As his team botched its chance to potentially bleed the clock dry and prevent St. John’s from even attempting a game-tying shot at the end of regulation, Kansas coach Bill Self struggled to hide his frustration.
He yelled at freshman Kohl Rosario for fouling after less than one second rather than letting more time go by.
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At the start of that sequence, the score was tied with just over 13 seconds left in regulation and Kansas had four fouls to give before St. John’s would enter the bonus. The Jayhawks used the first of those two fouls so quickly that barely two seconds ran off the clock.
By the time Kansas used the last of those four fouls, St. John’s still had 3.9 seconds to engineer a game-winning play. Dylan Darling made the Jayhawks pay, converting a driving layup as the final horn sounded to secure a 67-65 victory that sent the Johnnies to their first Sweet 16 since 1999 and ended Kansas’ season shy of the NCAA tournament’s second weekend for the fourth straight year.
“When Kohl fouled the first time, he fouled in one second,” Self said. “I wish he could have just let him hold it and foul five seconds into it, so now you’ve got a situation where maybe there’s not 3.9 [seconds left]. Maybe there’s 2.0 or 1.5. Our whole deal was with only two team fouls, why wouldn’t you go ahead and foul in that situation?”
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Had Kansas managed to force overtime, the Jayhawks would have carried momentum into the extra session. They played from behind nearly the entire game, rallying from deficits of 14 points with eight minutes left in regulation and nine points with just over four minutes to go.
Three consecutive offensive rebound put-backs by Rosario, Flory Bidunga and Tre White brought the Jayhawks within two with just over a minute to go. Then, after a defensive stop, freshman phenom Darryn Peterson attacked the basket, drew a foul and sank two free throws to earn Kansas its first tie since seven minutes into the first half.
Self was right to use the fouls Kansas had to give to try to burn clock, but the Jayhawks’ execution left a lot to be desired. Worse yet was the way that Kansas defended Darling on his game-winning drive.
Now with no fouls left to give, Kansas guard Elmarko Jackson appeared wary of fouling Darling as he attacked off the bounce. None of Jackson’s teammates stepped in to help either, with Peterson and the rest of the Jayhawks preferring instead to stay glued to St. John’s players spacing the floor around the 3-point arc.
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“We left them too much time,” Self said, “but irregardless of that, you’ve gotta guard 3 or 4 bounces and we didn’t do that.”
The basket from Darling was his first of the game after four previous misses, all from 3-point range. It earned the Big East regular season and tournament champions a crack at Duke in Washington D.C. next week in the East regional semifinals.
While St. John’s will prepare for that, Kansas will return home to contemplate a fourth straight season below the standard that Self had previously established. Peterson will surely enter the NBA Draft. Other players face uncertain futures. Even Self said that given the medical issues he has endured the past few years, he’s not sure whether he’ll return to coach another season.
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It was a rough ending to a rocky season for Kansas.
Now a tumultuous offseason awaits.
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