Kansas notched its first win inside of Allen Fieldhouse in 2025 on Wednesday. KU defeated Arizona State, 74-55 in what was a closely contested affair for most of the game. There were 11 lead changes in the first half before Arizona State went into the break with the lead. KU opened the second half with a 17-3 run to take control of the game and the Jayhawks never looked back.Zeke Mayo led all scorers with 23 points in the win. He went 5 for 8 from 3 and also had five rebounds. Hunter Dickinson finished with 15 points and 12 rebounds. As a team, KU held Arizona State to 13 points in the second half. For the game, KU shot 44 percent from the field and held Arizona State to 36 percent from from floor.
Postgame, Bill Self met with reporters to discuss the game. Here’s everything the KU coach said postgame.
On holding Arizona State to 13 points in the second half…
“We were great defensively. Who would have thought we shot the ball worse the second half? From 2, we shot it worse from 3 and basically held them to 11, then they get the layup there at the right at the very end. But that was exceptional. Now, granted, they didn’t have as much depth tonight, so their guys got tired. But Rylan [Griffen] was terrific and Shak [Moore] is a difference-maker, defensively. Everybody else was better the second half. That was great effort. I mean, it was a great effort. I don’t think we played great by any stretch offensively, [Dickinson] is 5 of 15 and some different things. But defensively, that’s about as turned up as I’ve seen a team for an entire half.”
On getting a win after dropping the West Virginia game at home last week…
“I’ve thought about this, and I’ve always thought this: Allen Fieldhouse is a great home court, but for people that don’t really understand and feel out Allen Fieldhouse, there’s also more pressure to win here than there is other places. And players feel that. Sometimes, we play tight at home, in all honesty. The West Virginia [game], we can’t get that back. We need to move on from that, but [we need] to hold serve at home. So that was nice that we did that. We didn’t do anything special tonight by any stretch, but we did hold serve and hopefully set up a big game on Saturday.”
On defending ASU full court after makes and how that contributed to KU’s defensive success…
“When [Arizona State is] playing everybody, 33, 35, 37 minutes, the more you make them have to earn things and not give them times where they can rest, I think it makes it harder. And that’s one thing we wanted to do. We actually talked about that a lot in practice that we were going to try to be different. But I will tell you this, we tried to be different against West Virginia in many ways, and there just wasn’t the intensity to go do it till the very end. I thought that was good, and you’ll see more of that going forward.”
On if defending full court leads to more minutes for…..
“I think so, maybe. But AJ [Storr] didn’t play today. He had a rough three minutes, but I thought everybody else did a good job. And Rylan [Griffen] probably needs to play a few more, and Flory [Bidunga] needs to play a few more. Flory [Bidunga] kind of labored there the first half. I still said what I actually feel: there’s eight guys that you feel comfortable that could be starters out there right now.”
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