Mykhailiuk buzzer-beater downs K-State, 90-88
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LAWRENCE, Kan. – Junior guard Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk drove the lane and laid in the game-winner as time expired to push No. 3/2 Kansas past Kansas State, 90-88, as the Jayhawks claimed round one of the 2017 Dillions Sunflower Showdown Tuesday night inside Allen Fieldhouse. The buzzer-beater gave KU its 13th-straight victory and moved its all-time series edge over KSU to 192-93.
With the game tied at 88-88 and just 5.5 seconds remaining in regulation, the Jayhawks (13-1, 2-0 Big 12) found themselves with a final possession and opportunity to put away the pesky squad out of Kansas State (12-2, 1-1 Big 12). After Devonte’ Graham found Mykhailiuk near midcourt, the guard out of Ukraine saw nothing but open court in front of him, taking it the final 47 feet to the bucket, where he laid it in before the final buzzer sounded. The ball kissed off the side rim, off the backboard and through the bottom of the net to hand the Jayhawks their 11th-straight home victory over their in-state rival.
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk drains a buzzer-beater
to defeat Kansas State.
Mykhailiuk’s bucket brought an end to a stellar second half for the junior who scored all 11 of his points in the final frame, which included a 2-of-3 mark from beyond the arc. He was joined by four other Jayhawks to score in double figures, including freshman guard Josh Jackson, who led all scorers with 22 points, tying a season high, and senior forward Landen Lucas who added a career-high 18 points and brought down 12 rebounds to tally his second double-double in as many games.
Though Kansas came away with the win, it was anything but easy as the Wildcats refused to go away for the full length of the game. The Jayhawks’ now-47-game Allen Fieldhouse winning streak didn’t seem to intimidate their Sunflower State rivals as the Wildcats got out of the gates quickly. The visitors opened a nine-point lead just eight minutes into the contest with the help of nine makes on their first 13 attempts and four 3-pointers.
After netting a season-low four points in his team’s conference opener at TCU last Saturday, Jackson showed no effects of a hangover as he helped the Jayhawks stay within arm’s reach of the Wildcats. The freshman out of Detroit put in 16 of KU’s first 26 points, including a pair of rim-rattling dunks that brought the capacity Allen Fieldhouse crowd to a frenzy.
As well as the Wildcats shot at the start of the second half, Kansas matched it with a torrid shooting stretch of its own to close the frame. After converting on only three of its first nine attempts from the field, KU posted a blistering 17-of-23 (73.9 percent) clip over the final 16 minutes to fly by the Wildcats before the halftime buzzer. In the final 6:20 of the half, Frank Mason III connected on four 3-pointers and was joined by Jackson and Graham, who each shot one in from long range, to turn what once was a nine-point deficit into a 10-point KU advantage at the half, 52-42.
The double-digit halftime deficit didn’t last long as Kansas State started the second half on an 11-4 run, a stretch that prompted a timeout from KU head coach Bill Self less than three minutes into the half.
The quick talk did the trick as Kansas regained control with help from Mykhailiuk. He answered KSU’s early second-half run with a 3-pointer followed by a trio of free throws. Lagerald Vick added a trey of his own to give his squad a 70-62 lead with just over 12 minutes remaining.
Kansas State again refused to go down without a fight as the Wildcats clawed back over the next four minutes, eventually bringing the score back to level at 75-75 on a jumper from sophomore Dean Wade at the 8:34 mark.
Both teams suffered from scoring droughts that lasted more than three minutes in the waning minutes of the match. Though the Jayhawks never surrendered the lead down the final stretch, their lead never stretched to more than four over the final four minutes of regulation.
KSU’s Wesley Iwundu pulled the game level for the ninth and final time on his jumper with 50 seconds to play. Both teams had possessions to pull ahead in the final minute. However, neither side could pull ahead until Mykhailiuk’s driving bucket to end the game.
Kansas ended the game shooting 53.2 percent (33-of-62) but allowed the visitors a 50.8 percent (31-of-61) clip, marking the first opponent in 30 games to shoot better than 50 percent from the field.
In addition to Jackson, Lucas and Mykhailiuk’s double-digit efforts, Mason III added 15 points, his 13th game in double-figures this year. Graham contributed 13 points and tied Jackson for the team lead with six assists.
UP NEXT
Kansas returns to Allen Fieldhouse to face Texas Tech on Saturday night at 6:15 p.m. Central on ESPN2. The Red Raiders are fresh off a overtime victory over No. 7 West Virginia.
GAME NOTES
KU STARTERS (CONSECUTIVE / SEASON / CAREER STARTS)
Sr. G Frank Mason III (88 / 14 / 91)
Jr. G Devonte’ Graham (21 / 14 / 50)
Jr. G Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk (4 / 4 / 10)
Fr. G Josh Jackson (14 / 14 / 14)
Sr. C Landen Lucas (3 / 8 / 41)
SERIES INFORMATION
• Kansas leads the all-time series with Kansas State, 192-93, including the last four games … Kansas is 47-18 against K-State inside Allen Fieldhouse, including 10-straight home victories in the series … During Big 12 play, Kansas is 36-5 against the Wildcats … Bill Self is 27-5 against K-State while the head coach at Kansas … It is the closest margin of victory for Kansas in the Dillons Sunflower Showdown since an 81-79 overtime victory on Jan. 30, 2010 in Manhattan.
ATTENDANCE: 16,300 (250th-consecutive sellout)
KANSAS NOTES
• Kansas has won 50-straight games at home, including 47 inside Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhawks improve to 8-0 in Allen Fieldhouse this season, 751-109 all-time and 213-9 under Bill Self.
• The Jayhawks played in front of a sold-out Allen Fieldhouse crowd for 250th-straight game on Tuesday night. The streak dates back to the 2001-02 season. Kansas has led its league in attendance for the last 30 seasons, dating back to the 1986-87 season.
• Kansas now has 2,199 wins in program history (2,199-837; .724).
• Kansas is 13-1 or better for the second-straight season and seventh time in the Bill Self era.
• KU’s 13th-straight wins ties for the ninth-longest during the Bill Self era.
• Kansas State entered Tuesday holding opponents to 58.8 points per game as KU’s 90 total points became the most surrendered by the Wildcats this season.
• Kansas went into halftime with a 52-42 lead. It became the fourth time Kansas scored 50 points in a half this season.
• Kansas used a 12-2 run last in the first half before going into halftime with a 10-point lead (52-42). The Jayhawks ended the first half making eight of its last nine shots from the field.
• It is the fifth time in 14 games that Kansas has had five double-figure scorers in the same game.
• KU scored 16 second-chance points to K-State’s 10 second-chance points.
• Despite turning the ball over six more times than Kansas State (15-9), Kansas outscored the Wildcats in points off turnovers, 19-17.
STREAKING
Kansas maintains these active streaks, all of which lead the nation:
• 12 Big 12 Conference regular-season titles
• 27 NCAA Tournament appearances
• 27 seasons with 20 wins
• 50 wins at home, including 47 in Allen Fieldhouse
• 149 weeks ranked in AP Top 25
OPPONENT NOTES
• The Wildcats scored the most points by an opponent in Allen Fieldhouse this season (88).
• KSU’s 50.8 percent shooting percentage from the field is a season high for a KU opponent this season.
• Despite the loss, K-State recovered from a 10-point halftime deficit and a 12-point second-half deficit. Both are the largest overcome by a KU opponent this season.
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
Senior G Frank Mason III
• Scored 15 points on 4-of-5 shooting from 3-point range with four assists in 39 minutes.
• Started in his 88th-straight game.
• Scored his first 12 points from 3-point range.
• Big 12-leading season scoring average increased to 19.8 points per game.
• Finished the night with 1,405 career points.
Junior G Devonte’ Graham
• Finished with 13 points on 4-of-9 shooting with a team-high six assists in 37 minutes.
• Started in his 50th career game.
• Made a 3-pointer at the buzzer before halftime, giving KU a 10-point (52-42) cushion at the break.
• Passed Tyshawn Taylor for 19th-place on the 3-point field goals made list with 123 career treys.
Freshman G Josh Jackson
• Tied a career-high 22 points on 9-of-15 shooting with nine rebounds and six assists in 32 minutes.
• Reached 20 points for the third time this season.
• Scored the first points of the game on a dunk on KU’s first possession. Jackson has scored KU’s first points in seven of 14 games this season (K-State, Davidson, UMKC, Georgia, UAB, Siena, Duke).
• Made his first five shots attempts from the field, including two dunks, to reach 11 points by the 9:52 mark of the first half.
• Scored 16 points on 7-of-8 shooting with five rebounds and five assists in the first half.
Junior G Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
• Made a buzzer-beating fast break layup at the end of regulation to give Kansas the 90-88 victory.
• Finished with 11 points and two assists in 22 minutes of action.
• Started in his fourth-straight game.
• Made 2-of-3 from beyond the arc. Has made at least one 3-pointer in 13 of 14 games this season.
• Father, Iurii Mykhailiuk, was in attendance, traveling over 5,500 miles from Ukraine to watch his son play.
Senior C Landen Lucas
• Scored a career-high 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting with 12 rebounds in 28 minutes. Grabbed seven first-half rebounds.
• Finished with his sixth career and second-straight double-double. Also his third-straight game with a double-figure rebounding total.
• Has a combined 37 points and 41 rebounds in the last three games.
• Now has 503 career rebounds.
QUOTES
Kansas head coach Bill self
On Svi Mykhailiuk’s buzzer-beater:
“Svi (Mykhailiuk) made a great play that won the game for us and he showed some athletic ability there. I know K-State thought he walked, so I’m anxious to watch the tape to see if he did walk at the end, but it wasn’t called. We certainly feel very fortunate to have won. We probably didn’t deserve to win tonight, but certainly we’ll take it and feel fortunate about it.”
On the Wildcats fighting back and how good the Big 12 is from top to bottom:
“I thought they played great. We didn’t do anything to keep them out of rhythm. They really didn’t score off their actions, they scored off their players. We actually defended their actions decently, but their players just scored on our guys. But when you play at home, without being negative, you get two steals playing at home — that tells you just how inactive we are. So there are a lot of things we have to improve on. We certainly haven’t performed in our first two games in league play and we weren’t great in Vegas, so that’s five bad halves in a row. But hopefully we can turn it around and realize what we’re not doing and decide we want to get better as a group collectively.”
On Landen Lucas, Josh Jackson and Mykhailiuk’s play tonight:
“I thought Landen (Lucas) did some good things. Josh (Jackson) was good the first half, then he really didn’t do much the second half. Of course, he got a technical. I thought it was a soft technical, but still, you can’t say, ‘That’s a foul,’ to an official. And he’s got a reputation now, so he has to keep his mouth shut. But we’ve got some good individual players that perform well in stretches, but just as a team we didn’t collectively and that wasn’t very good. We have to be tougher, but these are the same guys we’ve been saying all along that have to get tougher, and we haven’t gotten tough yet. So I’m hoping we have it in us, but we’re certainly not near as tough as what we were last year.”
On another tough game coming up Saturday against Texas Tech:
“Texas Tech is good. They should have won in Ames (Iowa). They controlled that game in Ames the entire time and they controlled the tempo. The thing about it is, when you have quick guys on the perimeter, you should be able to create some pace. And we don’t create any. Frank (Mason III) and Devonte’ (Graham) don’t do anything to create any pace. We have to somehow get those guys to be the same guards they were last year, at least on the defensive end. But to get two steals in a game in which there were that many possessions, that’s pretty soft on the defensive end.”
Kansas freshman guard Josh Jackson
On the technical foul that he was charged with:
“I don’t really know. All I said was, ‘That’s a foul’ and next thing I know I’m hit with a technical, but you learn from it and move on. There’s nothing I can really do about it now.”
On what he was thinking during Svi Mykhailiuk’s final play of the game:
“Rebound; trying to get down the court in case he missed it. Just try and get the ball and tip it in pretty much.”
On his aggressiveness in this game as opposed to the TCU game:
“The other night I battled with foul trouble a little bit but definitely tonight I just felt like I was going to come out trying to bring energy into the game, attack the basket a little more and it worked out.”
On Coach Self encouraging him to control his emotions after his third technical of the season:
“(He said to) Just to focus on the next play. There have been a couple of times where I get a technical foul for what I think is really nothing, but some refs are different. Some will give you a technical for a lot less than others will. But I would say you’ve just got to move on.”
Kansas junior guard Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk
On whether or not his game-winning play was Coach Self’s plan:
“No. First of all I was supposed to throw it back to Frank (Mason III) or Devonte’ (Graham) and what happened was that one of the K-State players was guarding D-tae (Graham) so he had to throw the ball back to me and I saw the open lane.”
On almost falling in during the last play:
“I tried to throw it to Frank, but he was not open so I almost stepped out over there.”
On whether or not he traveled during the last play:
“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”
On seeing the replay of the potential travel in the final play:
“I think it was a good basket.”
On his teammates mobbing him at the end of the game to celebrate:
“It was a great moment.”
On his thoughts while driving to the basket in the final play of the game:
“I was just trying to make a layup because it was an open lane and there were like four seconds left, so I was just trying to get to the lane.”
Kansas senior forward Landen Lucas
On his 18-point, 12-rebound game:
“I felt good, (it was) just another step forward and making progress each and every game. Coming off the TCU game I wanted to make sure I came out and rebounded again. When I focus on that there’s so much attention on our guards. They’re so good that it’s easy to score off of them and I was able to take advantage of that and get some points tonight.”
On what he was thinking during Mykhailiuk’s final play of the game:
“I wanted him to throw that alley-oop to me you. He made it so it was cool.”
On the difference between this K-State team and past ones that haven’t been able to come back from such large leads:
“Well, it’s a rivalry game so we knew that they were going to fight and not give up at any point in time. They kept fighting but a lot of it is on us. We never put together multiple stops when we were up and that’s what we developed last year. We’ve got to develop it again this year; when we get a comfortable lead and get three or four stops in a row and put it out of reach. We didn’t do that tonight so some of it’s on us, but they also never stopped fighting.”
On what he thought of Mykhailiuk’s last play and the celebration:
“It was a great play by Svi because like he said, it wasn’t exactly what we drew up but he improvised and made it happen. And as far as the celebration, it was kind of dangerous (so) I kept myself out of there. I’m glad everyone came out okay and nobody got hurt.”
Kansas State head coach Bruce Weber
On the final play of the game:
“I didn’t want (Kansas senior guard Frank Mason III) to beat us. I’ve watched him too much over the years and I saw him against Duke. I said, ‘We’ve got to take it out of his hands.’ Obviously, the other kid (Svi Mykhailiuk) makes a good play and he makes a tough shot. We battled our hearts out. I thought we came prepared and shot the ball very well to start the game, but this is why they win here; they turn it up at a certain point. We didn’t deal with it very well in the first half, we got a little stagnant. In the second half we settled down but we could’ve controlled a little more, made sure we got the ball inside and taken advantage of some of their weaknesses. I’m just sad for our kids because they battled so hard, I thought we would have it. It was either (Kansas State senior forward Wesley Iwundu) to the hoop or (Kansas State sophomore forward Dean Wade) shooting it, and we got a great look and the rebound, we just didn’t make the play at the end.”
On the referees’ no-call on the final play:
“I think everybody knows here what happened. We had our chance, they made the play and they got the win.”
On what he learned about his team:
“I think we learned about ourselves at Colorado State, at Maryland and at Boston College. We’re a good team and we’ll keep battling back. I told the team it’s done and over with, we’ve got to worry about Saturday. It’s a long season, (there is) a lot of good basketball left and a lot of good things can happen. They’ve got to come to our place, but before that there’s a whole bunch of games and we’ve got to get better.”
On his team’s focus down the stretch:
“The only disappointing thing was that first half. I thought we executed, which is what we talk about doing to win games. We gave up 12 points to Texas in the last four minutes the other night. We have a joke that you’ve got to stop the other team for all 30 seconds and end the game in stops. We had (Iwundu) and (Kansas State senior forward D.J. Johnson) in foul trouble and we got four-straight stops to give us a chance and we came down and made plays. We did it against Maryland except for the last two (plays) and hopefully we’ve figured some things out. It’s hard right now because we had a chance to do something special. We’ll give them a day off tomorrow, just (watch) video, to get their minds cleared. It’s hard without classes, but they probably need the break and we’ll get after it on Thursday.”
On his team’s next focus:
“We gave a heck of an effort. We’ve got a good group, I think they proved we belong. Now we’ve got to do it on Saturday and then Tuesday, that’s the key. I wrote on the board, ‘Success is not final and failure is not fatal.’ I told them we were going to win this game, but it’s not over then, it’s not final. We’ve got to keep winning on Saturday and then Tuesday and then next week. Now all the guys believe we’ve got to get better. Dean Wade is taking a nice step. We’ve got to be a little sharper, take care of the ball and make better decisions. Our defense has looked great — it didn’t look good today — but their defense allows 39 percent (field goal percentage) and we shot 50. I think we both shot 50 percent, which neither team has allowed this season. I’m proud of our guys. The last thing I wrote on the board was, ‘Let’s make January 3, 2017 a memorable moment that you will have for you the rest of your life and K-State fans will be proud to be a part of.’ We were close, but we didn’t get it done.”
Kansas State senior forward Wesley Iwundu
On the expectation of hearing a whistle on the last play:
“I was caught (up) in the moment. I pretty much didn’t see what was going on. It was a great play made to end the game.”
On his last possession:
“That was a great shot. We got what we wanted. We expected that. (It was a) Great shot by Dean. (Wade). He hits that nine times out of 10. It just happened to come off the front of the rim, but it was a great play. We’ll get it next time.”
On his last rebound:
“Yeah, I had my grips on it and it kind of just slipped out. The call went the other way and that was it.”
On takeaways from this game despite the loss:
“They’re the No. 3 (ranked) team in the country. We just gave the number No. 3 in the country a good game. So moving forward we’ve got to keep our heads high and focus on our part in this game. We played a great game today so we shouldn’t be upset with ourselves. Like I said, we’ve just got to keep moving on.”
On coming out of the locker room at halftime to battle back from the 10-point lead:
“I think we did a good job of staying poised. Playing in a place like this you can let the games get away too far from you. I think older guys, and even the younger guys, did a good job of keeping their poise and just coming out with some adjustments in the second half. We were off to a great start.”
Kansas State senior forward D.J. Johnson
On the expectation of hearing a whistle on the last play:
“I thought a call was going to be made but it wasn’t.”
On what was going on in the huddle having the game tied with 20 seconds left to play:
“For our possession, we already had things planned and the play drawn up for it. Like Wes (Iwundu) said, we had secured it well I thought.”
On having to adjust how to play based on foul calls:
“Coming in I know that I usually get a lot of fouls here and coming in I thought I’d be less aggressive. I thought that was key to a lot of their success in the first half and their bigs being a little less aggressive. We tried to turn it up the second half.”
On the difference in the way plays were called from the first to the second half:
“I thought the officiating crew did a good job with calls both ways as far as fouls (go).”
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