LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -- After going 1-for-7 and fouling out in Tuesday night's 66-54 loss to Michigan State, Kansas forward Nick Collison vowed to redeem himself.

Against Division II Pittsburg State on Saturday night, the 6-foot-9 freshman still fouled out. But he also scored 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the Jayhawks (No. 4 ESPN/USA Today, No. 5 AP) subdued the pesky Gorillas 96-71 with a strong second-half effort.

	Pittsburg State's Brandon Pate looks for room around Kansas' Jeff Boschee (13) during the first half Saturday.

"It helps a little bit. But you start of feel good about what you're doing and then you remember this is not the best team you're going to be playing," Collison said. "But any time you can come out and play well, it's good."

The Gorillas (5-3) might not be the best team on the Jayhawks' schedule, but they did not look like the worst, either. Behind guard Brandon Pate's 29 points, they stayed within 10 points until Collison triggered a take-charge spurt in the second half.

"That little Pate was hard to handle," Kansas coach Roy Williams said.

Pate, a 5-foot-11 senior, had 16 points in the first half.

"The past couple of games, my shot hasn't showed up," he said. "I guess I was due for a good game."

Kansas struggled to take a 13-point halftime lead over the smaller, slower Gorillas, who cut it to 54-44 early in the second half.

Then Collison's 8-footer ignited a 15-2 run that brought the sellout crowd to its feet and put the game away. Collison scored 10 points in the spurt.

"I fouled out again, but I can live with that," he said. "I thought I played well. The first half we were still making a lot of mistakes. But we played better defense. I think that's how we pulled away."

Kansas outrebounded Pittsburg State (5-3) 53-31 in what has become a tradition of playing one Division II team each season from within the state. In their previous seven wins, including a 55-point blowout of the Gorillas in 1995, the Jayhawks' average margin of victory was 34.4 points.

Kansas led by as many as 19 in the first half but managed only a 48-35 lead at intermission as Pate almost personally held them at bay, penetrating inside and hitting from the outside.

"I was a little winded but in the second half. They hit the gas on us," Pate said. "We couldn't match them."

Eric Chenowith, a 7-2 center, went 10-for-10 from the foul line and also had 20 points. Freshman Drew Gooden had 12 rebounds and 13 points. Michael Jones and Dan Stanley each had 10 for Pittsburg State.

"I thought we did all we could do," said Pittsburg State coach Gene Iba. "Their transition obviously hurt us, and obviously their size."

In a confused twist created by an apparent NCAA mistake, the Gorillas were unsure if the game would count as an exempted contest or an exhibition for them. An NCAA official admitted during the week that the NCAA manual incorrectly referred to such games for Division II schools as exhibitions.

An exhibition game would not count against Pittsburg State's record while an exempted game would not count against its 27-game limit.

"I'm not sure what we're eventually going to say right now," said John Painter, the NCAA's senior statistic coordinator.