Kansas State's Jamar Samuels (middle) wrestles for a
loose ball with Kansas forward Marcus Morris (22), KU's
Cole Aldrich (right) and teammate Jacob Pullen (0) during
the first half of the Big 12 Tournament Championship on
Saturday. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)
In a battle of the best in the conference this season, the Kansas Jayhawks came out on top yet one more time. And this time the prize for being the best was the championship of the Big 12 men’s basketball tournament, an honor the Jayhawks have earned seven times in the 14 years the Big 12 has been in existence.
The Jayhawks led practically from wire to wire in short-circuiting Kansas State’s bold bid for its first Big 12 postseason tournament championship with a 72-64 victory Saturday before a capacity Sprint Center crowd blanketed in partisan colors of purple and royal blue and millions more viewing on ESPN.
With both teams headed for the NCAA Tournament and expected to receive extremely favorable seedings – the Jayhawks should receive the tournament’s overall No. 1 seed – there was concern by some that the Big 12 Tournament title game between the two sunflower state rivals might lack some of the intensity and the burning will to win that would be omnipresent if the loser had more to lose. Anyone who felt that way should have thought better and certainly doesn’t know much about this rivalry.
Although Kansas now holds a 34-2 won-lost advantage over the neighboring Wildcats since the inception of the Big 12, history has shown there aren’t many contests between the two schools that aren’t hard fought and highly contested, despite the season records.
KU guard Brady Morningstat (12) tries to score against
Kansas State's Jamar Samuels (32) as Dennis Clemente
21) trails the play. Kansas defeated K-State for the third
consecutive time this season, 82-74, to capture the men's
Big 12 tournament crown. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)
Fatigue from having played in the late semifinal game Friday night may or may not have had an appreciable impact on Kansas State’s performance in Saturday’s championship game, but nerves and the intensity of the crowd appeared to contribute to a somewhat tight and sloppy start by both teams. Five minutes into the game, Kansas held a 5-0 lead, and Kansas State missed its first 11 shots from the field before recording its first points at about the 14:45 mark in the first half.
The Wildcats fought back and took their first lead at 17-16, but behind the offense of sophomore forward Marcus Morris, who scored eight of his game-high 18 points in the first half, the Jayhawks quickly retook the lead and held a 31-27 advantage at the intermission.
Reserve guard Tyrell Reed contributed 15 points off the bench for the Jayhawks, Sherron Collins added 12, mostly in the opening half, and junior center Cole Aldrich chipped in 10, along with eight rebounds.
The second half was pretty much all Kansas, as the Jayhawks slowly began pulling away after halftime. The Wildcats, who rode the hot hands of Jamar Samuels and their two sensational guards, Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen in the second stanza, narrowed the gap to four or five points on a couple of occasions, but every time the top-ranked Jayhawks seemingly had an answer. KU eventually stretched the lead to 12 points late in the game, and from there, it was all over but the celebrating.
Two of the best guards in the Big 12 this season,
KU's Sherron Collins (4) and K-State's Jacob Pullen,
battle each other in the Big 12 Tournament title game
Saturday at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.
(AP Photo/Ed Zurga)
Samuels tallied 14 points and Pullen and Clemente, who combined for 50 points in the semifinals Friday, contributed 30 to K-State's title game total.
Kansas capitalized on a big advantage at the free-throw line, where they were had 17 more free-throw attempts than K-State. The Jayhawks made 24 of 31 at the charity stripe, while the Wildcats went to the free-throw line just 14 times in the game (zero times in the first half) and made only eight of those, a 57 percent average.
With disappointment visibly etched all over his face, Wildcats coach Frank Martin told reporters after the game, "KU is the best team in the country. Every time we made a push, they answered. That's what makes them so difficult to beat. They never give in."
The Big 12 Tournament champions shot 44 percent from the field for the game, two of eight behind the three-point arc. More important, however, Kansas played especially tough defense on Saturday, holding Kansas State’s high-powered offense to just 35 percent shooting, down considerably from the Big 12 regular-season runner-up’s 56 percent offensive showing the day before against Texas A&M.
"They've got good players," KU sophomore guard Tyshawn Taylor said in post-game interviews. I think they brought out the best in us."
The win was KU’s third consecutive victory in the last six weeks over its sunflower archrival and 180th all-time, against 90 losses against the Wildcats.
Kansas' Collins was named the most valuable player of the tournament. Two Jayhawks, Collins and Aldrich, and two players from Kansas State, Pullen and Clemente, joined Donald Sloan of Texas A&M on the all-tournament team.
For this year, at least, there is no debate. The Jayhawks’ victory Saturday made sure of that. The Kansas Jayhawks are the 2009-10 Big 12 Conference basketball champions – both in the regular season and in the conference postseason tournament.
Now it’s on to the NCAA Big Dance, the final journey in the 2009-10 roundball season. In addition to Kansas and Kansas State, five other Big 12 teams are expected to receive NCAA Tournament bids, the most Big 12 teams to participate in the NCAA Division I Championship in a single season.
If this past season of Big 12 basketball is any indication, conference teams should make a very good showing during March Madness.
KC Examiner Big 12 basketball season picks record: 86-24 (.780)
For more information:
Big 12 Conference official Web site
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