Who would have thunk it? Who would have believed the nation’s highest-scoring college basketball team would count a mere 19 points in a half?

“Ain’t no way in the world we should score 19 points in a half,” Kansas junior Drew Gooden said. “I can score 19 points in a half. No way in the world we should have 19 points. We shot just horrible.”

That miserable first half was too much to overcome as Oklahoma stunned the Jayhawks, 64-55, in the championship game of the Big 12 Conference men’s basketball tournament on Sunday afternoon at Kemper Arena.

Kansas made just seven of 30 shots in the first 20 minutes that’s a chilly 23.3 percent but Oklahoma didn’t shoot much better, just 37.1 percent, and led 29-19 at the break.

“Twenty-nine to 19,” Gooden said. “That’s like a junior high game. We just had a horrible-ass first half.”

Gooden scored just six points in the first half, but finished with a team-high 22, along with 15 boards. Up-front mate Nick Collison added 15 points and 13 rebounds, but the rest of the Jayhawks Kirk Hinrich, in particular were mostly silent.

Hinrich, who was on the All-Big 12 first team with Gooden, was a stultifying 0-for-10 from the field. Hinrich had six assists and three steals, but couldn’t buy a bucket.

“Oh-for-10 I never had a nightmare like that,” Hinrich said. “It just didn’t go in, I guess.”

Gooden wasn’t in a good mood afterward and neither was Hinrich.

“We’re pissed off because we lost,” Hinrich said.

Added Gooden: “It’s like a wake-up call for some guys on this team.”

	The Jayhawks go up against Holy Cross in the first round of NCAA tournament action on Thursday at 6:50 pm in St. Louis.

Kansas overcame the 10-point halftime deficit and forged a 39-39 deadlock with 11:35 remaining. KU had momentum, the mostly pro-Kansas crowd was shattering decibel records in Kemper and Oklahoma’s Hollis Price, another All-Big 12 first-teamer, broke the Jayhawks’ backs.

First, Price popped in a couple of short jumpers, then the junior guard contributed a pair of threes about the six-minute mark. Credit went where credit was due from Kansas coach Roy Williams.

“We had two huge defensive breakdowns late,” Williams said. “The other story is Hollis Price. He had some big baskets for them.”

Keith Langford was the culprit in at least one of those two breakdowns. Williams yanked the freshman guard and burned his ears as he left the floor, then gave Langford still more tongue-lashing when he sat down.

“It was just lack of hustle,” Williams said of the defensive mistakes. “We can’t do that. You’ve got to hustle every frickin’ time, and we didn’t do that.”

Still, Kansas may not have been in those late crucial situations if the Jayhawks hadn’t been so tepid early. The Jayhawks missed 12 of their first 14 shots and 18 of their first 21. They went from one TV timeout at 11:59 to the next at 7:44 without scoring a single point. At that stage, Kansas had more turnovers (10) than points and trailed, 14-7 a football score.

Oklahoma's Quannas White celebrates. While White accurately signalled the Sooners' Big 12 tournament finish, he was one off their NCAA Tournament seed No. 2 in the West.

“We put ourselves in such a hole,” Williams said. “I told them at the half we’d get back in the game if we were a little more patient.”

Sure enough, the Jayhawks nailed their first six shots of the second half to go with three of four free throws and crawled to within one (36-35) with 14:40 remaining.

“For whatever reason, we started in a funk,” Collison said, “but we got out of it.”

At that stage, it was anybody’s game, and anybody turned out to be Oklahoma.

Did the Sooners want it more?

“To think they had more motivation would bother me,” Williams said, “but the fact is they were more focused than we were in the first half. We took wild shots, we didn’t have good movement, but I don’t think it was because of our want-to.”

Kansas will take a 29-3 record into its NCAA Tournament meeting next Thursday in St. Louis against Holy Cross. Of those 29 wins, 18 came against Big 12 Conference teams.

“We got it to 18-0, but we didn’t get it to 19,” Williams said. “I’m hopeful we’ll learn something from this. This can help us, but not just because we say so. It’s just talk. Fifteen guys in short pants need to work at it, too.”