photo by: AP Photo/Rick Scuteri

Kansas forward Bryson Tiller shoots on Arizona State forward Santiago Trouet (1) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Tempe, Ariz.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Kansas coach Bill Self had the unusual experience on Tuesday night of watching the final 26 minutes and seven seconds of the Jayhawks’ 70-60 loss to Arizona State from a computer in the Desert Financial Arena visitors’ locker room.

That meant he had the chance to hear the Fox Sports 1 broadcast mention at one point in the game that his team was 5-for-17 on layups.

“What happens if you’re able to finish around the rim?” Self wondered in his postgame press conference. “Of course, (ASU center Massamba) Diop had a lot to do with that. He’s a presence in there. And we didn’t play as big.”

It was a strange game for KU’s frontcourt. Three days after Arizona limited him to two points and four rebounds for arguably his least impactful game of the season, sophomore forward Flory Bidunga bounced back — at least on paper — with 14 points and 13 rebounds.

But he had to fight to get to 6-for-14 shooting on the night after opening 1-for-7, and still was responsible for one of the game’s most crucial misses on a late layup that could have cut the deficit to one point with 4:27 to go.

Everyone on KU’s roster was around the rim constantly and yet unable to put the ball into the net. The Jayhawks lost for just the second time in 17 games this year in which they have outrebounded their opponent. Three KU players reached double-digit rebounds as the Jayhawks secured a whopping 25 offensive rebounds yet somehow it only equated to six second-chance points.

Bidunga was at a loss postgame: “I mean, I don’t know. I tried, we tried to put the ball in the hole but it didn’t go in. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I don’t know,” Self said of the bizarre stat. “That’s hard. That’s hard, because usually off of offensive rebounds, defenses are in scramble mode. I know we are. And we didn’t take advantage of that whatsoever.”

As Self referenced, ASU made far better use of its own 14 offensive rebounds, often at the most pivotal moments of Tuesday’s game. (The Jayhawks are 335th in the nation in offensive rebounds allowed per game, according to teamrankings.com.) Diop, a 7-footer who had three, put back his own miss in a four-point game to curb KU’s momentum early in the second half.

With the margin back down to four again inside of eight minutes to go, 6-foot-3 guard Pig Johnson somehow snagged two offensive boards on the same possession and drew a foul against Bryson Tiller to force the under-eight timeout, leading to a second-chance 3-pointer for Moe Odum that made it 57-50.

Diop had one more dunk off his own offensive board for good measure to put the exclamation point on the Sun Devils’ win with 2:12 remaining. He wound up with 19 points and nine rebounds on the night.

By the time the final buzzer sounded, that 5-for-17 stat on layups had slumped all the way to 6-for-22. Even on a bad shooting day, KU hit its 3-pointers at almost the same rate — 7-for-27.

What made the issues from close range so much more glaring was that the Sun Devils weren’t exactly clinical inside either. They finished 5-for-17 on layups themselves and just 19-for-59 (32.2%) from the field overall, including 9-for-33 (27.3%) in the second half.

“Even with bad offense,” Self said, “there’s still an opportunity for us to win if we could just get key stops, and we didn’t do that.”