Kansas men’s basketball goes cold, still nabs Big 12-opening win over Oklahoma State
STILLWATER, Okla. — What happened Tuesday, Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self doesn’t anticipate is going to happen again very often.
During the Jayhawks’ Big 12 Conference opener on the road against Oklahoma State, Self watched his team miss 19-straight shots in the first half. While Self would say postgame he didn’t realize that had happened as it did, it’s a reality that was evident to so many in the moment.
And yet, by game’s end, Kansas had still come away with a 74-63 victory after going into that halftime break tied 29-29 with the Cowboys.
But while Self may consider that a rare event, it’s one that’s kept alive what’s now an eight-game winning streak for the Jayhawks (12-1, 1-0 in Big 12). It’s dispatched an Oklahoma State (7-5, 0-1 in Big 12) team that held a lead early in the second half. The message at halftime that the lid would come off for Kansas, a talking point revealed by senior guard Ochai Agbaji and confirmed by Self, played out in the final 20 minutes as the Jayhawks shot almost 71 percent from the field so their final mark for the game could be 43.1 percent.
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“It’s tough, but I think at this level you’ve got to have some sense of poise and a sense of where the game is going,” said senior forward David McCormack, asked how hard it is to be patient when they see 19-straight shots not fall. “Because if you don’t then you’ll just kind of get lost in the speed of the game and the deficit will grow.”
McCormack attributed a better second half for Kansas to he and his teammates better dictating the speed of the game. He felt in the second half they were able to slow things down, at least comparatively to the first, and create better scoring options.
Here are a few more takeaways from the game:
David McCormack has a career night
McCormack said postgame his focus was to be an inside presence and rebound, and he certainly accomplished both goals against the Cowboys. While McCormack had his share of miscues in both halves, he still finished with a 17-point, 15-rebound double-double for the Jayhawks. Across about 23 minutes off the bench, considering super-senior forward Mitch Lightfoot started in his place, McCormack had a +/- of +15 while shooting 7-for-13 from the field and 3-for-3 from the free-throw line.
McCormack’s 17 points are a season-high, and the most since he dropped 22 in the NCAA tournament opener last season against Eastern Washington. McCormack’s 15 rebounds are a career-high, and a part of his first double-double since he recorded one back in December this season against St. John’s. Whether or not the game means he’ll be back in the starting lineup come Kansas’ game Saturday at Texas Tech, or some time in the near future after that, was not revealed Tuesday.
“It was great,” said Agbaji, asked what he thought of McCormack’s performance. “I didn’t know he had 15 rebounds until we came into the locker room at the end, him and (redshirt sophomore forward) Jalen (Wilson). But David was, he was spectacular … There was a point in the game when I was just telling him to just keep going, Like ‘We’re just going to keep feeding you.’ Like, Last year when we played Oklahoma State it was the same guy guarding him. So, it was like, ‘Man, just go at him.’ Like, ‘New year, just go at him again.’”
Self did feel Kansas got good minutes out of Lightfoot, who started for the first time this season. Lightfoot played about 15 minutes and had a +/- of -4, with the majority of those minutes coming in the first half when Self thought Lightfoot got the team off to a good start. Lightfoot finished with six points, four rebounds, four blocks and a turnover.
Kansas experiences its first true road environment
While the Jayhawks had played in 12 games prior to this conference matchup, none of them had come in a true road environment like this one would. The Colorado contest in December was supposed to serve as the first, before it was canceled. And so, inside Gallagher-Iba Arena, this 2021-22 Kansas team experienced what that was like for the first time.
And even though the Jayhawks left with an 11-point win, Self, Agbaji, Lightfoot and super-senior guard Remy Martin all felt the final minutes of the game could have gone better. They saw themselves take what was Kansas’ largest lead of the game, a 15-point advantage with less than four minutes remaining, and yet only lead by nine with close to three minutes left.
Self thought his team didn’t play smart or hungry for most of the final four minutes of the game. He thought Oklahoma State didn’t quit, and that Kansas felt the game was over. Both Agbaji and Martin indicated what issues arose can be worked on in practice.
“Yeah, I think the stuff that we saw, obviously that’s bad by us,” said Lightfoot, agreeing the Jayhawks were learning their way through playing in a true road environment the last few minutes. “Me committing a … foul on a four-point play, that’s unacceptable. And we had some other turnovers … How many turnovers did we have in the last, like, two minutes? Like seven? So, stuff like that’s got to — we’ve got to handle that. We haven’t really played a ton of, like, close games coming down the stretch like that. So, I think it’ll be good for us to understand how serious we have to take those last few minutes. Winning has to be solidified in those last two and a half minutes and that certainly wasn’t what we were looking for or coach was looking for.”
Agbaji noted, though, that it’s always nice to start off conference play with a win and that it’s especially true when that win comes on the road. McCormack added that he couldn’t have said it better himself, and that doing so can set a tone for the rest of the season.
The Jayhawks held the Cowboys to 35.7 percent shooting from the field and finished with more points off of turnovers, despite committing more of those miscues. Kansas also recovered by game’s end when it came to rebounding and second-chance points, areas that were going too much in Oklahoma State's way early.
Jayhawks take on an old teammate
The first matchup between Bryce Thompson’s new Oklahoma State squad and Kansas went the Jayhawks’ way, with the Cowboys ultimately falling short in this conference tilt. Thompson, who spent the 2020-21 season with Kansas, finished with eight points, two rebounds, an assist, a block and a turnover. In close to 23 minutes of action off the bench, he had a +/- of -11.
Six of Thompson’s points came in the first half. He had a jumper in the final minute before halftime that brought the score to a 29-29 tie. It’s just that neither he nor his teammates were able to take the momentum from the end of that first half and translate that into a victory by the end of the second.
“It was fun,” said Agbaji, asked about what it was like to go up against his former teammate. “Like I was just talking about the other day, we’re going to have different matchups against guys that we had on our team last year and it’s going to just be — obviously, we want to get the best of it, beat them. But … it was nice to see him out there playing.”
Oklahoma State was led by Isaac Likekele’s 16-point, 12-rebound double-double. Kansas saw Agbaji, with 16 points, and junior guard Christian Braun, with 15 points, join McCormack in double figures scoring.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas basketball opens Big 12 play with win against Oklahoma State
