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The 22nd ranked Kansas Jayhawks broke open a tight game over the last nine minutes, fending off a gritty Oklahoma State Cowboy team 64-49 at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater Monday night. Mario Chalmers, the Big 12 Player of the Week, scored 13 for KU, while Julian Wright, Brandon Rush and Sasha Kaun had 12 points each. JamesOn Curry led all scorers with 15 for OSU. KU has made many runs of their opponents over the course of the season, but this game was more a game of droughts in the first half. Either each team played fabulous defense, forcing turnovers by the bucket-load or neither team could take care of the basketball, depending on the point of view. Because neither team generated much in the way of offense, let’s credit great defense. With 15 Jayhawk and 13 Cowboy turnovers in the first half alone, surely it has to be attributed to defense. Kansas opened with a Rush dunk off a feed by Chalmers, and after a highlight reel dunk by Julian Wright lead 9-2 in the early going. But O-State began to chip away, closing the lead to one by the second media timeout. KU again extended the lead to around six, and it stayed there until a closing of the half run by OSU, aided by at least six Jayhawk turnovers, left the game tied at 23 by intermission. Foul trouble plagued each team, but Curry, the most experienced Cowboy, was the only player to get three before halftime, and he sat all but 10 seconds of the final 4:44 of the half, which made the closing run of the half all the more surprising. The Cowboys got their first lead of the game on a David Monds lay-up with 18:51 to play. Over the next nine minutes there would be four ties and three lead changes, and when O-State’s Mario Boggan converted a traditional three-point play O-State led 42-39. The rest was all Jayhawks. Kansas went to a 3-2 zone which effectively shut down the Cowboy half-court game. O-State would not score again from the field in a half-court set, and didn’t get many second chances at the hoop. Wright led the offense during the stretch run, dishing out three assists and getting a follow-up dunk off a Chalmers miss. Five different Jayhawks scored during the closing 25-7 run, including the only Jayhawk three from Russell Robinson. "I'm proud of our guys. They fought. It was ugly," said KU coach Bill Self. "Oklahoma State played hard, but we responded." Each team made but one shot from beyond the arc; Kansas in seven tries, O-State in 13. Both teams took better care of the basketball, but OSU still turned it over 11 times in the second half and 24 for the game. KU wound up with only four turnovers in the second half, and 20 for the game. The Jayhawks outrebounded the Cowboys 43-27, getting at least five boards from six different players. Rush lead KU with nine boards, with Christian Moody and C.J. Giles coming off the bench to get five each. Probably the most amazing stat: Kansas had 16 steals in the contest. That won’t happen very often in the Big 12. O-State seemed to come out a little flat, but they scored only 44 against Texas A&M on Saturday. Certainly the Cowboys have their share of distractions; the issues with head coach Eddie Sutton are well-documented and won’t be rehashed here. Because this is a down year for OSU, the Jayhawks needed to take care of business and get the W. It wasn’t a clinic; O-State did the things they needed to do to win for 30 minutes or so and appeared to run out of gas at the end. But it’s a Big 12 road win, and they are all huge. "That game could have gone either way," Self said. "We go on a really good run to end the game, but we put ourselves in a tough postion to do that." Mark Howe is a freelance writer currently residing in Milford, IN. He is a former ticket taker, usher and security worker at Allen Fieldhouse, and can be reached at mhowe (at) rockchalk (dot) com.