No. 6 Kansas 98, Ohio 41
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Marcus Morris led Kansas to another easy win.
He scored 26 points and had eight rebounds to lead No. 6 Kansas past Ohio Friday night in the third round of the Las Vegas Invitational.
“I thought I played well. I got some easy shots,” Morris said. “But I could have rebounded better and could have played the post better.”
Led by Morris, the Jayhawks are scoring 92.5 points per game, and giving up 52.2 points.
Morris was 11 of 14 from the field for the Jayhawks (5-0), who will play Arizona (5-0) on Saturday night.
Also for Kansas, Travis Releford added 13 points while Markieff Morris had 11 points and eight rebounds.
“They will get after us,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “Our players know this is a big game. They blew us out last time, and it is a great rivalry.”
Two seasons ago, the Wildcats beat the Jayhawks 84-67 in Tucson.
Kansas (5-0) played host Arizona on Saturday.
“He’s obviously a great athlete,” Self said. “We’ll obviously have to pay great attention to him.”
The Jayhawks never trailed, and eventually built their largest lead of the half at 43-16 before giving up the last four points before halftime. The Jayhawks’ lead never got below 27 in the second half.
The Jayhawks are now averaging 92.5 points per game and giving up 52.2.
No. 4 Kansas State 82,
Texas Southern 68
MANHATTAN — Jacob Pullen and No. 4 Kansas State got just what they needed from undermanned and road-weary Texas Southern.
Three days after getting beaten 82-68 by No. 1 Duke, the Wildcats (5-1) played what KSU coach Frank Martin described as some of their best basketball of the year Friday night in dismantling the Tigers. Pullen, their team leader and senior point guard, may have felt better than anyone. After going 1 for 12 against the Blue Devils, he was 6 for 14, scoring 16 points and adding seven assists.
“I put Tuesday behind me when I woke up Wednesday morning,” Pullen said. “I just wanted to come out and win this basketball game. I’m a competitor. I hate the fact that we lost, and today was a chance for us to win another game, so I focused on that.”
This was a rout from the start. The Wildcats (5-1) unleashed a 14-0 run in the early going and spent most of the rest of their night building a bigger and bigger advantage. Kansas State’s biggest lead was 39 points before Texas Southern chipped away in the final minutes against reserves.
“For the first 32, 33 minutes of the game, I thought that’s as well as we’ve played,” Martin said. “We were getting shots. We didn’t shoot it great but we were getting shots through our offense rather than guys holding the ball and getting shots from one-on-one play.”
The Tigers (1-5) dressed only nine players and started two walk-ons. Plus, they were playing their sixth consecutive road game to open the season. They’ll finally get to play at home their next game, on Dec. 4 vs. North Texas.
Kansas State, which hit only 11 of 23 foul shots against Duke, made good on 9 of 12 from the foul line while building a 44-18 halftime lead and wound up hitting 13 of 19. They outrebounded the Tigers 45-26, including a whopping 20 offensive rebounds.
“That means we took good shots,” Martin said. “My definition of a good shot is a shot that comes from the offense and it’s a shot where the floor balance is good, which means you’ve got people in place to rebound the basketball. When you take shots where you don’t move the defense, then offensive rebounding becomes very difficult.”