By Keith Taylor
Special to NKyTribune
Kentucky took Kansas to the limit but couldn’t overcome the heavy “Phog” at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas.
The fourth-ranked Jayhawks escaped with a 90-84 victory in overtime Saturday night in the SEC-Big 12 Challenge, overcoming a 46-40 halftime deficit and a gritty effort by No. 20 Kentucky.
The loss snapped the Wildcats’ three-game winning streak as Kansas increased its home winning streak to 35 games.
“Those kids gave everything they had,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “They fought like heck. They came in this building expecting to win.”
Kentucky (16-5, 6-2 Southeastern Conference), making its first appearance in Lawrence in 10 years, had defeated Kansas (17-4, 5-3 Big 12 Conference) in three previous meetings on neutral sites, but couldn’t duplicate the feat for a fourth straight time.
“We had our chances in regulation,” Calipari said. “I’ve got to do a better job of teaching these kids how to win. They do not know how to win a game. And that’s my job. That’s why they want me coaching them.”
Calipari said a late relapse similar to his team’s meltdown in a 75-70 loss at Auburn on Jan. 16 resulted in the six-point setback.
“We’re still doing the same things — it’s losing basketball, it’s Auburn all over again,” he said. “It just wasn’t the entire game. At Auburn, it was for 15 minutes. Here it was about for five minutes. It was about five or six minutes of losing basketball.”
Kentucky got a solid performance from Tyler Ulis, who scored a career-high 26 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the floor. In his fourth consecutive 20-plus outing, Ulis added eight assists and three steals in 45 minutes.
Jamal Murray followed Ulis with 15 points, followed by Alex Poythress with 13 and Isaiah Briscoe with 12.
Link to Boxscore: Kansas 90, Kentucky 84, OT
Kansas outrebounded the Wildcats 42-31 and made 30-of-47 foul shots while Kentucky was 13-of-22 from the charity stripe. Poythress, Derek Willis, Marcus Lee and Skal Labissiere all fouled out in the second half, leaving Calipari with limited options down the stretch and in the overtime period.
Despite the foul differential, Poythress wasn’t offering excuses.
“We just have to learn to play without fouling,” he said. “That’s something we’ve been struggling with all year. We just have to learn to keep our hands up and we can’t look for an excuse or anything. We fouled, we shouldn’t have fouled. That probably cost us the game. A lot of us were in foul trouble down the stretch.”
In his return back from an ankle injury, Dominique Hawkins played 15 minutes and finished with four points in his first outing in seven games.
“(I) probably shouldn’t have played Dom today,” Calipari said. “I mean, he hadn’t played in a month and I put him in this game to make shots? That’s on me. That’s not on Dom. Poor kid. I feel bad. He had wide-open looks and he’s been shooting well. But he (had) a high-ankle sprain.”
Although a loss, Ulis thinks it will prove to be a beneficial experience going into the final five weeks of the regular season.
“I feel like we came out into their building, fought hard, played hard the whole game, the whole (45) minutes and we have to keep our heads up for that,” he said.
Poythress agreed.
“We’ve got some fighters,” he said. “Everybody who was playing was fighting. There’s no such thing as moral victories, but we can all (hold) our heads (up high) today. Everybody who was out there fought from top to bottom.”
Game tracker: Kentucky at Tennessee, 7 p.m., Tuesday. TV/Radio: ESPN, 98.1 FM WBUL
Keith Taylor is a columnist and senior sports writer who covers University of Kentucky athletics for KyForward.com