This isn't the limbo, but when it comes to Kansas University women's basketball the question's the same: How low can you go?
Texas A&M, a team that had never defeated Kansas and had dropped 15 straight Big 12 Conference road games, humbled the stumbling Jayhawks, 58-51, on Saturday afternoon in Allen Fieldhouse.
"It shocked me," said KU senior guard Selena Scott, "and it shocked everybody else."
In front of a season-high crowd of 1,132, the Jayhawks were like the little girl with the curl. When they were good, they were very, very good, and when they were bad, they were horrid.
For example, Kansas bolted to a 13-4 lead after the first seven minutes, then the Jayhawks missed 14 of their next 16 shots and trailed 30-21 at halftime.
"We could not score," KU coach Marian Washington said of that dreadful drought. "Not that we didn't have open shots. We just didn't score."
KU's shooting woes continued for the first 13 minutes of the second half as the Aggies built leads of as many as 19 points. Then, for some reason, the Jayhawks shook their shooting doldrums and outscored the Aggies, 18-6, in the last seven minutes. But all that did was make the score look more respectable.
"They really worked hard at the end," Washington said of her players, "so that was good to see."
Otherwise, what good Washington witnessed was minimal. KU's veteran coach certainly wasn't happy to see freshman Blair Waltz limp off the floor a couple of times.
Waltz, who led KU with seven rebounds despite playing just 20 minutes, apparently has a stress fracture in her right foot. If so, the 6-footer from Blue Valley could miss as many as six weeks.
"It's been going on for a couple of days," Waltz said of the injury. "It's just like the stress fracture I had in my left foot last summer."
In addition, senior guard KC Hilgenkamp played despite missing the last two practices with an apparent case of the flu. Hilgenkamp, who averages 12.7 points a game, came off the bench Saturday and scored eight points.
"When you lose two players you depend on, it's really tough," Washington said.
With Waltz and Hilgenkamp ailing, the Jayhawks' offense sputtered and sometimes just flat died. Scott played 38 minutes and scored 14 points, but no other KU player reached double figures in scoring.
"We do so many things in terms of our offense," said Washington, now in her 29th year as KU's head coach, "that I haven't even seen it."
Washington did see Texas A&M steal the ball 22 times with most of the thefts coming off a fullcourt press that Kansas didn't handle with any consistency.
"We made our life harder than it should have been. We let their press rattle us," Washington said.
Kansas dipped to 5-10 overall in bowing for the seventh time in its last nine starts. A&M, now 1-6 in its series with Kansas, is 9-4 and 1-0 in the Big 12. The Jayhawks are 0-2 in the conference and will travel to Baylor on Wednesday.
"No one said it was going to be easy this year and obviously it's not," Washington said. "We are struggling, and we knew we'd struggle."
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