By Steve Habel, Senior Editor
AUSTIN, Texas — The gap in men’s basketball between No. 3/3 Kansas and the University of Texas is as wide as the span from the top to the bottom of the Big 12 Conference standings, a daunting fact for a Longhorn team that was picked to finish third in the league in the preseason and started the 2016-17 campaign in the Top 25.
Kansas didn’t have a whole lot for which to play Saturday when it traveled to Austin to face reeling Texas, but the Jayhawks went ahead and took care of business anyway, garnering a 77-67 victory over the Longhorns in Big 12 Conference play at the Frank Erwin Center.
Josh Jackson scored 18 points to lead four Jayhawks in double-figure [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]scoring as Kansas (26-3, 14-2 Big 12) clinched the outright Big 12 championship with two regular-season games remaining. Kansas won its 13th straight league title, 17th Big 12 championships overall and an NCAA-leading 60th all-time conference regular-season title.
“You look at what Kansas has done and what we need to do to get to the place Kansas is now, and it seems like a long way away,” Texas coach Shaka Smart said after the game. “It’s pretty amazing to think about what Kansas has done with the strength of the league and the tough places we have to play.
“We just have to get the guys all on the same page and have a high level of belief. We need to be more connected — and that’s a nut we are going to have to crack — and we still don’t understand that there is only one way of getting that done, and that’s working to make the players around you better.”
With the loss, UT’s record fell to 10-19 overall and 4-12 against Big 12 opponents. The Longhorns’ 19 losses are the most since the 1983-84 season, when Texas went 7-21 under Bob Weltlich) and pulls to within sight the all-time team single-season loss record of 22, which was set in 1982-83.
“People tell me that these games we are playing and what we have been going through will pay off, but we have to fully own that,” Smart said.
Frank Mason III added 16 points for the Jayhawks, who dominated in bench scoring (21-9), points off turnovers (28-13) and points in the paint (40-30). Devonte Graham and Dwight Coleby had 12 points apiece for Kansas, which won its sixth straight game.
“Pretty workmanlike — it was a nice win,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “I thought today was going to be our hardest game as far as energy level and that we might have been a little lethargic because we’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster. The real euphoria of winning the title came in our last game, but it’s nice not to have share.
“Our energy level was good early. We played a good 15 minutes and Texas played well for five minutes in the first half. Then we really just traded baskets in the second half.”
Jarrett Allen scored a game-high 20 points and 11 rebounds for Texas, which lost its fifth straight and seventh in the last nine outings. In two games against the Jayhawks this year, Allen has averaged 22 points and 15 rebounds. Andrew Jones added 18 points for the Longhorns.
“I was fired up, but the game didn’t go as planned,” said Allen, who decided to play for his hometown team rather than for Kansas, which recruited him heavily. “Kansas is a great team, but eventually someone is going to take them down. We have to learn to play hard every minute of the game. You can see Kansas is into it all the time.”
A 14-1 run by Kansas in the middle of the first half turned a one-point Texas lead into a 13-point advantage for the Jayhawks with 4:44 to play before halftime.
Coleby had two dunks and two free throws in that surge and led Kansas with 10 points in the first half. He was 4-of-5 from the floor in the half as the Jayhawks outshot Texas, 48.4 percent to 40.7 percent, helping KU to a 40-31 lead at intermission.
Allen led all scorers in the half with 13 points and five rebounds.
The Longhorns cut the Kansas lead to 56-51 on a three-pointer by Jacob Young at the 10:39 mark of the second half but the Jayhawks responded with an 8-1 run to push their advantage to 64-52.
“Against Kansas, you have to be aggressive and we were too timid to start the game,” Smart said. “If you want to win games like that you have to go right at people. We got away from the things we practiced on for this game in the first half, but we have to make sure our guys know that their best basketball is ahead of them.”
Kansas’ win allowed the Jayhawks to sweep Texas in basketball and football in the same academic season for the first time since the inception of the Big 12 Conference in 1994. The Jayhawks, which have won the last seven meetings between the two teams, entered Saturday’s game No. 1 in the RPI ratings. The Jayhawks’ strength of schedule is sixth nationally.
“Kansas is efficient, but we were able to hang around with them — they are not unbeatable,” Jones said. “We have to dedicate ourselves to improving and use all these games as learning experiences. We have to grow, to trust each other, to stick with (Smart’s) plan.”
Texas has two regular season game remaining, Wednesday at Texas Tech and March 8 at home against Baylor. The Big 12 tournament begins March 8 in Kansas City.
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