Cold-Shooting Jayhawks Fall to UMKC, 47-44

Box Score
Photo Gallery
Notes/Quotes
Coach Brandon’s Press Conference

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas women’s basketball couldn’t overcome a slow start and cold shooting, as UMKC defeated the Jayhawks, 47-44, inside Allen Fieldhouse Thursday night.
 
After trailing 9-2 after the opening quarter of the game, the Jayhawks (4-4) wasn’t able to establish a rhythm, finishing the contest shooting 28 percent from the field and netting a season-low 44 points. UMKC (2-7) shot only 35 percent, but converted 9-of-15 free throws, which proved to be the difference at the end of the night.
 
Freshman guard Kylee Kopatich led the team in scoring for the second time this season with 14 points, and tacked on a perfect 4-of-4 from the free throw line. Sophomore guard Lauren Aldridge was the only other Jayhawk to score in double-figures with 10 points, marking her seventh game this season recording 10 or more points. Junior forward Jada Brown led the team in rebounds with seven, paired with four points.
 
Kiana Law led the way for UMKC, scoring 20 of the Roos’ 47 points. She posted a double-double with 10 rebounds along her 20 points. Samantha Waldron tallied 13 points on 4-of-10 shooting, including two three-pointers for the Roos.
 
Thursday’s action got off to a slow start, with neither team scoring until under the seven-minute mark. UMKC scored the first points of the evening, and the Jayhawks answered two possessions later. The two teams remained tied at two each until a UMKC trey with less than five minutes left in the quarter, which sparked a 7-0 run to finish the opening period.
 
While Kansas forced four turnovers in the first ten minutes, it still faced a 9-2 deficit heading into the second quarter after shooting 1-18 to start the game.
 Freshman guard Kylee Kopatich led the Jayhawks with 14 points
Exactly one minute into the second quarter, Aldridge hit a three from the top of the arc, injecting some much needed energy into the cold-shooting Jayhawks. Kansas proceeded to take off on a 10-0 run over nearly five minutes of game time, turning an eight-point deficit into a two-point advantage. After UMKC ended the Jayhawks’ run with a layup to tie the game, both teams shot 1-7 from the field to finish the half. The Roos’ six-point second quarter was the lowest-scoring quarter for any Kansas opponent this season.
 
The Jayhawks emerged from the locker room leading 17-15 over the visitors, looking to improve on their shooting after a 20 percent performance in the first half. Baskets from the three-point line began to fall for Kansas in the third quarter, making three of its first six attempts.
 
Aldridge’s second three of the night at the 3:51 mark gave the Jayhawks a five-point lead, their largest of the night. The Roos responded with a 9-0 run to close out the quarter, taking a four-point lead into the final ten minutes of action. All three of Kansas’ third-quarter baskets came from beyond the three-point line, marking the first time all season that the Jayhawks did not record a two-point field goal in a quarter. Kansas did remain perfect from the free throw line, draining all five of its attempts.
 
Shooting struggles persisted for both teams in the fourth quarter, with both squads enduring scoring droughts of more than three minutes.
 
With 4:41 remaining in the game, the Jayhawks cut the UMKC lead to just two points with layups from Kopatich and Brown. Out of the timeout, freshman forward Tyler Johnson and UMKC’s Kiana Law traded baskets for the next four possessions, as the Roos held onto their narrow lead.
 
Kansas missed the mark on its next four attempts, and a three from UMKC’s Waldron extended the Roos’ lead to five with under a minute to play.
 
After forcing the Roos to protect their lead from the free throw line, Kopatich popped a three to bring the Jayhawks within one point with 10 seconds the play. UMKC beat the full court pressure to put in a layup in the final moments of the game, and Aldridge’s potential game-tying three fell short as the buzzer sounded, giving UMKC the victory, 47-44. 
 
POSTGAME NOTES
UMKC 47 // KANSAS 44
Dec. 10, 2015 – LAWRENCE, Kan.

SERIES INFORMATION

  • Kansas dropped to a 15-4 record overall against UMKC with the loss Thursday night.
  • A loss against the Roos gives Kansas a 16-6 record against programs from the Western Athletic Conference. 
  • Thursday evening marked the 19th time the two teams have met on the hardwood.
  • The Roos’ victory snapped KU’s six-game winning streak, which began in 2004.

ALLEN FIELDHOUSE
Attendance: 1,736 (Capacity: 16,300)

TEAM NOTES

  • Kansas won the tip for the seventh time this season.
  • In Thursday’s match, Kansas shot a season-low shooting percentage of 28 percent, marking the lowest field goal percentage since KU shot 20.4 percent from the field versus Duke (11/30/13).
  • The Jayhawks concluded the game with 44 points, marking the lowest scoring output this season and least amount of points scored since Kansas netted 40 against Duke (11/30/13). Previously, the lowest score for the Jayhawks this season was 52 against Arizona (11/23/15).
  • UMKC held the lead for the entire first quarter. The first quarter was the lowest scoring quarter the Jayhawks have had this season with only two points (1-18, 5.8%) compared to UMKC’s nine.
  • At the end of the first half, 10 of Kansas’s 17 points were from the bench. The halftime point total of 17 is the fewest points in a half for the Jayhawks this season. The last time KU had less than 17 going into the half was against K-State last spring.
  • All of KU’s points in the 3rd quarter were from three-point range with the exception of two free throws.
  • The Jayhawks shot 16-of-58 from the field, marking the fewest field goals made Kansas recorded 11 against Duke (11/30/13).
  • This is the first time this season that the Jayhawks have lost despite taking a lead into the locker room at halftime. Kansas is now 4-1 when leading at half time.  

INDIVIDUAL NOTES

  • Redshirt junior guard Timeka O’Neal matched her personal-best of three rebounds, which was last set against NIU (11/27).
  • O’Neal finished the night 2-of-4 from beyond the arc. She leads the Big 12 in three-point field goal percentage, shooting 54.2 percent on the season.
  • Freshman center Chelsea Lott tied her career-high with one blocked shot and grabbed a career-best three rebounds.
  • Freshman forward Tyler Johnson tied a career-high with one assist. The last time she had one assist was against Memphis (11/19/15).
  • Junior forward Jada Brown earned a season-high seven rebounds. She previously had six against Texas Southern on 11/15/15. This is the first time Brown has led the Jayhawks in rebounds all season.

POSTGAME QUOTES

Kansas Head Coach Brandon Schneider
Opening Statement:
“Kiana Law was really the difference in the ball game. She was extremely aggressive and really took it to our fours and fives, and goes out and gets a fourth of their rebounds and half of their points. I really felt like she was the best player on the court tonight and I tip my cap to her.”

On starting off shooting cold:
“You look at it we only had eight assists on the night, so I think it is a situation where we get off to a poor start and I think our guys want to win, but I think they went about it the wrong way on the offensive end. We tried too many individual plays instead of playing together and moving the basketball a little bit, and that is the lesson we are going to have to learn to get back into some of these games when we are not playing well. We are going to have to be five guys on the floor not just one person trying to do it all, and I didn’t think we had one guy do that, I think we had multiple people do that. We had some guys really play out of character, we had some people that have not established themselves as three point shooters and tonight decided to shoot more than they would in practice that is not the time to work on your game when you are in a tight game like that. I need to do a better job of letting people know what their strengths and weaknesses are and try and stay away from our weaknesses and play to our strengths.”

On leading after the first half after shooting 1 for 19 in the first quarter:
“You are happy to be in the game, obviously, when you start out that way and play that poorly offensively. We just couldn’t string together enough stops, but they played inside on us and Caelynn (Manning-Allen) got into foul trouble and Tyler (Johnson) did some nice things offensively, but we couldn’t keep it out of Law’s hands. She made some big baskets at some important times and when they splash in a three at the end of the shot clock I think that was really a difference maker.”

On slow starts becoming a theme:
“I would say that is a trend and I feel a lot of that starts with the defensive end. I know tonight we only scored 44 points, but we have been much more consistent offensively than defensively. When we are playing man we foul entirely too much and its obvious to me that we must get quite a bit better at zones because we have difficulty defending the paint and we foul too much on the perimeter. “

On what to take from the last two close losses:
“When you’re disappointed like this, not only in the fact that you lose but maybe how you lost and how you played, you have to be careful that you don’t say too much you need to get eyes on the film and evaluate it and go from there. When you’re pride is hurt a little bit you can say some things that you can’t take back.  You have to be careful in the situations that you don’t do that as a coaching staff.

On the close last few minutes of the game with no timeouts:
“They made their free throws. We wanted to foul without any time going off the clock.  When you’re down with :35 on the clock you can’t play out the possession.  We wanted to foul and we did a good job there.  They made some free throws. Even the last play we didn’t get matched up in the press. With nine seconds, we had a chance had we been able to commit another foul and they did a good job getting the ball over the top of us before we could get to them. “

On Chelsea Lott’s contributions:
“Well, sometimes those are the hardest jobs.  When you’re maybe third on the depth chart and you aren’t getting a lot of minutes, but you always have to be ready when you’re name is called to come in and play at a high level. I was proud of what she did tonight in the time she was given.”

Sophomore Guard Lauren Aldridge
On Tyler Johnson’s production off the bench:
“Tyler did a really good job for us tonight. Caelynn (Manning-Allen) struggled a little bit more than usual, so it’s awesome that we have a deep bench we can go to and can come in a contribute in positive ways.”

On the feeling of a sense of urgency at this point in the season:
“I feel like we should have felt a sense of urgency from game one. We talked about crunch time in practice a couple days ago and how every possession for us is crunch time, and every game for us is crunch time and we have to be able to step up to the challenge no matter who it is or what our record is. What has happened in the past and what the Big 12 is looking like in the future. It has to be a focus on the present and it’s crunch time right now, it was three weeks ago and it will be in March.”

Junior Forward Jada Brown
On being one of the older members on the team and having to show leadership:
“Like coach Brandon said we preach defense and we knew the offensive end wasn’t working this game, it wasn’t what we wanted it to be.  We knew that we had to get stops and get offensive rebounds.  We had to crash the boards and being together on the defensive end it where it had to start”

On the feeling of a sense of urgency at this point in the season:
“We do have a young team like you said, but we established at the beginning of the season that that wasn’t going to be an excuse for us. So being young, everybody has to come out and play their best game for us to be successful and we know that. Getting that together and everybody knowing their roles and being realistic about them and if you don’t like your role then get in the gym outside and start playing like we practice.”

UMKC Head Coach Marsha Frese
On winning in Allen Fieldhouse for the first time since January of 1989:
“I think our team is pretty young and I think there’s always an element of being blissfully ignorant of the battle you have ahead. We talked a lot this week about games like this. You can’t look at it like a 40-minute game, you look at as five-minute battles. You look at it all week as five-minute battles and we really were focused and dialed into that tonight.”

On the close finish:
“Honestly, I didn’t look up to the clock a whole lot. We asked our kids to stay focused in the moment. As they went into runs, we just tried to manage every minute of the last quarter from fatigue all the way down to execution. Coach Brandon made a ton of great adjustments and every time he made an adjustment, we tried to do one as well. I was just really proud of the kids executing down the stretch.”

On UMKC’s momentum (second win in a row):
“We’ve been struggling to adjust to the loss of our starting point guard at the beginning of the season. It’s taken a little longer than we would have liked to adapt to a different rotation and different lineup. I’m excited about it, but they all count as one win or one loss. We’ve got another one on Saturday and they all count the same in your record. I’m happy for the team to get some confidence going forward that when you execute a game plan, really good things can happen.”

On the meaning of beating a Power Five Conference team:
“They’re all the same game plan. We prepare the same for every single team. They’re all one step on the journey to get to postseason play. I think more for us, it gave our young team confidence that when we dial in and get focused on a game plan, we have a lot we can accomplish. We’re still pretty young; we’ve only got the one senior and this type of win is not something they’ve experienced yet. I guarantee they’re going to like how it feels.”

NEXT UP
Kansas continues its six-game homestand to close out the 2015-16 non-conference slate. The Jayhawks face Navy on Sunday, Dec. 13 at 1 p.m., inside Allen Fieldhouse. The game will be broadcast on the Jayhawk Television Network/ESPN3 and the Jayhawk Radio Network.
 
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