Kansas guard Kevin McCullar Jr. (15) drives against Kansas State guard Cam Carter (5) during the first half on Monday, Feb. 5, 2024 at Bramlage Coliseum. Photo by Nick Krug

Manhattan — Kansas State’s most important possession of the game Monday night looked dead in the water.

Then, with the shot clock ticking down in overtime, Tylor Perry zoomed into the paint past two Kansas defenders and managed to fling an underhand layup that spun its way into the hoop, giving the Wildcats a 67-66 lead.

The next time down, he drained a 3 from the left wing to extend his team’s lead to two possessions.

Kevin McCullar Jr. missed the front end of a one-and-one after getting fouled on a defensive rebound with 21 seconds to go and KU down two points, and K-State claimed the upset win, 75-70.

The Wildcats beat the Jayhawks in overtime in Bramlage Coliseum for the second straight season, and although they struggled on offense for much of the night, the individual heroics of Perry, who had a game-high 26 points, were enough to push them across the finish line.

Cam Carter had 19 for K-State. KU was led by 21 from Hunter Dickinson, who also had 12 rebounds before fouling out.

KSU coach Jerome Tang is now 11-0 in overtime since taking over at the start of last season. This particular victory allowed the Wildcats to snap a four-game losing streak in Big 12 Conference play.

“We’re not good enough to not execute, not play smart,” KU coach Bill Self said. “You go on the road, you need to make free throws, you need to take advantage of your opportunities, and we didn’t do that well enough. And we were still right there with a chance to win. We got to tighten those things up, honestly. But hey, this league — anybody in America that would have come here tonight and played them, it would have been a hard win with that crowd and everything else.”

KU fell to 6-4 in conference play, including 1-4 in road games, just two days after it looked to have set its conference campaign on track with a big home win over Houston.

“Ain’t no excuses, we just got to take care of business,” point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. said. “We should have won that game, and all the credit goes to them.”

A pair of early 3-pointers by Carter gave the Wildcats a quick advantage, but a flagrant foul call on Jerrell Colbert, administered upon review, curbed some of K-State’s momentum. In an unusually long stretch of more than nine minutes before the first media timeout, both teams seemed to run out of steam, but McCullar willed his way to seven quick points and a couple of buckets inside for Dickinson allowed KU to go up 19-15 when the whistle mercifully blew.

“I thought that they were the more athletic and explosive team early in the game,” Self said. “I thought we showed stretches where we were as well.”

The Wildcats came out of the break with five straight on a 3 by Arthur Kaluma and layup by Carter and took the lead, and then a long string of fouls and turnovers prevented the Jayhawks from mounting any meaningful response. KU made its first field goal in more than four minutes when Johnny Furphy’s transition layup got goaltended with five minutes remaining in the half.

That served as the centerpiece of a rather clumsy 9-2 run to give the Jayhawks their largest lead at 30-25, but a turnover by Parker Braun led to a 3-pointer for Perry and then Perry rolled in an acrobatic layup to tie the game again.

Harris made a pair of free throws, McCullar missed a transition layup and then Will McNair Jr. couldn’t hit a floater after catching a deflected full-court pass, so the Jayhawks went into the break with a two-point advantage.

“We didn’t do a good job, I’m not saying that by any stretch,” Self said, asked about the offensive execution in the first half, “but the few opportunities that we had, Juan underthrows Hunter on an uncontested layup, Parker throws a high-low pass that’s wide-open on out of bounds, Kevin missed a layup at the end of the first half. You score four points on those, you wouldn’t be asking the same question.

“Yeah, we didn’t do a good job at all, but we were still up two at halftime if I’m not mistaken. So it’s not like that was the ball game.”

A 9-0 run to open the second period looked like the spark KU needed to gain some distance from the Wildcats, but KSU responded promptly with eight straight, including back-to-back contested 3s by Perry. Then, out of a media timeout, Carter capped off the run with a game-tying three-point play through a foul by Furphy.

“Obviously we had an opportunity to keep them at arm’s length and didn’t do a good job of that,” Self said.

The Jayhawks missed six consecutive shots — mostly fairly open — and McCullar was off on a pair of free throws as the Wildcats continued to hang tough despite their own shooting drought.

Harris got called for a shooting foul trying to block a 3-point attempt by Perry from behind. Perry made all three free throws. Dickinson made a layup, but Carter hit a 3 from the corner to force a timeout by Self with KU trailing 58-54.

Back-to-back turnovers by Kaluma and Carter led to hard-fought layups by Harris and McCullar as KU took a 62-60 lead with 1:36 to go. Perry scored on a ball that Dickinson inadvertently tipped up on a rebound opportunity after a K-State timeout, and then Kaluma got a measure of revenge with a steal against McCullar, after which the Wildcats were able to call timeout again.

Kaluma put K-State ahead with a putback off a corner 3 attempt by Carter that fell well short, but Harris and Adams ran a simple pick-and-roll to set Adams up for a game-tying dunk in the final seconds.

After Perry’s heroics in overtime, Dickinson scored a quick bucket but then got called for a foul that led to two more free throws for Perry.

“I just think I got to do more for my team out there,” Dickinson said. “Just a couple plays, tipping it in for the other team, you’re really giving up two points. When we cut it to two and I ran him over, I really don’t understand how that could be a foul, but I can’t, I guess, give the defender any contact on a screen. I guess I got to run around the screen. Just making those type of plays when the game is close, I can’t do it.”

Harris responded with two more throws of his own; KU got another stop but not the additional free throws it needed.

The Jayhawks will return to Lawrence to host No. 13 Baylor Saturday at 5 p.m. The game has been selected for ESPN’s “College GameDay.”

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