Kansas holds on to beat Clemson; plus, roundup
OMAHA, Neb. — Kansas won Friday night, but not until it had subjected the stomach linings of its fans to another one of those familiar old turns of roiling. Luckily, the people who watch the Jayhawks intently are seasoned at such matters, a useful knack for those times when a lead reaches 20 with 18:16 left, and again with 15:42 left, and again with 12 minutes left, then winds up wobbling at a wee six with 90 seconds left with a Clemson coming up the court.
Clemson missed a semi-wild 3-point shot with 79 seconds left, and its deficit never got any closer than the final score of 80-76 as its breakthrough season ended at 25-10 and with its first Sweet 16 appearance in 21 years. Kansas, in turn, went on to wreak more acid upon its devotees as it will play in its horror chamber known as the final eight, the round that
has checkmated it the past two seasons, as well as five times all told in Coach Bill Self ’s 15-season tenure.
“We did just enough,” Self said.
Thirty minutes in, he would not have expected to need the little fist pump he gave at the end, the one that punctured the air with relief before he went to shake hands with Clemson Coach Brad Brownell. Self ’s Kansas team looked like a masterpiece of spacing and ball movement with its four perimeter players and its interior giant, the 7-foot Nigerian Udoka Azubuike, who would stuff the box score with 14 points and 11 rebounds. Even when both Big 12 player of the year Devonte’ Graham and Azubuike had sat down with three fouls each at the 14:15 mark, Kansas kept its polish.
It got a fine supporting-actor effort from Silvio De Sousa, the Angolan who joined the team in December, and it got another gem from the March-hot guard Malik Newman, who shot 6 for 11 overall and 4 for 7 from 3-point range, had 17 points and said: “My confidence is just sky-high. I’m not really out there thinking anymore, just playing.”
By the time Graham reentered the game to drain a 3-point shot with 8:34 left in a disagreeable shooting night for him — 4 for 12, but 16 points padded with late free throws — Kansas led 65-47 and seemed all set. Brownell would credit Kansas with “a really good gear” and an enviable tempo. The typically smart play of the junior Lagerald Vick, with his 13 points and eight rebounds, mattered throughout. It seemed the boffo performance from Clemson’s Gabe Devoe on the other side, often dazzling his way to 10-for-17 shooting and 31 points, would prove nothing more than an eye-pleasing sideshow.
Six minutes of play later, a Kansas inbounds pass went amok, Clemson’s Shelton Mitchell grabbed it near midcourt and began storming toward the basket. When he came down with the ball in his left hand and made a dunk that might have justified the ticket prices, Clemson lurked just six points away at 74-68, and Self called the hasty 30-second timeout.
Some 2:27 remained, somehow.
“We could have executed a lot better,” Graham said. “I don’t know why we do that when we have a lead, just kind of relax.”
He clanged a free throw off the back iron with 1:30 left, and the football powerhouse of Clemson looked primed to treat its traveling basketball fans to something truly mad. But Mitchell’s quick 3-point heave from the right of the top of the key never had much chance, and Devoe’s ensuing force from the right side plunked off the rim, and Kansas spent the rest of the seemingly endless time holding on.
“We finished the game about as poorly as a team can,” Self said, “but we got the W and we played really well in stretches and certainly made some timely shots. We know we’ve got to be a lot better on Sunday.”
That will bring either Duke or Syracuse, and that will ratchet up the meaning of Azubuike in the middle, what with Kansas’ fourand-one approach this season differing from so many of Self ’s past teams, and what with the margin for error not thick.
“Obviously he can score oneon-one,” Brownell said. “His size is so big that he’s catching the ball five feet from the rim. And because they have four guys making shots, Vick is the guy who you would think maybe we can help a little bit off Vick, because he’s, like, their worst 3-point shooter, and he has 50-some-odd on the season and goes 3 for 6 tonight.
“Most teams have somebody that you can kind of scratch off. So one of the reasons they’re so hard to guard is they’ve got a center that scores if he catches it deep, and he’s bigger than everybody on the floor so he does get position, and then you’ve got guards that can all make shots and drive by you, and they play with great spacing.”
A team Self deems one of his less likely to make it to a final eight has made it to a final eight, where Kansas slipped off the bracket in 2016 as a No. 1 seed against Villanova, and in 2017 as a No. 1 seed in Kansas City against Oregon. “I think about it all the time,” said Self, whose two Final Four trips with Kansas came in 2008 (champion) and 2012 (runner-up). “Devonte’s not won the last two, but there’s seven that I haven’t won when I’ve been the head coach,” counting one each at Tulsa and Illinois.
“Certainly it’s etched in the back of my brain,” he said — and in the linings of many stomachs.