Kansas basketball drops Big 12 Conference game against Iowa State as road issues persist

AMES, Iowa — Kansas basketball’s 2023-24 season continued Saturday as the Jayhawks suffered a 79-75 defeat on the road in Big 12 Conference play against the Iowa State Cyclones.

Here are a few takeaways from No. 8 Kansas (16-4, 4-3 in Big 12) losing at No. 18 Iowa State (16-4, 5-2 in Big 12):

A costly sequence to end the 1st half

Kansas led by a point with less than a minute left in the first half. Although the first half had its ups and downs for the Jayhawks, they appeared to have the momentum ahead of the break. But a foul on graduate senior forward Parker Braun was upgraded to a flagrant. While disputing the call, head coach Bill Self received a technical foul.

The ensuing swing saw Kansas down four points at halftime, in a game it would lose by four. In a matchup where every possession wound up mattering, it’s a costly sequence that helped Iowa State prevail. It’s part of why the Jayhawks lost on the road in Big 12 play.

“I wish I wouldn’t have gotten a technical,” Self said. “It cost us one point because they got the ball back anyway on the flagrant. So — but still, that was a big play. And I haven’t seen it, it may have been a good call. I know that it wasn’t anything malicious or anything like that, but it may have been a good call. But certainly it was a four-point play because they made one out of two on the technical and then they got the ball back — whether it be a technical or a flagrant one they’d still get the ball back and then they made the 3 at the end.”

Dajuan Harris Jr.’s game shouldn’t be overlooked

Kansas redshirt senior guard Dajuan Harris Jr.’s nine points, seven assists and two rebounds don’t jump off the stat sheet like other performances Saturday. They especially don’t when they come in a loss. But it shouldn’t be overlooked that Harris excelled in this matchup and was a key reason why the Jayhawks had a chance to steal the game away from Iowa State.

“Well, I thought Dajuan played well,” Self said. “His numbers don’t really determine, at least in my mind, if he has a good game or not. It’s one stat and one stat only, and we didn’t get it done. But I thought he did have a good game for the most part.”

Senior center Hunter Dickinson finished with a 20-point and 15-rebound double-double. Freshman guard Johnny Furphy (15 points), graduate senior guard Kevin McCullar Jr. (16 points) and junior forward KJ Adams Jr. (13 points) all finished in double figures as well.

But without Harris, Kansas’ starters would have faced a much tougher challenge.

It’s too bad fans won’t see these teams play again during the regular season

The new-look Big 12 put an end to every team in the league playing each other twice — home and away — during the regular season. But more than what that means for unbalanced schedules, it also takes away an opportunity for fans to see these two teams in a rematch. Maybe they’ll play again in the Big 12 tournament, and provide another stellar game to follow, but that’s not a guarantee.

“I think the winning the league mindset with players and fans is different than it was when you knew you were playing everybody twice,” said Self, who acknowledged he could be wrong on the point he was making. “I mean, we’re playing Baylor twice, we’re playing Houston twice. I mean, we’re playing Oklahoma twice — who’s been in the top 10. We’re playing our rival K-State twice.”

Self continued: “I was in the Big Ten when it was an unbalanced league, a lot of times the favorite in the league is depending on who you get at home and when you get on the road. To me, to me, it’s going to be a fabulous league. Whoever wins the league should be a one seed, that’s how I see it regardless. But I don’t think it has the same meaning at least when you go into a locker room and you have the standings up there and it’s uneven and you don’t — you’re not playing the same people.”

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas basketball drops Big 12 Conference game against Iowa State