Kansas Shows Pride and Poise at Finish : Midwest: Top-seeded Jayhawks hold off Western Kentucky at foul line, 75-70.

Time and time again, Kansas stepped to the free-throw line with the game on the line and flicked away all those questions about its seeding.

The Midwest Regional’s top-seeded team advanced to the semifinals Saturday night by using its height advantage to build the lead and then making clutch free throws for a 75-70 victory over Western Kentucky.

The Jayhawks (25-5) are in the regional semifinals for the third consecutive year. They head to Kansas City--where they won the national championship in 1988--for a game Friday against Virginia, which defeated Miami of Ohio, 60-54, in overtime in the earlier game.

“We supposedly weren’t a real No. 1 here, but we’re still playing,” Coach Roy Williams said.

Kansas pushed the ball inside to its towering front line to frustrate the undersized Hilltoppers (27-4). When Western Kentucky sagged inside to cut off the middle, the Jayhawks made big shots from the outside.

And when Western Kentucky chopped a 13-point deficit to four in the final minute with a blaze of three-point shots, the Jayhawks coolly put it away from the foul line.

Kansas made 22 of 25 from the foul line in the second half. Jerod Haase scored 10 of his 14 points from the line, including eight free throws in the final minute.

“Kansas is a good basketball team and they sure weren’t going to beat themselves,” Western Kentucky’s Darius Hall said. “Even when we started hitting threes, they did what they had to do: hitting free throws and handling our press.”

They showed the kind of poise that was missing in their last big NCAA tournament upset--a second-round loss to Texas El Paso in 1992, when the Jayhawks also were top-seeded at the University of Dayton Arena.

“We’ve been labeled a bad-shooting team at the foul line,” guard Jacque Vaughn said. “That shows you how labels stand. That was the sign of a very poised team.”

Unlike three years ago, there was no letup this time.

“I always talk to our kids about the ‘want-to,’ ” Williams said. “We can’t let them have more want-to than we do. If we match their intensity, our ability will take over.”