Hunter Dickinson took the blame for Kansas’ defense. But Bill Self sees bigger issues
Kansas, a men’s basketball team that yearly prides itself on defense, was shredded for 91 points a game during the Jayhawks’ short two-day, two-game stay in Kansas City for the 2025 Big 12 tournament.
“Right now, we’ve scored points, we just haven’t stopped guys,” KU coach Bill Self said after an 88-77 loss to Arizona in a conference tourney quarterfinal contest Thursday night at T-Mobile Center.
“The bottom line is we didn’t make them play bad,” he added of the high-scoring Wildcats, who a night after UCF scored 94 points (in a 98-94 loss to KU) hit eight 3s while scoring 46 points in the paint to KU’s 20.
The Jayhawks offense, led by Zeke Mayo’s five 3s and Dajuan Harris’ four treys, knocked down 14 3s in 31 attempts yet still lost by 11 because of an 18-8 Arizona run to close the game.
“I don’t think it’s at a point where I’m concerned about what we’re going to get (on a given night),” Self said. “I would say there would be many times that I would be concerned about ... can we score enough points and is our defense good enough to keep a team under 70? Can we get to 70?
“I think what I’m most concerned about: What are we going to get on the defensive end? Because I think we’ve got to make people play poorly in many ways when you’re playing an elite team, which we’re more than capable of doing. But we haven’t done that consistently.”
On Thursday, Arizona big man Henri Veesaar scored 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting. He was 2-of-3 from 3. Guard KJ Lewis came off the bench to score 19 points, while Arizona’s talented guard tandem of Caleb Love and Jaden Bradley was held to a combined 18 points on 6-of-16 shooting (2-of-6 from 3).
“I think it starts with me,” said KU center Hunter Dickinson, who scored 19 points on 8-of-18 shooting with 12 rebounds in 30 minutes. “I’ve got to be better for my team and give them more energy. I feel I let them down defensively.”
How so?
“I’ve got to be better in the ball-screen coverage and one-on-one,” Dickinson said. “I think I let my teammates down with that.
“When you look at it,” he added, “their best player, holding him to 11 points (Love also had six assists in 36 minutes) and their second best player (Jaden Bradley) to seven points going into that game, I feel like you would be confident in that. But I gave up too many baskets today, especially one-on-one where I let my team down.”
Self — he said he thought the Jayhawks were in the running for a “6 or 7” seed on Selection Sunday — is not giving up on the defensive end.
“I think we can do some things. I don’t think we have great energy because I think we’re fatigued,” said Self, who said he planned on giving the team a couple days off after playing two games in KC.
“I feel like that we don’t create havoc, in large part because I think we’re fatigued sometimes. I think we play tired sometimes. I think Hunt said it best. We’ve got to play well for 40 minutes, and then we can take 48 hours off, and we’ve got to play well for 40 minutes again. And it’s a two-game tournament, and we’ve got enough gas in the tank to do that.”
It was suggested that KU may have been a fatigued team Thursday after downing UCF in an overtime slugfest Wednesday night.
The Jayhawks (21-12) were outscored by 10 in crunch time versus the Wildcats (21-11). Arizona’s bench outscored KU 45-13.
“I don’t think you can blame fatigue. In this NIL era we are paid to play, so you’ve got to be professionals and approach it like professionals. You can’t give that excuse,” Dickinson said.
Of the fatigue factor, Self said: “That was a pretty quick turnaround after four guys played almost 40 minutes each last night, and so I just didn’t feel like we had the energy defensively to keep them out of the paint. And obviously they shot the ball well (53.4% to KU’s 42.2%). And where they really hurt us the most was at the rim, and they dominated the paint. Arizona’s got a really good team.”
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, whose team fell to KU 83-76 on Saturday in Lawrence on KU’s Senior Day, acknowledged his team may have had fresher legs than the Jayhawks.
“That’s why you play a 20-game regular season, and fortunately for our guys we earned the double bye (in tourney),” Lloyd said. “When you earn something like that, hopefully you can take advantage of it. I’m sure it helped us a little bit today.”
He also said the Wildcats wanted desperately to make up for Saturday’s loss to KU.
“This game we’ve really looked forward to playing it since last Saturday. We had an awesome introduction to the Big 12 in Lawrence, Kansas, and it was a similar game today and they kind of made the run at the end (Saturday),” Lloyd said. “It kind of left a bad taste in our mouth, but by no means does that mean that just because you lost the last one the next one is going to be given to you. So our guys did a great job preparing and making it happen, and proud of our guys overall. This has been a resilient group. We’ve had some tough days, but we’re here for it, so I’m really proud of how the guys came out and played today.”
Arizona advanced to meet Texas Tech in the Big 12 Tournament semifinals at 8:30 p.m. Friday.
