Some thoughts…from Allen Fieldhouse

Gary Bedore, Journal-World KU men’s basketball beat writer

“Sasha Kaun had his best game of the season which had to come at a good time for him. His confidence seemed to be wavering befroe he exploded for a 15-point effort. It was sloppy early but KU took control with that 24-1 run and blew out the Blue Demons. Lot s of lobs and dunks made for a pretty exciting day for the fans.”

Tom Keegan, Journal-World sports editor

“Skill, athleticism, depth, savvy, intensity, maturity. Kansas had all that in abundance Saturday afternoon in a game that felt more like a 40-point blowout. This team is a really good team that’s going to better, provided the players coming off of injuries devellop as expected.”

Ryan Greene, KUSports.com editor

“Sasha Kaun had a great game, yes, but I thought the beast today was Mario Chalmers. The dude’s stat line was unreal. The junior do-it-all guard finished with 12 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and a career-high seven steals. The return of Sherron Collins was good, too, but don’t forget that on both ends of the floor, Chalmers is this team’s motor that keeps the machine running smoothly.”

Inside the numbers

15: Sasha Kaun had lost his starting spot a couple weeks back and coming off the bunch didn’t help him snap out of his funk, either. Until today. Kaun got into a nice rhythm early in the second half, scoring nine points in highlight-reel fashion. All of this came after Bill Self removed him from the game in the first half and instead of yelling at him tried an incouraging tongue.

7: Mario Chalmers played a huge role in the Jayhawks’ crippling run in the first half with a pair of his seven steals leading to crowd-pleasing transition buckets. The career high in swipes highlighted a big day for the junior guard.

10: The Jayhawks again held an opponent under 50 percent from the floor, and this time it involved shutting down the Blue Demons’ top scorer: senior guard Draelon Burns. Burns finished with 10 points, but none of them meant much, with all 10 coming in the second half with the game decided.

3: Brandon Rush has struggled from deep since returning to the lineup, but was given ample opportunities to get back on track Saturday. He took advantage, hitting 3-of-7 attempts en route to a 13-point performance.

Just in case you missed it…

Sherron Collins wasn’t necessarily his old self just yet, but back a couple weeks ahead of schedule from surgery to repair a stress fracture in his foot, the sophomore guard scored six points on a pair of threes in 13 minutes on the floor. His return makes a deep team deeper, and now he has a week to rest until KU’s next game.

Hopefully you didn’t miss it…

The Jayhawks played well today in large part because they looked like a team having fun on the floor. There were plenty of highlights to go around, and the biggest of all may have been Darnell Jackson’s alley-oop throwdown on a lob from Mario Chalmers in the second half. After getting sucked into a pace they didn’t want to be playing at and trailing DePaul 13-12, KU forced the pace to pickup defensively, running the Demons out of the gym.

They said it…

Sasha Kaun on his breakout game: “He just said don’t get down, don’t put your head down, just regroup. He was pretty positive about it…That’s one of the biggest things – I need to be more active and just get more energy up when I’m playing on the court, and then good things will happen. And that’s what happened today. I was active, I wasn’t slow, that’s the result of it, I think.”

Sherron Collins on how he’s feeling: “I’m about in the range from 85-90 (percent)…I just was in the cast for those two-and-a-half weeks, and didn’t use (my leg) at all, so now just trying to fire back off of it, it’s just weak. So basically I’ve just got to get my quad back firing. Once my quad fires, I’ll be all right.”

Sherron Collins on Sasha Kaun: “We knew Sasha, it was coming from him. He deserves it. Sasha works hard, good attitude, he just wasn’t playing too good. Now that he broke out, I think we’re gonna get even better.

Russell Robinson on Sasha Kaun: “Today, I hope he didn’t tease us. He can play like that every day. We’ve just got to get him going, get him in that mindset.”

Bill Self on Sasha Kaun: “He played good, didn’t he? Got off to a terrible start. I took him out and he was so down. I didn’t know how he would respond when he went back in, but guys did a good job getting him the ball, but after he got his first couple of baskets got a lot of confidence, played with some fire, and I thought he looked great.”

Bill Self on Sherron Collins: “He’s pointed to this game since he had the surgery – ‘I got to get back for DePaul.’ What we thought, that this past Monday he would be back practicing full speed. And he just hadn’t been able to….I told him just go out there and play safe. That’s not really his game, but don’t try to do anything initially and I’m going to play you two-three minutes at a time, and we’ll kind of see where it goes. I think he’s a little frustrated because his body won’t do what the brain tells it to do, but that’s only going to be a few days from now until it does that.”

Bill Self on Mario Chalmers: “Today was the best game he’s played all year – by far. And he’s played some other good games, but by far. He impacted the game today by doing a little bit of everything. Best anticipator I’ve ever coached, defensively.”