Fort Hays State’s men’s basketball team lost to Kansas University by one more point than it did Kansas State.

But Tigers coach Mark Johnson couldn’t help but think his team played better against KU than it did against K-State three days earlier.

“We didn’t shoot the ball as well, I thought, in the first half, and obviously the Kansas defense had a lot to do with that. But I definitely think we’re a better team today than we were Saturday when we played Kansas State,” Johnson said Tuesday following FHSU’s 93-56 loss to KU.

While Johnson wasn’t willing to go any more in-depth about the comparison of KU and K-State – which defeated Fort Hays State, 95-59 – the Tigers’ Tyrone Evans said there was a difference between the two Big 12 Conference teams from Kansas.

“To me, KU’s guards are better,” Evans said. “But it’s going to be a battle when those two meet. It’s just going to be a nice battle. I’m definitely going to be watching that.”

The Tigers were a combined 6-of-35 from the field and just 3-of-18 from behind the three-point line in the first half against the Jayhawks.

“Nothing was going down for us,” Evans said. “Coach recognized that and said, ‘It isn’t going down, just keep your head up and keep shooting, and it’s going to go down.'”

That’s exactly what began to happen in the second half for Fort Hays State. The Tigers’ field-goal percentage jumped from 17-percent in the first half to 48 percent in the second. FHSU went 6-of-14 from behind the arc after intermission.

“I wasn’t too nervous because I’ve played against some of those KU players before,” Evans said. “But we came out in the second half ready to play. I just wish we would have come out the first half like that.”

Though he may not have been nervous early on, Evans was scoreless in the first half. However, Evans led the way in the second half to finish with a team-high 15 points – including going 3-for-4 from behind the arc.

“In the first half he was a little passive, and I looked at him myself like, ‘This isn’t the guy I know,'” said Chicago native Sherron Collins, who faced Evans of Aurora, Ill., on the AAU circuit. “He brought it a little bit more in the second, and I was just like, ‘OK, now we’ve got to guard him,’ because he can definitely shoot it.”

Evans remembers playing against Collins, saying he’s a better player than his AAU days.

But it was his one memory – though very brief – of facing Brandon Rush in an AAU tournament that Evans joked about the most.

“I played against Rush in Las Vegas, and he got kicked out two minutes into the game because he was hanging on the rim,” Evans said.