CHICAGO -- Kansas didn’t need much time to look like a finished product.
Three weeks of practice with Trey Kaufman-Renn was enough for the No. 15 Jayhawks to put together a polished, punishing showing Tuesday night, rolling past No.
24 Kentucky 89-69 in the Champions Classic. Kentucky, by contrast, had been building since its first summer practice in the middle of June, and still walked out of Chicago looking miles behind.
Kaufman-Renn was at the center of it all. He finished with 12 points, six rebounds and six assists without a turnover, and his passing opened the door for everything Kansas wanted to do.
Bill Self’s team kept finding seams in Kentucky’s defense, and the Jayhawks turned cuts into easy baskets over and over again. Kansas scored 14 points directly off cuts, with Kaufman-Renn assisting on nine of those points.
“One thing that we have become much better at, which helps chemistry, is that we have become much better cutters,” Self said. “We weren’t cutters until we got Trey Kaufman-Renn.
Then you become a cutting team, which is an element that we didn’t have two weeks ago. I think it’s pretty good.”
That movement made Kansas look dangerous even without Melvin Council Jr., the guard who broke his foot Monday. It also made Tre White a problem Kentucky couldn’t solve.
White scored 30 points on 16 shots, while Kaufman-Renn’s playmaking and the force of future No. 1 pick Tyran Stokes pushed Kansas into a different gear. A sixth-year senior from Sellersburg, Indiana, and an 18-year-old from Louisville gave the Jayhawks a combination that looked awfully hard to handle.
Kentucky never found a clean rhythm on offense. The Wildcats were hurt early when sophomore big man Malachi Moreno picked up his second foul with 16:37 left in the first half, limiting him to seven first-half minutes. That call set off a rough stretch, and Kansas kept Kentucky from getting much of anything easy after that.
Mark Pope’s team managed only four points directly off cuts, and outside of Zoom Diallo pull-ups or contested Malachi Moreno post-ups, the offense had little flow. Diallo gave Kentucky some shot-making, but the starting backcourt of Diallo and Furman transfer Alex Wilkins combined for just one assist and seven turnovers.
Kentucky spent the offseason talking up its creators and its shooting, believing Diallo and Wilkins could bring the kind of playmaking the roster needed. The Wildcats also added shooting, hoping Milan Momcilovic, Ousmane N’Diaye and Justin McBride would supply the perimeter punch that was missing a year ago.
Instead, Kansas smothered Momcilovic, who got only three 3-point attempts. The best shooter in college basketball, as the piece of the puzzle was described, never got the kind of clean looks Kentucky needed.
Right now, the Wildcats look too slow and too predictable. There aren’t enough quick decision-makers on the floor, and smart defenses can smother the offense before it ever gets moving. Kansas did exactly that.
“We took a massive, really disappointing, not living up to our standard hit tonight, but this is a good group that is going to learn and respond,” Pope said.
There are reasons Kentucky still believes in what it has. Moreno looks like the kind of frontcourt piece a team can build around, and Diallo, flaws included, keeps competing.
Wilkins has talent and room to grow. Redshirt-freshman Braydon Hawthorne could become a real two-way force, and Momcilovic remains Momcilovic.
Kentucky may eventually settle on using him more as a screener to create leverage.
But Tuesday exposed the gap in the present. Kentucky has only one true high-major difference-maker in the frontcourt, and the Wildcats were outscored by 16 points in the 13 minutes Moreno sat against Kansas. The 4-spot was a mess, with N’Diaye and McBride taking turns forcing shots that didn’t belong.
It was also a rough night because Stokes, who chose Self over Pope, helped deliver the damage. Kentucky’s $20 million-plus roster did not speak to the media afterward, which would have been different had the Wildcats won.
Now the questions come fast. Kentucky has an in-state nonconference game with Indiana in 10 days, and Virginia and Louisville are on the December schedule. That’s a lot to absorb after a night like this, especially with Pope now 29-27 against high-major teams at Kentucky.
Kansas, though, left Chicago looking like a team that has already found itself. Kentucky left with the conversation it wanted to avoid.
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Kentucky came out with energy in Chicago and looked ready to make a statement in the Champions Classic, but the game quickly turned once Kansas started applying pressure. The Wildcats were undone by the same issues that have lingered around them, with turnovers feeding the Jayhawks run game and defensive breakdowns making it hard to recover after the opening stretch.
Zoom Diallo did his part with 24 points, and Malachi Morenos foul trouble only added to Kentuckys problems as the frontcourt rotation thinned out. Kansas freshman Tyran Stokes led the way with 21 points and nine rebounds in the 89-69 loss, leaving Kentucky with another reminder that its margin for error shrinks fast when the ball security and physical defense are not there. [Read more 🡒]
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