Kansas rides hot start to win over UW-Milwaukee
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) Devon Dotson had 22 points and nine assists, Udoka Azubuike added 15 points and 17 rebounds, and second-ranked Kansas rolled to a 95-68 victory over Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Tuesday night.
Ochai Agbaji also had 22 points for the Jayhawks (8-1), who built a 40-12 lead in the first half and cruised the rest of the way to their 26th consecutive home win. It also gave them 300 for the decade, joining Gonzaga (304) as the only Division I schools to have reached the milestone before the calendar flips to January.
Darius Roy had 25 points to lead the Panthers (5-5), who actually outscored the Jayhawks most of the second half. Leading scorer Te'Jon Lucas was held to 11 points on 1-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc.
Kansas basically put the game away with a faultless first 12 minutes.
Agbaji, who went for 20 points and 12 boards against Colorado over the weekend, continued his torrid pace by knocking down three 3-pointers in the first three minutes. McCormack and Azubuike got into the act down low, using their massive bulk against the smaller Panthers. And then Dotson went on a scoring binge, using cat-quick penetration to get into the lane and knocking down a series of 3s when Milwaukee began to collapse on the paint.
The result was a 17-1 run to start the game, a 23-4 advantage by the 14-minute mark, and a 40-12 lead - and a whole bunch of used timeouts by Milwaukee coach Pat Baldwin - by the time the buzzer sounded on the under-8 media timeout.
Just how efficient was Kansas by that point? Try a 19-3 rebounding advantage, an 8-of-13 mark from the 3-point line, and 11 assists on the Jayhawks' first 15 made field goals. Oh, and they had just three turnovers.
The crisp passing and utter selflessness was on display during one fast-break opportunity, when Dotson curled a bounce pass around a defender to Agbaji, who passed up his own look to dump the ball to Tristan Enaruna for a layup.
Milwaukee finally had a stretch of success late in the first half, but the Jayhawks still cruised into the locker room with a 52-27 lead. The second half was mostly academic, punctuated by a few big highlights - like the alley-oop pass from Dotson that Agbaji threw down with a rim-rattling reverse dunk with about 12 minutes to go.
That was enough to start the victory party nice and early.
BIG PICTURE
Milwaukee never gave itself a chance by spotting Kansas a big lead on the road, but it also never gave up. The Panthers scored seven of the first eight points to start the second half and stood toe-to-toe with the Jayhawks the rest of the way.
Kansas is poised to move to No. 1 next week after top-ranked Louisville lost to Big 12 rival Texas Tech at the Jimmy V Classic in New York. The result was shown on the video boards in Allen Fieldhouse and elicited a big roar.
UP NEXT
Milwaukee plays its lone home game in December against Eastern Illinois on Saturday night.
Kansas plays Kansas City on Saturday night at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
---
More AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25