ROSEMONT, ILL. ? Bundled up in his heavy winter coat, a blue Kansas University stocking cap atop his head, Julian Wright trudged toward an Allstate Arena exit on a bitterly cold December Saturday here on the outskirts of Chicago.

Not exactly a Hallmark holiday moment for Wright, whose homecoming was not a happy one.

“As much as it was cool to come home, I wanted to leave here with a win,” Wright, Kansas University’s sophomore forward from Chicago, groaned after the No. 5 Jayhawks’ 64-57 loss to unranked city school DePaul (3-4).

“It’s disappointing we lost,” he added of himself, fellow Chicago native Sherron Collins and the rest of the Jayhawks.

A loss appeared to be an impossibility with 14 minutes left, KU up by 14 points.

At that point, the Jayhawks led the then-hapless Blue Demons – a team that missed 14 straight shots and failed to score a basket in the final 8:40 of the first half – 37-23.

However, Sammy Mejia scored eight straight points in a 14-0 run that turned a 53-45 KU lead into a 59-53 deficit with just 1:23 to play.

“We were in the lead the majority of the game. Then we started to watch. We didn’t keep our aggressiveness up,” Wright said.

KU, in fact, went from 4:39 to :09 without a field goal.

That drought downed a KU team that had been on an emotional high since beating top-ranked Florida seven days ago in Las Vegas.

“Florida was good for us. It wasn’t the thing that fixed everything,” KU coach Bill Self said after his Jayhawks fell to 6-2 overall.

In fact, Tuesday’s 83-32 rout of Dartmouth aside, the Jayhawks had shown some sorry signs since the Florida win.

“The last couple of days of practice have not been very intense,” freshman center Darrell Arthur said after scoring 10 points with five rebounds in 28 minutes. “We didn’t come out ready for this game. I don’t think we’re focused now. We’ll get it back.”

Self confirmed the team had not practiced well.

“I don’t think we’ve been on the right track since Florida,” he said. “In order to get confidence, you have to do it daily. It comes through repetition. We still haven’t got it through repetition yet. You have to come to work every day in practice, come to prepare. We are not a good practice team, yet.

“You can have great moments (like Florida) and not be a great practice team, but over time you usually end up playing like you practice.”

Sophomore Brandon Rush, who had a horrid day (three points off 1-of-7 shooting in 34 minutes), did not notice a dropoff in the team’s focus on Saturday.

“I thought we came out with the same intensity as we did against Florida,” Rush said. “We were up 14, and thought we had the game sealed. They came back and hit some big shots at the end.”

Rush said the Jayhawks may have relaxed playing with a big lead even though they knew DePaul of the Big East Conference was capable of rallying.

“Coach said they were a second-half team. He warned us over and over again they were a second-half team,” Rush said. “It is very disappointing. Really not much to say more than that.”

“Even in their losses they’ve been a second-half team. They came back (in losses) against Kentucky and Purdue,” Self said. “We told the guys that.”

KU, which came out playing stifling defense, led a low-scoring game, 26-17, at halftime. At that point, DePaul had hit just six of 23 shots (26.1 percent) to KU’s 50-percent mark.

However, KU opened the second half with a Wright turnover, followed by a miss by Mario Chalmers and two by Rush, one being a layup.

Also, Russell Robinson and Wright missed connections for a turnover, and Arthur double-clutched and bricked a shot, KU finally scoring on a Wright basket 2 1/2 minutes into the half.

“We really didn’t capitalize on them not playing well,” Self said. “When they started playing well, they certainly took advantage of us playing poorly.”

A turning point in retrospect came when KU’s Robinson fouled Karron Clarke on a three-point attempt with 4:18 left, KU up 53-45. Clarke made all three free throws, and the Demons embarked on their 14-0 surge.

“It was a bad play by a veteran player,” Self said. “I don’t know if that was the key play. It sure seems it was the play where we lost momentum. We fouled a bad shot. Instead of having the ball up eight, we’re up five. One play didn’t beat us. Several hurt us. Still, it was a pretty big play.”

Mejia, who Self once recruited, made three straight big plays during DePaul’s game-stealing run. He had a pair of threes over Rush and a fadeaway 10-footer to give the Demons a five-point lead with less than two minutes to play.

“We had to keep their two big guys from having big halves,” Self said of Mejia (23 points, 18 second half) and Wilson Chandler (12 points, nine second half). One had a huge half. We actually did an average job on Chandler, but a bad, bad job on Mejia. Sammy really controlled the second half. Also, foul problems helped them.

“All that said, if we would have taken advantage of our opportunities when we had the ball early in the second half we could have kept them at arm’s length. We didn’t do that.”

The Jayhawks didn’t help matters by running non-productive offense the final five minutes.

“We didn’t execute our plays,” Arthur said. “Everybody got a little bit lazy and relaxed at the end. We thought we had it won.”

“We haven’t been executing plays. We’ve been trying to do it on our own,” noted Chalmers, who hit three of five threes and scored 15 points with two assists in 34 minutes. KU had 13 assists for the entire game.

In the final analysis, KU couldn’t put away a foe that was down by 14 and on the verge of perhaps giving in.

“I don’t think we had the killer instinct when we had ’em down,” Chalmers said. “We needed to put them away.”

Now it’s back to practice today in preparation for Monday’s 8 p.m. game against Southern California at Allen Fieldhouse.

“It hurts. We know we have to get better every day at practice. We have a lot of work to do,” Wright said.