Box Score West Virginia got 17 points and 17 rebounds from freshman forward Oscar Tshiebwe, but he was nearly flying solo offensively today in the Mountaineers' 60-53 loss to No. 3 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas.
 
The Mountaineers, looking to become just the second team in school history to win back-to-back games against Top 5 teams, just couldn't find enough complimentary scorers to support Tshiebwe, who tallied 15 in the first half to build a six-point halftime lead.
 
"Oscar was very good at doing what Oscar does," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "Offensively on the glass he was very good. Defensively he kind of has a tendency to forget some things, which is understandable."
 
On two occasions in the opening stanza, 16th-ranked West Virginia actually led Kansas by 10 points and appeared to be in control of the game, but Kansas, as it has done all eight times it has defeated West Virginia here in this building, was once again able to come up with the answers to get another victory.
 
It was KU's 29^th straight win to open conference play dating back to 1992 and extends its current home court winning streak to 26, second longest in the country behind Gonzaga's 31 straight home wins.
 
Kansas got this one done on defense, the Jayhawks completely shutting down West Virginia in the second half by limiting the Mountaineers to just seven field goals on their 25 shot attempts.
 
WVU missed all four of its 3-point tries and also failed to convert on six of its 15 second-half free throw attempts. Overall, West Virginia was only 12-of-22 from the line and made 19-of-59 from the field for 32.2 percent.
 
"I'd say we shot ourselves in the foot," Huggins said. "We missed so many one- and two-footers and we missed step-in shots. We go 12-for-22 from the free throw line and that wasn't because we had bad free throw shooters up there – what you would think wouldn't be a bad free throw shooter – but we continue to miss free throws. And we continue to miss two at a time, which blows my mind."
 
Fellow freshman Deuce McBride was the only other player wearing a blue jersey who did anything consistently on offensive, the Cincinnati resident finishing the game with 13 points while coming off the bench.
 
Tshiebwe and McBride's 30 points were more than half of the 53 the team scored this afternoon.
 
Meanwhile, Kansas (11-2, 1-0) got 17 points and 11 rebounds from 7-foot center Udoka Azubuike, who made all six of his field goal attempts to maintain his status as the No. 1 field goal shooter in the country who connecting on better than 80 percent of his shot attempts this year. Azubuike, a career 38 percent free throw shooter, was also actually productive from the charity stripe today by converting half of his 10 attempts.
 
Sophomore guard Devon Dotson contributed 16 points and Marcus Garrett added 12 as the Jayhawks outscored the Mountaineers 36-23 in the second half, several of their baskets coming on lobs to the rim.
 
"We said to them to keep the ball out of the middle of the floor and we did nothing but turn them to the middle of the floor," Huggins explained. "We're guarding ball screens a little bit differently than everybody else is guarding it, but basically what it is one guy is on one side of the screen, one guy is on the other side of the screen and when the bigs never do their job you leave the guard hanging.
 
"We left the guard hanging so many times and when you help up you expose the rim and how many lobs did they have because we exposed the rim?" Huggins added.
 
Kansas outscored the Mountaineers 30 to 20 in the paint and 11 to 3 on fast break points, but a lot of the specialty stats were in WVU's favor.
 
West Virginia (11-2, 0-1) beat Kansas on the glass 44-30, thanks to Tshiebwe's 17 boards and Derek Culver's 12, including 21 on the offensive glass. 
 
WVU had a 20 to 6 edge in bench points and a 15 to 4 margin in second chance points.
 
"We had it down to three or two a couple of times and go miss two free throws or go one-for-two," Huggins said. "That's hard to do."
 
The Mountaineers will remain on the road to face Oklahoma State on Monday night in Stillwater. The Cowboys were defeated 85-50 earlier today at Texas Tech, which will be in Morgantown next Saturday for West Virginia's Big 12 home opener at the Coliseum.
 
Monday night's Oklahoma State game will tip off at 9 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN2.