Courtesy_Flush

K.J. Lawson said the key Monday against the first-place Wildcats, who lead Texas Tech by one game and KU and Baylor by two, will be to “play hard every possession. Nobody’s got sympathy for you. Go out and compete. Play for the name on the front of the jersey.”

He added that K-State, which has lost 12 straight games to KU at Allen Fieldhouse, will “definitely bring it,” after Saturday’s 85-46 annihilation of Oklahoma State at Bramlage Coliseum. “We’ve got to bring our A-game, bring the fight to K-State, not let them bring it to us.”

“We’ll put this one behind us,” Self said. “It’s not going to do us too much good to watch this film. But we’ll get this behind us. We were talking — not putting it behind us because the game was over — but talking about that as early as halftime (with KU down to Tech by 25 points). We would have had to come out in the second half, in the first eight minutes, and cut it to 15 (point deficit), or something like that, to probably have a chance to put some game pressure on them and we didn’t do that. So, therefore, the whole deal was that for the last 12 or 14 minutes we were just trying to get our guys to the finish line so we have rested bodies for Monday.”

Monday’s game, by the way, has some added significance. It’s the 900th men’s basketball game to be played in the 64-year-old fieldhouse. KU is 786-113 (.874) over 64 seasons and 248-13 (.950) in the 16-year Bill Self era at Allen.