Bill Self rips KU basketball’s performance, toughness in ‘frustrating’ Utah loss
Bill Self looked inward after his Kansas men’s basketball team — one that’s dropped four of its last seven games — never led once in a 74-67 loss to Utah on Saturday night at Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.
“Yeah, it’s frustrating,” Self, KU’s 22nd-year coach said after his Jayhawks fell to 17-8 overall and 8-6 in Big 12 play. Utah improved to 14-11 and 6-8. “I’ve obviously done a (bleep) job getting these guys to understand the way we have to play in order to give us a chance to win.”
He had many lowlights to point to in a game in which the Jayhawks trailed by as many as 11 the first half.
KU trailed by just two at halftime (39-37) before falling behind by 11 again with 11:37 to play.
“We were awful,” Self said in his postgame radio interview. “They killed us on the glass, and they killed us off of our turnovers and then, of course, we don’t create much havoc ourselves at all. So it was tough.”
His team will remain in Utah until Tuesday when the Jayhawks travel to Provo, Utah, to face BYU, a team with a 17-8 record, 8-6 in the league.
“We stay out here three more days,” Self said. “I’m tired of regrouping We don’t need to regroup. We need to be men as an entire organization and do what our job is to do — accept responsibility for everybody when we don’t do it well. We didn’t do it well at all tonight.”
The lowlights continued.
Utah scored 22 points off turnovers; KU just seven. The Utes outrebounded KU 46-36 and hustled their way to 16 offensive rebounds to KU’s six.
Utah hit 11 3s to KU’s nine. The Utes also had 14 second-chance points to KU’s nine.
“Obviously we’re frustrated,” Self said. “I actually thought we’d play much better than that tonight, but we didn’t come out, in my opinion, ready. ...
“We left a lot of points on the board, especially in the first half, and then catching the ball in tight, not delivering. But even with all that being said, we still had a chance to win on the road and didn’t close.”
The game was tied at 60 with 4:31 left, the Utes outscoring KU 14-7 to close the game.
“We had the game tied,” Self said, “and they beat us on every toughness play down the stretch. We didn’t block out once. There weren’t many positives to hang our hat on. Rebounding and taking care of the ball crushed us.”
Senior KU big man Hunter Dickinson missed a batch of inside shots on a night he went 4-of-12 shooting. He finished with 12 points and seven rebounds.
Senior guard Zeke Mayo, who left the game briefly in the second half after appearing to hurt his leg on a driving layup, had 15 points on 4-of-9 shooting. He was 2-of-6 from 3 on a night KU made 9 of 24 treys (to Utah’s 11 of 34).
Senior point guard Dajuan Harris had four assists, three turnovers and 14 points. He hit two 3s.
“We didn’t have any answers for them defensively,” said Self, disappointed KU came out of the gates down 5-0. “We messed up the first coverage on a simple ball screen. After we had all day yesterday to know exactly how we’re guarding certain things.”
Dickinson said the Utes defenders “packed it in, tried to go under a lot. We were not able to be good drivers, not able to drive as much as we wanted to. We had a lot of good looks (KU hit 40% of its shots to Utah’s 37%). I had a lot of of good looks. I just missed too many shots today.”
Utah guard Gabe Madsen scored 24 points on 7-of-18 shooting. He was 5-of-13 from 3.
“He was at top of the scouting report,” KU’s Harris said. “He shot 22 3s last game (against Cincinnati). We knew what he was going to do. We’ve just got to come ready to play.”
Harris explained the challenge ahead for the No. 17-ranked Jayhawks, who could drop out of the top 25 on Monday and face a huge road challenge Tuesday night.
“We’ve got to be ready to play. We’ve got to realize what’s on our chest, Kansas, about this being a pride thing,” Harris said. “We’ve got to recognize what every team is going to do when they play against us, and we just don’t get it right now. We just don’t get that. And once we start getting it, I think we’d be in pretty good shape.
“But we’ve got to realize what’s on our chest, and not the back of our jersey, our last name. It’s really a pride thing right now.”
