Cincinnati — After an ugly, low-scoring, slow-paced first 33 minutes, Kansas dealt a death blow to Cincinnati with one pivotal stretch of 14 straight points.
Previously clinging to a one-point lead, the KU men’s basketball team pounced on the Bearcats with seven minutes to go. Led by guard Zeke Mayo, who scored a contested layup over Cincinnati’s Dan Skillings Jr., swiped the ball from Day Day Thomas and tossed a crucial lob to teammate Shakeel Moore, KU brought an end to a back-and-forth rock fight at Fifth Third Arena, taking down UC by a score of 54-40.
The Jayhawks, who improved to 12-3 overall and 3-1 in the Big 12, have now won a second straight road game for the first time since Feb. 20, 2023.
“We wanted to make sure everybody knew that (UCF on Jan. 5) wasn’t a fluke, that we can win on the road, that we’re a different team than last year,” center Hunter Dickinson said, “and that we’re a gritty team, that we’re able to go on the road and have that defense travel and all that toughness travel. It was just a really good win for us tonight.”
Cincinnati shot just 21.4% in the second half, including a 2-for-13 showing beyond the arc. KU didn’t make any 3s at all after the break and wasn’t much better offensively in general, but forced turnovers and grabbed rebounds to prevent the Bearcats from undertaking their long, meticulous offensive possessions.
“We actually got better looks today than what we shot it,” KU coach Bill Self said. “I don’t know that they did. I think we did a great job. I think their misses were contested more than ours were. They threw a couple at the end of the (shot) clock and we didn’t until the end. Down the stretch, the last five minutes we played efficient, smart and got the ball to the right guys.”
Dickinson was the Jayhawks’ only double-digit scorer, but his 14-point, 12-rebound performance helped make the difference in the game.
“Hunt kept us in it in the first half in a weird way,” Self said, “because how can a guy keep you in it and score six points? But he did.”
KJ Adams scored eight points and tallied seven boards, including five offensive rebounds in the second half.
“When you shoot it as bad as we were, you know a lot of them are going to keep coming off,” Dickinson said, “so you got to try to crash the glass as much as you can.”
Dillon Mitchell scored 10 for Cincinnati and Skillings and Arrinten Page posted nine each.
“This is definitely huge,” Mayo said of the victory. “They were a top-15 team in the country a couple weeks ago. We understood they’re a desperate team. I mean, they started 0-3 in the league. We just understood the assignment coming into their home floor, knew that it was going to be ramped up with their fans and everything, and obviously they’re playing desperate and more aggressive there in the first half.”
KU fell behind 8-2 on a series of hard-charging drives to the rim by the Bearcats before Dajuan Harris Jr. banked in a 3-pointer to quell Cincinnati’s early offensive. The Jayhawks took their first lead of the game when Mayo batted a rebound away from a leaping Skillings, took it himself and drained another 3 in transition to make it 10-8.
Back-to-back steals by Skillings on errant passes by Harris hampered KU’s offense and a putback dunk by the substitute Page put UC ahead again. The Jayhawks didn’t score for more than five minutes until David Coit broke through for a layup, only for Skillings to connect on a corner 3 moments later.
KU trailed by seven points on a pair of occasions, but the slow, methodical Cincinnati offense labored on a string of empty possessions. With 46.8 seconds remaining, UC’s Day Day Thomas got called for the first shooting foul by either team, and AJ Storr made a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to one point.
Thomas missed a desperation 3 at the shot-clock buzzer on the Bearcats’ final possession of the half, giving the Jayhawks one last opportunity, but Harris’ last-second layup rattled out.
KU took a long-awaited lead on a floater by Mayo early in the second half, missed a string of open shots that could have extended its lead further, but still took its largest lead at 28-25 on a steal into a transition layup by Moore. Then Cincinnati scored its first point since three minutes and 46 seconds remained in the first half on a 1-for-2 trip to the line for Jizzle James.
Once again draining the entire shot clock, Page put the Bearcats in front on a stepback 3 over Flory Bidunga with 13:22 to go.
The teams went back and forth down the stretch as KU handled itself well with a bench-heavy lineup. Adams, a machine on the offensive glass, put back a missed layup by Moore through a foul by Skillings with 7:57 to go, but couldn’t finish the three-point play after the under-8 timeout.
A significant swing by the standards of a low-scoring game occurred shortly after, with Page missing an open dunk and Moore sinking a floater on the subsequent possession, forcing Cincinnati to call timeout down five points with 5:13 remaining.
That was when Mayo and the Jayhawks kicked into gear for the 14-0 run, capped off by a floater by Harris.
“He’s just a good player,” Self said of Mayo, who finished with nine points on 4-for-10 shooting. “And he’ll be the first to tell you this wasn’t his game at all offensively today. He didn’t have any rhythm, didn’t make any shots. But good players, when they play the right way and they hang in there, the ball tends to find a way to bounce their way when you do that, and that’s what he’s doing.”
Cincinnati didn’t score until a 3-pointer by Josh Reed with 1:21 to go.
The Jayhawks will play their second straight road game against No. 3 Iowa State at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. The Cyclones beat Texas Tech 85-84 in overtime on Saturday.
