Rare home loss to Baylor doesn’t need to derail KU’s season, Garrett tells teammates
It doesn’t happen often, but Kansas’ basketball team does drop a home game every now and then.
“I just told them in the locker room that our Final Four team lost here a couple times,” KU junior combo guard Marcus Garrett said. He implored his teammates to keep the faith following Saturday’s 67-55 loss to Baylor in Allen Fieldhouse.
It was KU’s first loss in the fieldhouse in 27 games dating to the 2017-18 season — one in which KU lost home games to Oklahoma State (84-79), Arizona State (95-85) and Texas Tech (85-73). While disappointing, those results did not derail the Jayhawks on their eventual road to the Final Four.
“The good thing about basketball is we get to play a lot of games. We have another game Tuesday. We can get back on the right track,” Garrett added after scoring 11 points, with four rebounds, four assists and four turnovers against the Bears in 35 minutes.
KU (12-3, 2-1), which is a game behind Baylor (13-1, 3-0) and TCU (12-3, 3-0) and tied with West Virginia (13-2, 2-1) and Oklahoma (11-4, 2-1) in the Big 12 race, will meet the Sooners at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
“He said, ‘Stay together. It’s a long season,’’’ KU forward Ochai Agbaji said, asked to reveal coach Bill Self’s postgame message to the team after the Jayhawks lost for the 14th time in Allen (against 256 victories) in the 17-year Self era.
“All of us know we’ve just got to keep this in the back of our minds when we go and play down there (Waco, Texas on Feb. 22), especially because we’re going to have that pressure on us to to go down there and compete and win down there. We’re just ready for our next game so we’re just moving on from that (Saturday’s loss) knowing it’s a long season, like I said,” Agbaji added.
The Jayhawks suffered several breakdowns leading to the loss to BU.
“Our ball and body movement was awful,” Self said. “We had no rhythm offensively at all. It was similar against West Virginia (in KU’s 60-53 win on Jan. 4 at Allen). But we were able to drive the ball downhill a lit bit the second half (versus, Mountaineers) to force help. We never did that this game. When Dot went out (hip pointer forced Devon Dotson to miss 11 minutes early in second half) and Marcus (sore ankle) isn’t healthy … obviously it makes it look worse than what it actually was even though it was pretty ugly,” Self added.
Self in critiquing the offense said: “I thought our passing to Doke (Azubuike, six points, 3-of-6 shooting) was atrocious. We’ve got to become better passers.”
As a team, KU had just three assists the second half and nine for the game. It led to 55 points, lowest point total by a Jayhawk team in Allen Fieldhouse since KU scored 53 in a victory over Oklahoma on Feb. 20, 2000.
“Some of it is on Doke (not catching the ball when it’s delivered or not getting open), a lot is on our perimeter players having the confidence to throw it to him,” Self said. “I didn’t think the reason we were poor defensively or offensively would be because of Doke but because their guards totally dominated the game.”
BU guard Jared Butler scored a game-high 22 points, while guards MaCio Teague and Davion Mitchell had 16 and 10 points respectively. Forward Freddie Gillespie had 13 points and five boards and forward Mark Vital three steals and six rebounds to go with his four points and four assists.
“They scored 21 points off our turnovers. We scored two,” Self said. “A 19-point difference at home is hard to overcome.
“They controlled the game,” Self added. “Give Baylor props. They were better than us, better prepared, coached, everything today. Our guys tried. It was a perfect storm of things not going well. It reminded me a lot of the Arizona State game a couple years ago where their guards completely dominated us (in 10-point KU loss at Allen).”
Self will not overreact to the rare home loss. He took exception when a reporter asked if the younger Jayhawk players were fully aware “this (losing a game) doesn’t happen here?”
“I will not make a big deal out of it like that. … That’s almost saying players here don’t care as much as players in the past because we got our (butt) handed to us today. They were just better than us,” Self said.
“They were fortunate in some ways to get the lead (13 point margin at halftime) but also we didn’t do enough to keep them from doing it. I thought our guys tried. I hate to say this but this is sports. When you play a team that can win a national championship regardless of where you play them if they are on and you’re not, they’re going to beat you. That’s what happened today,” Self noted.
