The Christmas break has mercifully arrived for the Kansas men’s basketball team, but not without a scare more fit for Halloween.
Head coach Bill Self said all week that to succeed Friday night — in a tricky post-finals, pre-holiday matchup against Yale — his team would need to understand that the holidays don’t start until after the game ends.
For about 15 minutes, it appeared that message had fallen on deaf ears. The Ivy League favorites jumped out to a 25-14 lead over an uncharacteristically turnover-prone Jayhawks squad devoid of offensive inspiration.
If not for a transcendent Kevin McCullar Jr., who scored 11 points in the final 5:09 of the first half to cut the deficit to one point, and then racked up a career-high 34 by the night’s end, the Jayhawks might have become another victim of the upset-laden week.
Ultimately, though, they topped the Bulldogs 75-60 at Allen Fieldhouse.
“My teammates put me in a position to make plays, the coaching staff drew up plays for me to get downhill and it worked out for me,” McCullar said in his postgame ESPN+ interview.
McCullar fired without hesitation from deep and just as often went to the basket — he was 4-for-7 from deep and 8-for-8 from the line. Meanwhile, Yale went nearly seven minutes without making a shot in the second half.
Nick Timberlake played a season-high 29 minutes and managed 13 points, including 3-for-7 from deep.
“Nick just looked like a different guy tonight,” Self said. “He just needed something good to happen and we’re all very happy for him.”
Dajuan Harris Jr. added 10 more points with a pair of 3s of his own.
Guards Bez Mbeng and August Mahoney led Yale with 13 points each, while the center Wolf added 11, slowing down considerably after a strong start.
“They had a good team, and I think we outscored them (by) about 24, 26 points the last 24 minutes — after just being horrid early and they were really good,” Self said.
The highly mobile Wolf had tested Dickinson early, spinning his way past the Jayhawks’ 7-footer for a layup to open the scoring, then cutting for another one to put Yale up 6-5.
Self swiftly brought in Parker Braun for some athleticism off the bench, and Braun promptly finished a lob from KJ Adams to get KU back in front. The Jayhawks didn’t establish a clear-cut advantage, and Mahoney drained a 3 to give the Bulldogs their first two-possession lead midway through the half at 15-11.
KU relied on Timberlake off the bench to sustain it in the early going, as he had half of the Jayhawks’ first 14 points on five early shots. That provided only a brief respite as Yale embarked on a 10-0 run — including back-to-back 3s by John Poulakidas and Wolf — as the Jayhawks went nearly five minutes without scoring.
“I think the way they guarded us, obviously we didn’t do a good job running our stuff,” Self said, “I think Hunt got off to a bad start, and if you’ve followed us much over the years, usually to start every game I want to play inside out, and that didn’t work out too well tonight.”
Finally, Dickinson laid the ball in with 5:57 to go and McCullar completed his second three-point play of the game soon after to cut KU’s deficit to 25-19. The Bulldogs kept the Jayhawks at arm’s length, forcing defensive breakdowns that led to more 3-pointers for Poulakidas and Mahoney, but KU scored seven straight and Wolf clanked a 3 off the back rim in the waning seconds as the Jayhawks went in trailing by one point.
“Even as bad as we played the first 15 minutes, we were pretty good the last five minutes and it made it where (if) we come out and do what we’re supposed to do we can win this game and get control of the second half,” Self said postgame, describing his halftime message to the team.
Elmarko Jackson missed a contested layup that could have put KU up 40-39 early in the second half, and then a corner 3 back down the floor. McCullar eventually tied the game when Harris picked him out for a corner 3 with just under 14 minutes to go. The Jayhawks needed two more minutes to take the lead, which they did on a perfectly executed fast break from Jamari McDowell to Timberlake to Jackson to Dickinson for a layup.
KU continued to labor on offense but benefited from a profound dry spell that saw Yale miss everything from difficult 3s to easy layups, altogether amounting to nine consecutive errant shots before a Wolf layup with seven and a half minutes to go. At that point, the Bulldogs trailed 51-45, and then McCullar set his new career high with a 3 on the following possession.
Timberlake and Harris helped KU extend its lead to double digits for the first time all night, and the Jayhawks were a team transformed as they drew out what became a 21-5 run.
McCullar even banked in a 3 with just over two minutes to go. It was that kind of night for him.
“Kev’s been our best player the whole year and proved it again today,” Timberlake said. “Got nicked up in practice the other day and just fought through it. Easily one of the toughest teammates that I’ve ever had.”
KU, which improved to 11-1, will face Wichita State at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City on Dec. 30.
“I was just glad that we fought back, going into Christmas break with a win,” McCullar said.
