Melvin Council Jr. didn’t just have a night - he had the night. In Kansas’ nail-biting 77-76 overtime win over NC State, the senior transfer guard delivered a performance that will be talked about in Lawrence for a long, long time.
“We had one guy who was probably the best performer that I think that I've had on the road in my 23 years at Kansas,” said head coach Bill Self. “He was unbelievable.”
That guy, of course, was Council - and Self wasn’t exaggerating. Council poured in a career-high 36 points, drilling nine 3-pointers, grabbing seven rebounds, and dishing out four assists in a game that turned into his personal highlight reel.
For context, that 36-point outburst puts him in elite company - he’s now just the sixth Jayhawk to hit that mark in a game under Self, joining names like Andrew Wiggins, Elijah Johnson, Jalen Wilson, Ochai Agbaji, and Ben McLemore. And those nine made threes?
Second-most in Kansas history, trailing only Terry Brown’s 11 - also against NC State - back in 1991.
What makes this performance even more jaw-dropping is how unexpected it was. Coming into the game, Council had been shooting just 18% from beyond the arc and had made only five threes all season.
Five. So when NC State opted to sag off and dare him to shoot, it wasn’t exactly a reckless gamble.
“I don't think anybody would say it's not a sound philosophy based on his numbers up until this point,” Self said.
But Council had other plans.
“My scout team does that to me in practice,” he said. “My guys and coaches just tell me to be confident in my shot and just take it. I talked to Mario Chalmers a couple of weeks ago and he was telling me ‘Be aggressive,’ ‘Shoot the ball,’ so that's just what I tried to do today.”
Early on, it looked like NC State’s strategy might hold. Council missed two of his first three attempts from deep.
But then he got hot - really hot. Two more threes before the under-8 timeout in the first half forced Wolfpack head coach Will Wade to tweak the game plan.
“We adjusted after he made his third 3,” Wade said. “That was kind of our line of demarcation; when he was going to hit that, we were going to adjust. We adjusted after he hit the third 3, but he was in rhythm and got going.”
And once Council found that rhythm, there was no turning back. He went into halftime with 13 points and four made threes - already a solid night by most standards. But he wasn’t done.
In the second half, Council turned it up another notch. He hit four of his five attempts from deep over the final 20 minutes of regulation, including a clutch stretch where he scored Kansas’ final 13 points to keep the Jayhawks alive without Darryn Peterson on the floor. That solo scoring run helped push the game to overtime.
Then, in the extra period, Council delivered the dagger - his ninth 3-pointer of the night, followed by a layup to cap his 36-point masterpiece.
“Shooters don’t remember their misses,” Self said. “They only remember their makes. And so in his mind, he’s thinking he’s looking at a big basket, which was probably good for us, really good for us.”
Flory Bidunga might’ve summed it up best in the postgame.
“That’s a bad man,” he said.
And on this night, there was no denying it. Melvin Council Jr. didn’t just answer the call - he rewrote the script.