Kansas Proves It's as Dominant as It Gets

AUSTIN, Texas -- As college basketball teams go these days, the top-ranked Kansas Jayhawks are about as dominant as they come.

They defend well, rebound and can get scoring from all five positions on the floor.

Flawless, they aren't. But the Jayhawks aren't preoccupied with achieving perfection when even on their not-so-best-night they can still manage an 80-68 road win against a respectable team as they did during Monday night's dismantling of the 14th-ranked Texas Longhorns.

"I don't think there are any dominant teams," said KU forward Marcus Morris, who led his team with 18 points. "We have a lot of faults in our team as far as rebounding and guarding. But I think we came out real aggressive against them guys. We took the first punch and never let up."

Texas' best shot was a six-point lead inside the first six minutes of the game. The Jayhawks then countered with a game-changing 22-0 run that turned their six-point deficit into a 16-point advantage that left woozy the Longhorns and the majority of the 16,734 that ventured into the Erwin Center for this highly anticipated Big 12, Big Monday matchup.

During the run, seven different Kansas players scored points, while Texas was forced into seven turnovers and missed 14 consecutive shots in 16 empty possessions. Somewhere in all of that lies the difference between a good team and a dominant one.

"I don't even know what happened. It happened so fast," said UT star forward Damion James, whose team has now lost five of its last seven games. "They showed why they're the No.1 team in the country. If we want to be that, we've got to watch this game and see what we've got to do make things happen."

Oddly enough before the season began and even as recently as a month ago, these two teams seemed about as even matched as two elite teams can be. The Longhorns even eventually wrestled away the No. 1 ranking Kansas held since the preseason.

Surely, Monday's night's matchup was not only suppose to decide the dominant team for the Big 12 regular season, but also likely serve as the precursor to the Big 12 tournament championship game and quite possibly the Final Four.

But in recent weeks, these two teams have traveled very different paths. The Longhorns, since occupying the No. 1 ranking for two short weeks, have lost five of their last seven games.

Kansas (23-1, 9-0 Big 12), meanwhile, has won nine straight since losing on the road to Tennessee in January and has reclaimed the No.1 ranking and all but locked up the Big 12 regular-season title at the halfway point.

"Going into the season, we were ranked No. 1, they were No. 2, " Morris said. "We circled this game on our calendar and we were ready from Day 1 to play this game."

And at various points Monday night, Sherron Collins played that, so did freshman guard Xavier Henry, as did Morris in spurts as well as guard Tyshawn Taylor off the bench.

James was the only player on the Texas side that seemed to have given much thought to this game during the first 34 minutes. In that span, James was the lone Longhorn in double figures. Freshman point guard J'Covan Brown came on late with a barrage of scoring that momentarily reduced the deficit to eight points.

What the Jayhawks get is there is greater power in diversity than in a one-man show. Three players scored in double figures while four more players scored at least seven points. Henry broke from a shooting slump for his best effort of the Big 12 season with 15 points. Collins was up and down but still gave the Jayhawks 15 points.

Their production made center Cole Aldrich's seven point performance on 2-of-10 shooting not look that bad.

"That's a main part of our team," Morris said. "We've got a lot of guys you can go to."

James finished with 24 points, while Brown came off the bench to contribute a game and career-high 28 points. Remarkably, just five Texas players scored points with starting point guard Dogus Balbay going 0-fer and all 28 bench points coming courtesy of Brown.

While Texas coach Rick Barnes recognizes the need to get more offensive production from guys like senior center Dexter Pittman (three points) and freshman shooting guard Avery Bradley (three points), the Longhorns problems are far deeper than points. They had just six assists to 17 turnovers and were outscored 27 to 5 off turnovers against Kansas.

"I told them if we could understand one aspect of this game we could be the team that we want to be. That is assists to turnovers." said Barnes, whose team is 19-5 and 5-4 Big 12 and dropped from No. 9 to No. 14 in this week's Top 25. "If we could understand that part of the game."

Kansas, which had 14 assists against 10 turnovers, seems to have that aspect of the game on lock. That has opened the door to bigger possibilities like claiming another Big 12 Championship with a three-game lead over the next three-best teams in the standings.

"We put ourselves in a pretty favorable position," said Kansas coach Bill Self, who won his first game at Texas on Monday. "We still have three tough road games left, obviously and some hard home games. K-State, Missouri and A&M all have three losses. If somebody gets hot and runs the table that puts pressure on us."