LAWRENCE, Kan. – Keith Langford had 21 points and a career-high seven assists and Wayne Simien had his fourth straight double-double, leading No. 2 Kansas past scrappy Pacific 81-70 Saturday.

Aaron Miles had eight assists and 19 points, one short of the senior guard’s career high, for the Jayhawks (4-0).

Christian Maraker had 22 points for the Tigers (2-1), who kept it close by scoring on six straight possessions down the stretch before Miles made a steal with 1:10 to go.

The Jayhawks scored on five consecutive possessions themselves to win their 11th straight at home and start 4-0 for the first time in since 2000-2001.

The Jayhawks led by only one point at halftime and the tall, aggressive visitors had quieted the normally boisterous Allen Fieldhouse crowd. But Kansas finally began pulling away from the unranked visitors with an 8-0 run capped by Simien’s slam dunk for a 51-42 lead with 12:29 left.

Freshman guard Russell Robinson came off the bench and supplied several key plays. He stole the ball from David Doubley at midcourt and drove in for a layup, then canned a 3-pointer with 9:17 remaining to make it 58-48.

At the 6:32 mark, the 6-foot-1 point guard fed fellow freshman Darnell Jackson for another basket underneath and then drove in for a crowd-pleasing reverse layup that gave Kansas its biggest lead, 66-53.

Simien, a 6-foot-9 senior, had 12 points and 15 rebounds after being held to just six points in the first half.

The Tigers, with the 6-foot-9 Maraker, 6-9 Guillaume Yango and 6-10 Tyler Newton clogging the middle, dominated the boards in the early going, holding almost a 2-to-1 rebounding average at the 10-minute mark.

Robinson finished with seven points, as did J.R. Giddens and Christian Moody.

Kansas led by as many as six points in the first half but Pacific pulled even at 31-all on Yango’s follow-up dunk and then took a 34-35 lead on Marko Mihailovic’s 3-pointer before Simien’s hook gave the Jayhawks a 35-34 halftime lead.

Mihailovic had 10 points for Pacific, which won a school-record 25 games last season before bowing to Kansas 78-63 in the NCAA tournament. Yango had nine and Tyler Newton had eight.

AP-ES-12-04-04 1721EST