Kansas had just turned the ball over in the first half against Iowa State on Monday night when the ball popped loose along the sideline. Jayhawks guard Dajuan Harris Jr. made a huge hustle play.
With a perfect baseball slide, Harris managed to grab the ball and, while on the ground, tossed it to teammate Hunter Dickinson. Dickinson quickly passed it to David Coit, who then sent a pass from midcourt to KJ Adams. Adams caught the ball, jumped, and dunked it, causing the Allen Fieldhouse crowd to erupt.
This play highlighted a key fact about Kansas at this point in the season: they were playing with a sense of urgency.
Zeke Mayo scored 17 points, and Dickinson added 14 points and nine rebounds as No. 16 Kansas beat No. 8 Iowa State 69-52. But it was their defense, which nearly shut down Iowa State’s powerful backcourt, and their hustle on both sides of the ball that kept Kansas in the race for the Big 12 title.
Kansas (16-6) is now tied with Iowa State (17-5) at 7-4 in the Big 12, 2 1/2 games behind Houston and Arizona.
“We talked about a mindset of just, you know, how much can we trust each other? And how much do we enjoy playing with each other?” said Kansas coach Bill Self. “I don’t think the emphasis was defense. I think the emphasis was, ‘If our head is right and we play with freedom, we can look pretty good at times,’ and that is what happened tonight.”
Kansas held Iowa State to just 3-for-21 shooting from beyond the 3-point line. And even though the Cyclones only turned the ball over seven times, almost every turnover—like the alley-oop dunk by Adams—led to fast-break points.
“There’s probably not a place or a team or a program that does a better job than what Kansas does in transition,” Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said. “If you have a turnover and how they turn it into points — we had very few turnovers but you feel like every one that we had turned into a layup or a dunk at the other end.”
Kansas, who had blown a 19-point halftime lead at Baylor last weekend, thrived when they were under pressure, while Iowa State lost their third straight game. The Cyclones were missing forward Milan Momcilovic, who is recovering from an injury to his non-shooting hand.
Momcilovic warmed up before the game and might be back soon.
“He continues to do the things he needs,” Otzelberger said. “I do think he’ll be back in the next few weeks. But it’s a day-to-day situation. Today was the first step for him, feel what it feels like to go through the game warmup. But we’ll see. I don’t want to rush him back. I want it to be on the timeline that’s on his best interest and whenever that is he’ll be ready to go.”
Iowa State’s Tamin Lipsey, Keshon Gilbert, and Joshua Jefferson were each held to 11 points by Kansas, but they needed a lot of shots to get there. The trio shot 13-of-42 from the field and just 2-of-14 from three-point range.
Meanwhile, leading scorer Curtis Jones was limited to seven points on 3-of-11 shooting.
“It sucks for sure. Losing is not ideal,” Jones said. “But I mean, we did some things well. We got 17 offensive rebounds, only had seven turnovers. It’s just really shots weren’t falling. We clean up free throws, make a couple 3s, it’s a different game.”
