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KANSAN.COM
As crowd loses faith, Kansas mounts ferocious comeback
▶ BRIAN MINI @brianminimum
Senior guard Frank Mason III celebrates an overtime victory over West Virginia with fans on Feb. 13.
Missy Minear/KANSAN
With just minutes left in the game, several Kansas fans had left and West Virginia supporters had started chanting. No. 3 Kansas was desperately pressing and fouling down 14 points. Fifty minutes later, Kansas walked off James Naismith Court with an overtime victory.
Everyone thought that Kansas would lose at some point during the 84-80 win. The outcome even surprised coach Bill Self.
"I still don't know how we did it," Self said in his postgame press conference.
They had good reason to doubt the possibility.
The biggest deficit Kansas had come back from this season was against Kentucky, when halfway through the first half, Kansas found itself down 12.
This was new for the Jayhawks, though. They found themselves down by 14 with 2:43 remaining in the game at home.
"Basketball is a game of runs, Coach always says that," senior guard Frank Mason III said. "He just said, 'Keep fighting, play every possession like it's your last.'"
To make matters worse, the last time Kansas lost back-to-back home games was in 1989 when it lost consecutive home games to Oklahoma State and then Oklahoma.
"We were definitely thinking about that down
14 with two minutes left," Mason said about the possibility of losing two home games in a row. "We were just thinking about it as a group, and we had to do whatever we had to do to make that not happen.
"It's still amazing to me," he said about the comeback.
Despite the unlikelyhood of a comeback, the players still fought back.
The fans? Not so much.
Junior guard Devonte' Graham, whose two three-pointers in overtime
ignited the crowd, smiled as he said, "the ones who left, missed out. Definitely."
Self said that the fans "that left a little bit early missed a hell of a finish."
It's understandable why some fans didn't stay the entire game. Kansas shot just 34 percent from the floor and that was after Kansas stepped up offensively during overtime.
The ESPN broadcast even acknowledged the slightly dwindled attendance when commentator
'I think it's the most remarkable win I've ever been a part of, and we've had some great ones here, but we've never come back from 14 down with 2-and-a-half minutes left against the No.9 team in the country."
Bill Self Kansas coach
that people who had left were not, "true fans."
"I think it's the most remarkable win I've ever been a part of, and we've had some great ones here, but we've never come back from 14 down with 2-and-a-half minutes left against the No.9 team in the country," Self said.
Dick Vitale commented
It's remarkable not just because of the comeback itself, but because of the implications in the Big 12 title race.
With the win and the Baylor loss on Monday
night, Kansas moves two games ahead of the Bears for first place in the conference. With a loss, Kansas would have had little room for error with an upcoming game against Baylor in Waco.
Regardless whether they stayed or left, fans got what they wanted most: a win closer to a Big 12 title.
Edited by Ashley Hocking
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