photo by: AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz

Creighton's Ryan Kalkbrenner, right, shoots against Kansas' Hunter Dickinson during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024, in Omaha, Neb.

Omaha, Neb. — There were two potential All-American centers on the floor Wednesday night, but you might not have known it from watching the game — unless you looked at the alignment of Creighton’s defense.

The Bluejays returned to a tried-and-true strategy from past KU opponents that had inhibited Dickinson in some of his worst games of the 2023-24 season, loading up the paint with defenders, beyond just their own star center Ryan Kalkbrenner, and therefore providing loads of near-uncontested opportunities for Kansas’ guards to shoot.

And as much as the Jayhawks had tried to construct a roster for this year that would forcibly space teams out and punish them for attempting that strategy, they couldn’t do anything of the sort on Wednesday.

Dickinson was only able to attempt four shots, his lowest total since a game against Maryland on Jan. 19, 2021 during his freshman year at Michigan, and he finished with six points. In the meantime, the rest of the team shot 34.8% from the field in the ugly 76-63 road loss.

As guard David Coit put it, “they were sagging off of us, packing it in, so that made it hard for us to make plays for him.”

“I mean, they just dared us to shoot, which was a good game plan, and obviously we didn’t exercise enough patience to still give our offense a chance to work a lot,” KU coach Bill Self said. “They basically had four guys in the paint the whole time, so we know we’ll see that moving forward.”

In fact, the Jayhawks’ very next opponent, Missouri, had some success with a similar look in last year’s Border Showdown, limiting Dickinson to a modest 13 points and hanging tough in one of the Tigers’ most competitive performances against power-conference foes in the last calendar year.

In that game last December, KJ Adams was able to take over and will his way to 17 points on an efficient 7-for-13 shooting. On Wednesday, though, Adams followed up two of the best performances of his career — lockdown defense against Duke and 22 points against Furman — with a lackluster four points and five rebounds.

Instead, Dajuan Harris Jr., Zeke Mayo and AJ Storr combined for 47 of KU’s 70 shots, with Harris taking a career-high 21 attempts and making just six as Creighton repeatedly gave him space to work behind ball screens. Self acknowledged that Harris wasn’t “making those little floaters” that he normally does but added of his 21-shot tally, “I actually thought that was good. Moving forward, I was OK with that.”

Meanwhile, Storr had just two of his 12 points in the first half and Mayo had zero of his 12 in the second half, meaning KU didn’t have a consistent off-ball scoring option throughout the night

Coit concurred with his coach that KU’s guards need to demonstrate more patience. As for Dickinson himself, Self said there isn’t much the center himself can do to mitigate the sort of strategy Creighton employed, but that KU can scheme ways to get him touches, even if he’s not attempting shots.

“We can probably do some things better to make sure the right guys are passing it,” Self said. “To start the second half we made KJ the passer and (Dickinson) caught it at three feet and he threw it out to Juan for an uncontested 3. He still wasn’t going to get the shot, but at least he got a touch.”

That play nearly got the Jayhawks back in the game, kick-starting a 9-0 run that brought them within one point of the Bluejays, even though they never took the lead.

It provides something small to build on ahead of Sunday’s rivalry tilt.

“We got to take our losses like we take our wins,” Coit said. “Obviously we hate to lose, we don’t want to be here, but at the end of the day we got to stay confident, stay confident in who we are and what we can do. We can’t get too down, but we got to understand we got to learn from this.”