This one was essentially lover just a few minutes after it started, as the 17th-ranked Kansas men's basketball team overwhelmed and swallowed up Middle Tennessee on both ends of the floor en route to an 89-45 victory at Allen Fieldhouse.
KU's defense held MTSU to just 45 points on 25% shooting, while the KU bench players scored 46 points themselves.
KU overpowered the Blue Raiders in just about every area from start to finish, with freshman guard Luke Barnett even coming in to put the cherry on top with three 3-pointers in the game's final few minutes on four attempts.
The KU crowd went nuts after each Barnett make, and several KU reserves got extended minutes in the blowout win.
That's in large part thanks to the work the starters did while they were out there, making quick work of Middle Tennessee in building a 36-14 halftime lead. KU added to that with 53 points in the second half.
The Jayhawks (2-0) will see the competition turn up another notch closer to the Louisville and Duke exhibition games they played on Tuesday, when they take on No. 23 Kentucky at United Center in Chicago in this year's Champions Classic.
Tipoff for that one is slated for 8:30 p.m. central on ESPN.
Here's a look back and some of Friday's action.
LIKES
• TKR, TKR, TKR – This dude appears to be a difference maker in every way. And he still just got here. Self has obviously not been shy about heaping praise on the big man, but that only scratches the surface for how big his impact figures to be for this team. There's not much he can't do — on either end — and his teammates already appear to have a pretty clear understanding of what those things are. He's a tough guard for any one defender on offense and he'll make post players miserable by leaning on them when he's on defense. I documented every little thing he did in this game to give you a clearer and more in-depth look at what that is, and I'll post that sometime soon. So, keep an eye out. For now, though, just know that KU's a much different, much more complete team than it was before TKR arrived. Big time.
• Get it and go – Some of Self's best — and favorite — teams have had lineups that featured four or five guys who could get the ball off the glass and push the ball up the floor without hesitation. This team is one of them, depending who's on the floor. They've got at least three or four different lineup combinations, though, that can do this, with guys like Tyran Stokes, Dennis Parker Jr., Trent Perry, Tre White and, of course, all the lead guards possessing the potential to fly up the floor.
• Barnett's role – You gotta love it. Before Melvin and Tre and TKR joined the roster, there was real talk about freshman guard Luke Barnett being the surprise of the summer and carving out a fairly significant role. The minutes aren't quite there right now, but he's still got a role. And he plays it without fail, checking into the game at the end of each half when the Jayhawks are in search of a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer. He doesn't have one yet, but if feel like it's only a matter of time before it comes. And, hey, there's a long list of some pretty good KU players who didn't even have that much of a role during their freshman seasons.
• Bench love – It's one thing for the bench guys to support the starting five when they're out there. That's pretty much a given. But it's always cool to watch when the starters support the reserves on the floor, and this game had a ton of that. No one is more vocal about it than Tre White, but all five KU starters and even the sixth and seventh men got way into this one when their teammates would deliver big-time moments on the floor without them. This no doubt seems like a pretty small thing, and it is. But it's also an important part of building chemistry, which is more important now than ever, with these rosters being forced to come together sometimes within days, weeks or months of meeting one another. Self has said this, but this group of Jayhawks does seem to genuinely like each other. And sometimes the best evidence of that comes from these moments on the bench, when the starters aren't only cheering on the reserves but also giving them crap for the moments they mess up.
DISLIKES
• 3-point shooting concerns? – We know this team has guys who CAN shoot the 3, but how many of them will do it consistently. So far, the answer has been very few. The Jayhawks were 9-for-25 from 3-point range in the season opener (White and Blyden combined to make 5 of the 9), which was good for a respectable 36%. In this one, Self's squad started the game 1-for-8 from behind the 3-point line and finished the game 7-for-19, including a mark of 5-for-8 in the second half, to make up for the 2-for-11 in the first half. Add that to marks of 7-for-24 and 8-for-24 against Louisville and Duke, and you have to at least wonder whether the consistency will be there with this group from behind the arc.
• Sloppy at times – You're gonna get that when the scoreboard is this lopsided. But, if you ask Self, that's no excuse for it. Guys got sped up, threw careless passes, turned it over in transition and got a little bit out of place and out of sync at times in this one. It didn't hurt the Jayhawks in terms of the outcome of this one, but you might not have known that by watching Self on the bench at times. He looked pretty irked by a few of the mistakes, most likely because they were preventable and pretty careless. It's early. And everyone gets that. But KU also plays Kentucky in a pretty high-profile game in Chicago in four days and those types of things likely will hurt them against the Wildcats.
• Rotation still a work in progress – Nothing tells us that more than the fact that all-energy dude Trent Perry did not play in this one until the 12:39 mark of the 2nd half. Before giving Perry a look, Self elected to give big men Davion Adkins and Paul Mbiya quick stints on the floor. Given that they're both bigs, it's possible that that better fit what KU needed to do to matchup with the Roadrunners. It also could be as simple as Perry, who has made a name for himself with fans by bringing awesome energy to the floor every time he's out there, simply did not have one of his better practices on Thursday and, therefore, did not earn the opportunity. It's hard to expect them to have the rotation and minutes licked at this point in the season, especially with such a deep group. But it's one of those things that's always better to work out sooner than later.
WHAT THE?
• The near double dip! – Late in this one, when Middle Tennessee's Landyn Colyer tried to dunk over Davion Adkins from the right block, Adkins rejected the try before Colyer even got anywhere close to the rim. As if that wasn't a good enough highlight, Adkins teammate and fellow-freshman Trent Perry then tried to flip the script by dunking on a Middle Tennessee defender on the fastbreak that followed the Adkins block. Perry's dunk missed, but he was fouled by MTU forward Aiden Bolden to prevent what would've been a wild turn of events in essentially the same possession.
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