Previewing a week on the road for KU basketball: ‘The next two games are monsters’

Baylor and Texas Tech are the only men’s basketball teams in the Big 12 Conference with perfect records after the first three games of the marathon 18-game league schedule.

As much as Kansas coach Bill Self respects the 3-0 Bears and 3-0 Red Raiders, “I don’t think anybody is going to run the table,” the Jayhawks’ 21st-year leader said before a 78-66 victory over Oklahoma (1-2) on Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse.

That victory upped KU’s league record to 2-1, same mark as Kansas State, TCU and Iowa State heading into a week that sends KU to Oklahoma State (0-3) on Tuesday for an 8 p.m. tip and West Virginia (1-2) for a 3 p.m. Central contest on Saturday.

“The next two games are monsters,” Self said. “The way we’ve always done it, we break our season down into weeks. We didn’t have a good week (last week). We lost at Central Florida (1-2). We didn’t do ourselves any favors.

“What we do this particular upcoming week is big. You go 2-0 this week you are right where you should be. You go 1-1 you are looking uphill. You go 0-2 it’s a big climb. This is a big, big week for us. Not very often do you go into the second week of an 18-game schedule thinking, ‘Gosh, these are must win games.’ I think there are some people who feel that way.”

The Jayhawks (14-2), ranked No. 3 in the AP poll for a second straight week, on Tuesday take on (8-8) Oklahoma State in Gallagher-Iba Arena.

The Cowboys had travel problems involving both of their games last week. Extreme wind gusts prevented the Cowboys from making it to Lubbock, Texas on Monday, the day before their game against Texas Tech. They traveled the day of the game and were blown out by the Red Raiders, 90-73.

Then the Cowboys had travel woes that delayed the start of their 66-42 loss at Iowa State on Saturday.

Heavy snow shut down airports in Oklahoma on Friday. The Cowboys left Stillwater via bus at 6 a.m. Saturday (the game was initially set for 5 p.m. Saturday) for the Oklahoma City airport where their charter plane was grounded because of mechanical problems.

The Cowboys waited on a different plane and eventually landed at the Des Moines, Iowa airport Saturday afternoon. Cutting it so close because of factors out of OSU’s control ... the game was first moved from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., then set back until 7:15 p.m. Saturday in Ames.

“I do think that we have to start to evaluate the decisions we make as it relates to these kids,” OSU coach Mike Boynton said after the game. “I thought there was an opportunity to maybe do something a little bit different, have a little bit more flexibility when making this game happen. We tried everything we could to get here.

“We’re talking about kids. These aren’t professionals. We don’t want them to be professionals yet. But we’ve got to start putting them back at the forefront of the way we make decisions as opposed to what we are doing with them.”

He continued.

“I hope this doesn’t in any way come across (as an excuse). We played bad,” Boynton stated. “We didn’t play well. And really the weather had nothing to do with how we played. The weather created some challenging circumstances and we tried to do the best with what we had.”

Boynton stressed he wasn’t blaming anybody. It would have been difficult to play the ISU game on Sunday or reschedule down the line,

“We had a bunch of bad options in all honesty, right? There’s not an option to play tomorrow (Sunday),” Boynton said. “Both teams play Tuesday. They (Cyclones) have to travel across the country (to play BYU on Tuesday). So, weather, right? You can’t really do anything or control it. So, we took the best of a lot of kind of really bad options.”

Rather than return to Stillwater after the game, the Cowboys remained in Ames overnight, then headed back to Oklahoma Sunday to conclude the long travel week.

“We played (lousy) and when that happens in this league there’s not a whole lot you can expect in terms of having an opportunity to win. So (I was) disappointed in our lack of fight. I really thought they got off to a good start. They punched us in the mouth four minutes into the game where we never responded,” Boynton said.

The Jayhawks will Tuesday be playing an OSU team led by senior guard Bryce Thompson, who attended KU his freshman campaign.

Thompson, who averages 12.6 points a game on 41.8% shooting, needs 14 points to reach 1,000 for his four-year college career. He’s made 25 of 68 3s this season for 36.8%. The team’s other double-digit scorer is junior guard Javon Small, who averages 14.8 points per game.

OSU has five players who have hit 12 or more 3s on the season. As a team, OSU has cashed 148 of 410 3s for 36.1%. In comparison KU has made 102 of 285 3s for 35.8%.

OSU in its other Big 12 game lost at home to Baylor, 75-70 in overtime. Thompson had 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting (0-6 3s) in the Baylor game.

“I’m not looking past anybody,” Self said. ”We’ve got two road games this week. We’ll prepare for two road games. Oklahoma State is a place historically we haven’t played great there.”

KU is 37-36 all-time in OSU’s Gallagher-Iba Arena. Self’s KU teams are 9-8 in the building, winning three in a row and four of the last five in Stillwater. Overall, Self is 26-11 against his alma mater as KU coach. Boynton is 3-10 versus KU,

“It’ll be a hard game for us. It always has been. They are capable of giving us all we want and more,” Self said.

A key factor Tuesday could be turnovers. KU committed just two turnovers (school record for fewest turnovers in a game) in Saturday’s win over OU after committing 18 turnovers in the loss to UCF and the league-opening win over TCU.

“That was a big part of the game, being able to eliminate turnovers,” freshman guard Johnny Furphy said on Saturday’s postgame radio show, “A lot of our opponents’ points have been coming off turnovers. To get rid of those were big. Now we have to reset and focus on the next game.”

Or as Self said: “Obviously there’s room for improvement in a lot of areas. But that (Saturday) was much better. We looked like a basketball team.”

Self confirmed to The Star on Monday that he was planning on opening with Furphy in the starting lineup for the second straight game. Elmarko Jackson, who has started 15 of 16 games, again is slated to come off the bench.