Simien appreciates loss

'We all stuck together and fought'

Lubbock, Texas ? Kansas University lost a basketball game — its first in conference play — on Monday night, which was utterly disappointing to Wayne Simien.

But the senior forward insists he won’t carry bad memories away from United Spirit Arena, site of the Jayhawks’ 80-79 double-overtime loss to Texas Tech.

“It was a great game. It will go down as one of my all-time favorite games even though we took the ‘L’ because we all stuck together and fought,” Simien said after scoring 20 points and grabbing 13 rebounds while playing a whopping 47 minutes.

“I’m proud of our guys.”

KU senior Michael Lee, who had three points in 11 minutes, also was proud of the troops after KU’s second loss against 20 victories and first in league play after 10 victories.

“Nobody quit. We played all the way through,” Lee said.

He was asked about the controversial call, in which game officials indicated Aaron Miles traveled after grabbing a rebound of a Tech miss with 7.9 seconds left and KU up, 79-77.

Miles appeared to be hacked by three Red Raiders, who Simien says were being told to foul by the Tech coaches on the bench.

KU's Wayne Simien tries to fire up the Jayhawks in the second half.

Darryl Dora came down and hit a game-winning three a few seconds later.

“It’s not on us. That’s something outside our control,” Lee said of refs’ calls. “All we can do is play basketball. It’s what we did.”

Of dropping the first conference game and not being able to go undefeated like Lee’s freshman year, Lee said: “It’s disheartening because we lost. It would have been good to go 16-0. It hurts we lost.”

It really hurt having the 6-foot-9 Dora drill the winning three after the Jayhawks made so many big plays, including Keith Langford’s coast-to-coast layup at the end of regulation to tie the score and Christian Moody’s tip of a Simien miss to tie the score at the end of overtime.

“It’s how it works sometimes,” Lee said. “It was a great game that came down to that big shot. Dora … hats off to him. It happens sometimes.”