Coach Bob Chipman learned a couple of useful tidbits about his Washburn University men’s basketball team Tuesday night. One good. One not so good.

First, the good news.

“We can score,” Chipman said after watching Washburn’s first exhibition game of the season against Kansas University.

The less favorable revelation?

“Now we’ve got to stop somebody.”

He was referring to the 98-79 thumping his Ichabods received at the hands of the No. 24 Jayhawks inside Allen Fieldhouse – including an eyesore of a first half in which Washburn allowed 57 points.

“Wow,” Chipman continued. “They were on pace for 120 there for a while, 130.”

There certainly were points aplenty, particularly in a sloppy first half, in which both teams attempted to shake the doldrums of nearly three weeks of preseason practice.

Washburn appeared to wiggle free first. The Ichabods, an NCAA Div. II school picked to finish sixth in its 11-team conference, stuck with the Jayhawks for the first 12 minutes.

The ‘Bods even grabbed the lead. Once. For exactly 76 seconds.

With 14:31 left in the first half, Washburn forward Jonathan Leopaul rose for a lay-in over KU’s Tyshawn Taylor in the lane to put Washburn in front, 14-13.

Little more than a minute later, the Jayhawks’ Tyrel Reed buried one of his five three-pointers on the night to push KU back in front, 16-14.

And, boy, did things get out of hand in a hurry after that. Chipman used two timeouts in two minutes to try to stop the energized Jayhawks to no avail. By halftime, Kansas had three players in double figures, and Washburn trailed by 22 points.

“That last 10 minutes of that first half seemed like a year to me,” Chipman said.

Too many athletes and substitutions for the tiny Ichabods to handle.

“They ran the ball,” said forward Lekheythan Malone, a transfer from Div. I Arkansas-Little Rock. “They got a lot of transition points on us and easy buckets. That’s what really killed us tonight.”

Washburn, which played against Kansas last season, actually allowed more points Tuesday night than the 92 it surrendered during the regular season to last year’s national championship Jayhawks team.

But the similarities seemed to end there when examining this year’s Kansas team, which features eight players who weren’t on last year’s roster.

“It’s hard to compare them to last year’s team, but KU is KU,” said senior guard Mario Scott, who scored seven points Tuesday and started against the Jayhawks as a junior. “They’re going to reload and restack every year. We weren’t coming in here expecting the game to be any easier than last year, but it’s pretty hard to compare this team to last year.”

Said Chipman: “I think some of those kids are probably better than we want to give them credit for. They were sitting behind some of the greatest players ever to play at KU.”

The Ichabods played more relaxed facing a large deficit in the second half, shooting at a 50 percent clip (15-for-30) and outscoring the Jayhawks, 44-41, to make the score seem closer than the game indicated.

Forward Darnell Kimble led Washburn with 14 points, while guard DeAndre Eggins added 13, and Malone chipped in 11.

Chipman, who has seen his share of hoops in his 30 years as Ichabods coach, said he thought the second half was a more accurate representation of how his team will fare during its Div. II season.

But he also attributed the closely contested final 20 minutes to another factor: guys like 6-foot-11 KU center Cole Aldrich spending plenty of time on the pine.

“Coach (Bill) Self was trying to get everybody out there,” Chipman said. “I think they could’ve thrown it into Cole, and he could’ve dunked it 75 percent of that game if they wanted to. I think he was being nice to us.”