Kansas guard Zeke Mayo (5) tries to cut between Colorado guard Julian Hammond III (3) and Colorado guard Javon Ruffin (11) during the first half on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

The Kansas men’s basketball team had its first chance on Tuesday night to demonstrate substantive progress in an oft-discussed area since the Jayhawks’ loss to Kansas State: playing with consistent energy.

So how did it go for KU with Colorado visiting Allen Fieldhouse?

“I feel like as a team we were a little up and down,” center Hunter Dickinson said, “kind of like our season.”

As Dickinson put it, KU started out playing at a middling level, turned it up shortly before halftime and then “it kind of took us a little bit to get going in that second half.”

Indeed, in a sequence out of the halftime break that sparked flashbacks to the beginning of the Jayhawks’ epic collapse at Baylor on Feb. 1, KU allowed an 8-2 stretch with two immediate 3s by Andrej Jakimovski, called a timeout and still led the Buffaloes extend it into a 13-5 run with a third 3 from Jakimovski for good measure.

“Whatever was said during the timeout, I don’t think it really worked very well,” KU coach Bill Self said. “I don’t think we came out and were a lot more fired up after that or played with a lot more energy defensively. Guys, when we guard, we can guard. And then we just become very, very average instantly when we don’t have that same defensive intensity and energy.”

A 14-point lead entering the break got reduced to six immediately, giving CU life in what turned into an unnecessarily anxious second half for the Jayhawks.

“I think our biggest woe is obviously coming out of halftime,” guard Zeke Mayo said. “We have to figure out those first five minutes, how to put our foot on the gas a little bit and just take teams out of their rhythm.”

KU didn’t get the margin back to 14 points until a minute and 12 seconds remained and ended up winning by 12, meaning it got outscored after the break.

“I thought we did some good things in the first half defensively,” Self said. “I thought the way we started the second half was exactly the way we played on Saturday, just to be real candid.”

Self acknowledged that the Jayhawks did improve in some aspects. Certainly KU did a better job limiting the Buffaloes’ three-point offense, holding all non-Jakimovski players to a combined 1-for-16 from deep, and top scoring guard Julian Hammond III — unlike his Kansas State counterpart Dug McDaniel — was a nonfactor most of the night.

But the effort didn’t necessarily demonstrate the consistency Self had been seeking.

KU has another opportunity to take a step toward putting that quality on display on Saturday when it travels to face Utah at 9 p.m. Central Time. The Jayhawks haven’t won back-to-back games since beating K-State and TCU on Jan. 18 and 22.

They will stay in Salt Lake City through Monday morning ahead of a game in nearby Provo, Utah, against BYU on Tuesday.

“It’s a long week coming off of a game like this, and then obviously a big-time road trip to Utah with two good teams,” Mayo said. “So I think for us it’s just about how we approach practice, how we approach film, looking at things and parts of our game to get better as a group.”

Self was asked postgame if it could help KU to experience an uncommonly long road trip.

“I think it can,” Self said. “It can also not, but I think it can. But trust me, the reason we’re staying the five days doesn’t have anything to do with the pre-planned idea this would be a good team bonding deal.

“… We just talked in the locker room as a staff: What can we do there besides eat and watch the (NBA) All-Star Game and stuff together to try to create some positive bonding-type things? No skiing, probably out of the question.”

It won’t be long before the Jayhawks find themselves playing Colorado again, incidentally, as they take on the Buffaloes at the CU Events Center on Feb. 24. Self said one of their players told him in the handshake line, “We will see you in two weeks.”

“They’ll scout us, we’ll scout them,” CU coach Tad Boyle said. “It’s going to be a whole different game, and I’m hoping that we can have the kind of crowd that they had tonight, and we keep the Jayhawks out of there. I’m a little worried about that given our year. Hey, we’ll be ready to go.”