INDIANAPOLIS – USC defeated No. 3 seed Kansas 85-51 on Monday night to reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament – giving the Jayhawks the third worst defeat in program history.
Prior to Monday’s game, Kansas had suffered just eight 30-point losses in program history, the most recent being a 72-40 loss against Kentucky in 2014.
“That’s about as bad as we can play,” said Kansas coach Bill Self. “And I am sure [USC coach] Andy [Enfield] would say that’s one of their better games for sure. It was a very bad combination for us. “
One of college basketball’s tradition-rich programs, the Jayhawks had played nearly 3,200 games without ever setting foot on the floor of Hinkle Fieldhouse – the iconic hoop cathedral made famous by the Hollywood movie ‘Hoosiers’. The way they played Monday night, they won’t be happy to return.
Kansas missed the first eight shots, most of them wide open, and never led the game. The Jayhawks’ biggest unanswered score was just five points.
“I think their height clearly bothered us, but our shot choice was poor,” said Self. “You know, we haven’t been a great shot selection team all year, and tonight it seemed like we were speeding up a little bit and we were not executing, we were doing some very marginal shots.”
Kansas couldn’t offend no matter what USC showed defensively. Kansas was particularly bad against the zone, shooting 7-of-30 for 21 points.
The Jayhawks’ 51 points were the lowest in an NCAA tournament game since they pitted 49 against Ohio in the 1985 round of 64 (a game Kansas won 49-38).
Offensively the USC could do no harm. The sixth-placed Trojans made 11 of the 18 3-pointers and 13 of the 24 overall on Monday.
Kansas was 6 of 34 out of paint. On disputed shots, USC was 22 of 39, including 6 of 7 from 3-point range for a total of 50 points.
Marcus Garrett, senior security guard from Kansas, summed things up pretty succinctly: “I just feel like we were falling short today. We chose the wrong day not to take shots, and the other team made everything they shot.”
He himself said he felt that “there was probably less margin for error with this team than with any team we’ve had since coaching here.”
“I think our guys maximized their capabilities pretty well, but our margin of error was small,” he continued. “If we played in a way where the ball got stuck or we were one-on-one players or whatever, not really playing together, helping each other, we got very average or even poor, like we were tonight.
“I think we’ve learned that there is a certain way to play. If you play that way, we can be quite successful. But if we don’t, we’re going to be average or below average very quickly. Was a team. in January. When we fell behind and got frustrated, we just didn’t have enough power to put something together to make it a game. ”
Kansas’s previous worst NCAA tournament loss was an 18-point defeat to Indiana in the 1940 National Championship, when Phog Allen was the Jayhawks’ coach.
The USC will take on Oregon on Sunday as third seed in the Sweet 16. It will be the first meeting between Pac-12 teams in NCAA tournament history
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.