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Kansas downs Texas for Big 12 tourney title

Mar 13, 2011 - 3:58 AM Kansas City, MO (Sports Network) - Kansas maintained its dominance of the Big 12, as Tyshawn Taylor scored 20 points to lead the No. 2 Jayhawks past the 10th-ranked Texas Longhorns, 85-73, en route to an eighth conference tournament championship.

This is the Jayhawks' fifth crown in the last six years, and they got it with a balanced attack on Saturday -- six players scored in double figures. Marcus Morris scored 17 points, his twin Markieff added 14 and nine rebounds, and Brady Morningstar netted 13 with six assists in the convincing victory.

Kansas' (32-2) eighth straight win all but wrapped up another No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the perennial national title contender.

"If we play like that every game, it's definitely going to be hard to stop us. We had great ball movement and we had great help defense," Marcus Morris said.

Jordan Hamilton scored 21 points and J'Covan Brown chipped in 17 for the Longhorns (27-7), who allowed the Jayhawks to make 57 percent of their shots and fell short of their first Big 12 tourney crown.

Tyrel Reed, Marcus Morris and Taylor drained successive three-pointers to give Kansas a 17-9 lead five minutes into the game.

The top-seeded Jayhawks scored on five straight possessions a little later to push the margin to 27-15, and a 10-0 run capped by a Taylor dunk made it 39-23 with just over four minutes remaining in the opening half.

"We played with really good energy and were very aggressive from the outset, and I think that was the biggest difference," Kansas head coach Bill Self said.

The Longhorns erased a 12-point halftime deficit in Lawrence back on January 22 to snap Kansas' 69-game home winning streak, and again found themselves down by double digits at the break, trailing 48-33.

Another comeback seemed possible as Texas chipped away at the deficit, pulling within 60-52 on Cory Joseph's mid-range jumper with nine minutes to go.

But Taylor and Reed stopped the Longhorns' momentum with consecutive three- pointers, and Markieff Morris' putback dunk and free throw extended the lead to 69-55.

"Every time we gave ourselves a chance, we either took a quick shot or made a poor decision, or we went down and made a poor decision on the defensive end and gave them either a pretty good look from the perimeter or an offensive rebound," Texas head coach Rick Barnes said.

The closest Texas got in the final six minutes was eight.

Game Notes

Kansas is 8-1 in Big 12 title games...From 2006-08, Texas reached the Big 12 title game, only to be ousted by Kansas each time...Reed and Thomas Robinson tallied 11 and 10 points, respectively, for Kansas...Joseph posted 14 points in the loss...Texas forward Tristan Thompson battled foul trouble all game and played just 11 minutes, tallying seven points and two rebounds.