One more look from Kansas University’s vantage point at the good, the bad and the ugly of an amazing college basketball game in which the team that was way behind way late couldn’t miss a three-pointer, and the team that was ahead couldn’t make a free throw.
The good: Mario Chalmers took another step forward and has been the team’s best player three games into the Big 12 Conference portion of the schedule. He leads the team in scoring (17.7), assists (6.0), steals (2.7), and three-point shooting (42 percent) in conference play.
In Monday night’s fall-from-ahead 89-86 overtime loss to Missouri, Chalmers ran the point more often and looked extremely comfortable. He’s the team’s best passer and penetrator and is a disruptive defender. His confidence has shot upward in a hurry.
Another positive: Darnell Jackson, with eight points and six rebounds in 22 minutes, is showing no signs of rust from the suspension.
Also, the Jayhawks ran their offense well, got good shots, hit them to the tune of 53.4 percent, and hammered Mizzou, 42-32, on the boards.
THE BAD: In the final 57 seconds of regulation, KU missed 5 of 10 free throws. A lousy 6 of 10 would have gotten the job done. Christian Moody made 3 of 8 on the night and is shooting 46 percent from the line on the season, which makes the two misses with 0.4 remaining not as shocking as it was disappointing.
Panic was another negative in the waning moments of regulation, when bad decisions were made on where to go with the ball against full-court pressure, which resulted in a pair of tie-ups with the arrow pointing the right way once, the wrong way another time.
The last chance in overtime, with two seconds left after Jimmy McKinney hit a pair of free throws to put Missouri up by three points, required Darnell Jackson to wait another second or two to pick up the ball before the referee started his five-second countdown to give teammates more time to run down court. It also required Jackson to whip a baseball pass to someone in the frontcourt, such as Brandon Rush or Chalmers. Instead, Jackson passed it to Russell Robinson in the backcourt and there wasn’t time for him to get off anything but a desperation heave.
THE UGLY: We’ve all seen a player miss a pair of free throws with little or no time left, but can anyone ever recall a team’s leading scorer doing what Rush did when he drove to the hoop and at the last instant instead of taking the make-or-break shot inexplicably passed it to a guarded player? Jackson didn’t catch the pass and why would he? Certainly, his only thought there was to tap in Rush’s shot if it popped out.
Rush is so talented that it’s easy to forget he’s a freshman. He looked like one at the end of the Arkansas game, when he passed instead of driving, and certainly looked like one when he passed after driving Monday.
Rush shirked responsibility by not wanting with two seconds left to take the shot that could have sent the game into a second overtime period. In time, he’ll realize his world won’t end if he takes and misses a big shot and questions about his ability in the clutch will persist if he continues to pass up the big shot.
