Stillwater, Okla. — The fifth-ranked Kansas men’s basketball program was closer to full strength again for Tuesday’s road test at Oklahoma State.
After being limited to eight scholarship players in a home win over Texas last week and just nine at Oklahoma, Kansas had 11 scholarship players available for Tuesday’s game with OSU.
Big men Zach Clemence and Zuby Ejiofor and backup point guard Bobby Pettiford Jr. returned to action in this one, with all three going through both rounds of pregame warm-ups.
The only KU players not available on Tuesday were super-senior big man Cam Martin (shoulder) and redshirt freshman Kyle Cuffe Jr. (knee). KU coach Bill Self said recently that he did not expect either of those players to return in time to impact the rotation this season.
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PHOTO GALLERY: Kansas basketball at Oklahoma State
Box score: Kansas 87, Oklahoma State 76
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Ejiofor was the only one of the three previously injured Jayhawks who played during Tuesday’s first half. He checked in with 6.9 seconds to play in the half to allow Ernest Udeh Jr. to get to halftime with just two fouls.
Udeh, KJ Adams and Jalen Wilson all played the final five to six minutes of the first half with two fouls without picking up their third.
Pettiford split his time for much of the night between the bench and the stationary bike to keep his hamstring loose. He played in the second half when Dajuan Harris Jr. was injured and needed to leave the game for a few minutes.
Harris limped off the court and back to the locker room before returning to action. He was seen after the game with his left ankle heavily taped but walking on his own with little trouble and without a walking boot.
Kevin McCullar Jr., who also left the game late with an ankle injury to his right leg, had his ankle heavily taped and also was walking fine after the game and without the help of a walking boot. McCullar told reporters that it was “a little sprain” and that he was not at all concerned about his status moving forward.
“Oh no, I’m playing for sure,” he said when asked if he was worried about his status for Saturday’s showdown with Baylor. “I’ll be out there.”
For the second game in a row, Self had a special guest sitting close to the Kansas bench: his mother, Margaret Self, who made the trip to last weekend’s Oklahoma game and Tuesday’s clash with Oklahoma State.
Like many of the parents of current KU players, Margaret spent most of the game standing while cheering on the Jayhawks.
In addition, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark was in attendance at Tuesday’s game between the Jayhawks and Cowboys.
We’ve reached the point in the season where the glimpses and glances at postseason projections start to hold a little more weight.
In fact, this weekend, CBS will unveil its first look at the top 16 seeds in the NCAA Tournament as they stand entering the final three weeks of the season.
The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will still have plenty of work to do, of course. But for the past few years, this early glimpse at the top of the bracket has provided a concrete look at where certain teams stand as they jockey for seeding position.
In the latest ESPN Bracketology update, Joe Lunardi wrote Tuesday that KU was the fourth No. 1 seed in his current bracket and that it would stay there even with a loss at OSU.
After Tuesday’s win, Kansas coach Bill Self thought back to this team’s three-game losing streak and how he sensed then that things would work themselves out as long as KU put in the work required to fight through it.
Now, after a few weeks of doing just that, Kansas sits in a first-place tie in the Big 12 race with Baylor and Texas at 9-4 in the conference with five games to play.
“There’s at least seven and maybe eight (teams) that are second-weekend teams in our league and Oklahoma State’s one of them,” Self said Tuesday night. “When we lost three in a row, everybody said the sky’s falling, I’m like going, ‘That’s the league we’re playing in right now.'”
