LAWRENCE, Kansas — Lost in the sauce of the never-ending Darryn Peterson discourse hides the fact that it’s late February, and Kansas still doesn’t know quite what makes it tick yet.
Bill Self likes this team, but he sure wasn’t tickled pink by how his group handled Saturday’s test. Unranked Cincinnati waltzed into Allen Fieldhouse and drubbed No. 8 Kansas 84-68 handing the Jayhawks its first double-digit home loss to an unranked opponent since 1993, per CBS Sports research.
“We played soft,” Self said matter-of-factly.
Peterson’s spotty availability status has become the story. It’s often been distilled down to an argument like this: When Peterson plays, Kansas is a national championship contender, but…
Well, Peterson played a full allotment of 32 minutes against Cincinnati, the most minutes in two weeks, and yet, Kansas’ home fans were dipping for the exits long before Saturday’s final buzzer sounded.
There’s been a fog (or Phog?) clouding the reality that Kansas is still in tinkering mode, while numerous other national championship hopefuls have cleared those hurdles and have elevated into a new zip code with March looming.
Meanwhile, Kansas’ hot-spots emerged for the world to see.
KU big man Flory Bidunga has been one of the fiercest defensive players this season, but Cincinnati found real cracks in the armor on the edges of this Kansas defense. Cincinnati forward Baba Miller scored eight of his 12 first-half points when Bidunga was not guarding him. Big man Moustapha Thiam gave redshirt freshman Bryson Tiller the work early and often on the way to a 28-point, eight-rebound showing on his 20th birthday.
“That’s one heck of a birthday present,” Cincinnati coach Wes Miller said. “We all got to feel like it was our birthday tonight. I mean, I didn’t know he had 28. I knew he was playing great, but I thought he was terrific.”
The other side of the aisle was not feeling like having a slice of birthday cake.
“I didn’t think our bigs played very big today,” Self said.
That’s a grave indictment for a national championship hopeful because teams like Michigan and Florida are driven by their enormous front-lines. Bidunga is generously listed at 6-foot-10 and 235 pounds. Tiller is 6-foot-11 but doesn’t always play like it. A depth option like 7-footer Paul Mbiya is not part of this rotation right now. Is Kansas big enough to win this thing in the supersized era that is college basketball? On Saturday, it sure wasn’t. Cincinnati ripped down 14 offensive rebounds, much to Self’s chagrin.
Kansas’ offense was also entirely rudderless for long stretches. The Jayhawks managed just 1.04 points per possession and managed just two assists over a 15-minute span in a second half gone awry. Peterson scored 17 of the most invisible points. Melvin Council, long the emotional leader of this group, went 3-for-13 from the field. Outside of some empty-side pick-and-rolls for Bidunga to go Turbo Smash on the rim, Kansas’ offense found no easy answers against a Cincinnati group that is a top-10 defense.
“It’s terrible, we didn’t play well,” Self said. “Against good teams, you’re not going to score fast. You’re not going to score on the first side (of the floor). We don’t have that type of team, and we didn’t screen, and we didn’t do a lot of things the way that I would hope that we would do it. I got to do a better job of getting us to do. We’ve shown that we can do it at times, but we certainly didn’t do it against a team that demands it being done because they’re so sound.”
There isn’t any time to lick wounds. No. 2 Houston will saunter into Lawrence on Monday, and the Cougars can steal some of Cincinnati’s homework.
Houston could out-rebound the Jayhawks by 21, not 11, if Kansas isn’t careful. Houston’s defense — which is even better than Cincinnati’s — could wreck havoc against Kansas if this offense doesn’t snap out of the stagnation.
“It just wasn’t a very tough team today like we’re capable of being,” Self said. “Hopefully, we get that mindset corrected here. We’ll see…”
Kansas does not lose games at home. This is just the 23rd time that a Self-coached club has lost in this basketball cathedral. Back-to-back home losses feel unfathomable.
“Bad, brutal and it sucks,” Council said. “We are supposed to defend homecourt always. Losing to UConn, now Cincinnati. We can’t do it no more.”
Let the tinkering begin because this team has plenty to learn about itself.
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