Kansas Jayhawks’ eight-game win streak ends at Tech: ‘We were not going to go 18-0’
Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self did not expect his team’s eight-game winning streak to continue indefinitely.
“First of all, we were not going to go 18-0 in our league. We were probably not going to go 17-1. I’d like to think we would, but that’s not the type of league that we play in,” Self said after No. 25-ranked Texas Tech’s 75-67 victory over No. 6 KU on Saturday afternoon at United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas.
The Red Raiders (11-3), like KU 1-1 in Big 12 play, handed the Jayhawks (12-2) their first defeat since the day after Thanksgiving when Dayton clipped the Jayhawks, 74-73, in Florida.
“Maybe Baylor is good enough to do that,” Self said of the No. 1-ranked Bears (15-0, 3-0) perhaps winning all their conference contests. “We are a team that has to grind it out away from home and we just didn’t do that.
“This was the first real road game we played. Even though St. John’s was on the road (95-75 KU win on Dec. 3), even though Oklahoma State was on the road (74-63 KU win on Tuesday), this was the first game I felt like it felt like a road game. I don’t think the crowd had anything to do with our performance,” Self noted of KU’s play before 14,320 Tech fans, “but what they didn’t understand is how turned up the other team would be when it’s the biggest game to date scheduled so far this year and those sorts of things.”
Baylor currently tops the Big 12 Conference standings at 3-0, followed by Oklahoma and Texas (2-1), KU, West Virginia, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State (1-1), Iowa State (1-2), TCU (0-1) and Kansas State (0-3).
Baylor already has won two road games while KU is 1-1 on the road.
“They were coming off a disappointing loss,” Self said of Tech, which lost to Iowa State, 51-47, on Wednesday in Ames, Iowa. “and how coaches can use things as motivation. I don’t think we respected that. I think we thought we could show up and think we’d play hard and that would be good enough. It’s not good enough,” Self added.
Self didn’t buy the notion that the Jayhawks may have looked past Tech because the team’s top two scorers, Terrence Shannon and Kevin McCullar, were not available Saturday against KU because of injuries.
“We didn’t know they weren’t playing until right before tipoff. That didn’t have anything to do with it,” Self said.
KU will be back in action on Tuesday against Iowa State. Tipoff is 7 p.m. at Allen Fieldhouse.
“I’ll take it as a big learning process from this,” senior guard Ochai Agbaji said after scoring 24 points with four rebounds, two assists and three turnovers in 35 minutes. “Learn what we did wrong, what was working at times, what wasn’t working. It is a learning process,” Agbaji added.
KU junior forward Jalen Wilson, who had a season-high 20 points with two rebounds, three steals and four turnovers, said “early in the season it shows us exactly what we need to do. We’ve got to approach every game playing harder than the opponent, bring more energy than them even if we are on the road. Go off that … energy, playing hard on defense before anything else.”
Wilson said KU’s being outscored 44-18 in the paint was “horrible. We’ve got to focus on that, focus on defense. I know with our length and speed, stuff like that should never happen. With our conference, the guys we have to play against, it will not be acceptable especially with the goals we have.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2022 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Kansas Jayhawks’ eight-game win streak ends at Tech: ‘We were not going to go 18-0’."
