KU trails Houston by 3 games with 3 to play: ‘We weren’t going to win the league’

Kansas’ 76-68 loss to BYU on Tuesday night at Allen Fieldhouse dropped the Jayhawks to three games behind league-leader Houston in the Big 12 standings with three games left to play.

What that means is the Jayhawks, 21-7 overall and 9-6 in the Big 12, will — barring a miraculous set of circumstances — not be clipping down the nets and celebrating a regular-season conference crown in 2023-24.

The race for the top spot appears to be a two-way battle between Houston (12-3) and Iowa State (10-4).

Baylor, like KU, is tied for third at 9-6, followed by Texas Tech, BYU and TCU (all 8-7), Oklahoma (7-7), Texas and Kansas State (7-8), UCF (5-9), Cincinnati (5-10), Oklahoma State (4-10) and West Virginia (4-11).

“I’m not trying to be negative. We weren’t going to win the league,” KU coach Bill Self said Tuesday during his postgame radio interview after the Cougars ended the Jayhawks’ 19-game homecourt win streak.

“Houston and Iowa State positioned themselves with the schedule remaining to put themselves in great position. What we could have done (by stopping BYU) ... we could have put ourselves in great position to not play on Wednesday. Now we are going to have to fight our butts off to make that happen,” Self added.

Self was referring to KU attaining one of the top four seeds for the conference tournament set for March 12-16 at T-Mobile Center.

The conference’s top four finishers receive byes Tuesday March 12 and Wednesday March 13 and do not open play in the event until the quarterfinals on Thursday March 14. The Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14 seeds play in Tuesday’s tourney-opening doubleheader.

The Nos, 5, 6, 7 and 8 seeds are joined by the two Tuesday winners as well as the 9 and 10 seeds in second round action on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s costly loss, KU coach Self says, came down to 3-point shooting of both teams. BYU went 13-of-34 from 3-point range; KU was 3-of-15.

“The bottom line is this: It’s hard when you get outscored by 30 points beyond the arc. I was hoping it would be more like 15 and we’d make enough twos to make the difference. You get outscored 30, that’s pretty telling,” Self said.

“They didn’t shoot it great (38.2% beyond arc). You don’t have to shoot that great when you shoot that many of them,” Self added.

Nick Timberlake was 1-of-6 from 3 and Johnny Furphy 0-for-5.

“The majority of those were wide open,” Self said. “Johnny (10 points, 4-of-12 shooting) had two go all the way down and come back out. That happens. We are not a great shooting team and we didn’t shoot it near as well as we are capable of shooting it.

“The bottom line is you’ve got to figure a way to get stops on the other end. Even though we defended them some, the few mistakes we made — I know we made a lot and we switched ball screens a lot — the way we guarded ball screens helped us at times but ended up costing us at the end. We had too many mistakes off switches and that was a big difference.”

KU led by 12 points with 18:28 left and led 56-50 with 7:26 to play. KU was outscored 26-12 to end the game.

“In our building … unbelievable,” Self said. “Granted they made some shots. We bailed them out some. Fifty/50 balls … when you are playing poorly like that you have to make sure the other team plays worse than you do.

“We didn’t score inside the arc like we normally do and then you go 3-for-15 from 3, that’s not going to beat anybody. Hunter (Dickinson, 6-of-15 from the line) struggled obviously at the line and we had many opportunities (19-of-31 from line as a team) to kind of kind of keep our cushion.

“We got what we deserved. They were better than us. We’re going to have to forget this one although this one will be hard to forget. I hope like heck we can go down to Baylor and compete a little bit better.”

KU heads to Baylor for a noon tip Saturday as the No. 7-ranked team in the country. KU is 2-5 on the road and 7-1 at home in Big 12 games.