Sprint Center has been unkind to Jayhawks of late

The Kansas basketball team has won 225 games and lost 10 at Allen Fieldhouse during the 15-year Bill Self era. That calculates to an amazing 95.7 win percentage in KU’s tradition-rich campus building.

Self’s squads, meanwhile, have compiled a 35-9 record in the Jayhawks’ home-away-from home — Kansas City’s Sprint Center. That win percentage is 79.5.

“You’ve got to realize just because you are at home or in Kansas City or wherever we’ve got homecourt advantage that teams are not going to come in and lay down,” KU senior guard Devonté Graham said after Wednesday’s 74-65 loss to Washington at the Sprint Center.

It marked KU’s second straight loss at Sprint Center and third in four tries. KU fell to TCU in a Big 12 quarterfinal contest last March before beating Purdue and losing to Oregon in NCAA Tournament contests at Sprint Center.

“It’s always just a wake-up call,” Graham added of losses at Allen or in KC. “We always have a target on our back just because of the name on the front of our jersey. We’re going to get everybody’s best shot. We’ve got to be locked in, focused and ready each game no matter who it is.”

KU had last lost consecutive games at Sprint Center in 2008-09 when Syracuse and UMass stopped the Jayhawks on Nov. 25 and Dec. 13 respectively. Prior to that, the last time KU dropped two straight in KC was the 1982-83 season when the Jayhawks fell to Ohio State in the regular season and Oklahoma State in the Big Eight Tournament. Both of those losses were at Kemper Arena.

The loss to Washington on Wednesday, which was KU’s first of the season after seven victories, proved somewhat alarming to Self, who saw an unheralded, 7-2 Huskies team, out-scrap his No. 2-ranked Jayhawks.

“We will not be a good competitive team that can compete on a national level unless we get tougher, unless we try harder. I think our ‘try level’ tonight was very weak,” Self said after the game.

“We weren’t ready to play right from the jump,” Self added. “The second half we came out and we were just awful, just no energy. We are so small if you don’t play scrappy and don’t play to your quickness, we are going to look slow and not athletic. They were bigger, more athletic and obviously more skilled. We got outplayed, outcoached, out-everythinged.”

Self provided radio analyst Greg Gurley an example of uninspired play during a postgame interview on the Jayhawk radio network.

“We’re out at the end running around trying even though the game is over with about two minutes left,” Self said. “There was a loose ball on the floor. We hesitate to dive for it. Their No. 15 (Noah Dickerson) dives for it, throws it to the top of the key, they make a three and game’s over.

“We don’t have the dog in us we had with Frank (Mason) and Josh (Jackson) and Landen (Lucas) obviously in three positions. I think we’ve got to get some dog in us and play with a chip on our shoulder. We’ve got to share the ball. There were some really selfish play in the first half that set the tone for the whole game,” he added.

Self used his seven scholarship players plus walk-on Clay Young.

“When you play as small as we do and rely so much on perimeter shooting (KU was 5 of 20 from three Wednesday to Washington’s 9 of 21) you’ve got to make the other team play bad. We did not do that,” Self said.

As far as individual performances Wednesday: Guards Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk were a combined 4-of-20 shooting. They hit 3 of 13 threes. Center Azubuike had 10 points and nine boards in 23 minutes. The only other scorer in double figures was Lagerald Vick, who scored a career-high 28 points.

“We didn’t grind at all,” Self said. “We don’t know how to get the ball to Doke yet. We’ve got to get better at that. Doke doesn’t know how to play against that type of (2-3) zone yet.”

Washington entered as an unheralded team picked to finish 10th of 12 squads in the Pac-12’s preseason media poll.

“Washington’s scores have not been impressive so far at all. Even their wins have been close against mid-major type teams, but they put it on us,” Self said.

The Huskies have lost to Virginia Tech (103-79) and Providence (77-70). They beat Belmont, 86-82; Seattle, 89-84 and UC Davis, 77-70 and had double-digit wins over Eastern Washington, Kennesaw State and Omaha.

“They were ready to play. (Matisse) Thybulle, good gosh, I’d love to have him — 19 points on 11 shots, 5 of 8 threes and best defender in the gym hands down. (David) Crisp controlled the tempo. They were better coached obviously. They were a lot better than us,” Self said.

KU will meet another Pac-12 team, undefeated, No. 16-ranked Arizona State at 1 p.m. Sunday at Allen fieldhouse. Arizona State (7-0) will play St. John’s on Friday night in Los Angeles in the Hall of Fame Classic.

“Hopefully our guys will get their legs back under them,” Self said. “That’ll be one of our toughest tests. I said our schedule had just started when we played Syracuse. That’s true.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2017 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Sprint Center has been unkind to Jayhawks of late."