Self OK with six-year extension of SEC/Big 12 Challenge: ‘It’s good for the whole’
The Big 12 Conference claimed the SEC/Big 12 Challenge six games to four on Saturday, regaining bragging rights over a league that won the one-day event by an identical 6-4 tally in 2017-18.
In much-anticipated basketball games involving ranked teams, No. 8 Kentucky stopped No. 9 Kansas 71-63 at Rupp Arena in Lexington; No. 1 Tennessee defeated unranked West Virginia 83-66 in Knoxville, Tenn.; No. 24 Iowa State defeated No. 20 Mississippi 87-73 in Oxford, Miss., and No. 14 Texas Tech clipped unranked Arkansas 67-64 in Lubbock, Texas.
In other games televised on the ESPN networks … Baylor stopped Alabama and it was TCU over Florida, Oklahoma State over South Carolina, Oklahoma over Vanderbilt, Georgia over Texas and Texas A&M over Kansas State.
It was quite a day for the Big 12 and SEC. Those two leagues stole most of the attention from everybody else in college hoops.
“I can appreciate how good it is for the Big 12 and SEC leagues as a whole,” KU coach Bill Self said after the Jayhawks’ loss to fellow blueblood school Kentucky.
“I have no idea who won the Challenge, who won the other games,” Self added, speaking moments after the Big 12 as a league improved to 4-1-1 over the SEC in the six-year history of the event.
It was announced hours before the KU-Kentucky game that ESPN and the two leagues agreed to continue the one-day Challenge six more seasons. The Challenge will be held on a common Saturday bye date during the conference season of both leagues.
Self — his Jayhawks are 4-2 all-time in the Challenge — would prefer it be contested in December before the start of conference play.
“I’d say sometimes ‘Cal’ (Kentucky coach John Calipari) goes through this (too) … sometimes Kentucky has to do things that they may not want to do for the good of the whole. That’s where we are, too. It’s good for the whole,” Self said of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. “I wish it could happen in December. (But) there are so many league games we can’t do that.
“There are no time slots available with (football) bowl games and stuff. It needs to be covered one day on ESPN as an infomercial for both leagues. That’s positive,” Self added referring to one advantage of holding the Challenge during the conference season.
The 2020 Challenge pairings will be announced during the summer. It’s expected, but not a certainty that Kentucky will return the trip to Kansas next January, effectively completing a home-and-home between the schools.
Dedric Lawson draws praise
Dedric Lawson scored 20 points and grabbed 15 rebounds versus the Wildcats on Saturday at Rupp Arena. Various Wildcats guarded the 6-foot-9 junior, who hit 7 of 18 shots (2 of 3 threes) and 4 of 4 free throws in 39 minutes.
“I’ll tell you what Dedric is, and I’ve known he and his brother (K.J.) for a long time. He’s a relentless player,” UK coach John Calipari said after his Wildcats improved to 16-3 and handed the Jayhawks their fourth loss in 20 games. “So how many rebounds did he get on the second and third bounce, where everybody else stops and he just keeps going? He has an unbelievable feel to get the ball in the basket. They (KU coaches) are playing him around the goal based on they have to, but that kid could shoot threes, he could beat you on the bounce. He is a really good player.
“And we did throw different guys at him. I thought we defended him pretty well — 20 and 15, and I think we did a pretty good job on him,” Calipari stated.
Self thought Lawson deserved to head to the free throw line more than four times.
“It’s frustrating, because I’m not saying he got fouled, but gosh dang, he only shot four free throws. To me, that’s just unbelievable,” Self said. “But, certainly, he did a lot of good things, especially the first half (11 points, 11 rebounds as KU led, 33-30 at the break), and then we kind of let things get away from us the second half. It was just a game in which we tried until the end, but we didn’t have enough ‘oomph,’ didn’t have enough juice to do enough things to put some real game pressure on them.
“The baskets that we had close to the rim, they wiped away by blocking our shots (UK had six blocks). Or, if they didn’t get blocked, we thought about them getting blocked. There were so many times we got the ball inside and then when you play from behind like we did the last seven or eight minutes, when you get fouled, you’ve got to make your free throws. You have (very) little margin for error and we didn’t take full advantage of it.”
Loud arena
Rupp Arena, which seats 23,000, was sold out Saturday. There did not appear to be many KU fans in the building.
“Yeah it was good. It’s good. It’s no Allen Fieldhouse, but it’s good,” Self said, with a smile, referring to the atmosphere in Rupp. “The reality of it is it’s a terrific atmosphere. I said before the game, this is why you go to Kentucky and Kansas. You play in a ton of huge games. It’s terrific. I don’t think it had anything to do with our play tonight. We handled the atmosphere pretty well. The second half, a four or five minute stretch it got away from us. But that wasn’t what affected us as much as length.”
Calipari noted: “It was really good. I thought (ESPN’s) GameDay was really good. They said it was one of the best GameDays they have had.”
Different than Duke game
Kentucky has come a long way since losing to Duke, 118-84 in the Champions Classic on Nov. 6 in Indianapolis.
“I’d rather learn from a close win than an absolute shellacking that we took. But if it does help us, that’s great, but I don’t — there’s no solace in what happened up there. We got absolutely clubbed by a very good team,” Calipari said Saturday night.
Longhorns next for KU
KU will next meet Texas at 6 p.m., Tuesday, at Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas. The Longhorns, (11-9, 3-4) fell to KU, 80-78, on Jan. 14 at Allen. KU is 5-2 in the league.
