Texas-El Paso Miners vs Kansas Jayhawks Box Score on Dec 07, 2021

Ochai Agbaji scored 23 points and Christian Braun added 20 Tuesday as No. 8 Kansas cruised past UTEP 78-52 at Kansas City, Mo.

Agbaji and Braun entered as two of the top three scorers in the Big 12, with Agbaji's 22.6-point average ranking him among the nation's top 10. Agbaji went 9 of 12 from the field in this one, while Braun, coming off a career-high 31 points in a road win at St. John's, continued his recent surge by going 9 of 13. He also snared six rebounds.

The Jayhawks (7-1) raced to a 10-0 lead and never looked back, holding the Miners (4-4) to 31.1 percent shooting.

Kansas still committed 16 turnovers, and the Jayhawks looked sloppy in the second half, managing only a 36-31 advantage after leading by 21 points at halftime.

Kansas coach Bill Self even showed his frustration, drawing a technical foul with 9:44 left after Jalen Wilson committed a foul. Wilson grabbed a team-high seven boards.

UTEP did little to capitalize on the second-half turnovers it forced. The Miners' leading scorer, Souley Boum, netted 18 points but went just 5 of 19 from the field, including 2 of 10 from 3-point range. Jamal Bieniemy, the Miners' second-leading scorer, played just 11 minutes and scored only four points.

Kansas shot 59 percent in the first half, leading by as many as 27 before settling for a 42-21 halftime margin. Agbaji scored 13 points and Braun added 10.

The Jayhawks missed their last four attempts of the half, failing to hit a field goal inside the final 4:32, though the Miners could not make much of a dent in the bulge.

Boum missed all but one of the six 3-point attempts he took in the first half and went 2 of 10 from the floor before the break, contributing to a 30 percent clip for the Miners. They also committed 10 turnovers, four on steals by the Jayhawks' Dajuan Harris.

The matchup was unlike the teams' March meeting when UTEP led inside the final three minutes before Kansas won 67-62 in a hastily scheduled game prior to the 2021 postseason.

--Field Level Media