. 12, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Jayhawks have experienced only one regular-season conference sweep by a Big 12 opponent in the 18-year Self era. In 122 regular-season Big 12 home-and-home series during the Self era, Kansas has 82 sweeps, 39 splits and has been swept once (by Oklahoma State in 2018).
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 3:25 PM with the headline "Kansas falls at West Virginia, 91-79: ‘We won’t be ranked next week,’ Bill Self says."
