Moments That Popped: No. 19 Kansas 86, Kansas State 62

It was big news around college basketball when Darryn Peterson was ruled out before Saturday's game at Kansas State.

But it wasn't a big deal for the 19th-ranked Jayhawks, who showed again that they know how to play without him.

It wasn't perfect. It wasn't always pretty. But it wound up being pretty easy, and, by game's end at Bramlage Coliseum, the Jayhawks put an end to K-State's 3-game home-court winning streak with a convincing 86-62 win over the Wildcats.

The win was the fourth straight in Big 12 play for KU and second in a row on the road after a 1-2 start in conference play that featured two losses away from home.

Five Jayhawks scored in double figures, with Flory Bidunga (21 points & 10 rebounds) and Melvin Council (17 points, 12 assists, 7 rebounds) leading the way.

Elmarko Jackson (19), Bryson Tiller (16) and Tre White (13) rounded out the KU scoring.

You don't always see such joy from the Jayhawks when they take down a team that's .500 on the season, but this was an important win for all in the program, as it allowed them to finally get the upper hand on their in-state rivals after a few years of disappointing trips to Manhattan.

Next up, KU (15-5 overall, 5-2 Big 12) will look to make it five in a row in conference play with a home showdown vs. No. 13 BYU in Lawrence.

Tipoff is slated for 3:30 p.m. on ESPN, with the network's College Gameday coming to Allen Fieldhouse for the weekend.

Here's a look back at some of Saturday's Sunflower Showdown action.

LIKES

• Tiller goes to work - KU would've been in real trouble in this one without Bryson Tiller's showing up with the mindset of playing aggressive basketball from the jump. While he continued to show he still needs to work on being and playing bigger, he was a big-time weapon for the Jayhawks on offense, leading Kansas with 12 points on 5-of-5 shooting in the first half. He scored with his back to the basket. He scored at the rim. He hit jumpers. And he got to the free throw line, too. Tiller didn't do a whole lot in the 2nd half. And you could hear KU coach Bill Self — like most games — yelling Tiller's way a lot. But that's in large part because Self knows how high Tiller's ceiling is and wants him to reach it. For a while in this one, he did and his first-half production was a huge part of the reason the Jayhawks won.

• K-State can't guard Melvin - It was as if KU guard Melvin Council Jr. could smell the rim and had some dog-like gravitational pull toward it. We've seen it before. But it was exaggerated in this one and Kansas State struggled to stay in front of him or stop him for much of the game. Council plays so fast, with such aggressiveness and so downhill that it can be tough to cut him off when he gets a head of steam. Add to it the fact that he has a creative array of shot-making skills that gets more and more creative the closer he gets to the rim and he can be a real handful when he's in all-out attack mode. You have to assume he started that way in this one because of his knowledge that KU would be without Peterson, and it certainly looked that way in the way he played and in the way K-State struggled to stop him. Council finished with 17 points, 12 assists & 7 rebounds in a monster performance with DP out. Oh, and he also did a little mocking of the Wildcats' "Wabash Cannonball" fight song as the final seconds ticked off the clock. Gotta love rivalries, right?

• Great D on Haggerty - Self made it clear that the Jayhawks entered this one with great respect for both K-State leading scorer PJ Haggerty and the Wildcats' offense as a whole. And then his team went out and showed that they were listening when Self and his coaching staff talked all week about how slowing Haggerty was such a big key in this one. Yeah, the K-State guard scored 23 points in the game, but he needed 17 shots to get those 23 points and also was a slow-starter, taking a long time to get comfortable before getting nearly half of his points (10) at the free throw line. It was a bit of a perfect storm when it comes to Haggerty. KU knew he would get his, but they made him incredibly inefficient while doing it and that hurt the entire K-State offense.

• Great D overall, for the most part - Kansas State's a team that has shown it can score big totals and also bait teams into getting into games that go up and down way faster than KU's accustomed to playing. But the Jayhawks didn't take the bait on Saturday night and, more importantly, they didn't really allow Kansas State to play the game at its tempo. The Wildcats' 3-point shooting in the first half (see below) was a little bit of a product of that. But KU cleaned that up in the 2nd half for the second game in a row. And the visitors kept Kansas State to just 62 points and 34% shooting on the night. The Wildcats competed and made it a game for much longer than Kansas would've liked. But the Jayhawks hit them with a knockout run midway through the second half that was as much about the Jayhawks' defense as it was what they did to put points on the board. Solid outing. Far from perfect but solid for the circumstances.

DISLIKES

• 3-point D early - The Wildcats had a few way-too-open looks from deep in the game's first 10 minutes and they stepped into a few easy makes. But even when KU got a hand up or crowded a KSU shooter, the Wildcats still knocked down a few too many 3-pointers in the first half. It was reminiscent of the issues KU had against Colorado's shooters in the first half earlier in the week. It was clear that K-State was going to go down swinging and had a ton of confidence just letting shots fly. At one point, the last 6 baskets made by the Wildcats were from 3-point range. At that same time, the Wildcats had made 8 triples (8-for-16 through 14 minutes) and just 2 2-point baskets. The 'Cats finished the first half 8-of-19 from 3-point range and finished the game 10-for-29, so that's just 2-of-10 in the second half. Obviously that's two good 2nd halves in a row for KU's 3-point D, but they've got to figure out a way to find that, or at least get closer to it, in the first half in games to come.

• Defensive rebounding woes - 7-foot-2 K-State center Dorin Buca, a junior from Italy, had 6 offensive rebounds in the game's first 7 minutes. He finished with 8 of the Wildcats' 13 offensive boards on the night, continuing to add to an issue that KU has encountered throughout the season - defensive rebounding. In fairness, the Wildcats did miss a whopping 40 shots, so the number of offensive rebound chances was higher than in a lot of games. But K-State's ability to get on the glass early helped keep KSU in this game before the Jayhawks blew the game open late.

• No DP - The Jayhawks have now played 20 games this season and exactly half of them have been without freshman guard Darryn Peterson. Here's the good news, though. Peterson missed this one because of an ankle injury, not the cramps or hamstring issues that plagued him throughout the non-conference slate. DP has actually been pretty solid in Big 12 play, starting every game for KU until Saturday night's game in Manhattan. Rather than freak out like many did while the DP uncertainty created frustration earlier this season, it seemed like this was a pretty cut and dry situation. Rolled his ankle. Could sit tonight and then get another full week of rest before the showdown with BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa next Saturday. Of course you want him out there as much as possible, but the Jayhawks had five players step up and score in double figures in his absence.

WHAT THE?

• Elmarko finds his groove - Kansas guard Elmarko Jackson didn't start out hot, but he sure did finish that way. It was one of those weird nights, with Peterson out, where the KU rotation was a little bit wonky. Jamari McDowell and Jackson both had settled into their roles as the 6th and 7th players in KU's mostly-7-man rotation, but each player started a half on Saturday night — McDowell the first and Jackson the second. It took a minute for them to find their footing, but Jackson made his minutes count by staying in attack mode all night. He got downhill, he got to the free throw line and scored a career-high 19 points, many of them coming at key times in the 2nd half as the Jayhawks ran away from the Wildcats. Jackson was 7-for-7 at the FT line and shot 5-of-7 from the floor, with 2 3-pointers in 26 minutes. Given where he was early in the game, this explosion was definitely a what-the-wow! type of transformation.

— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com