‘Leadership, toughness’ lacking as turnover-plagued KU falls to K-State, 74-67
It’s easy to look at the stat sheet and once again blame turnovers for a Kansas basketball loss on the road.
Easy, but not accurate, coach Bill Self said after Tuesday’s exceedingly sloppy 74-67 loss to rival Kansas State at Bramlage Coliseum.
“I really think people think there’s a common theme — turnovers,” Self said after the Jayhawks’ 23 turnovers contributed to the team’s sixth loss in seven road games in 2018-19.
KU had 24 turnovers in a loss at Iowa State and 18 bobbles in a setback at West Virginia.
“No … it’s leadership. It’s toughness. It’s inexperience. There’s a lot of things that go into it,” Self added of factors besides turnovers leading to KU’s poor record on the road.
Freshman Quentin Grimes committed five turnovers, while Dedric Lawson, Devon Dotson and Ochai Agbaji had four apiece and Charlie Moore three for KU (17-6, 6-4 Big 12), which lost for the first time in its last four trips to Bramlage.
“It’s paying attention to detail. It’s understanding what we’re doing,” Self said. “There’s a lot of things that happened before we even got to Manhattan — reasons we were not successful, not just after the ball was tipped,” he added, not identifying those specific reasons.
“I’m talking everything — mental, physical, this team doesn’t have much right now.”
KU played Tuesday without sophomore guard Marcus Garrett, who missed his second straight game because of a sprained ankle. It’s hoped he’ll be back for Saturday’s 11 a.m. home game vs. Oklahoma State.
“Not having Marcus is a big miss for us,” Self said. “He’d have been by far our most experienced true guard. It’s not excuses. Everybody deals with that crap. We’re obviously dealing with our fair share now.”
Self was pleased with his team’s 2-3 zone defense that helped the Jayhawks overcome an early nine-point deficit and grab a 33-30 lead at the half vs. K-State (17-5, 7-2).
He was distraught over an offense that hit 46.2 percent of its shots (7 of 20 threes). KU had 11 assists to its 23 miscues.
“It was awful. It can’t be worse,” Self said of the offense. “They did a good job on Dedric (18 points, 6 of 15 shooting, 1 of 5 threes). Bodies on Dedric have been something that have really given him problems. They did a good job with that. They only trapped him two or three times but trapped him everywhere. That was obviously frustrating. Just to be able to pass and catch and get open one pass away … it was awful.”
Dotson scored 13 points with five rebounds, five assists, four turnovers and three steals, while Moore came off the bench and hit two threes. Agbaji had six points and four boards and Mitch Lightfoot six points and five boards in 14 productive minutes. Lagerald Vick, who had seven points and two turnoveres, played 19 minutes — just four the first half after playing poorly on defense early.
“Certainly we’ve had some other awful offensive execution days,” Self said, “but this ranks right up there with one of the ‘best’ in that regard. But give them credit. Their defense was so much better than our offense it was comical.”
Barry Brown scored 18 points, Xavier Sneed scored 14 and Dean Wade added 12 points and nine rebounds for K-State, which improved to 5-26 vs. KU in Bramlage..
Seeking a 15th straight Big 12 regular-season title, KU has fallen into a fourth-place tie in the league standings with Texas Tech, which also is 6-4. Here’s how it shakes out: KSU is 7-2, Baylor 6-2, Iowa State 7-3, KU 6-4, Texas Tech 6-4, Texas 4-5, TCU 3-5, Oklahoma 3-7, Oklahoma State 2-6 and West Virginia 2-8.
“We’re not worried about that,” Lawson said. “We’re worried getting better. We’re worried about winning the game Saturday.”
He conceded that KU’s leadership in road games “is pretty poor. We need more leadership for our younger guys in an environment like this. Things can be fixed. It’s not too late. It’s only February. We’ve got a lot more games to play to fix them (problems).”
Lawson said things looked positive after one half Tuesday.
“Go in halftime winning, we’re up three, we need to finish,” Lawson said. “Teams make shots. You have to give them credit. They made shots when they needed them. We’ve got to lock in and guard our man when it’s crunch time.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2019 at 10:23 PM.
