photo by: AP Photo/Lucas Peltier

Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) celebrates after defeating Duke during an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas — When Kansas’ preseason All-American center Hunter Dickinson got ejected midway through the second half of Tuesday night’s game, head coach Bill Self remembered telling his team, “Now we’ll find out how tough we are.”

The Jayhawks, as it turned out, were just tough enough to scrape together a few exceptional defensive possessions late and beat No. 11 Duke, 75-72. In the process of doing so, they might have carved out an identity for which they had long been searching.

“This team had no identity yet,” Self said. “I think we could maybe take some pride in saying we got more of an identity now because we kind of won ugly down the stretch, which we had to play that way in order to have a chance to win without Hunt out there.”

How did the Jayhawks pull off the ugly win? In large part, they accepted their adverse circumstances and welcomed the challenge of playing in Dickinson’s absence.

“We really did it for our big man,” point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. said. “He was out half the game the second half, so we just wanted to get that tough win for him.”

“It kind of brought us more together, really,” added guard AJ Storr, a first-time starter on Tuesday night. “It gave us more energy. Hunter is our best player. When he went down, that just brought energy to the whole team.”

Once they shook off some initial surprise that Dickinson actually got ejected for the call — he appeared to kick Duke’s Maliq Brown in the head after coming down with an offensive rebound through a foul, but as Storr said, “It didn’t look like he did it intentionally” — they were prepared to push forward with their two-point lead and 10 minutes left to play.

Maybe none more prepared than the “really jacked” freshman center Flory Bidunga.

“Everybody was jacked after Hunt got out,” Bidunga said. “You have to do it for Kansas because that’s not like something personal, that’s Duke against Kansas. And then I think we put a show on when Hunt got out. You know, we played our ass off. They played their ass off too, but it ended up that we (won) the game.”

Bidunga, who had to play straight through the rest of the second half, finished the game with six points, a team-high eight rebounds, a block and a steal. Self said, “The best thing about Hunter not being in the game was that Flory was. So we’re going to look at it as a positive.”

“I think he played really well,” senior KJ Adams said. “Obviously it’s a bummer that an All-American like Hunter had to go out, but it makes me happy that Flo got a chance to show the world what he can do, and it’s amazing what he did out there, especially a freshman coming in, in that big environment, a huge game, and he did really good.”

Adams performed quite well himself, finishing with three blocks and three steals to go with his eight points and three assists. Self said he “showed a lot of people tonight that you can be an elite player at this level and not be a prolific scorer, because he did it all.”

A particularly exemplary demonstration of the work Adams and Bidunga did was possibly the most significant defensive play of the game, a massive stand with KU nursing a one-point lead and just seconds remaining. Adams stuck to Duke guard Kon Knueppel like glue as the freshman from Wisconsin tried to go for the sort of spinning, off-balance shot he had attempted with some success throughout the game.

“That defensive possession late when we were up one, that’s about as good a defense as KJ can play,” Self said.

And right when Knueppel started to go up against Adams, there was Bidunga, using all of his length to prevent him from even lobbing up a shot. The ball deflected from Knueppel over to KU wing Rylan Griffen, who made a pair of free throws to push KU’s final margin to 75-72.

“As soon as I seen the ball, I was just like, ‘Go get it,'” Griffen said.

Griffen had a redemption arc of his own in the second half, as it happened. After pulling up for what Self called an “awful” 3 with the shot clock turned off at the end of the first half — one that resulted in KU going into the break up two points instead of between five and eight — the Alabama transfer knew he “owed” his teammates.

“My teammates just told me, ‘Don’t worry about it,'” Griffen said. “‘Just keep shooting, keep playing hard,’ and I told them I was going to make up for it, so that’s what I tried to do when I came back in, in the second half.”

He ended up being the primary reason that Duke couldn’t pull away in the final minutes. The Blue Devils took a two-point lead for the first time all night (they had led by one point twice) on a dunk by Cooper Flagg, forcing a timeout by Self with six minutes to go. On the other side of the break, Griffen hit a go-ahead 3-pointer; two minutes later, he earned the offensive rebound that led to an old-fashioned three-point play.

“I was trying to crash the boards even more,” Griffen said. “When I got open shots I focused in on making them, and then defensively I was just focused on that end too.”

KU only scored one more bucket, a floater by Zeke Mayo, before Griffen’s final free throws, so he in fact accounted for eight of the Jayhawks’ final 10 points.

After the win, Self and Adams both refrained from placing too much significance on a lone November victory. As Adams noted, both KU and Duke will look much different by March. But the Jayhawks laid out a blueprint for winning ugly, and did it without a player, Dickinson, whose production is usually a prerequisite for any major KU success.

photo by: AP Photo/Lucas Peltier

Kansas forward KJ Adams (24) reacts after scoring against Duke during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Las Vegas.

photo by: AP Photo/Lucas Peltier

Duke guard/forward Cooper Flagg (2) dives for the ball against Kansas forwards Flory Bidunga (40), KJ Adams (24) and guard Zeke Mayo (5) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Las Vegas.

photo by: AP Photo/Lucas Peltier

Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) dunks the ball against Duke during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Las Vegas.

photo by: Kansas Athletics

Kansas’ AJ Storr shoots over Duke’s Kon Knueppel during the game on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, in Las Vegas.