Lubbock, Texas ? Watching Kansas University lose Saturday to Texas Tech, 69-64, in United Spirit Arena called to mind the way the United States Olympic and national teams lost to seemingly inferior athletes.

As with the Olympians, the Jayhawks looked faster and jumped higher, but it really doesn’t matter how fast you run and how high you jump when you’re standing still. It also doesn’t matter if you can’t make a layup. By Kansas coach Bill Self’s count, the Jayhawks blew 11 of those.

Explosiveness also is pretty meaningless if a player who’s not a skilled shooter plays as if he equates a good shot with an open shot, as did Julian Wright. In the first half, Wright hoisted not one, not two, but three ill-advised perimeter jumpers. Most of Darrell Arthur’s seven misses in 13 tries came from close range. His line drives crashed off the backboard too hard to spill into the hoop.

For Brandon Rush, passing up open shots wasn’t the problem this time, just making them. He misfired on all but four of his 14 attempts.

The Jayhawks also were guilty of spacing out defensively. Russell Robinson, and for a short time Sherron Collins, held Texas Tech star Jarrius Jackson scoreless in the first half. He recovered with 15 second-half points.

It was obscure Darryl Dora, a destructive force from KU’s past, who prairie-dogged his way back into the limelight again. Two years after hitting the game-

winning three-pointer against Kansas, Dora shot his way to 19 points. Wright had trouble staying with him at times, and when KU went to its 3-2 zone in the second half that had been so effective in the past, Dora quickly shredded it. He snuck behind the first layer of it to hit a jumper and then found himself wide-open on the left wing to bury a three-point shot. Back to man-to-man the Jayhawks went.

“Darryl played, which is sometimes unusual,” Knight said afterward.

Why does he tend to play well against Kansas?

“Maybe the moon was right,” Knight said. “How the hell do I know. If I knew that I wouldn’t be talking to you people.”

Knight said he didn’t think his players cut to the hoop particularly well, which was more indicative of his standards than of how well Tech performed

that skill compared to typical modern-day teams, such as Kansas, for instance.

The key three-point shot Jackson hit late was a byproduct of movement without the ball on his part and ball movement on the part of teammates.

“We have to work really hard with Jackson on doing things other than when he has the ball in his hands,” Knight said.

Bingo. That’s the phrase that captures why the Red Raiders won the game. Their players did far more when they didn’t have the ball in their hands than did the Kansas players.

The game illustrated so well that it’s not always the team with the better players that wins. It’s the team that plays better basketball. For a 34-minute stretch starting a couple of minutes into the game, Texas Tech outscored KU, 61-41, and didn’t do so because it has better players.

You want to win on the road against a Bob Knight-coached team, you better play smart and unselfish basketball because you’ll surely be playing against it.