Kansas had no problems with UMKC on Wednesday night at Allen Fieldhouse. In fact, I wondered at one point if UMKC would even score. Kansas jumped out to a 15-0 lead in this game and lead by 28 at halftime and ended up winning the game by 47.
"We passed it around well, but we still turned the ball over way too much and had so many unforced errors. We did some good things tonight. Considering that Thomas (Robinson) wasn't here. He'll be back tomorrow. He needed to be with his family; there is no doubt about that. We did some good things. We had some individuals play well. We shared the ball. Our thoughts were unselfish. The little three-quarter court press that we put in has been pretty effective so far the first two games (utilizing it). If we can get to where we can sort out of it better maybe it can be a good way to take some time off of the shot clock so teams have less time to shoot it. We did some good things tonight. We just didn't rebound the ball in the second half at all."
Robinson missed the game because of a death in the family.
There's not a whole lot we can learn about KU in this game because, well, it's just UMKC. This one was never in doubt. Kansas is now 6-0 lifetime against UMKC.
UMKC head coach Matt Brown said he told his team the first four minutes were critical in the game -- the same four minutes that didn't see UMKC score.
"Obviously Kansas is a terrific basketball team, and in terms of our effort and energy, I didn't think we had the same effort tonight that we had two years ago. I told them that the first four minutes of the game would be very, very critical - we did a bad job of executing our half court offense, and I thought that was the difference in the game. Just like I mentioned to our guys, our biggest game of the week is Saturday against Southern Utah to open league play."
Kansas, the No. 3 team in the country, heads to Ann Arbor to play Michigan this weekend.