photo by: Kansas Athletics

Kansas forward Bryson Tiller looks to shoot inside against Kansas State on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Manhattan.

With high-volume scorer Darryn Peterson out with a sprained ankle, Kansas was always going to need a wide variety of players to step up at the offensive end on Saturday night in Manhattan.

The Jayhawks got precisely what they needed, perhaps to an even greater degree than anyone could have anticipated. Elmarko Jackson reset his career high with 19 points, a resurgent Bryson Tiller scored 16 and the ever-reliable Melvin Council Jr. found himself in triple-double territory with 17 points, 12 assists and seven rebounds.

Flory Bidunga led all KU players with 21, adding 10 points and three blocks, and Tre White chipped in 13 points as well over the course of the night, as KU strung together a 27-7 run when it mattered most to beat Kansas State, 86-62.

“The five guys that were our main players production-wise, I thought they all played great,” KU coach Bill Self told reporters postgame. “We haven’t had that, where we had everybody playing well like we did tonight, especially late.”

K-State star guard P.J. Haggerty tallied just five points in the first half, but the Wildcats kept the game close — a two-point margin at halftime — with 3-point shooting from the likes of Andrej Kostic (who made his first four 3s and finished with 12 points). Haggerty came alive in the second half and finished with 23 points, but KSU, without three starters due to injury, didn’t get production from basically anywhere else.

“Just making his time with us very difficult, trying to get him out of his rhythm, and just denying the ball to him as much as possible,” Jackson said of KU’s approach to Haggerty.

The Jayhawks won a fourth consecutive league game for the first time since Feb. 28, 2023, and as Jackson referenced, beat KSU in Manhattan for the first time since 2022.

“It feels really good,” Jackson said of his performance. “This is my first win here as well, so to do that en route (to) our first win here — it was like three years or something — it feels really good, and we’re just continuing to work towards a common goal of trying to just push and fight to win the regular-season Big 12 championship.”

In the opening minutes, Kansas dared the Wildcats’ big men to fire away from beyond the arc. Taj Manning made just his third 3-pointer of the season and sixth of his three-year career to give KSU an early lead, but Dorin Buca and reserve Marcus Johnson (a more accomplished shooter) missed once each. The Jayhawks took the lead when White found himself wide open from deep, and then Council rattled in a floater to put KU up 9-6 at the first media timeout.

Tiller had six points in his first shift on the floor. The Wildcats countered with Buca, who had six early offensive rebounds.

With KU up 17-10 after another close-range bucket by Council, Kostic drilled 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions as part of a 9-2 run to tie the game for K-State. Kostic, a freshman from Serbia, matched his career high for points in a single game in that short time frame; he exceeded it with a fourth make in transition not long afterward.

“We knew his reputation, we think he’s really going to be a good player, we just thought he hadn’t made shots yet,” Self said. “If you go back and look at it, most of them, maybe you get by with one, but I don’t think we respected him in the manner in which he deserved there in the first half.”

The Wildcats knocked down their seventh and eighth 3s in succession to retake the lead at 28-26, forcing a timeout by KU. The Jayhawks at the same juncture were just 1-for-2 from beyond the arc.

After stagnating against a couple possessions of zone defense from K-State, they broke a scoring drought of nearly four minutes with a single free throw by Council. He then added an acrobatic layup the next time down to put KU back in front.

Haggerty, one of the nation’s leading scorers who had been held scoreless for the first 17 minutes and 48 seconds, got on the board with a pair of free throws after pushing the pace in transition.

With KU holding a 33-31 lead, Bidunga and White engineered a well-played give-and-go to set up Bidunga for a fierce dunk. That kicked off a frenzy of scoring in the final minutes of the half, with Buca — a menace on the boards — putting back Haggerty’s miss, another floater by Council, and then Haggerty avoiding the outstretched arm of Bidunga with a delicate layup.

Council came up empty on another attempt at the rim, but C.J. Jones missed a good look at the buzzer to leave KU ahead 37-35 at the break.

It was, by any statistical metric, a bizarre first half. The Wildcats made seven more 3s than the Jayhawks but did so without getting any from their usual top scorer, Haggerty, who had five points on 1-for-7 shooting. Kostic paced KSU with his rapid-fire dozen in the first half, but Tiller had 12 too on 5-for-5 shooting, his first game with as many points in seven weeks. Council also had 11 to go with five assists.

In addition, with 10 boards, Buca accounted for the majority of his team’s 19 rebounds, and no one had more than four of KU’s 16.

Much as he had against Colorado, and has for much of the season, White drew some hard-won fouls early in the second half to account for a lot of KU’s scoring. The Jayhawks took their largest lead at eight points on a layup by Bidunga, then extended it further when the referees charged KSU coach Jerome Tang with a technical foul.

Before an increasingly aggrieved Bramlage Stadium crowd, the Wildcats mustered a quick response with a tough finish by Haggerty and a deep 3 from David Castillo — only for Council to hit a 3 of his own when K-State went under a ball screen by Bidunga.

Bidunga went to the bench after incurring his second and third fouls, one on defense and one on offense, in rapid succession.

With the Jayhawks up six as the half approached its midway point, KU missed a series of 3s and allowed K-State to cut its deficit to 54-50 on a layup by Haggerty. White put in a close-range jumper off an inbounds pass, Jackson stepped back for a 3 and then Haggerty traveled to halt the Wildcats’ momentum, but again KSU scored five straight of its own. That included a benefit to the Wildcats when an offensive foul on Manning for an elbow to Council’s face was changed to a foul on Council because he broke through the cylinder — in other words, intruded on the space to which Manning was entitled. Haggerty followed up that call with a 3-pointer.

The Jayhawks broke through with a high-speed drive by Council, who drew a foul and finished a layup as part of a three-point play that made it 67-55. That capped off an 8-0 run and prompted a timeout by Tang.

That did not stem the tide, as Bidunga came away with back-to-back buckets inside after a lone free throw by Haggerty.

“I think they missed some of the same shots they made the first half, and I think we rebounded the ball a lot better, obviously,” Self said of the second half.

In fact, K-State scored just twice over the final 4:13 as KU nearly doubled its margin from 13 to 24. A dunk by White with the shot clock turned off served as the exclamation point.

“We just had to have an aggressive mindset coming in,” Tiller said. “We didn’t get off to the greatest of starts, but we locked in on defense and that’s what led us to win the game.”

The Jayhawks, who improved to 15-5 and 5-2 in league play, will have an open date before they host BYU on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Self predicted that Peterson will return for that game.

“That game will obviously mean a lot to a lot of people,” he added. “They’re terrific, and ‘(College) GameDay’ will make it extra hype.”

“Biggest game so far, probably,” Tiller added.

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