photo by: AP Photo/Kevin Kolczynski

Kansas head coach Bill Self, center, reacts to the official and has a technical called on him as his team plays against Central Florida during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Orlando, Fla.

Orlando, Fla. — The Kansas men’s basketball team, even its newer members, went into Addition Financial Arena for a shootaround on Saturday keenly aware of what had happened the last time KU visited the venue — blown lead, upset loss, pandemonium in Orlando.

So the Jayhawks drew their own conclusions when confetti inexplicably began to fall as they were preparing for Sunday’s rematch with UCF.

“Apparently somebody was expecting another upset this year,” center Hunter Dickinson said, adding that the Jayhawks also took note of being instructed to leave the court through a separate exit, “like they were preparing for another court storming.”

Wing Rylan Griffen, who heard about the conspicuous confetti secondhand, said that in his head, he thought, “We can’t let that happen.”

The Jayhawks indeed denied the UCF faithful a second chance to celebrate. Instead, KU emerged with one of its biggest road wins, by final margin (51 points), in the program’s storied history.

The Orlando Sentinel reported, citing a UCF official, that the confetti was left over from a New Year’s Eve event held at the arena. Whatever the case, its inopportune drop from the rafters fueled a team that head coach Bill Self had already been hoping would develop an “us-against-the-world” mentality.

“I felt like guys took that to heart and really realized how teams are looking at us,” Dickinson said, “and we really needed to come out and show everybody why we were the preseason No. 1 team in the country.”

He added that the team knew it needed to get back to “playing harder, playing hungrier, playing with a fire and a passion that we needed that we felt like we were lacking the last couple games.” Griffen said he and his teammates approached it as a “must-win game.”

This shift in mindset helped KU muster the much-needed energy Self had harped on all week — after, he said, a series “do-better talks” since the stunning home loss to West Virginia that he figured his team had probably gotten sick of.

“We caught (UCF) on a day when they didn’t play near as well, but today, that was a pretty turned-up team that was playing in the blue today,” Self said.

Perhaps most turned up of all was the fifth-year senior Dickinson, who, not for the first time this season, had taken a step back to reevaluate his own play after a sub-par performance and realized he could do more to boost the Jayhawks. The result was one of his best statistical showings of the year, with 27 points on 12-for-17 shooting and nine rebounds, even as he played his fewest minutes (23) since the season opener against Howard.

“I think I looked myself in the mirror the last couple games and just noticed that I wasn’t playing as hard as I needed to for the team, and I was letting the team down in that sense,” he said. “I just felt like ever since warmups, ever since coming into the gym, (I) came in with a different mindset, and I feel like I just kind of felt like it was going to be one of the games.”

Griffen, who saw the ball go in every time he shot it (four times on 3-pointers, two more on free throws) had the same sense.

“I don’t know why, the gym just felt like it was a good gym today,” he said. “I don’t know, I just got good vibes. Even Hunter said it to me, he was like ‘I got a good vibe, a good feeling about this game.’ I was like, ‘Bro, me too!’ … Even in warmups, I felt like my shot was good today, so that’s probably why I shot it like I did in the game.”

It may have been a charmed game for the Jayhawks, but KU will hope to carry its momentum forward into Wednesday’s home date with Arizona State, and two more road games ahead in the span of a week at Cincinnati and Iowa State.