Kansas advanced to the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday with a 98-84 win over UCF. Although the Jayhawks led for over 30 minutes of action, the contest had plenty of momentum swings. It was a closely contested first half and KU battled to take a 13 point lead before UCF used a 17-3 run to take the lead. With the game tied, KU had the chance to attempt a potential game-winning shot but KJ Adams turned the ball over. In overtime, a Hunter Dickinson 3 gave KU an early advantage and the Jayhawks never fell behind after that. 

As a team, KU shot 45% from the field while UCF shot 46% from the field. Zeke Mayo led KU with 24 points and eight rebounds. His five 3s were one off a season high. Dickinson went for 23 points and 12 rebounds while AJ Storr (19 points) and Adams (15 points) rounded out the double-digit scorers. For just the second time in his KU career, Dajuan Harris fouled out.

Postgame, Bill Self met with reporters at the podium to discuss the game. Here’s everything the KU head coach said at the podium via the transcript provided by the Big 12.

On the game overall…

“Well, we’re happy we won. We didn’t play our best, but I think they had a lot to do with that. When we had a chance to kinda break the game open, we didn’t take advantage of it. But fortunately, Zeke and AJ both made shots and Hunt made three threes in the second half that were all huge, and we needed every one of them. That was not a very good defensive performance out there tonight.”

On AJ Storr’s performance and his play down the stretch…

“Well, I think I was told by a third party today, ‘I got a good feeling about AJ Storr’ and I actually agreed with him. Although we didn’t do anything different from a substitution deal, but he was obviously one of the better players in the game without question. We needed his offense without question, so he was big for us tonight. We don’t win the game without him.”