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Newell: Embiid's dominant stretch helps lift KU over Iowa State, 77-70 ↗

AMES, Iowa —The small lineup had kept No. 8 Iowa State close.

After a pair of DeAndre Kane free throws, the Cyclones trailed Kansas by five midway through the second half, and Hilton Coliseum fans started to amp up the noise sensing the chance at a comeback.

Dodd: No. 15 Kansas immune to Hilton Magic in 77-70 win at No. 8 Iowa State ↗

AMES, IOWA — Here it was, late in the second half, and Joel Embiid was giggling. Clapping and giggling. One clap, then two. Then a few more. In the midst of a scalding-hot atmosphere inside Hilton Coliseum, Embiid couldn’t stop smiling.

ESPN: No. 15 Kansas beats No. 8 Iowa State 77-70 ↗

AMES, Iowa -- Naadir Tharpe scored a career-high 23 points, freshman Andrew Wiggins had 17 points and 19 rebounds and No. 15 Kansas beat No. 8 Iowa State 77-70 on Monday night for its third straight win to open Big 12 play.

The Jayhawks (12-4, 3-0) handed the Cyclones their second consecutive loss after a 14-0 start.

Tait: FINAL: Kansas 77, Iowa State 70 ↗

The question entering Monday's massive game at Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa, was whether this young Kansas squad was ready to go on the road and into one of the most hostile arenas in the conference and stand tall enough to leave with a victory.

Thanks to the performance of one of the oldest players on the roster, the Jayhawks proved they were, 77-70, over No. 8 Iowa State.

Leaders: Tharpe’s big night keeps KU unbeaten in Big 12 ↗

He didn’t quite match Elijah Johnson’s 39-point outing of a year ago.

But Kansas University junior Naadir Tharpe continued a two-year tradition of scoring from the point guard position in Hilton Coliseum, exploding for a career-high 23 points in Monday’s 77-70 victory over Iowa State.

CJOnline Live Blog ↗

Box score ↗

OUR DAILY THREADS:

• The Mayor, Citizen Kane join growing list of liars
• OSU
• Duh

Nice to see the young ones keep fighting back. Think we learned even more tonight!

I am ecstatic about this win!

Best thing is that we learned how to hang onto the better part of an 11pt lead in a hostile environment from one half to the other.

Fortunate that ISU didn't hit many 3s, but our incredibly athletic defense really bothered them.

I'm going to enjoy this box score ↗, because its got yummy goodness: 5 blocks by Embiid, 19 rebounds for Wiggins and a career high scoring for Naadir. Starters played super for most of the game.

The only negative -- did we really have 24 turnovers??!!

Wigs was 100% to my liking. 19 rebounds? Sick!

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Beginning to look like HEM was right in his early assessment of Joel. He is rising to the level of dominance it will take for us to possibly make the deep run to get the NC. And Nadir showed us that any of these five starters can explode on any given night from now on. Great, absolutely great victory in Ames tonight. Very little to say negative except Joel has got to keep his kool or he's going to get a lot of calls against him when he doesn't have it coming. Again tonight it looked as if he did. A chip/swag is good, but he has to stay on the floor for us to be successful. Maybe some AFH steps will be in the forcast for the coming days. He'll learn to not be so headstrong or guys will try to get in his head from now on. Anyhoo, thrilled to get out of Iowa with the W. Way to go Jaybirds, now you're on the BG 12 roll for TEN straight!

!so sad ↗

There's still time... right?

@bskeet picture speaks volumes!

Embiid gets me jumping up and down in my living room like a little school girl, im going to have to thank him for weekly exercise.

It was not just a win, it was a statement.

KU is now showing that it has embraced Self-Ball and it is paying off. The game would have been a blowout without the one sided foul calling. Teams are starting to hang all over Embiid with the idea of getting him in trouble and the refs are playing right along. A lot more fouls need to be called when players grab him and hold his arms and when he tries to free himself, he invariably get the foul called on him. Nyang showed he is still a flopper, but Karma eventually got him with two quick fouls.

There is no question that KU is now in the driver's seat with two good road wins. As usual, the Conference Title still goes through Lawrence.

I did not care for the new uniforms. If you remove the name, there is nothing that says KU; I prefer some version of the road blue uniform.

@JayHawkFanToo agree, but I do like the uni's. The looked awful w/yellow. Be better at home. Team should get much stronger w/ all the fouls and strips tonight. Think they will value the ball better. 3-0, can't let up! Tonight was so fun!

That was great to see Wiggins smiles. And it was a beautiful smile. He knew he made a huge contribution to the big win. I think he read our chattering about his lack of joy and lack of effort. So he left everything on the floor tonight. 37 minutes and 19 rebounds! Great performance. Great smile.

Horn toot: predicted KU +10, outcome +7, close enuff for gubmint work.

Horn toot: predicted Kane and Hoi overstating injury, outcome: overstating. No serious sprain gets that much better that fast.

Horn Toot: Self would play bench first half to win energy budget last ten minutes, yup.

Next.

Whaaaaat the H.....no Melvin sighting?

So did our L&A keep ISU from making their 3's or is it the old "Live by the 3, Die by the 3" adage? Or all of the above, combined with our defense?

When Coach told them they were starting conference play and it was reset to 0-0, there had to have been a big sigh of relief for the team to put the hard non-conference schedule behind them and start fresh. It's like a whole 'nother team.

Loved that every time the crowd would amp up we put a run in and before you knew it we would be up 7 or more.

Did you see the callout by ol' Doc on one of our in-bounds play ...."LOB, LOB, LOB"? Hoiberg bought into it and then the whole team did too. Turned out ol' Doc wasn't right. :-)

3-0 Baby in conference! Only team undefeated.

The best part............we don't have to listen to every pundit posit about how tough it is to play in Hilton Colisieum.

BTW, how did ISU move UP one notch in the new AP Poll when they LOST last weekend?

@RockChalkinTexas I think a little of both, especially Wigs & Jojo.Ya know, I just kept thinking about Doc being a traitor every time they showed him. I thought-what a pr**k after Bill took him in last year when Neb tossed him out with the conf. Oh well, all is fair I guess; old Okie ballers just stick together.

“I think they’re all very good players,” Hoiberg said. “I think Embiid’s the best player in the country.”

Game by game, scouting reports change. It appears for awhile, the strategy is to get JoJo ejected. The schedule we have played has pointed out our weakness's in several areas. Self has shown in the last 3 games that the inability caused by double teaming the post which SDSU used to perfection is no longer a problem, rather it has become an advantage. Last night the double teamed Big's were masterful at creating havoc with their passing out of the double.
The youthful panic in the Florida attack has been replaced by an almost professional focus on playing basketball Bill Self style. Wig's has flourished by just being a solid teammate. Since the conference has started in the ACC, Parker has disappeared.
Watching JoJo in the second half made me think about how our Freshmen have started to become men, men that trust their coach and are starting to see that this work really does pay off.
Last night wasn't perfect, but it did not miss by much.

JoJo and Andrew post game press conference from Cyclones website.

! ↗[http://www.cyclones.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?&db_oem_id=10700&id=3160423]. ↗

Great win by a young team. Seems the non-con scheduling is already paying dividends. Embiid is now a marked man. So is Perry. Jamari seemed to be out of it in the first half. Also didn't like Hogue literally pulling Perry over on a wrestling arm bar move late in the second. Ref's needed to call him on that intentional foul. Good to see the plan coming together. Another big game this Saturday. RCJH!

I wasn't surprised by our win. For gosh sakes, we're 17-1 our last 18 against them. Maybe I am biased against all things Clones, but I never bought the hype of the Clones 14-0 start. I am also having trouble envisioning Okie State as a top ten team, too. I think we'll play well against the Pokies, and send them home with a loss on Saturday.

ISU once again showed that they have the dumbest fanbase in the Big 12 last night. Every single call, "booo, booo." On calls that weren't even close. I loved the comment @iowajayhawk2005 made yesterday about ISU fans. So true. What was even better about the ignorance of their fans is, there was a point in the game where we had 6 FTAs and they had 24 FTAs. The differential closed a little when they had to foul, but for the most part they had the advantage. Ridiculous.

Anyways, pretty good game in a tough environment against a good team. I don't like the argument that ISU lost the game rather than us winning it. I get that it's their game and all, but they were getting calls every time they went in the lane, I can't figure out why they kept shooting threes. Especially since we were in foul trouble. When they showed that Niang was 3-19 from the field I was speechless. We would be crucifying a guy for doing that. But enough about them.

Wiggins, Tharpe, and Embiid all played great. Wayne Simien tweeted after the game, "19 points: child's play. 19 rebounds: grown man business." Was great to see Wiggins get his hands dirty down low. Tharpe was 7-9 from the field with, 3-4 from three, and 6-7 from the line. Besides the 4-4 A:TO ratio, that's a great stat line. Embiid was a monster again. Personally, I thought the flagrant that he got called for was garbage. Nice acting job. In a game this big, to make that call and let ISU get back in was criminal.

The downside is the turnovers. Disgusting. As usual, a lot of them were just stupid, unnecessary plays. And Tharpe actually got away with a couple. But let's stay positive :)

Great win on the road. We are in the driver's seat for the BIg 12. However, we have murderer's row coming in the next 3/4 games. Fortunately they're all at home (except at TCU). Going on the road to Waco isn't easy, but it's certainly not Ames or Stillwater. Going to Stillwater for their one sellout crowd of the year looks to be our toughest test remaining, but it seems that OSU may be a little overrated (and I just don't think KSU is any good).

RCJH

@wrwlumpy, faux choir boy Hoii just sewing seeds of jealousy between Embiid and Wiggins for next game, so the team plays less cohesively. Ignore him Joe and Andrew. Further, The goal of some coaches that have to compete against Self and KU appears to be to try to get Embiid to the pros after this season, so they don't have to face him next season.

@MoonwalkMafia - Hmmm. ISU's "boo everything" fanbase reminded me quite a bit of the Missouri crowd. It's the kind of fanbase that has never really won a title at anything, that feels that they are disrespected, but have done nothing to earn respect -- they are kind of lost. So they scream without purpose.

@globaljaybird - Great article on Embiid by Myron Medcalf at ESPN today. Yes, my man, Embiid is the key to our assent ... and he better be, with Black getting five fouls in five minutes.

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/92544/joel-embiid-can-carry-kansas ↗

Great win. Loved everyone's attitude. Hoping this young team uses this as our launching point and not the pinnacle. I'm sure we're good - there's no way the basketball gods would allow Naadir to be the star of our Zenith, right?

@jaybate 1.0 "The goal of some coaches that have to compete against Self and KU appears to be to try to get Embiid to the pros after this season, so they don't have to face him next season." Excellent point!

Do you remember the Coneheads from SNL? They tried to cover up their alien origin by saying "We're from France". In 2014, they would probably say "We're from Cameroon, and by the way we killed lions with our bare hands." Embiid may never play in the NBA, he'll just jump back in his flying saucer.

Folks, I haven't seen the game yet but I assume it was televised and covered by national and local media. In that case, why all the pictures of Georgetown playing ISU?

@ Paris. The game was on here in Houston. Espn has two bits on the game today. Fun to watch although I did not like the gray uniforms; stick to blue, white, or red.

Anyway, great win against a good team on the road.

@ParisHawk lol, PHOF take on new uniforms.

@jaybate 1.0 I looked up Adidas in Wikipedia: it appears the name comes from the founder Adi Dassler, Adi being short for Adolf.

So KU is wearing uniforms from a company named after a Nazi Party member called Adolf. At least it's the other Adolf...

@ParisHawk I don't know who in the wide, wide world of sports is designing our last couple of uniforms, but they must be blind.

I'm gonna throw a t-shirt out in my backyard and let my dogs design the next jersey for us.

Having said that, they can wear pink burlap tutus for all I care, as long as they keep on winning.

The cloudy lining to this sunny game is that our bench provided nothing besides Traylor. Only 6 guys played double figure minutes. Traylor fouled out in 5 minutes of playing time. Even with refs calling fouls on us just for looking at an ISU player that's hard to do.

Two months ago we were all gaga over playing 10 or 11 guys. It's not gonna happen. We may puzzle why, but it's not. Mason's leash is suddenly very short, of course the way Naadir was playing we didn't want much Mason. Greene and Frankamp's confidence is wavering. They literally get the hook for any mistake and by mistake I mean missed shots, or opponents scoring.

Quick hits

The Good
- Wiggins was incredible on the glass last night. It seemed like he really put a lot of focus on rebounding against the Cyclones and then went out and did it.

• Selden played a lot better than the box score indicates. Those six assists included probably the best pass of the season (the rocket from 30 feet away for the Perry dunk) and two of the best entries to Embiid (both placed so that Embiid was turning into his shot as he caught the pass). Selden was also probably the best perimeter defender last night.

• Embiid dominating in the paint. He had both his best block of the year (the rejection and takeaway on the dunk attempt in the second half) and his best post move (the spin on the baseline for the lay up following said block). Embiid has the opportunity to be the most dominant player in college basketball.

• Tharpe's play overall was beautiful. A little sloppy with the ball at times, but he was scoring and still getting everyone involved.

• I had advocated that Traylor probably shouldn't play against ISU, but he played and put forth his usual great effort on both ends.

The Bad
- 24 turnovers. That's one of the two things that kept ISU in this game. We win by 20 if we cut the turnovers down. 7 TO by Embiid. 6 by Wiggins. 4 from Tharpe. That's 17 TO from 3 guys that will have the ball in their hands constantly every single game. Must be cleaned up.

• 34 FT attempts by ISU. This was the second thing that kept the Cyclones around. ISU shot 31% from the field. Depending on their half court sets, they wouldn't have cracked 60. Putting them on the line nearly 3 dozen times kept them in it, and had they shot a bit better from 3, may have made this game much stickier down the stretch.

• 6 points off the bench. Yes, KU has a lot of firepower in the starting lineup, enough so that every starter except Embiid has scored 20+ points twice in the last five games. But they still need to get something from their bench. This is something to keep an eye on.

• Naadir Tharpe's ankle. I still don't like the way he's running. He is playing fine, but I am not convinced that he is healthy. This is also something to watch, because the schedule doesn't afford more than 5 days between games at any point until the end of the regular season.

• The rotation last night revealed my concern. We tried to play two inside players against their spread sets and ended up fouling a lot. Embiid (fouled out), Black (fouled out), Ellis (4 fouls) and Traylor (3 fouls) accounted for 17 of our 26 team fouls. I think we need to match up with more quickness in the rematch, because I doubt ISU shoots that poorly (16% from 3 and 31% overall) again.

The Ugly
- Perry Ellis' continued struggles against physical front lines. Perry has shot below 50% four times this season (Wake, Villanova, SDSU, last night). He has scored fewer than 10 points two other times (Florida, Georgetown - exception due to injury). I understand that Perry is not a physical player, but he can't basically become half the player he is just because a team gets more physical - (averages 13.3 points overall, a shade under 7 in those 6 games). I bring this up because it was an issue last year, and, although he has been MUCH improved this year, it's still an issue.

• Joel Embiid allowing himself to get baited into technicals and flagrants. As I said before, officiating crews receive reports prior to each game with things to look for. Given that last year's game was controversial and had some post game issues (and threats), I had a feeling that things would be watched closely. Add to that the fact that Embiid got tossed on Saturday and I knew they would have an eye on him. Just foolish on his part to let himself get tangled up again. He needs to be VERY aware that officials will not hesitate to hit him with another flagrant or T if he gets involved in something at this point.

Niang 0-9 from 3, Kansas dominates the glass. I'm glad we didn't go small.

I know that everyone says that if Iowa State would have shot better that the outcome would have been different. While this is certainly true, if KU is smarter with the ball and commits under 15 turnovers, then that would have negated them even having an average shooting night(they average 9 per game). KU did the exact same thing at Florida with being careless with the ball. Self has to work on this with them, as they are going to eventually run into a hot shooting team. I actually thought that their defense wasn't that bad. I know that they don't force as many turnovers as what previous teams have, but I am not so sure if it is a true indicator of how good their defense is. Turnovers are the reason why they did not win by twenty. It's that simple.

@KirkIsMyHinrich The biggest reason we dominated the glass was because of Wiggins 19 rebounds. Embiid had a good rebounding night with 9. Ellis had six, but so did Tharpe.

I think had we played one big surrounded by four perimeter guys, we still dominate the glass, we may have fewer turnovers and we may foul less.

ISU had 22 points from the line and 27 points off turnovers. That's 49 of their 70 points. Let's say we cut turnovers from an absurd 24 to a more manageable 17. Let's say we cut our 26 fouls down to a more reasonable 21. That's going to take away probably 5 made FT (7 total attempts) and probably 9 points off turnovers (7 possessions, not all of which will convert into baskets). That's 14 points ISU loses, plus we probably gain 4-6 points by getting shots on those possessions. We could have blown Iowa State out last night by 25-30 with the way they shot. We kept them in it by fouling and turning the ball over. Going small probably helps in both of those areas.

@justanotherfan You are absolutely right about the matchups and how that affected our fouling and turnover situations. KU really helped them stay in the game where they should not have been. Even just 5 fewer turnovers and 5 fewer fouls and they win by maybe twenty.

@justanotherfan Yes Wiggins had 19 rebounds. You should give some thought to why he had 19 rebounds.

The results of this game didn't surprise me, after I caught on to "The Mayor's" game plan.

Fred is a sneaky guy, I give him credit for that.

His plan started on Saturday, by faking the severity of Kane's ankle sprain. He left Norman on crutches? Really? They going to stick to that story? Even the mushy commentators almost exposed this hoax.

Fred's game plan was to draw fouls and win this game by winning the foul war. They did foul out two of our bigs, and they did go to the FT line for 15 more attempts than us. But they paid a price for taking that strategy... most of the time when teams run this strategy they lose focus in other parts of their game. Even though you could argue 3-pt shooting doesn't relate to drawing fouls while driving or on defense because those are different areas of the game, you can also argue the opposite, and when players have to give extra thought to anything it takes away from their focus on nailing shots. ISU shot a miserable 16% from trey. We had something to do with that because our defense is improving... but come on... many of those shots were uncontested and ISU has a reputation for nailing 3s, even when they are contested.

Everything came into complete focus on this game when Kane drove the paint on Embiid towards the end and blew the shot and hounded the refs for a foul and Embiid didn't lay a glove on him. Kane suddenly acted injured again. I hate that kind of wussy basketball. A play from the Hansbrough playbook (except he often did take body blows). We all know how well that strategy works against Kansas teams! ha!

What a pathetic, whiny game from Fred this time. I laughed when Mush and Fran commented about Fred not liking the contact of the game, and it showed Fred with a whiny look at the refs. Didn't last year's game in Ames end whiny? Iowa is close to Wisconsin... maybe they can borrow some cheese from that State, since Wisconsin doesn't seem to be whining this year!

@Crimsonorblue22 Love the picture! The sweetest sound of the night was the sound of silence as the fans started to file out before the game was completely over!

Great win that puts us in the drivers seat....although only 3 games in. While we wouldn't have won without Tharpe or Wiggins having the game they did, the biggest impact was by Embiid. In the 2nd half he dominated at both ends. They couldn't stop him on offense. On defense, not only did he block shots (even a 3!) but he changed shots and also got into their heads.
No question that we need to clean up the turnovers.....we can't always count on a team missing so many 3s.
If we can win the next 2 home games.....we'll really be in good shape.