PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas (AP) — Of the six halves Kansas played on its three-game trip to the Bahamas, Jayhawks coach Bill Self thought only one of them was any good.

The other five, he thought, were ”crappy.”

That’s the bad news. The good news is his team got two wins anyway.

Perry Ellis scored 15 of his 19 points in the second half, Wayne Selden Jr. scored 14 and No. 2 Kansas survived a stiff challenge before beating Texas-El Paso 67-63 on Saturday night in the third-place game at the Battle 4 Atlantis.

Joel Embiid came off the bench to add nine points, seven blocked shots – all in the second half, and the most in a game by a Kansas reserve since at least 1995 – and six rebounds.

”We have a long ways to go to become a good basketball team,” Self said. ”And that’s not all bad, either. We rarely have great teams in November. But we’re not as good as we were 17, 18 days ago. So that’s a little frustrating that we’ve gone backwards. We didn’t play well at all over here.”

Naadir Tharpe added 11 for the Jayhawks (6-1), who never trailed. The Jayhawks won despite Andrew Wiggins being held to six points, nearly 10 below the freshman’s season average.

McKenzie Moore scored 15 for UTEP (4-4), including three free throws with 6.8 seconds remaining to get the Miners within three. Justin Crosgile scored 14 points and Vince Hunter added 10 the Miners, who held Kansas to 39 percent shooting.

”Let me just say that we got beat by a fine team tonight,” UTEP coach Tim Floyd said. ”And they’re going to do a lot of things, I think, in the NCAA tournament this year.”

It was the second straight night where Kansas saw a big early lead, 11-2 against Villanova and 15-2 against UTEP, evaporate and the game turn into a struggle.

The finish was frantic, with UTEP scoring 13 points in just over a minute and carving away most of a late 14-point Jayhawk lead, but Kansas had enough.

Barely, but enough.

And if UTEP had been better from the line, it might have been a different story – the Miners missed 10 of 24 tries from the stripe.

”I was real pleased with the effort,” Floyd said.

Kansas led by 15 in the second half, and after a series of UTEP rallies, the Jayhawks were still up by 14 following Ellis’ jumper from the right wing with 2:21 left.

It was 59-45 at that point. It was 18-8 UTEP the rest of the way, a far cry from how the Miners started the night.

On UTEP’s first possession, Floyd – who isn’t exactly shy about going against convention, with his box-and-one and triangle-and-two defenses on display often in the Bahamas – did something hardly ever seen anymore, especially at the start of games.

He stalled, though said afterward that it wasn’t a true stall, just a set with hopes of creating 3-on-2 mismatches or open drives.

Think the old North Carolina ”four corners,” or something akin to it, anyway. That’s what the Miners did in the opening minutes, running an average of 30.1 seconds off the 35-second shot clock on their first nine possessions. Simple logic, really – the fewer possessions Kansas had, the fewer chances it would have to score.

It only sort of worked.

After 5 1/2 minutes, Kansas had only two points.

In that same span, the Miners had zero points.

”It was different … but I thought we adjusted well,” Ellis said.

The Miners missed their first six shots and didn’t get on the board until 12:35 remained in the half, a drive by C.J. Cooper snapping an 0 for 6 start by UTEP and cutting Kansas’ lead to 7-2. By the time UTEP scored again, Kansas had already pushed the lead out to 15-2, running off eight straight. And along the way, UTEP ditched the ploy and just started playing.

That’s when it became a game, for really the first time. UTEP went on an 18-11 spurt, getting within 26-20 late in the half. Wiggins – who had been scoreless until then – scored six straight to give Kansas a 12-point lead with 1:30 left, and Selden’s acrobatic drive gave the Jayhawks a 34-25 lead at the break.

But UTEP hung around, all the way to the end.

”We didn’t want to leave here without getting better for the rest of the season,” Hunter said. ”I believe we did. I believe we got better, playing the No. 2 team in the country.”

— Associated Press —

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas (AP) — Ryan Arcidiacono had not made a shot all night. So naturally, he was Jay Wright’s choice on the play that wound up deciding Villanova’s fate.

And it was the right choice.

Arcidiacono’s 3-pointer with 10.1 seconds left put Villanova on top for good, and the Wildcats upset No. 2 Kansas 63-59 in the semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis on Friday night.

”We had a choice who we were going to run that for,” said Wright, the Villanova coach who’s now 4-1 in last five games against teams ranked in the top five. ”And we picked Ryan. I don’t think there’s a guy on our team who would doubt that. … Everybody just knows he lives for that. When we practice end of the game situations in practice, he always makes the shot.”

Sure enough, he delivered. Arcidiacono had missed all five of his previous shots, but made the one that counted – the only field goal for the Wildcats in the final 7 minutes.

”I thought I was wide open, so I just pulled the trigger,” Arcidiacono said.

Arcidiacono got it off in plenty of time, even as Kansas’ Perry Ellis – listed as 5 inches taller – charged his way.

”Almost,” Ellis said.

Darrun Hilliard and Dylan Ennis each scored 14 for Villanova (6-0), which meets Iowa in Saturday night’s championship game. JayVaughn Pinkston scored 13 and James Bell added 10 for the Wildcats.

Frank Mason scored 12 for Kansas (5-1). His three-point play with 34.2 seconds left gave Kansas its first lead in more than 25 minutes, but the Jayhawks couldn’t hold on in the final moments.

”It was not a pretty game,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. ”Certainly, I hate that it came down to one possession like that.”

Ellis scored 11, while Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid added 10 each for Kansas, which plays Texas-El Paso in the third-place game Saturday.

Villanova led 57-46 with just over seven minutes left, then got outscored 13-1 to lose the lead – and then found a way at the end to cap a wild night where one team would go on a run, then the other would follow.

It held true to the end, with the Wildcats having the last run.

Pinkston’s layup made it 36-26 early in the second half, before Kansas ran off eight unanswered points in a flash – four of them by Ellis – to get within two.

Villanova was undeterred.

The Wildcats answered with a 12-2 run, capped by Ennis’ 3-pointer with 12:44 remaining to give Villanova what was its biggest lead, 48-36. The margin was still 11 with 7:19 left, but the Jayhawks just kept coming. And after Villanova went more than 4 minutes without scoring, Kansas was back within 57-54 with plenty of time left.

Mason’s layin off a lob cut Villanova’s lead to one, and the converted ballroom serving as an arena this weekend was simply rocking. Kansas fans had filled the building, and they weren’t quiet.

That is, until Arcidiacono rendered them silent and gave Villanova a huge early win.

”He seemed like a tough kid to me,” Self said. ”Usually, in a game like this, the tough guy is the one making plays. It didn’t surprise me at all that he’s the one who took the shot.”

For the first 6 1/2 minutes, Villanova made nothing. Literally, outside of a couple free throws, nothing.

It was 11-2 Kansas out of the gate, and Villanova was looking wholly overmatched in the early going. The Wildcats missed their first seven shots, not getting anything from the field to drop until Hilliard – who had scored 12 by intermission, seven more than anyone from Kansas to that point – hit a 3-pointer with 13:14 remaining.

Just like that, everything changed.

Villanova scored 27 of the next 35 points over a stunning 12 1/2-minute stretch, turning that 11-2 deficit into a 29-19 lead, the last point coming when Arcidiacono made one of two free throws awarded after Self was protesting a bit too much with one of the referees during a time-out. The shot by Arcidiacono capped a 12-0 burst by the Wildcats.

It was his only point until the 3-pointer in the final moments.

Kansas went into the locker room down only 29-22. It could have been so much worse – after holding Villanova without a field goal for nearly seven minutes to start the game, the Jayhawks went the last eight minutes of the half without one of their own, going 0 for 7 from the floor with five turnovers during that dismal stretch.

Combined, the teams were 14 for 53 in the opening 20 minutes. Villanova shot 29 percent, Kansas 24 percent, but the Wildcats held a 28-15 rebounding edge in the half.

”We’re a long ways to go,” Self said. ”I love our talent, I love our players and all that stuff. But the thing is, there’s a difference between trying hard and actually competing. And we have to learn how to compete. And it’s not going to happen overnight.”

— Associated Press —