Moments That Popped: St. John's 67, Kansas 65 | Rd. 2 NCAA Tournament

San Diego — The 4th-seeded Kansas men's basketball team's season came to an end on Sunday at Viejas Arena because of a handful of things that plagued the Jayhawks all season long.

Inconsistent offense. No one other than Darryn Peterson able to find, take and make his own shot. Self-inflicted wounds. And very little production or help beyond the starters.

More from Sunday's loss to St. John's...

• Self talks future after gut-wrenching NCAA tourney loss

Bill Self's bunch often found ways to overcome those issues during the season. But on Sunday, they were simply too much and Kansas fell to 5th-seeded St. John's 67-65 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament after SJU's Dylan Darling's buzzer-beating layup ripped the Jayhawks' hearts out.

Kansas got off to an awful start, really on both ends of the floor, and then found a way to right the ship, using stingy defense and trash shooting by St. John's midway through the first half to cut the SJU lead to one late in the first half. But the Johnnies closed the half on a 9-2 run and led 34-26 at the break.

Down as many as 14 at one point late in the second half, the Jayhawks found a little life by simply refusing to quit. Kohl Rosario hit a late 3. Melvin Council hit another. And KU got stops and big time plays from Darryn Peterson, including a pair of free throws that tied the game at 65 with 13.1 seconds to play.

With fouls to give, Kansas whittled away nearly 10 seconds of the clock, leaving St. John's with just 3.9 seconds to make a play to try to win the game. And that's all Darling needed. He slipped past Elmarko Jackson on a drive to the right and drained an off-balanced layup that fell threw as the horn sounded and red light lit up the backboard.

Just like that, the Jayhawks' season had ended. After fighting so hard to get back into a game that they struggled in mightily for most of the day, the Jayhawks left the arena heartbroken.

KU now has lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament or earlier in four consecutive seasons, which, as you surely know, falls well short of Bill Self and KU fans' expectations for the program.

This latest loss, which freshman Kohl Rosario said afterwards was kind of a summary of the Jayhawks' season as a whole — "full of ups and downs" — dropped KU's final record to 24-11. There is no tomorrow. And Sunday marked the last time we'll see a lot of these guys in a Kansas uniform.

We'll sort all of that out in the days and weeks to come, as another batch of new faces is destined to fill the roster entering the 2026-27 season.

For now, though, here's a look back at some of Sunday's action from San Diego.

LIKES

• KU found footing in transition midway through the 1st half - St. John's has had some terrific starts of late and they had another one in this game. It wasn't right out of the gate, but it was enough to put Kansas on its heels early and give SJU a chance to dictate how the game was played. KU changed that briefly midway through the second half, using transition to attack, attack, attack and keep the game within a bucket either way for most of the final 10-12 minutes of the first half. That was important. It seemed huge at the time. But the fact that the Jayhawks allowed St. John's to regain separation heading into halftime proved to be a big problem.

• Flory's impact - He went out early with a pair of fouls — both on borderline calls — and he only sat for about 4 minutes, from 14:38 to 8:55 in the first half, before Self decided he had to bring him back. Good decision. And good for Flory for finding a way to make an immediate impact even with the 2 fouls. Bidunga grabbed a rebound on his first possession back on the floor and hit a late-clock jumper from 17 feet at the top of key on the next. He then contested a Zuby Ejiofor jumper to force a miss on the third possession. For the game, Flo finished with 12 points, 5 rebounds and 3 blocks in 31 minutes. He also finished with just 4 fouls.

• Paul Mbiya, man - The unlikely breakout of big man Paul Mbiya continued in this one, and it was almost as big on Sunday as it was on Friday against Cal-Baptist. He finished with 4 points and 6 rebounds in 13 minutes against St. John's after recording 8 and 3 in 16 minutes in Round 1. He also used four of his five fouls — a good move — and took up space and played big. There was talk when KU landed Mbiya in the offseason about him being an impact player during the 2025-26 season. And he was. It just took him until the final two games of the year to get there.

• Council stops shooting & starts attacking - It was still a rough shooting day for KU's point guard, as he knocked in just 6 of 15 shots against St. John's. But it was better. And much more representative of what we've seen from him all year. It flipped when he stopped worrying about hitting shots and started attacking the paint, looking to knife into the lane to get openings for himself or others. Council wasn't great, but he was good enough to help KU win if they could've gotten the job done. And a big reason for it was his return to his signature style of attacking at full-speed at almost all times. He finished with 15 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists in 39 minutes, but also had 5 turnovers on a night the Jayhawks really struggled to take care of the ball.

DISLIKES

• No poise almost right out of the gate - This was nuts. And it looked like KU knew long before any of us that they were going to be in for a rough day. To the Jayhawks' credit, they didn't quit. But the early tone that was set from a lack of poise certainly proved problematic. They struggled to take care of the ball. They were rattled in the huddle. They couldn't make a play on inbounds plays. And they had several careless turnovers that really hurt. You can't do that against anybody, but it can really be magnified in an NCAA Tournament game. St. John's did not play great and the Red Storm actually lost the statistical battle to Kansas in several areas. But the Jayhawks' self-inflicted wounds — on the stat sheet and in terms of maintaining their composure while dealing with them — really hurt this team from very early on and contributed big time to their season coming to an end.

• Foul No. 2 on Flory - It sure seemed like the second foul called on Flory Bidunga could've been a non-call. It also could've been called on Bryson Tiller if the whistle had to blow. That's certainly the way both Bill Self and Bidunga saw it during live action. "Are you positive you got the right guy," Self asked the officials, with Bidunga stating his case that it could've been called on No. 15. Self then checked with the alternate ref who sat courtside a couple of possessions later, one more time just to make sure. Bidunga came back in midway through the half and made his regular impact on the game. But having to sit him certainly contributed to that problem with poise that we talked about earlier.

• Fouling at the end the right move, but... - With four fouls to give in the final 13 seconds of the game, the Jayhawks were in position to almost force St. John's to use the entire clock before even being able to get a shot off before the end of regulation. But they didn't quite execute the way they needed to to make that happened. They did shave 9.2 seconds off of that 13.1-second clock by purposefully fouling SJU with their four fouls to give. But on a couple of them, they did it too quickly, leaving just enough time at the end for Darling to hit the game winner. "Use the clock, that's what I was thinking," Self said after the loss. "When Kohl (Rosari) fouled the first time, he fouled in 1 second. I wish he could have just let him hold it and foul him 5 seconds into it. So, now you've got a situation where maybe there's not 3.9 (left). Maybe there's 2.0 or 1.5. But our whole deal was, with only two team fouls, why wouldn't you go ahead and foul in that situation? We left them too much time."

WHAT THE?

• Elmarko vs. the dunk - You've seen both things happen before. To lots of players. But rarely have you seen them happen to the same player so close in succession to one another. But that's exactly what went down with KU guard Elmarko Jackson midway through Sunday's first half. After getting behind the defense and catching a perfectly throw pass from Paul Mbiya, Jackson was stuffed by the rim on his attempt to dunk it from the right side with his right hand. It felt like a crippling play at the time and was the perfect summary of how this one started for the Jayhawks. A couple of possessions later, however, Jackson himself snagged a loose ball on the defensive end and outran everyone to the basket, taking off from the same spot and attempting basically the same exact dunk as the one he just missed. Right side. Right hand. This time he made it. With authority. KU still should've had a couple more points because of the first gaffe. But he quickly made up for it and you kind of felt like that second one actually helped calm Kansas down.

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