INDIANAPOLIS – USC defeated No. 3 team Kansas 85-51 on Monday night to reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament – making the Jayhawks the third worst loss in program history.
Prior to Monday’s game, Kansas suffered only eight 30-point losses in program history, the last of which was a 72-40 loss to Kentucky in 2014.
“It’s about as bad as we could play,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. ‘And I’m sure [USC coach] Andy [Enfield] would say this is definitely one of their better games. It was a bad combination for us. ‘
The Jayhawks, one of the traditionally rich programs of college basketball, have played nearly 3,200 games without ever setting foot on the floor of Hinkle Fieldhouse – the iconic cathedral made famous by the Hollywood movie “Hoosiers.” The way they played Monday night, they will not be eager to return.
Kansas missed his first eight shots, most of which seemed wide-ranging, and never led during the game. The Jayhawks’ biggest unanswered score was just five points.
“I think their length obviously bothered us, but our shot choice was poor,” Self said. ‘You know we have not picked an excellent team for shots all year, and tonight it seemed to me when we were a little speedy and we did not execute, we took some very marginal shots . ‘
Kansas could not get anything going, regardless of what USC showed defensively. Kansas was particularly bad against the zone, shooting 7-of-30 off the field for 21 points.
The Jayhawks’ 51 points were the least in an NCAA Tournament game since scoring 49 against Ohio in the 1985 round of 64 (a game that Kansas won 49-38).
Offensively, USC could not do anything wrong. The sixth-seeded Trojans made 11 of 18 three-pointers and 13 of 24 overall out of the paint.
Kansas was 6-out-34 outside the paint. On disputed shots, USC was 22-out-39, including 6-out-7 from 3-point series for a total of 50 points.
Kansas senior guard Marcus Garrett summed things up pretty succinctly: “I just feel like we’re missing out today. We chose the wrong day to make no shots, and the other team did everything they shot.”
Himself said that he thinks there is probably less margin of error in this team than any team we have had since I coached here.
“I think our guys maximized their ability pretty well, but our margin of error was small,” he continued. ‘When we played in a way where the ball got stuck or we became one-on-one players or who still, did not really play together, did not help each other, we became very average or even poor, as we were tonight.
“I think we learned that there is a certain way to play. If you play like that, we can be quite successful. But if we do not do that, we quickly become average or below average. It feels like today was a team in January. When we got behind and got frustrated, we just did not have enough juice to gather something to make it a match. “
Kansas’ previous worst NCAA tournament loss was an 18-point defeat to Indiana in the national championship in 1940, when Phog Allen coached the Jayhawks.
USC gets third-seeded Oregon in the Sweet 16 next Sunday. This will be the first meeting between Pac-12 teams in the NCAA Tournament
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.