Kansas center Hunter Dickinson (1) turns for a shot over Baylor forward Josh Ojianwuna (15) during the first half on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

A week after raising its offense to an elite level to defeat the vaunted Houston defense, the Kansas men’s basketball team faced the inverse task against Baylor Saturday night.

It had to tighten up on defense to quiet one of the most formidable groups of shooters in the nation — and, as it turned out, ended up needing to do so missing two players from its rotation.

With Kevin McCullar Jr. out due to injury and Jamari McDowell out due to illness, the Jayhawks racked up 17 steals and forced 21 turnovers by the Bears, minimizing their possessions even as Baylor started to heat up from 3-point range.

Instead, it was KU point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. and first-time starter Nick Timberlake who hit key 3-pointers in the second half, before KU weathered BU’s last rally and claimed an ugly but pivotal 64-61 win at Allen Fieldhouse.

“Playing in front of these great fans, the energy they give us, it should really not be many times that KU loses at home,” center Hunter Dickinson said postgame. “Just with the atmosphere, with our coach, with the system that we run, it should be really hard for somebody to come in here and beat us no matter who’s playing out there.”

Harris briefly left the game after landing awkwardly following a contested layup attempt with four minutes to go but returned just two minutes later. He then hit a floater late in the shot clock to help briefly boost the Jayhawks’ lead back to five points.

Four starters were in double figures for KU, paced by 15 points from Dickinson despite his 7-for-19 shooting and 14 by Harris.

“I was hoping the game was slow, which it was,” KU coach Bill Self said. “I was hoping the game was ugly and muddy, which it was, in large part because they turned it over and in large part because we couldn’t make shots.”

Baylor, which was itself missing a top scorer off the bench in Langston Love, was led by a pair of freshmen: it got 21 points from center Yves Missi, who battled with Dickinson all day and who Self said is “obviously going to be a fabulous pro,” and 17 from guard Ja’Kobe Walter. The Bears also outrebounded KU 42-25.

Walter and Jayden Nunn each missed potential game-tying 3-pointers in the final seconds.

“They got exactly what they wanted because we couldn’t get matched up five-on-five and switch a simple high ball screen,” Self said.

Four early points from KJ Adams and a strong start on the defensive end helped KU jump ahead quickly, and then the Bears tried to go under a screen and allowed a 3-pointer by Harris before a layup by Dickinson made it 12-4 and forced an early timeout.

Baylor committed six turnovers in under seven minutes of game time and didn’t score again until it cut its deficit to 10 with a layup by Missi.

“I take responsibility offensively for our spacing and that was really the difference in the game,” said Baylor coach Scott Drew, who later said of the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs, “if Mahomes throws six picks, they ain’t winning tomorrow.”

Of the Jayhawks’ defense, Self said, “I actually thought our hands were better tonight. I thought our ball-screen defense was excellent. I thought Hunter did a great job on ball-screen defense. I thought behind it we had some guys screw up a couple times but for the most part it was really good, because that’s how they score.”

The Bears kept it close when KU’s defense started to show some vulnerability on the perimeter and Jalen Bridges made a pair of 3s. On the other hand, forward Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua missed two wide-open attempts of his own and the Jayhawks pushed their lead back to 25-15 when Johnny Furphy found Dickinson along the baseline for a hard-fought layup.

Elmarko Jackson fouled Walter on a 3-point attempt in the corner and the KU bench got called for a technical foul after the call, allowing the Bears to cut that lead in half in a single play.

Furphy got fouled on a baseline drive the next time down and converted his free throw for a three-point play, but he threw away a post entry pass that led to a dunk by Missi and then missed a pair of attempts from beyond the arc. Nunn drained a catch-and-shoot 3 to bring Baylor all the way back to 28-26.

KU led 34-28 at the half thanks to a strong last few possessions and a nice feed from Adams to Parker Braun for a dunk.

Furphy converted another three-point play out of the break, but then the Jayhawks nearly lost their lead entirely when they gave up an 8-0 run to force a timeout by Self.

KU escaped a dicey stretch when Baylor left Harris open for another 3 and then Timberlake scored his first of the game from the corner to put the Jayhawks back up 50-41.

As the minutes ticked down, Timberlake got on the scoreboard twice more with a two-handed dunk off a steal and another 3.

But the Bears weren’t done, as they got hot once more from deep, and Walter and Nunn hit 3s of their own to reduce Baylor’s deficit to five points with 5:15 to go.

Both teams were unable to score in the biggest moments until Harris’ floater.

Timberlake turned the ball over with 14.2 to go and then missed the front end of a one-and-one, which allowed Baylor its final two chances.

The Jayhawks, now 19-5 (7-4 Big 12 Conference), will face their latest two-day turnaround when they travel to Lubbock to face Texas Tech Monday at 8 p.m. The win boosts their chances in the Big 12 race, but Self’s attitude wasn’t so sanguine after the game.

“This is probably the least happy I’ve been after a win because that’s not how you play basketball, and that’s certainly not the intellect in which you’re supposed to play it,” Self said. “I’m disappointed that we can make those four or five plays that we made in the last minute that put us in harm’s way to actually lose the game.”

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