Kansas City, Mo. – When Arizona was announced to be one of four teams to join the BIG 12 conference, basketball fans quickly began visualizing potential matches between Wildcats and Kansas in future tournament games.
However, few could have expected the game to be in the quarter finals, but would be between two unpleasant teams. But that is exactly what will happen on Thursday night when Sixth-seeded Kansas meets third seeded Arizona.
Kansas (21-11) needed overtime to escape an upset attempt by UCF in a victory 98-94 on Wednesday.
Jayhawks was led by Zeke Mayo with 24 points. Hunter Dickinson got 23 points, AJ Storr had a season high 19 and KJ Adams added 15.
“Well, we’re glad we won,” said Kansas coach Bill Self. “We didn’t play our best, but I think they had a lot to do with it. When we had a chance to break the game a little open, we didn’t use it.”
Kansas led by as many as 13 points during the second half, but UCF stayed away. Jordan Ivy-Curry’s 3-pointer in the declining seconds sent the game to overtime. Kansas had a chance to win it in regulation but did not go off.
“We ran a game to get the ball to Hunter and they denied it,” Self said. “We threw the ball to KJ, which was not the paragraph, and KJ tried to do too much there.”
Arizona (20-11) was chosen to end the fifth for the season coach’s survey, so Wildcat’s third place can be interpreted as positive. After a 4-5 start in the season, Wildcats won 13 of their next 14 games to get back to the ranking.
But a 3-5 finish, including a loss of 83-76 to Kansas in the last game in the regular season, dropped Arizona from the vote again.
“I thought we were playing selfish,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd. “You won’t come to a place like Kansas and play selfish and succeed. We should have learned that lesson.”
-David Smale, Field Level Media
