Ames, Iowa ? Even though his team was able to cut a 22-point second-half deficit to 11 points in less than two minutes during Wednesday night’s 75-64 loss to Kansas University, Iowa State coach Greg McDermott ranked the Jayhawks second to none afterward.

“I think they’re the most complete team in the country,” McDermott said. “A lot of it has to do with (the fact) you’re bringing Sherron Collins and Sasha Kaun off the bench. Those two cats are good now. If somebody’s having a bad night – he wasn’t happy with Mario Chalmers for whatever reason (defense) at the start of the second half, and he took him out – I’d love to have him play for us if he wasn’t happy with him. To have Sherron Collins to stick in there while you get Mario settled down and get him back on track is a heck of a luxury to have.”

McDermott also glowed about how well Kansas uses defensive pressure in the halfcourt, yet the Cyclones had just eight turnovers.

It generally wasn’t a memorable performance by Kansas, yet McDermott pointed to the elements that he believes make Kansas so hard to guard.

“When they’re shooting the ball like they did tonight, when they shot 11 threes and made seven of them, they’re going to be tough for anybody to beat,” McDermott said. “They score on the block. They score off the dribble. Their (21-5, second-half) run, except for that 17-footer by Darrell Arthur, was all in transition, where they’re attacking you off the dribble. We were committing 21â2 guys to defensive transition, and they’re still just putting their shoulder down and going right at you, and it’s hard for anybody to defend. Had they shot the basketball the last couple of games on the road (Texas and Oklahoma State) that they lost like they shot tonight, I’m not sure they would have lost a couple of games on the road.”

McDermott didn’t give KU too much credit for answering the Cyclones’ 11-0 run.

“When you have a veteran team with experienced guards like they have – Russell Robinson, Brandon Rush and Mario Chalmers – you’d expect that they would respond, and that’s exactly what they did,” he said.