LAWRENCE, Kan. — Connie Yori calls free-throw shooting the funniest part of coaching basketball, but don’t think she was humored by what happened to her Nebraska women at the line in Allen Fieldhouse on Sunday afternoon.

Danielle McCray’s charity shot with 1.4 seconds to play, which gave Kansas a 62-61 victory, might have felt like the worst punch line ever. But that left the Huskers no more stone-faced than their abysmal 17-for-34 effort on the unguarded 15-foot shot.

That’s right. NU, which in a 71-51 victory against the Jayhawks in Lincoln last month hit 30-of-32 free throws, finished at 50 percent Sunday.

“I wouldn’t like to look at it as you get what you deserve from the free-throw line,” said junior guard Kelsey Griffin, who was called for the blocking foul that sent McCray to the line at the end. “Would we have liked to shoot free throws better? Yes. Would it have helped if we had? Yes. But there were other things that we didn’t do.”

For one thing, Nebraska wasn’t consistent enough defensively against the lowest-scoring team in the Big 12 Conference.

Still, the Huskers had enough in them to go on a late 14-2 run that turned a nine-point deficit with 6:08 remaining into a 57-54 lead on Griffin’s three-point play at the 2:47 mark.

Kansas regrouped behind senior forward Taylor McIntosh, who hit two free throws and also rebounded a miss at the line by Sade Morris to give the home team a 61-58 lead in the final minute. Griffin, who led Nebraska with 13 points, came right back to draw a foul on Krysten Boogaard before hitting two free throws.

After McIntosh missed in traffic as the shot clock was about to expire, NU’s Tay Hester dribbled in to draw a foul on Morris. Hester, who’d missed all of her previous five free throws, then hit one to tie that game at 61 with 12.2 seconds left. But when she missed her second, the Jayhawks got the ball up the floor quickly and went right to the sophomore wing McIntosh, who knifed left before Griffin tried to slide over and draw a charge.

Nebraska called two timeouts to try and ice McIntosh, but she swished her first attempt to provide the final difference.

“I’d say it calmed me down, gave me time to breathe and think,” McCray said of the lapse in time from when she got fouled to when she came through for her team. “Coaches try to freeze you … but I just used it as catching my breathing, because I kind of was a little tired from jumping up and down and screaming after drawing that contact (from Griffin).”

Her free throw left Kansas (15-9, 4-7) with its third win in four games. It was also the second time in two tries that the Jayhawks, 12-2 in Allen Fieldhouse, had avenged an earlier Big 12 loss.

“Tonight, they got up and denied us very well. They were hitting big shots, going after rebounds, and so I think they’re more aggressive on offense and defense,” NU sophomore guard Vonnie Turner said. “On misses, they pushed the ball more in transition. They weren’t like that a month ago.”

McCray led Kansas with 13 points and 10 rebounds, but the Jayhawks also got double-digit scoring totals from McIntosh (11), LaChelda Jacobs (10) and Nicollette Smith (10) to prevent Nebraska from improving to 4-0 on the road against Big 12 North opponents.

Turner scored eight of her 11 points during the 14-2 run when Nebraska took its first lead since early in the first half. But it was hard for her, or Griffin, to feel too happy about their performances as both players missed numerous minutes because of foul trouble.

That fact may have been the second-funniest thing to Yori late Sunday afternoon.

As Kansas coach Bonnie Henrickson noted of the Huskers, “Maybe they’re not as good as 30 of 32, but not as bad as 17 of 34, either.”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.