No. 12 Kentucky slugs No. 5 KU 80-62: ‘That team we played tonight could win it all’
After winning four games that came down to the last possession over the last 2 1/2 weeks, Kansas’ men’s basketball team was involved in a blowout on Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse.
Unfortunately for the No. 5-ranked Jayhawks (17-3) and their 16,300 fans in attendance — many who also attended ESPN’s GameDay TV show six hours before tip — the rout was orchestrated by Kentucky.
The No. 12-ranked Wildcats (17-4) rolled to a 20-point halftime lead and never saw the lead dip below 14 points the final 20 minutes in an 80-62 Big 12/SEC Challenge victory over the Jayhawks.
“We’ve been living on the razor’s edge the last couple weeks. I don’t want to say it caught up to us tonight — a much better team tonight put it on us pretty good,” KU coach Bill Self said after the Jayhawks’ 17-game fieldhouse win streak came to an end.
At one point, Kentucky led by 24 points, and it looked as if the Wildcats might wind up handing the Jayhawks program its worst loss in Allen Fieldhouse history. Texas beat KU by 25 points in Allen last season; Missouri won by the same amount in 1989.
Kansas outscored the Wildcats, 31-29, the final half to prevent that from happening. It wound up the seventh worst loss in fieldhouse history.
“The message,” Self said of what he told his team after the game, KU’s first loss since Jan. 8 at Texas Tech, is why did we get our butts beat the way we did? I think there’s a lot of things we didn’t do, there were more things you could say they did. They were great.
“I don’t know if there was a weakness in their game tonight: transition, first-shot defense, rebounding. They shared the ball, took care of it, shot it well, got to the line. They did a lot of things we didn’t do at all.”
Kentucky’s Keion Brooks scored 27 points and grabbed eight rebounds; Oscar Tshiebwe scored 17 points with 14 rebounds; Sahvir Wheeler had eight assists and TyTy Washington five assists, while Kellan Grady hit four threes en route to 12 points.
“That team we played tonight could win it all,” Self said of a motivated Kentucky team that entered Saturday’s contest having lost four of five in games versus the Jayhawks. The Wildcats improved to 24-10 all-time against KU.
Meanwhile, Kansas was led by Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun, who had off shooting nights en route to 13 points apiece. Agbaji hit 4 of 14 shots; Braun 5 of 11. KU power forward David McCormack had three points and one rebound in 16 minutes against his former AAU teammate Tshiebwe. Kentucky out-rebounded KU 41-29.
“The difference was he was so good so long the law of averages kind of prevails,” Self said of Agbaji, who had 36 points in the double-overtime home win over Texas Tech Monday and 29 points in a 78-75 victory at K-State a week ago.
Agbaji had just three points on 1-of-6 shooting the first half against Kentucky as Kansas trailed 51-31 at halftime.
“It wasn’t really anything different they did,” Agbaji said, “just making it tougher for me. Obviously that’s what teams are going to do night in and out. I just couldn’t find a groove. Things weren’t rolling for our offense anyway in that first half. It just wasn’t falling tonight.”
KU hit 40.7% of its shots and was 6 of 18 on three-pointers. Kentucky hit 50.8% of its shots and was 6 of 18 from three.
“I thought we were not very good defensively,” Self said. “I was disappointed the way we competed for balls. If we competed for balls, our defense wouldn’t have been that bad. I will make it easy — (there’s) a plethora, many things we can do to get better defensively,” he added noting it was unacceptable to give up 51 first-half points.
“Start by guarding our man. paying attention to the scouting report,” he said. “They were scoring every possession.”
As far as KU’s offense, Self said: “It never got rolling. It took us two-plus hours and it’s still not rolling. A lot is we never got to the line (KU was 8 of 10 to Kentucky’s 12 of 16 from the stripe). They were the most aggressive team. How many did we miss inside 3 feet, good gracious,” Self added, noting “Cal’s (coach John Calipari) teams are always good defensively.”
Jalen Wilson had eight points, eight boards and Mitch Lightfoot six points and seven boards for Kansas. Point guard Dajuan Harris had six points and four assists in 28 minutes; backup point Remy Martin five points, one assist in 14 minutes.
“Our guys … I thought they tried,” Self said. “I don’t think we competed very well. There’s a difference in trying hard and competing.”
KU will next meet Iowa State at 6 p.m., Tuesday, in Ames, Iowa.
“Go back to the drawing board, watch film and prepare for Iowa State Tuesday. That’s all we can do,” Agbaji said.
After noting, “they hit us in the mouth early and we didn’t do a very good job responding,” junior guard Braun said: “We’ve got to learn from this and move on. We’ve got conference play in front of us. We still have all our goals available to us. We’ve got to learn from this.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2022 at 7:32 PM with the headline "No. 12 Kentucky slugs No. 5 KU 80-62: ‘That team we played tonight could win it all’."
