Kevin McCullar Jr. scores career-high 34 points as Kansas basketball dispatches Yale
LAWRENCE — Kansas basketball remained undefeated at home with a 75-60 win Friday in nonconference play against Yale.
Here are a few takeaways from this latest win for No. 2 Kansas (11-1) against Yale (7-6):
Kansas overcomes a slow start
Kansas struggled mightily through most of the first half. Jayhawks coach Bill Self said postgame they were horrid, among other things. But in time they recovered and wound up outscoring Yale by 16 points in the second half to win by 15.
“I think they played really well,” Self said about Yale’s performance early. “I think the way they guarded us — obviously we didn’t do a good job running our stuff. I think (Hunter Dickinson) got off to a bad start, and if you’ve followed us much over the years usually at the start of every game I want to play inside-out. And that didn’t work out too well.”
Kevin McCullar Jr. scores a career-high
Graduate senior guard Kevin McCullar Jr. said postgame that the previous day someone sort of landed on his head as he was going up for a layup. However, despite the pain that caused, neither he nor Self gave any thought to him not playing against Yale. By the end of the game, McCullar had scored a career-high 34 points while shooting 11 for 18 from the field, 4 for 7 from behind the arc and 8 for 8 from the free-throw line.
“(McCullar)’s been our best player the whole year and proved it again today,” graduate senior guard Nicolas Timberlake said. “Got nicked up in practice the other day and just fought through it. Easily one of the toughest teammates that I’ve ever had, just all the crazy injuries that he’s gone through — the neck at Illinois, his back and then tweaking his neck yesterday. So, I mean, it’s just — it’s crazy watching him play and I love being on the court with him.”
Self, who described McCullar as one of the top five players in college basketball right now, added: “At practice he moved like there would be a 50-50 chance he couldn’t get back to the dormitory because of the pain. And then tonight he was fine and he was great. He’s playing at a really high level.”
Nicolas Timberlake starts to feel like himself again
Timberlake had been struggling in recent weeks. He hadn’t been the shooter from behind the arc that Kansas recruited him to be, and he wasn’t stellar defensively either. But against Yale, Self thought Timberlake looked like a player again as he shot 5 for 10 from the field and 3 for 7 from behind the arc and finished with 13 points.
“I finally felt good,” Timberlake said. “Had a great week of practice, I thought, personally, and just carried over. I’ve been thinking way too much during the whole year and finally felt like the kid at Towson who coach Self recruited here.”
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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 still undefeated at home despite slow start vs. Yale
