Kansas forward K.J. Adams Jr. (24) dunks the ball against Texas Tech forward Daniel Batcho (12) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex)

Lubbock, Texas — The third-ranked Kansas men’s basketball team remained red hot in Big 12 play from behind the 3-point line during a 75-72 road win at Texas Tech on Tuesday night.

KU’s win snapped a 29-game home winning streak for Texas Tech, which had been the second longest in the country behind Gonzaga’s 75 in a row. It also marked the first home loss for second-year TTU coach Mark Adams, who is now 26-1 inside United Supermarkets Arena.

Despite leading for the entire second half, the Jayhawks (13-1 overall, 2-0 Big 12) needed to survive another down-to-the-wire thriller to get out of Lubbock with a win. After leading by 10 inside the final five minutes, KU twice saw its lead trimmed to a single point. And both times, the Jayhawks responded with winning plays.

“Yeah, we don’t have much left,” KU coach Bill Self said after the victory. “OT probably wouldn’t have been a good thing for us today. We played well. Any time you score 75 on the road is usually a good thing, especially when you’re playing a team that guards like Tech. They made shots, too. If I was a fan I’d probably have enjoyed watching that game. There was some good basketball going on.”

Dajuan Harris Jr. tallied a career-high 18 points, knocking in a career-best five mostly wide-open 3-pointers and leaving the table-setting to teammate Bobby Pettiford, who finished with seven points and six assists in 25 minutes.

“The way teams are going to play him, at least to this point, they’re going to dare him to beat them and tonight he did. I mean, there haven’t been too many guys in KU history go 5-for-5 from 3 in a game.”

The Jayhawks also got double-digit scoring from Jalen Wilson (16 points) and KJ Adams (14), who did damage in both halves, with Adams playing one of the best offensive games of his career.

“I thought KJ was great,” Self said. “Playing against an athletic 7-footer’s not the easiest thing to do when you’re (6-7). But I thought he did a good job.”

Freshman guard Gradey Dick added 11 points and eight rebounds in 31 minutes, including an incredible individual-effort play midway through the second half that paved the way for KU to close out the game. After misfiring on a 3-pointer from the wing in front of the Kansas bench, Dick ran down his own miss on the other side of the paint.

After gathering, he pump-faked Tech’s Kevin Obanor and calmly hit a baseline floater to put the Jayhawks back in front by seven with 11:12 to play.

The Red Raiders cut the KU lead from 70-60 with 3:49 to play to 71-70 with 1:40 remaining and again inside the final minute, setting up one final chance to win with 25 seconds to play. But a wild sequence of colliding bodies ended with Kevin McCullar throwing an assist to Adams for a breakaway dunk to put KU up three with seven seconds left. Obanor’s last-ditch effort to tie it from the wing came up short, with McCullar the one contesting the potential game-tying 3.

“I think that Kevin played pretty well,” Self said. “He was aggressive. You know, he didn’t make shots, but he made the biggest shot of the game. And he didn’t do a ton (on defense) but he got the biggest steal of the game. We wouldn’t have won the game without Kevin in the last 30 seconds or 40 seconds.”

The shot Self mentioned came late, when McCullar hit an elbow jumper to push KU’s lead from one back to three, helping hold off the Red Raiders’ furious sprint to the finish.

Oddly enough, of KU’s regular rotation players and starters, it was former Texas Tech player McCullar who had the quietest night. He picked up two fouls early and was harassed by the home fans all night. He finished with seven points and three fouls while shooting just 3-of-9 from the floor.

The steal McCullar had came with Kansas up by one a second time, with the Red Raiders looking to take the lead inside the final 30 seconds. After bodies collided all over the floor, the ball squirted loose. McCullar scooped it up and tossed it ahead to Adams in the open floor.

“I can run almost as fast as anybody and I knew Kevin was going to fly that ball whether I’m open or not,” Adams said of the pass before his final dunk with 7 seconds to play.

It came with the biggest man on the court, Tech center Daniel Batcho, barreling down on him and contesting the dunk as it went through. Asked if he saw Batcho charging at him, Adams smiled.

“I could look at him behind me,” he said. He’s a big target to spot.”

Added McCullar: “I just got the ball, I knew he (the Tech player closest to him) was going to try to foul quick and I saw KJ sprinting hard and I just threw it to him and he took flight. There was a collision at the rim but he dunked it.”

As they said they would, though, McCullar’s teammates had his back. The goal, they said, was to make the game about Kansas and Texas Tech, not McCullar against his old team.

The Jayhawks did exactly that, picking up a hard-fought, total team win thanks in large part to their hot shooting and the way they responded to the early adversity in a game where they looked out of sorts throughout the first four minutes.

In addition to jacking up wild shots without much poise or purpose on the offensive end, two KU starters picked up three careless fouls in the first few minutes, with McCullar recording two of them. Harris had the other — just 21 seconds into the game — and the Jayhawks fell behind 13-5 before the first media timeout.

KU returned to the court with a different mindset. Wilson’s drive to the heart of the TTU defense led to an easy and uncontested bucket, and the Jayhawks ripped off a run of their own — 15-7 — to tie the game at 20 by the 10:55 mark of the first half.

“They cut it to one in like a minute,” Self said of Tech’s late surge. “In basketball, it can turn on a dime. Fortunately it did for us after that first timeout.”

Added Harris of the reversal of fortunes early: “Really we just had to calm down, don’t try to rush the shots because we were rushing too many shots early on. Coach got on us, so we just had to get the ball moving and when we got the ball to the middle of the court, that finished everything for us.”

From there, Wilson got red-hot from the outside, hitting three first-half 3-pointers in a 2-minute span to lead the Jayhawks to a 23-22 lead with 10:15 to play in the half.

The Jayhawks’ lead grew to 28-25 and Kansas had a few chances to add to it, but they temporarily reverted to their early-game approach of jacking up quick shots that didn’t fall. That allowed Tech to reclaim the lead at 29-28 with just under six minutes to play in the first half.

Kansas controlled the rest of the first half thanks in large part to Adams, who continues to emerge as a reliable offensive option for the Jayhawks.

Adams scored the final eight points of the first half for KU and he did it in a variety of ways. A contested dunk, a lob he laid in, a jumper that rolled in and a layup on a roll to the rim all proved to be too much for Tech to contain, as the Jayhawks continually attacked the lane with the pass.

The Jayhawks, who led 43-36 at the break, shot 56.7% from the floor in the first half and 50% from 3-point range, knocking in seven of 14 from downtown. Wilson hit three, Harris two and Pettiford and McCullar one each.

The 43 first-half points were the most by any team against Tech’s vaunted defense. And KU probably would have scored a few more if not for seven turnovers and several quick-trigger misses in the early going.

For the game, the Jayhawks 49% from the floor and 46% from 3-point range. More importantly, they found a way to close a game with tough plays late for the second time in four days. Pettiford agreed with Self’s claim that the Jayhawks were exhausted after the past four days.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “But it also shows what we’re made of; we’re tough, gritty, ready to battle.”

Next up, KU will travel to Morgantown, West Virginia to take on Bob Huggins’ club on Saturday at WVU Coliseum.