Led by Udoka Azubuike, No. 3 Kansas fights off No. 1 Baylor in thrilling Big 12 showdown

Kansas basketball’s 7-footer took over Saturday, and as a result, the Jayhawks took charge of their own destiny in the chase for a Big 12 championship.

Just how good was Udoka Azubuike? Allow the “Big Fella’s” head coach to weigh in.

“He was great,” said Bill Self. “Probably made himself a little bit of money today."

Azubuike scored 23 points on 11-for-13 shooting and hauled in a career-high 19 rebounds in a dazzling 36-minute outing, propelling No. 3-ranked KU past top-ranked Baylor 64-61 at Ferrell Center in Waco, Texas. The victory snapped the Bears’ 23-game winning streak, extended the Jayhawks’ own streak to 12 and created a tie atop the Big 12 standings with four games left.

Azubuike wore the satisfaction of emerging victorious in the high-profile, high-stakes battle on his face in the postgame news conference, emotion he was more than happy to explain.

“I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Oh, he can’t do this,’ ‘He can’t do that.’ All my life, I’ve been looked down on everything,” Azubuike said. “Just coming out here and playing the way I played, giving my all on the floor for my teammates and to everybody, it just makes me emotional.”

Azubuike, the Big 12 preseason player of the year, was held to six points, 11 rebounds in the teams’ first meeting, a 67-55 victory for the Bears on Jan. 11 in Lawrence.

“Coming in, I had a mindset that, yeah, I’ve been hearing people say all kinds of stuff, doubting me and all that stuff,” Azubuike said. “My teammates did a good job getting me the ball. We just stuck to what Coach wanted us to do. By God’s grace I was able to deliver down the stretch.”

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Devon Dotson had 13 points and Isaiah Moss 11 for KU, which is looking for a Big 12 title one year after its national record-breaking streak of 14 consecutive regular-season league championships came to an end.

“It was a great game,” Self said in a postgame radio interview. “Fun. Probably the toughest we’ve played all year long.”

The Jayhawks (23-3, 13-1 Big 12) led for the game’s final 28 minutes but almost blew an 11-point second-half advantage at the end.

An Azubuike put-back dunk, his eighth of the contest, put KU up 60-53 with 2:08 remaining. Freddie Gillespie hit a pair of free throws to cut the Bears’ deficit to five, but shooting a one-and-one with 40 seconds left, Gillespie was inaccurate on the front end, and Azubuike went to the deck to rip away his 19th and final rebound.

Dotson hit two free throws to re-establish a seven-point lead, but the Bears (24-2, 13-1) didn’t go quietly — team leading scorer Jared Butler hit a three with 29 seconds left to cut the deficit to four, and after an Ochai Agbaji turnover on an inbounds attempt, MaCio Teague drilled his own three to make it a one-point game, 62-61, with just 16.2 seconds remaining.

But Agbaji successfully made his next inbounds pass, and the ball eventually got to Moss, who was true on two free-throw tries with eight seconds on the clock. Jared Butler’s potential game-tying three was offline, and Moss grabbed the rebound to secure the Jayhawk victory.

“We obviously didn’t execute late. ... But God dang, we competed,” Self said. “Guys hung in there. We rebounded, even though (Mark) Vital was a monster on the glass. Couldn’t be happier with our guys. They’re so excited, and they deserve to be excited. That was a heck of a win.”

Butler scored 19 points and Gillespie and Matthew Mayer had 10 apiece for the Bears, who shot just 39.7% from the floor.

“All games should be fun, but when there’s always pressure to win, sometimes it takes the joy out of it where it’s more of a relief than it is joyful,” Self said. “But when you play a 50-50 game like this today, it’s all joy. Yeah, I’m excited. I’m proud of our kids. ...

“As you can tell, I’m a little wired and fired up and I know our kids are fired up. They deserve to be.”