{"id":204302,"date":"2026-03-14T07:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/204302\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T07:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T07:54:11","slug":"no-5-houston-routs-no-14-kansas-69-47-to-set-up-another-big-12-title-game-with-no-2-arizona-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/204302\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 5 Houston routs No. 14 Kansas 69-47 to set up another Big 12 title game with No. 2 Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

KANSAS<\/a> CITY, Mo. (AP) Kingston Flemings scored 21 points, fellow freshman Chris Cenac Jr. had 17 points and 14 rebounds, and fifth-ranked Houston<\/a> rolled past poor-shooting and lackluster No. 14 Kansas 69-47 in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Friday night.<\/p>\n

The second-seeded Cougars (28-5) held the third-seeded Jayhawks without a field goal for more than 10 minutes at point in the game, ultimately breezing into another championship matchup with second-ranked Arizona on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Houston beat the Wildcats 72-64 last year for its first Big 12 Tournament title.<\/p>\n

Darryn Peterson had 14 points to lead the Jayhawks (23-10), who had beaten the Cougars in their only regular-season matchup. But the Jayhawks were a whole lot better that night in Allen Fieldhouse than they were at T-Mobile Center, where they were 6 for 31 from the field in the second half and shot 24.6% overall in their lowest-scoring game of the season.<\/p>\n

With the relentless defense that’s become a hallmark of coach Kelvin Sampson, the Cougars controlled the game right from the start, making things especially difficult for Kansas big men Flory Bidunga and Bryson Tiller in the paint.<\/p>\n

Most of the Jayhawks’ offense came from Peterson, the potential No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. He had 12 at the break.<\/p>\n

Things really unraveled for Kansas in the second half, though.<\/p>\n

Houston forced Bill Self’s team into missing its first 16 shots while going on a 22-2 run of its own spanning halftime. Even the bucket that mercifully ended the drought, a dunk by Bidunga with 10:42 to go, nearly rattled its way back out of the basket.<\/p>\n

Houston led 51-31 at that point before coasting into its second consecutive championship game.<\/p>\n

Houston lost to the No. 1 seed Wildcats at home on Feb. 21 in their only meeting of the regular season.<\/p>\n

Kansas will likely be a No. 4 seed when the NCAA Tournament is revealed on Sunday.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2026 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) Kingston Flemings scored 21 points, fellow freshman Chris Cenac Jr. had 17 points and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2692,56,2742,58,57,2764],"class_list":{"0":"post-204302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-cougars","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news","13":"tag-kansas-jayhawks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}