The No. 1 Kansas Jayhawks just suffered one of the most shocking losses of the young college basketball season. For the first time in a century, they dropped a game to Creighton.
It wasn’t just that they lost but how they lost. The best team in the nation trailed by as many as 17 points, and they were never in the lead in the game. Eventually, they fell 76-63.
The Jayhawks shot just 36% from the floor, while the home side shot well over 47%. When asked about the loss, coach Bill Self had a rather answer: The other team made shots.
Bill Self has an odd excuse after loss to Creighton
“Have you ever played ball before?” the coach asked. “Sometimes it’s hard to keep that type of intensity up for the whole time because other team make shots. There are things that happen to disrupt that intensity. But if I’m not mistaken, we cut it to three, and I think we may have missed a shot to cut it to one or tie it. And then they made a couple of shots when we actually defended them decent. And then I thought Zeke got fouled on the one play, and that turned out to be a seven-point swing, which was a pretty big play.”
Kansas Jayhawks head coach Bill Self during the first half against the Michigan State Spartans in the NCAA, College League, USA Basketball matchup at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, GA
The defense collapsed in this second half, says Self
The coach did admit that his team’s defense wasn’t particularly good in the second half. However, he kept giving the other team credit for making timely shots:
“I don’t think it was because we didn’t try. I think it was more, we probably weren’t as turned up as we need to be turned up. I thought our ball screen defense in the first half was pretty good. We just couldn’t guard the ball. The second half wasn’t as good. But I thought that when you don’t make shots, and you don’t run good offense, and the other team is able to shoot the ball and be as good as they were offensively, it doesn’t take much to be off, just a little bit. And that was obviously the case. We were off a little bit, and they were really on, and they’re plenty good enough to beat us if we’re both good and we weren’t good tonight,” the coach concluded.
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At the end of the day, the Jayhawks are much better than they showed in this game, so Self is right in not being too worried about his team. Then again, it’s a short season, and they can’t allow this to snowball.
