College Station, Texas ? A grind-it-out victory Saturday over Texas A&M kept Kansas University’s men’s basketball team undefeated in conference play.
But the No. 14-ranked Jayhawks’ somewhat-scary 71-65 win didn’t give the two-time defending Big 12 Conference champions confidence they’ll be celebrating a third straight league crown this season.
“Any win is good,” said KU point guard Aaron Miles, who just missed a triple-double with 12 assists, 11 points and seven rebounds, “but we’re not doing some of the things necessary for a championship-caliber basketball team.”
For one thing, the Jayhawks aren’t putting away inferior teams.
Kansas, which improved to 11-2 overall and 3-0 in the Big 12, led unheralded A&M (7-6, 0-2) by as many as 13 points — at 61-48 with 4:17 left.
However, the Jayhawks struggled against A&M’s fullcourt press and bungled at the free-throw line late, missing five of seven free throws before Wayne Simien’s two clutch charities provided a 69-62 advantage with 13.5 seconds left.
“We’ve got to put it to teams, finish teams,” said Miles, who also was unimpressed with Wednesday’s nearly identical 73-67 victory over Kansas State. “We used to beat teams by 20, 30 in the past. It’s what I want to do, put teams out of reach. I want to see Stephen Vinson, Nick Bahe, the walk-ons play a lot more.”
That will not happen if KU — which pulled out Saturday’s game thanks to Miles, Keith Langford (21 points) and J.R. Giddens (14 points, including three straight threes in the second half) — doesn’t improve its rebounding.
A&M outrebounded KU, 40-35, grabbing 19 offensive rebounds to KU’s nine.
“They kicked our butts rebounding,” said senior center Jeff Graves, who scored 11 points but had no rebounds in making his first start of the season for the injured David Padgett. “It’s frustrating. We need to box out a lot stronger.”
Junior power forward Simien, who had six points off 2-of-10 shooting, grabbed eight boards in 32 minutes.
“Once again, we got our butts kicked on the boards,” Simien said. “We can’t let that happen. They had a lot of long shots, their guards getting in there and scrapping for it. We need to box out and go get the ball.”
KU coach Bill Self, who preaches toughness as much as any coach in the country, was sick over KU’s performance on the boards.
And it’s not as if there weren’t a lot of rebounds to be had.
A&M, for instance, missed 42 of 66 field-goal tries.
“I think we’re soft rebounding the ball,” Self said. “Wayne didn’t rebound the ball at all today, and Jeff didn’t get a rebound. When there’s that many shots missed and you’ve got your two best rebounders combine for eight, that’s very, very poor.”
Self lauded Giddens for his three straight threes that gave KU a 46-36 lead with 11:26 left and Langford for a 10-point outburst that put the Jayhawks up 27-26 late in the first– “We don’t win the game without those two” — but had negatives for the duo’s rebounding.
Langford finished with four rebounds in 26 minutes; Giddens had three in 25 minutes.
“J.R. … a great athlete is not getting any offensive rebounds. The other team’s three-man had six. That’s six extra possessions,” Self said of Antoine Wright, who had 25 points and 12 boards, including six offensive rebounds to Giddens’ zero. “I’m not just picking on J.R., whoever plays that position. Keith had two. We don’t go to the glass like we should. It’s one thing not getting them offensively, it’s another thing giving teams extra possessions.”
Self was mortified by KU’s play after the Jayhawks built a 13-point lead late.
A&M cut the gap to four at 69-65 before Giddens put home a slam to conclude the scoring, a dunk that followed a near steal by A&M.
“That’s as poorly as a team can finish a game as we did today,” Self said. “I can handle a team playing poorly and winning. I can handle playing poorly and losing as long as we do the right things and play smart and play together,” Self said.
“I don’t think that occurred the last five minutes at all. Up until then it wasn’t that bad. The last five minutes there was no semblance of a team trying to be focused and carrying out responsibilities and attacking each ball with two hands and getting open. We panicked. We looked like a team that had never seen a press before.”
The Jayhawks will, of course, remain undefeated in league play heading into Saturday’s home game against Colorado.
Up first, though, is Thursday’s 8 p.m. nonconference contest against Richmond at Allen Fieldhouse.
COLUMBUS, OHIO ? Home for the Christmas holiday with a victory in his back pocket, Kenny Gregory left Value City Arena Saturday as jolly as ol’ Saint Nick.
“I didn’t care if I played great. I didn’t care about my performance. I just wanted the win. All I wanted was a win,” Gregory, Kansas’ senior forward from Columbus, Ohio, said after the Jayhawks’ 69-68 victory over Ohio State.
Rest assured, Gregory’s Jayhawks who led by 15 points with 12 minutes left didn’t play great on Saturday.
Kirk Hinrich, Jeff Boschee and Drew Gooden each missed the front ends of one-and-one free throw situations in the final minute as Ohio State nearly erased a six-point, last-minute deficit.
Somehow, however, KU managed to hang on to win for the 10th time in 11 games heading into Christmas break.
“We missed a lot of free throws. We had a lot of turnovers. But we were able to hold on,” Gregory said after scoring 17 points with six rebounds and three assists.
KU “held on” thanks to some stingy defense in the frantic final moments.
Gooden he scored 16 points with 10 rebounds and eight turnovers misfired from the free throw line with :33.6 seconds left, Kansas up by one, 69-68.
Ohio State rebounded and called time with 16.9 seconds to play.
Buckeye guard Brian Brown accepted an in-bounds pass and hoisted a 15-footer that was well guarded by Boschee.
The ball appeared to kick off OSU’s Sean Connolly, but was ruled off Gregory and awarded to the Buckeyes with 7.6 ticks left.
“Definitely,” Gregory said, asked if it should have been KU’s ball. “Connolly had inside position and it went off him. He (ref) saw it a different way, so we had to keep playing.”
Given a second chance, OSU inbounded again to Brown, who had his path impeded by Gregory. Brown shot an off balance six-footer on the baseline that was blocked by Nick Collison.
Gooden batted out the rebound well past the free throw line, where it was picked up by Gregory.
The No. 9-ranked Jayhawks (10-1) had survived, handing OSU its third loss in 11 tries.
“I knew Brown would get it because he’s their go-to guy,” Gregory said of Brown, who finished with 17 points. “I tried to contest without fouling. I did enough to make him change his shot. Fortunately my big guys were there to block it and get the ball out of there.”
Collison he was one of five Jayhawks to pick up four fouls on a day KU shot 13 free throws to OSU’s 42 saved the day with his rejection.
“I had a hand up in front of him. I might have gotten a piece of it, just a little piece,” Collison said with a grin.
Gooden was “relieved” to knock the rebound out of harm’s way.
A last-second bucket would have meant a near riot on the court with a sellout crowd of 19,200 ready to storm the court to celebrate what would have been a major victory for the Buckeyes.
“I was relieved. I was relieved,” Gooden repeated. “We had the lead that whole game. To be up by six with a minute left and for them to have two chances to beat us … that’s a helluva position to be in.
“That,” Gooden added, “was a sloppy exhibition.”
Plenty disappointed in KU’s 22 turnovers Boschee, Collison and Gooden had bobbles in the last 2:40 KU coach Roy Williams was elated with the Jayhawks’ late stops.
“We played very good defense for 17 seconds,” Williams said. “That was the ballgame. For 17 seconds, we guarded as well as we’ve guarded all year.”
He said “it was a difficult game to coach,” mostly because of KU’s foul problems. Collison, Chenowith, Boschee and Hinrich all had four fouls with 10 minutes to play.
“It seemed like all their points were at the free throw line,” Gooden said. Ohio State hit 28 of 42 free throws to KU’s six of 13. “They were taking it to us and we were fouling them.”
When the Jayhawks weren’t fouling, they were committing turnovers.
“Most of them were my fault,” Gooden said of his eight turnovers. “I got lost in the crowd and lost my footing a bit.”
KU did enough good things in a pivotal 19-6 second-half run to open what turned out to be an insurmountable 53-38 lead with 11:59 left.
Gooden had nine points and two assists in the surge, while Collison had six points and Gregory four.
“We had a great run during that five-minute stretch in the second half,” Williams said. “We got it inside where we wanted to and all of a sudden we had a 13-point lead. Then we got in such foul trouble. We kept putting them on the line.
“We made some of the silliest turnovers I’ve ever had a team make.”
The Jayhawks didn’t want to take all the blame for seeing their 15-point lead dwindle to near nothing. They wanted to credit the Buckeyes, who were led by Brown, Boban Savovic (15 points, six assists), and center Ken Johnson, who had 11 points and six blocks. He rejected four of Chenowith’s offerings as KU’s senior center scored three points on 1-of-8 shooting.
“Ohio State showed a lot of poise,” Gregory said. “We had ’em in a deep hole, but they didn’t give up. They shot at least 40 free throws. We kept putting them on the line.”
As far as Gregory’s day, not even some boo birds could ruin his homecoming.
He starred as a prep at Columbus’ Independence High, yet was booed during pre-game introductions.
“It’s OK. I didn’t expect to be the most famous person in the building,” Gregory said. “I was satisfied with the reception. It wasn’t too bad. One guy was heckling me pretty bad. He said, ‘Go home.’ How can I do that? I’m already home.”
The Jayhawks headed to their respective homes for Christmas and aren’t required to return to Lawrence until Thursday for practice.