COLUMBIA, Mo. – Hold that fork. No need to stick it in the Jayhawks. They aren’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
Kansas’ stunning 82-77 basketball victory over Missouri here Saturday afternoon bent some prongs.
“A lot of people have written us off this year,” stressed Kansas All-American Danny Manning. “We feel different.”
Manning – what’s left to say about him – was routinely terrific in this one, scoring 37 points and clutching eight rebounds as the Jayhawks ended the Big Eight’s longest homecourt winning streak at 21.
“Danny Manning’s performances are always incredible,” teammate Chris Piper told the media afterward. “That’s something we expect. That’s an average game for him.”
It wasn’t an average game for the Jayhawks, though – not with their reputation as a team that builds early leads only to fritter them away in the second half.
As many as four times this season, that’s happened. But not Saturday, not even when the Tigers closed to within two points midway through the second half.
“For the first time all year,” Piper reflected, “I don’t think we were worried about being in control. Nobody was worried. We weren’t running up and down and throwing the ball away.”
Indeed, KU was guilty of just four second-half turnovers as it answered challenge after challenge down the stretch.
Big plays? Too numerous to mention almost, but Kevin Pritchard’s three-point goal at 3:49 and his three-point play off a drive weren’t insignificant.
“Everything seemed to be there,” Pritchard smiled afterward.
Everything except a stuff by Scooter Barry with :32 remaining. Barry missed a point-blank jam with the Jayhawks up by six at 80-74 – a gaffe that could have been a killer.
“I was gonna knock him out,” KU coach Larry Brown said good-naturedly, “but the other coaches told me to be positive.”
Brown left Barry in and the junior guard sent him a thank-you note with two bonus charities at :22 to put this one in the freezer.
“He was as mad as I was,” Barry said about the aborted slam, “but Coach Brown stayed positive with me and that really helped me.”
What helped the Jayhawks more than anything, however, was an eight-minute stretch during the first half when they outscored the Tigers, 20-0.
That’s right…20 unanswered points that turned an 8-6 Kansas deficit into a 26-8 bulge and left a record Hearnes Center crowd of 13,610 wondering what happened.
The answer was simple.
“We played great defense,” Brown said, reflecting on that eventually decisive spurt. “We had ’em way out on the floor. That’s the best we’ve played.”
During the whitewash Kansas pitched from 16:49 to 8:49, Missouri missed eight shots and turned the ball over six times.
“That’s what a great defense is about, not letting them get into their offense,” Piper pointed out. “But like a great team, they got it together and came back at us.”
Missouri did most of its comeback work during the last 3 1/2 minutes of the first half with Manning on the bench after picking up his second foul.
Mizzou cut five points off a 14-point KU lead and went into halftime lagging, 38-29.
“When they went in at the half only down nine, I was concerned,” Brown said. “They they came out and got back on us so quickly.”
It wasn’t THAT quick because buckets by Milt Newton hiked KU’s lead to 13 at 42-29. Missouri did battle inexorably back after that, though.
Eventually, at 12:19, Lee Coward’s three-point basket cut it to two at 52-50.
“We had a good lead,” noted Barry, “and it seemed like we started to fold, and it was the same old thing.”
Only it wasn’t the same old thing. For the next three minutes, KU treaded water, nursing leads of two and four points.
Then came Newton’s three-point goal at 7:39. Suddenly, KU’s lead was seven, a veritable cushion. Anyway, MU couldn’t creep any closer than five the rest of the way.
After Kansas played keepaway for the last 14 seconds and the clock ran out, Brown hurried over and shook hands with MU coach Norm Stewart – “That was one of the great, great handshakes I’ve ever had,” Brown smiled – and later praised the Tigers.
“There’s no way to keep Missouri out,” Brown said when asked if this defeat would throw a monkey wrench in the Tigers’ NCAA hopes.
In the meantime, Brown isn’t about to talk about the Jayhawks’ NCAA chances.
“I just don’t like to politic about that because I know there’s some other coach out there who feels the same way about this team as I do,” Brown said.
Saturday’s victory pushed Kansas into sole possession of third place in Big Eight standings at 7-5. Kansas is 18-10 overall.
The Jayhawks will travel to Colorado next Wednesday night before concluding the regular season at home against Oklahoma State next Saturday night.
Notes
-Jeff Gueldner returned to the KU starting lineup after missing the Oklahoma game with a sprained ankle. Gueldner failed to score, but contributed five rebounds and a team-high five assists during 32 minutes of duty…
-If you’re counting, Manning’s career point total is now 2,702. He broke, as you know, the conference career scoring record last Wednesday night…
-Saturday’s five-point margin was the largest in the last five games in the KU-MU series…
-KU coach Larry Brown’s career record against the Tigers is 8-3…
-Manning’s eight boards moved him into second place on the Big Eight career rebounding list. he probably won’t overhaul leader Dean Uthoff of Iowa State, however. Uthoff is 143 caroms ahead of him…
-Kansas made 21 of 25 charities. Three of the four misses occurred in the last three minutes, but none was the front end of a bonus opportunity…
Box Score
KU3844-82
MU2948-77
Kansas: Milt Newton 6-10 2-4 16, Chris Piper 1-3 3-4 5, Danny Manning 15-21 7-8 37, Kevin Pritchard 4-8 1-1 10, Jeff Gueldner 0-2 0-0 0, Clint Normore 0-1 0-0 0, Scooter Barry 1-2 4-4 6, Mike Masucci 0-1 0-0 0, Keith Harris 2-4 4-4 8, Team 29-52 21-25 82.
Three-point goals: 3-8 (Newton 2-5, Pritchard 1-1, Manning 0-1, Gueldner 0-1). Assists: 12 (Gueldner 5, Pritchard 2, Piper 2, Newton, Manning, Normore). Turnovers: 13 (Piper 3, Pritchard 3, Harris 2, Gueldner 2, Newton, Manning, Masucci). Blocked shots: 3 (Manning 3). Steals: 9 (Pritchard 3, Manning 2, Newton, Piper, Normore, Masucci).
Missouri: Derrick Chievous 4-10 11-13 20, Mike Sandbothe 1-3 0-0 2, Nathan Buntin 3-6 1-2 7, Lee Coward 4-8 0-2 11, Byron Irvin 1-6 1-2 4, John McIntyre 1-4 2-2 4, Lynn Hardy 0-0 0-0 0, Greg Church 1-2 0-1 2, Doug Smith 5-12 0-0 10, Gary Leonard 7-11 3-5 17, Team 27-62 18-27 77.
Three-point goals: 5-14 (Coward 3-5, Irvin 1-5, Chievous 1-2, McIntyre 0-2). Assists: 16 (Coward 3, McIntyre 3, Smith 3, Chievous 2, Irvin 2, Leonard 2, Buntin). Turnovers: 11 (Leonard 2, Church 2, Chievous 2, Sandbothe, Coward, McIntyre, Hardy, Smith). Blocked shots: 0. Steals: 9 (Coward 3, Irvin 2, Chievous, McIntyre, Hardy, Leonard).
