Jeff Withey had 15 points and 11 rebounds while becoming the Big 12’s career blocked shots leader, Elijah Johnson emerged from a season-long slump and No. 14 Kansas walloped Texas 73-47 on a festive Saturday night at Allen Fieldhouse.

Johnson finished with 12 points for the Jayhawks (21-4, 9-3 Big 12). Travis Releford added 15 and Ben McLemore had 13, including a 360 jam in the closing minutes that capped off quite a show against the Longhorns (11-14, 3-9) for more than a dozen former players in attendance.

Among them was Mario Chalmers, whose buzzer-beating 3-pointer forced overtime in the 2008 national title game won by Kansas. The Miami Heat guard was honored at halftime by having his No. 15 raised to the rafters, where it joined names such as Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Pierce.

Perhaps one day, Withey’s name will reside there.

The senior center had his 265th block early in the second half to move past former Texas star Chris Mihm for the most in league history. The reigning Big 12 defensive player of the year even had four steals while making life miserable for the young, undersized Longhorns.

Myck Kabongo, in his second game back from a 23-game suspension, was held to 13 points by the nation’s top field-goal percentage defense. The Longhorns’ sophomore guard missed his first seven shots and committed three turnovers, his only real success coming at the foul line.

Texas wound up shooting 21.8 percent from the field and 2 of 21 from beyond the arc.

The prime-time match-up between two of the nation’s stingiest defenses figured to put points a premium, but that only turned out to be the case for the Longhorns.

They had already fallen behind 11-8 when they went the next 8-plus minutes without a field goal, missing 10 straight shots, three free throws and turning the ball over twice. By the time Ioannis Papapetrou got to the rim for Texas, the Jayhawks had built a 24-11 lead.

It never got a whole lot better for Texas.

The Longhorns went another 6 1/2 minutes without a field goal before Demarcus Holland’s steal and layup got them within 28-15 at halftime. That meant the final 15:55 of the first half, Texas had precisely as many shot-clock violations (two) as they had made field goals.

It was the Longhorns’ lowest-scoring half of the season.

Kansas didn’t waste any time delivering the knockout punch in the second half.

Johnson was the catalyst, scoring the Jayhawks’ first seven points and finally starting to shake out of a season-long slump that has been frustrating and, at times, embarrassing for one of the key players on last season’s national runner-up.

The senior guard started Kansas on a 13-4 run by getting to the basket and drawing a foul. He missed the free throw, but moments later did the exact same thing and converted the three-point play. Johnson finished off his own spurt with another basket, and by the time Releford scored in transition, the Jayhawks had built a 41-22 lead with 14:32 remaining in the game.

Texas coach Rick Barnes, whose team is in danger of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time in 15 years, was powerless to stop the onslaught even with a full complement of timeouts.

Kansas eventually pushed the lead to 55-28 when Withey scored six straight points, including a follow-up dunk off his own miss with just less than 8 minutes left in the game.

McLemore put the exclamation mark on a celebratory night for the Jayhawks when he got ahead of the fast break with about 4 minutes left and elevated for a 360 dunk that brought down the house and gave Kansas a 68-34 lead on the dazed, checked-out Longhorns.

Kansas, which rallied from 11 down to beat Texas in January, emptied the bench in the final minutes as it coasted to its eighth win in nine meetings with the Longhorns.

— Associated Press —

Kansas head football coach Charlie Weis previously announced Clint Bowen would be coaching the Jayhawk linebackers and Monday he announced several other staff alterations and additions.

Weis began by announcing that Dave Campo is now the assistant head coach for defense and will remain coaching the defensive backs. Scott Vestal, who was previously the assistant director of operations, has been elevated to assistant defensive backs coach and he will also work closely with the special teams.

Previously serving as graduate assistants for the defense, Rod Jones will now serve as the director of high school relations, and Maurice Crum, Jr., has moved into the assistant director of operations position.

Matt Shula, who served in a quality control position in 2012, is now a graduate assistant working with the special teams, and Mark Ross, an intern with the program last season, has been elevated to a quality control position working with the offense.

Joining the Kansas football staff are Louie Matsakis, Max Onyegbule and Ty Greenwood. Matsakis and Onyegbule are returning to Jayhawk program, while Greenwood is making his first appearance.

Matsakis will serve as KU’s director of personnel. Matsakis returns to Kansas after spending the past four seasons at Youngstown State where he was the special teams and recruiting coordinator and running backs coach.

Prior to his time at YSU, Matsakis spent five of the six previous seasons on the Jayhawk staff. From 2007-09, he was the KU running backs coach and oversaw the specials teams.  In 2004-05 he was a quality control coach. During his previous experience at Kansas, Matsakis mentored the Big 12 Specialist of the Year in kick returner Marcus Herford in 2007, while also coaching running back Jake Sharp to All-Big 12 honors in 2008.

Kansas won a trio of bowl games during Matsakis’ previous time with the program, capping the 2005, 2007 and 2008 seasons with bowl victories in the Fort Worth Bowl, Orange Bowl and Insight Bowl, respectively.

Onyegbule, who was a three-year letterwinner on the KU defensive line, was also a part of two of those bowl wins (Orange, Insight). Onyegule who is returning to his alma mater as a graduate assistant with the defense, tallied 67 tackles during the 2006-09 seasons.

Onyegbule, who earned his degree from Kansas in December 2010, had a strong senior season in 2009 as he registered 37 tackles, including 16 solo stops. He also had 11 tackles for a loss of 64 yards and six sacks. He was twice named to the Athletics Director’s Honor Roll while he was at KU.

Greenwood will serve as the KU quality control coach for defense. Greenwood comes to the Jayhawk program after spending the past six seasons on the staff at Pierce College in Los Angeles, where he served as defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach.

Greenwood is a graduate of Delaware State where he was a three-year starter at defensive back. While at DSU, Greenwood earned All-MEAC honors and was named the team’s defensive MVP.

— KU Sports Information —

Buddy Hield came away with the steal, ran out to the other end of the court for a dunk that wouldn’t count. It was still time for Oklahoma to celebrate, and Hield would get bounced around on fans’ shoulders in a rare on-the-court postgame party at the Lloyd Noble Center.

Romero Osby scored 17 points, Steven Pledger added 15 and the Sooners held off No. 5 Kansas 72-66 on Saturday for their first victory over a top 5 team in seven years.

With the Jayhawks (19-4, 7-3 Big 12) on a surprising three-game slide, the conference regular season championship is suddenly up for grabs.

”It’s a step, but there’s a lot of steps,” Sooners coach Lon Kruger said. ”There are a bunch of small steps necessary, and again it happens because these guys have worked hard and continue to work at it and have maintained a real good attitude about getting better each day.”

The Sooners (15-7, 6-4) snapped a 10-game losing streak in the series and took down a top 5 opponent for the first time since beating No. 4 Texas on Jan. 28, 2006.

Freshman Je’lon Hornbeak went 4 for 6 at the free throw line in the final minute, just enough to keep the Jayhawks at bay. Cameron Clark hit two free throws to finish it off, and fans stormed the court after Hield stole the ball and dunk after the final buzzer sounded.

Just a week ago, Kansas had the nation’s longest winning streak at 18 games. Now, the program is on its first three-game losing streak since February 2005.

”We had lost two straight, too. We needed a win. So, they could have looked at us the same way,” Osby said. ”But we just came out and we just fought.”

Ben McLemore led Kansas with 15 points and Jeff Withey had 14 points, six rebounds and the one block he needed to tie Greg Ostertag’s school record with 258 for his career. The Jayhawks outscored Oklahoma 32-16 in the paint, but missed seven of their first 12 free throws to stall their attempts at a comeback.

”Obviously three in a row is not good, but this game to me today, I’m not leaving out of here disgusted with my team at all because we actually played better today,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, who was highly critical of his team after a loss at last-place TCU on Wednesday.

”We played a good team today, and they shot the heck out of the basketball.”

Oklahoma had a 23-11 advantage in bench scoring, led by Clark’s 10 points, to snap its own two-game skid. The Sooners never trailed over the final 30 minutes.

McLemore drilled a 3-pointer from the right corner to start a string of eight straight Jayhawk points, cutting the deficit to 57-56 on Elijah Johnson’s runner with 4:58 remaining before Amath M’Baye snapped a 4-minute drought for Oklahoma by hitting a 3-pointer.

Travis Releford had a chance to tie it at 60 before missing the second of two free throws with 4:12 to play, and Pledger connected on a 3-pointer from the right wing at the opposite end to give Oklahoma a smidgen of breathing room. Hornbeak then answered Withey’s two-handed slam with a 3-pointer, and the Jayhawks were forced to foul when Johnson came up empty on a drive to the hoop.

Hornbeak hit one of two free throws for a 67-61 lead with 57.7 seconds left, then split another pair after Johnson hit a 3. McLemore’s tip-in of a miss by Naadir Tharpe got Kansas within 68-66 with 15.7 seconds left.

Hornbeak then went 2 for 2 at the line when it counted the most.

”I missed two. I’m not really happy about that,” Hornbeak said. ”They went in and out on me. But the last two, I knew the touch – exactly where I needed to put the ball at.”

The Jayhawks, who made just three baskets and scored 13 points in the first half of the loss at TCU, surpassed that scoring total in just over 5 minutes as both teams got out to a crisp start. The problem for Kansas was at the other end, with the Sooners hitting 15 of their first 25 shots and leading by as many as eight points in the final minute of the first half.

Tharpe then earned a defensive 5-second call against Isaiah Cousins and had two baskets to get the Jayhawks within 38-34 at halftime. Kansas got as close as one before Osby’s third-chance basket started a string of eight straight Sooner points to restore the lead to 55-46 with 10 minutes left.

”I hate to say this but there’s a lot of teams in the country that lose two or three games in a row, and there’s a lot of teams that struggle winning away from home,” Self said. ”This today isn’t magnified from a win-loss standpoint if we had taken care of business when we should have the prior games.”

— Associated Press —

TCU made its first Big 12 victory a memorable one, and left the fifth-ranked Kansas Jayhawks with their first losing streak in more than seven years.

The Horned Frogs finally won in their new conference, leading throughout against the Big 12’s most dominant team in a 62-55 victory Wednesday night. It was their first-ever win over a Top 5 team.

”It means a lot. Obviously we’ve had some tough years,” Frogs senior forward Garlon Green said. ”We’ve had a tough year right now, but this is a big win. We need to carry this momentum.”

Green scored 20 points for the Horned Frogs, including five in a row after a late 17-4 spurt by Kansas (19-3, 7-2 Big 12).

Naadir Tharpe scored nine points in a 2-minute span, with a 3-pointer and six consecutive free throws, before a dunk by Jeff Withey with 6:49 left got the Jayhawks within 44-40 – the closest they got since TCU scored the game’s first eight points.

After Tharpe missed a 3-pointer on a break, Adrick McKinney slung a pass inside to Green for layup. Kansas guard Ben McLemore, the Big 12’s top freshman scorer, missed an open 3-pointer before Green had a three-point play to stretch the lead back to 49-40 for TCU (10-12, 1-8).

”I said this from day one, we need to focus on what’s in the locker room,” said first-year coach Trent Johnson, whose team has already had three season-ending injuries. ”You’re never as bad as people say you are.”

On this night, they were good enough to beat the team that has won or shared 12 of the league’s 16 titles.

The Jayhawks, coming off a loss four days earlier against Oklahoma State, had played 264 games in a row since January 2006 without consecutive losses, the longest active streak in NCAA Division I.

Against TCU, the Jayhawks looked nothing like the Big 12’s best team.

”It was the worst team that Kansas ever put on the floor, since Dr. Naismith was there,” coach Bill Self said. ”I think he had some bad teams when he lost to Topeka YMCA and things like that in the first couple years. But for the first half, there hasn’t been a team play worse than that offensively.”

Kansas already had six turnovers and missed its first four shots before finally scoring 7:17 into the game, on Ben McLemore’s bounce pass to Jamari Traylor for a layup that made it 8-2.

The Jayhawks didn’t get closer before halftime, when they trailed 22-13. Even after scoring seven points in a row over a 2 1/2-minute span – one point more than they scored the rest of the half.

”We knew going in that we would have to play extremely well, offensively, defensively, extremely hard, and they were going to have to help us out,” Johnson said. ”When I said help us, obviously they missed a lot of shots they probably would make.”

Kansas shot a season-low 30 percent from the field (18 of 61) and had its lowest-scoring game since also scoring 55 in an NCAA tournament loss to UCLA on March 24, 2007.

TCU kept the Jayhawks in the game making only 5-of-12 free throws in a nearly 2-minute span before Elijah Johnson’s 3-pointer got Kansas within 56-50 with just under a minute left. Johnson added another one from long range with 34 seconds left but that wasn’t enough.

Nate Butler Lind had 10 points for TCU. Connell Crossland had eight points and 15 rebounds.

McLemore led Kansas with 15 points, while Withey had 12 points and Tharpe 11.

There was a record sellout crowd of 7,412 fans in the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, a large portion of them loud Jayhawks fans cheering on their team coming off the 85-80 loss Saturday that ended their nation’s-best 18-game winning streak and a 33-game winning streak at Allen Fieldhouse.

But when this game ended, they were filing out of the arena while TCU students stormed the court to celebrate the Frogs’ first-ever win over a Top 5 team in 21 tries.

Green’s 3-pointer made it 20-6 before the only Kansas spurt of the first half that could have been more if not for missed free throws.

McLemore made two free throws, and after Green missed another shot from long range, Kevin Young made a layup before Withey blocked a shot. But the Jayhawks then went to the free throw line on three consecutive possessions – Young twice, and Travis Releford once – and made only one of two freebies each time while getting within 20-13.

— Associated Press —

Markel Brown let out a roar. Marcus Smart did a cart-wheel and a back flip.

Travis Ford exhaled for the first time all game.

After establishing a big first-half lead, Oklahoma State watched it all melt away Saturday. But in one of the rare instances of a team refusing to lose at intimidating Allen Fieldhouse, Brown and Smart managed to hold things together down the stretch against second-ranked Kansas.

Together, they helped the Cowboys pull out an 85-80 victory that ended the Jayhawks’ nation-leading 18-game winning streak – and their 33-game streak at the Phog, too.

”We just beat one of the top teams in the country, and a great team at that,” said Smart, who had seven of his 25 points in the closing minutes. ”It’s hard for teams to come into their home court and get a victory. We’re one of the few teams that have done it. We couldn’t believe it.”

That may account for his impromptu gymnastics.

”I was so ecstatic about the victory,” the freshman said, ”it just came to me to do it.”

Brown finished with 28 points for the Cowboys (15-5, 5-3 Big 12), who hadn’t beaten a top-5 team on the road since knocking off the Jayhawks on Jan. 2, 1958.

Oklahoma State stunned the Jayhawks by building a 14-point lead in the first half, but Kansas had pulled ahead 64-60 on a 3-pointer by Naadir Tharpe midway through the second half.

The Jayhawks still led by six when Phil Forte hit a 3-pointer from the wing with 4:15 left to begin a 13-2 charge, allowing Oklahoma State to seize control.

The Cowboys’ stretched the lead to 77-69 with 50 seconds remaining, but the Jayhawks (19-2, 7-1) managed to play savvy defense and take advantage of a couple missed free throws. Andrew White III’s 3-pointer made it 78-75, and his free throw made it 78-76 with 36 seconds left in the game.

Forte, an 89-percent foul shooter, made two at the line to restore a cushion, and White answered with two of his own. Smart added a free throw, and Johnson’s layup cut the Cowboys’ lead to 81-80.

Forte calmly made two more free throws with 7.9 seconds remaining, and Johnson turned the ball over near mid-court before Kansas could even get up a tying 3-point attempt. Forte got ahold of the ball and laid it in at the buzzer to punctuate the victory.

”This place here, it’s one of the greatest environments in college basketball, against a great basketball team,” said Ford, who had been 1-5 in his coaching career against Kansas. ”We figured a way out to score a few points. Really proud of our effort.”

Forte finished with 11 points for the Cowboys, all of them in the second half.

Ben McLemore had 23 points to lead Kansas. Kevin Young added 12 and Jeff Withey had 10 as the Jayhawks lost at home to Oklahoma State for the first time since Feb. 8, 1989.

”We haven’t played good in three weeks or whatever,” said Jayhawks coach Bill Self, who lost for only eighth time in 165 games at Allen Fieldhouse. ”When you don’t play well, you have to defend and rebound, and we didn’t do that worth a crap today. We got what we deserved.”

Johnson’s turnover in the closing seconds was the 16th of the game for the sloppy Jayhawks. They also had 16 earlier in the week, when they struggled to get past West Virginia.

”We don’t have a guard,” Self said despondently. ”We don’t have a point guard.”

Having one sure would have helped in the first half.

That’s when the Cowboys took control with a 19-3 run, taking advantage of the Jayhawks’ lousy offense while getting the ball in the hands of Brown, who had 11 points during the surge.

”We had to come out, punch them in the mouth and not let the crowd get into it,” Brown said.

By the time Brown was fouled by Johnson and converted the three-point play with 10:58 left in the half, Oklahoma State had a 26-12 lead – the largest by anybody against the Jayhawks all season.

Kansas eventually went on an 11-3 run of its own to get back into the game, but Brown delivered another 3-pointer out of a timeout and Oklahoma State managed to maintain a 40-34 lead at the break.

Brown finished the first half with 22 points, just two off his season high. The junior guard was 7 of 10 from the field, 5 of 7 from the arc and even had a couple assists.

Brown hit another 3 out of halftime before Kansas finally started to execute.

McLemore led the way with 11 points during a 16-4, momentum-changing run. Twice he finished off alley-oops from Johnson, and his lay-in with 13:23 left gave Kansas a 50-47 lead.

Smart and Brown refused to let the Cowboys wilt, though.

Smart, who considered Kansas before signing with the Cowboys, scored back-to-back baskets, and Forte finally scored after missing his first eight field-goal attempts. Brown then hit his seventh 3-pointer, pulling Oklahoma State within 59-58 with just over 8 minutes left in the game.

Forte added his first 3 moments later, and Michael Cobbins followed up a miss by Forte with a massive dunk that allowed the Cowboys to regain a 67-66 lead with 3:45 remaining.

”They got the best of us, definitely, on offensive rebounds,” Withey said.

Le’Bryan Nash, who had struggled all gam, beat the shot clock with a jumper with 2:40 left that gave Oklahoma State a 69-68 lead. And despite some tense moments down the stretch, they did enough on defense and at the foul line to hang on for a signature victory.

”It’s a big win, winning at Kansas. That’s one of the biggest wins of our season right now,” Nash said. ”It was a good win, but we still want more.”

— Associated Press —

Kansas senior Jeff Withey and redshirt freshman Ben McLemore have been named to the 12-person Oscar Robertson Trophy National Player of the Year Midseason Watch List by the United States Basketball Writers Association of America (USBWA), the organization announced Thursday.

The USBWA also released its Wayman Tisdale Award National Freshman of the Year Watch List on Thursday and McLemore was among the 12 players named. The St. Louis, Mo., guard is the only player named to both watch lists. Kansas and Indiana are the only schools to have two players on the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Year list.

“Ben and Jeff are having solid seasons to date and are in the position to have great years only if we continue to win in our league and play well,” Kansas head coach Bill Self said.

Named to the Sporting News Mid-Season All-American team Jan. 15, McLemore leads Kansas in scoring at 16.1 points per game, which leads all Big 12 freshmen and ranks second overall in the conference. The Jan. 14 Big 12 Player of the Week and two-time conference rookie of the week, McLemore leads the Big 12 in free throw percentage (86.7) and is second in three-point field goal percentage (45.1). He has a team-high 37 three-pointers made and is second on the team with 24 steals. A Wooden Award Mid-Season Top 25 honoree, McLemore has five games with 20 or more points this in 2012-13, including a 33-point effort in Kansas’ 97-89 overtime win against Iowa State.

If the season ended today, McLemore’s 16.1 scoring average would break the Kansas freshman scoring average record of 14.6 points per game set by Jayhawk legend Danny Manning in 1985.

“Being named to both lists is pretty cool,” McLemore said. “There is no way I could get these (honors) without my teammates and coaches. We have a lot of work to do to reach our goals of winning a conference title and doing well in the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.”

Withey leads Kansas in rebounding at 8.3 rebounds per game and has seven double-doubles this season. Both statistics rank third in the Big 12. The San Diego, Calif., center leads the league in blocked shots at 4.3 per game, which is third nationally. Also Wooden Award Mid-Season Top 25 and the 2012 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, Withey is scoring 13.1 points per outing and his 86 blocked shots this season are more than six Big 12 teams.

Withey, who set the Big 12 and Kansas single-season blocked shot record last year with 140, including an NCAA Tournament-record 31, has 251 career blocked shots to date. He is seven away from the Kansas record of 258 held by Greg Ostertag (1992-95) and 13 from the Big 12 all-time record of 264 by Chris Mihm of Texas (1998-2000).

“I’m honored to be named and with Ben it’s a reflection of how our team is doing more than what Ben and I are doing,” Withey said.

No. 2/1 Kansas (19-1, 7-0) will host Oklahoma State (14-5, 4-3) on Saturday, Feb. 2, at 3 p.m. on the Big 12 Television Network. Kansas’ 18-game winning streak leads NCAA Division I and its 33 game home-court winning streak is the second-longest nationally.

— KU Sports Information —

Travis Releford and Jeff Withey both scored 15 points and No. 2 Kansas nearly relinquished a double-digit lead before beating West Virginia 61-56 on Monday night to extend the nation’s longest winning streak to 18 games.

Kansas (19-1, 7-0 Big 12) shot 54 percent from the field in the first-ever meeting between the schools. The Jayhawks have held their last six opponents under 60 points.

Ben McLemore added 13 points for Kansas, which is in the middle of a stretch of six of nine games on the road.

Aaric Murray had 17 points and Juwan Staten added 14 for the Mountaineers (9-11, 2-5), who fell to 0-4 against ranked opponents this season.

West Virginia used several steals to trim a 15-point deficit to eight at halftime but never took the lead in the second half.

Staten scored three straight baskets, including a jumper that pulled the Mountaineers within 48-46 with 10:19 left. But they fell silent over the next 3 minutes.

McLemore, Kansas’ leading scorer who sat on the bench for most of the first half in foul trouble, hit a layup and made two free throws on the next trip down the court during a 7-0 run that put the Jayhawks ahead 55-46 with 7:33 left.

West Virginia never recovered. The Mountaineers managed just four field goals over the final 10 minutes.

West Virginia coach Bob Huggins could have picked up a $25,000 bonus for a regular-season win over Kansas, something that was included in a contract extension signed in November.

But the Mountaineers shot just 37 percent and Huggins fell to 0-5 all-time against the Jayhawks.

Without any players averaging in double-figure scoring for the season, Huggins has jumbled his lineups this season to try to come up with size matchups and points production.

Lately, not much has worked.

West Virginia has lost five of six games. With 11 games left in the regular season, the Mountaineers are in jeopardy of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time under Huggins, their sixth-year coach.

Freshman Eron Harris, who led West Virginia in scoring at nearly 16 points over the last three games, was limited to two points on 0-of-4 shooting.

Kansas held West Virginia without a field goal over the game’s first 7 minutes. Withey, who had a 25-pound weight disadvantage to West Virginia’s Deniz Kilicli, scored eight of Kansas’ first 14 points and he reached double figures midway through the half.

The Jayhawks twice built a 15-point lead before getting sloppy, and West Virginia trimmed the deficit to 38-30 at halftime.

— Associated Press —

Jeff Withey made life miserable for Oklahoma in just about every way possible.

Blocked shots? The Jayhawks’ 7-footer had four of them.

Steals? Three of those, too.

He also had 13 points and nine rebounds to polish off his afternoon, helping the third-ranked Jayhawks to a 67-54 victory on Saturday, their nation-leading 17th in a row.

Withey even had an assist when he fed Travis Releford in transition for an easy basket.

”He was terrific. Jeff played great,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. ”The mistakes we made in the first half, he erased a lot of them, which led to points. We didn’t do much offensively at all, but we got easy baskets off his defense when we got out and ran.”

Withey got out and ran, too.

Late in the game, Releford returned the favor by coming up with a steal and pushing the ball to Naadir Tharpe, who hit the 7-footer on the fast break for a dunk that helped to seal the game.

”I can think of better options than him leading the break,” Self said with a smile, ”but the way we played today, he may have been as good as our guards.”

Ben McLemore added 18 points and Releford finished with 10 for Kansas (18-1, 6-0 Big 12), which struggled much of the way offensively but still won their 33rd straight at Allen Fieldhouse to match the fourth-longest home winning streak in school history.

”We just couldn’t get to a point where we could threaten them down the stretch,” said Sooners coach Lon Kruger, whose team trailed 29-21 at the break and never could trim the lead.

Romero Osby and Amath M’Baye scored 12 points each, and Steven Pledger added 10, as the Sooners (13-5, 4-2) lost their 10th straight to the Jayhawks dating to 2006.

They haven’t won at the Phog since beating then-No. 6 Kansas during the 1993 season.

”They’ve got terrific athletes on the perimeter, a big shot-blocker inside, guys who are very unselfish,” Kruger said. ”They play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”

It was the 14th time in 19 games that Kansas held an opponent to 60 points or less, including the past five Big 12 foes. The Sooners had been averaging close to 72 points in league play, but couldn’t manage it by shooting just 35 percent from the field.

”Kansas is very, very good,” Kruger said matter-of-factly, ”and we have to play much better than we did today to compete with them.”

It was the 800th game played at Allen Fieldhouse, just down the Interstate 70 from Kemper Arena in Kansas City, where 25 years ago the Jayhawks beat the Sooners for the national title.

Neither team looked Final Four-worthy in the first half, though.

The Jayhawks were 1 of 6 from beyond the arc and committed eight turnovers, three by Releford. So even when Kansas managed to build a lead, going up 24-14 on McLemore’s putback with 5:30 left in the first half, the Jayhawks couldn’t establish too much separation.

Oklahoma didn’t do a whole lot to help itself, either.

The Sooners got within 29-21 at halftime on a 3-pointer by Pledger, but they still shot just 28 percent from the field. Their 21 points were a season low for any half.

”We did some good things defensively in the first half,” Self said.

Things didn’t change much for Oklahoma after the break. Osby missed the Sooners’ first five shots, and their first field goal didn’t come until M’Baye’s jumper at the 16:14 mark.

Osby admitted he was shaken by Withey, who kept hounding him everywhere on the floor.

”He does that with everybody. He makes it really tough, especially going to the basket,” Osby said. ”You try to get him off the floor with pump fakes and he just stays down, stays down. … He always bothers people, but I think I kind of let it get in my head a little bit.”

Kansas kept its lead hovering around 10 points for much of the second half. Elijah Johnson’s driving layup for his first basket made it 37-27, and his 3-pointer with 11:35 remaining gave the Jayhawks a 42-31 lead, matching their biggest of the game.

The Jayhawks had pushed it to 45-39 on McLemore’s 3-pointer with 4:10 left when the Sooners went on their last run. Consecutive baskets by Buddy Hield and M’Baye trimmed the lead to 10, but Johnson’s 3-pointer and another by McLemore put the game away.

”The first half was pretty sloppy as a whole. The second half we got it going, we started rebounding better,” Withey said. ”We got a couple steals and that led to easy baskets.”

— Associated Press —

Former Kansas basketball standout Mario Chalmers will have his No. 15 jersey retired at halftime of the ESPN College Gameday Texas at Kansas men’s basketball game Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013.

Chalmers was the 2008 Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player on Kansas’ NCAA National Championship team, but is most widely known for his game-tying three-pointer in the title game in KU’s 75-68 overtime win against Memphis.

“Mario definitely deserves to have his jersey hung,” Kansas head coach Bill Self said. “He was the most outstanding player in a 2008 Final Four, which featured four number one seeds. He was as clutch of a player as we’ve ever had here. He was a guy that seemed like the bigger the stage, the brighter he shined. He had an orneriness and toughness that a lot people didn’t see because they saw the smile. He was an assassin on the court.”

Chalmers’ lists of accolades go much deeper than the aforementioned. The Anchorage, Alaska, native was the 2007 co-Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore and an All-Big 12 Second Team selection during his junior year. He appeared on the league’s all-conference teams all three seasons he was a Jayhawk, including every Big 12 All-Defensive squad.

Besides his 2008 Final Four MOP, he was named to the Big 12 Championship All-Tournament team in 2007 and 2008, the second of which was bestowed on him after he scored a career-high 30 points against Texas in the title game.

Statistically, Chalmers led the Big 12 in steals with 97 in 2007 and 97 again in 2008, which are Kansas single-season records. His 89 steals in 2006 are a KU freshman record and his 283 steals from 2006-08 are second on the school’s career chart list, trailing only Darnell Valentine’s 336 from 1978-81. His 1,341 three-year Kansas point total rank 27th on the KU all-time scoring list and he also is among the school career records in three-pointers made (7th, 180), three-pointers attempted (10th, 430) and assists (14th, 420).

During Chalmers’ three seasons at Kansas, the Jayhawks were 95-16 (85.6 percent) with three Big 12 regular-season titles, three Big 12 postseason championships, two NCAA Elite Eight appearances, one Final Four and one NCAA National Championship.

“Mario cares about winning,” Self said. “Points are great and steals are great and he was the best stealer of the ball we’ve ever had here, but he cares about winning. Guys that play here understand that winning trumps everything and he understood that. Brandon (Rush) understood that, Shady (Darrell Arthur), Sherron (Collins), Sasha (Kaun), Darnell (Jackson), Russell (Robinson), they all understood that. That is what made that (2008) team so cool. There were games when Mario would take four shots in a game and I’d say, ‘shoot the ball’ and he’d say ‘Why? Everybody else is making shots.’ It was such a fun team to be around, but he was clutch. Everybody throughout his tenure here would ask me who’s our go-to guy and in our players’ minds there was never a doubt who our go-to guy was. There are not many guys out there, regardless of the school, that have held that distinction. Mario will be remembered for the shot but I will remember him more for being a winner.”

Selected 34th overall in the 2008 NBA Draft by the Minnesota Timberwolves, Chalmers was later traded to the Miami Heat. A two-time NBA Finals competitor, he joined elite company when his Miami Heat team won the 2012 NBA title. Chalmers joined former KU great Clyde Lovellette in becoming only the second Jayhawk to win both an NCAA National Championship and an NBA title. Like Chalmers, Lovellette, who was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in November 2012, was a Most Outstanding Player (MOP) when KU won the 1952 NCAA Tournament. He later won three NBA titles with the Minneapolis Lakers in 1954 and the Boston Celtics in 1963 and 1964.

“I’m proud of the career he has had since he left here,” Self said. “Being a world champion and a national champion, there’s not too many people that could have that distinction. He was an absolute treat to coach. He had great teammates and they all liked each other. It was such a fun time to be around. We’re all so proud of what he accomplished.”

Chalmers becomes the second Jayhawk in the Bill Self era to have his jersey retired. Former KU consensus All-America honoree Wayne Simien, who played at Kansas from 2002-05, had his No. 23 jersey retired during the 2010-11 season.

Becoming a near-yearly tradition in Lawrence, ESPN College Gameday will originate from Allen Fieldhouse for the fifth time in the eight-year history of the show.

— KU Sports Information —