Agbaji scores 24 points, but not enough as KU’s road woes continue with loss at Texas
Known as a man of few words, senior guard Lagerald Vick delivered a short, but sharp message to Kansas’ basketball players after the Jayhawks’ 73-63 loss to Texas on Tuesday night at Frank Erwin Center.
“I mean in the locker room Lagerald said, ‘We (stink) on the road. We’ve got to do something different.’ I agree. We’ve got to find ways to win on the road, change shoes, something, do something different,” KU junior forward Dedric Lawson said after KU’s fifth loss in six true road games this season.
The No. 11-ranked Jayhawks (16-5, 5-3), who fell to 1-3 in true road games in the Big 12 Conference, actually did make one obvious switch in an attempt to snap a slump that includes two straight losses and three in the last four games.
Coach Bill Self altered the starting lineup for the first time in eight games.
While the tinkering proved interesting — freshman Ochai Agbaji opened for Vick and outscored the senior 24 points to 10 — it ultimately didn’t change the Jayhawks’ fortunes on the road.
“Coach talked about it. I agree with him. (It’s) lack of leadership, really,” Agbaji said of the Jayhawks’ road problems. “It’s been a struggle through the season (to find out) who our main guy is to go to. That’s something we need to work on, or somebody needs to step up,” Agbaji added after hitting 8 of 10 shots en route to his career high in points and rebounds (seven).”
Agbaji was KU’s only true offensive weapon Tuesday. Lawson scored 13 points on 4-of-15 shooting. He was 1 of 5 from three. Vick had 10 points on 4-of-9 shooting. He hit 2 of 5 threes. The Jayhawks were 6 of 18; Texas 10 of 28 from beyond the arc.
Freshman point guard Devon Dotson had nine points, four assists and one of KU’s 13 turnovers. KU committed just four turnovers in a two-point win over Texas two weeks ago at Allen Fieldhouse.
“We’re pretty bad on the road. It’s just we’ve got to find a way to win on the road,” Dotson said. “We’ve got to create our own energy, got to play the same way we do as home, take pride.”
Self — he said “he was our best player tonight; that was just a coach’s decision” regarding Agbaji starting — sounded like a coach searching for more intangibles from his players.
“The thing is, when you lose it should really (tick) you off,” Self said. “Sometimes when it doesn’t do that, you are too comfortable sometimes accepting what happened. I don’t think we accept what happened (but) I don’t think we have the same mindset to fight as some of the teams we’ve had that had to fight.”
Of KU’s road woes, the coach noted of the tough schedule: “look who we’ve played too (losses at Arizona State, Iowa State, West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas). We should be better than 1-5. I agree 1,000 percent. There are some common things: Winning important points. Certain possessions you’ve got to get a stop. You’ve got to get a stop under 5 (minutes) and got to manufacture a basket under 5. That’s the difference between winning and losing. Things are correctable. If you go back over time, these are consistent themes. When you play away from home there’s less margin for error.”
The Jayhawks did show some fight in cutting an 11-point deficit (58-47) with 3:37 to play to just four points (65-61) after a three by Lawson at 1:01. Lawson missed from three with 48 ticks left. Had that fallen, KU would have trailed by just one.
Instead, Texas’ lead never dipped below four the rest of the way.
“To me this was a much bigger game than the Kentucky game,” Self said of Tuesday’s league game compared to Saturday’s 71-63 loss in Lexington, Ky. “The Kentucky game probably didn’t allow us to be as good as I wish we would (have been at UT). That’s a soft statement by the coach. Didn’t Texas lose at Georgia (98-88 Saturday)? I’m not buying that at all,” he added of KU having a hangover from the UK loss.
He monitoring how much his players despise losing by how they “practice. You can tell by leadership and team meetings and things like that. You hear all the time, a player-coached team is better than a coach-coached team. Now we don’t have players coaching the team probably as much as we like. When they do that they are accepting ownership in what’s going on. We also are young. We started three freshmen and a sophomore tonight. That’s no excuse. We’ve just got to be better.”
Texas had four players score in double figures in improving to 12-9 overall and 4-4 in the Big 12. Dylan Osetkowski scored 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting. He was 6 of 6 from the line as Texas hit 21 of 23 free throws to KU’s 13 of 16. Kerwin Roach had 15 points, Jaxson Hayes 13 points and nine boards and Jase Febres 12 points off 4-of-8 three-point shooting.
KU will next meet Texas Tech at 3 p.m. Saturday, at Allen Fieldhouse. The Red Raiders defeated TCU, 84-65, on Monday in Lubbock, Texas to improve to 17-4 overall and 5-3 in the Big 12.
This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 8:41 PM.
