Manhattan ? The Bramlage Coliseum crowd was stoked. Just as in the game in Allen Fieldhouse, the Kansas State deficit was shrinking in a hurry, this time all the way down to three points.
Russell Robinson, who has a knack for playing his best when needed most, knew where to go with the basketball. He whipped it to Brandon Rush in the left corner for a three-pointer that pumped the lead back to six points.
Cartier Martin answered at the other end with a three-pointer that cut it to three again. Again, Robinson knew where to put the ball – in Rush’s hands in the left corner. The shot took a lap or two around the rim and fell through.
In those 57 seconds midway through the second half, Rush doubled his scoring output in that blowout loss to Texas and fueled Kansas University to a 66-52 victory over its in-state rival Saturday.
“Big 12 champions,” Rush said after a 24-point, six-rebound game. “Amazing.”
If Texas protects its home turf and defeats Oklahoma today, the Jayhawks will be Big 12 Conference co-champs and No. 2 seed in the Big 12 tournament.
The possibility of sharing a championship and wearing a No. 2 next to its name in the conference tournament bracket did nothing to taint the sense of accomplishment for a young team that placed seventh among seven Division I schools in Maui, lost to Saint Joseph’s and Nevada in December and was standing at 1-2 in the Big 12 after losses to K-State and Missouri.
It’s not as if the Jayhawks will be glued to their televisions awaiting the outcome of today’s game in the Erwin Center.
“I don’t like to watch games because I’ll be the guy who hits the TV when something doesn’t go right for the team I want to win,” Rush said. “I’ll just wait for the box score.”
Rush had K-State fans throwing their purple beer steins at their televisions in the second half of a game in which he scored 16 second-half points. That’s one less point than Martin had in the game for a Wildcats team that didn’t score from the field after Martin’s three-pointer with 10:56 left.
On those occasions Rush didn’t lose him in a sea of screens, he did nice defensive work on Martin. As usual, the quick hands of Robinson, Mario Chalmers (all 14 points in the first half) and Jeff Hawkins came in handy.
That Rush was the scoring star couldn’t have worked better for the Jayhawks (22-7, 13-3) as they moved into the next phase of the season. Rush had averaged 10.6 points in the seven games leading into the K-State rematch.
“I don’t know what was going on,” Rush said. “I was shooting bad. Shots that were supposed to be falling weren’t falling, and I couldn’t get in a rhythm. I was in a shooting slump, and I knew I was going to come out of it.”
Rush came out of it by hitting four of seven three-point shots and in the process showed more of a left hand than in most games.
“I tried to go left every time,” he said.
And it worked the way he envisioned?
“I had 24,” he said. “It had to work.”
It worked. And so did KU’s formula for success: Force turnovers and fly. The Jayhawks scored 23 points off of 21 K-State turnovers.
Nice numbers, but the most significant were 24 for No. 25.
