The No. 2 Kansas Jayhawks weren’t going to make the same mistake twice.
After falling victim to the sandwich spot this time last week, the Jayhawks were mostly in control throughout their 88-69 win over Kansas City on Tuesday night in Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas (8-1), which is coming off a marquee win over UConn last Friday, will now welcome rival Missouri to town on Saturday.
To be fair, the Roos did score on the opening possession of the game to take a brief 2-0 advantage. After that, it was all Kansas on both ends of the floor. And with plenty of style points, too.
The Jayhawks pushed the pace out of the gates, and capitalized in transition with multiple highlight-worthy plays to get the crowd into it. The first play came on an alley-oop from freshman Elmarko Jackson to Hunter Dickinson, who finished the sequence off with a slam to give KU a quick 14-4 advantage right away.
Jackson facilitated another transition dunk a few minutes later, this time to veteran wing Kevin McCullar Jr. Moments later, McCullar was on the receiving end of a nifty pass from point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. that led to an easy layup in transition.
The Jayhawks led by double-digit for a majority of the rest of the game, but the Roos did cut it to single digits with under four minutes to go. Kansas City’s Khristion Courseault drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the key to cut the score to eight.
Kansas then answered with an emphatic 10-0 run in the closing minutes to remove any doubt about the outcome.
McCullar led the way with 25 points on 9-of-13 shooting. KJ Adams Jr. scored 18 points, while Dickinson added 14 points.
