Hunter Dickinson shares Bill Self's message to Kansas after Iowa State loss

Kansas let another road game slip on Saturday, falling 79-75 to Iowa State in the third loss away from Phog Allen Fieldhouse in the last four tries. It’s a trend that the Jayhawks certainly hope to stop.

And it’s part of the message that head coach Bill Self delivered to the team after the loss, according to center Hunter Dickinson. With just four losses on the season, Self wasn’t trying to cast a cloud over proceedings, either.

“To not be discourage by the loss, because you know it is a tough place to play,” Dickinson said. “But also it’s going to get harder down the stretch if we keep dropping games like this. The winner of this league will probably only have about five losses, so that gives us about two more, potentially, so we gotta try to go on a run here and string some wins together.” 

As the Jayhawks fell to 16-4 and have three conference losses, the margin to try and win the regular season league title is slimmer.

After starting the season 13-1, the Jayhawks are 3-3 over the last six games, with all the losses coming on the road. With five of the last 11 games on the schedule for Kansas away from home, Dickinson didn’t shy away from what he and his teammates will need to get done.

“We can’t be going every other game, especially on the road, we gotta try and steal one on the road,” Dickinson said. “When we’re at Allen, it’s a little bit easier with the crowd and everything. So we’ve gotta try to steal one of these road games coming up.”

Self said he was ‘encouraged’ after the loss

Simply put, Self thought Kansas did enough offensively to get it done but the defense had some lapses they couldn’t overcome against a conference foe.

“I was actually encouraged,” Self said. “This is the best offense we’ve run and you score 75 points against Iowa State in their building, it should be enough. We did some good things. We did make shots. They outscored us, you know, 21 points from beyond the arc. But I thought we hung in there and did some good things offensively. Defensively we weren’t good but we rebounded the ball better in the second half. 

“We did some good stuff. They were just better. And certainly they made us pay. I don’t know how many shots they made, you know, in the last five seconds of the shot clock but you know, they made us pay.”

Dickinson led the scoring with 20 points, 15 rebounds and four assists on the afternoon. Kevin McCullar Jr. added 16 points, seven rebounds and three assists.