Columnist Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated has given us another gem, this one about Olympic skating champ Sarah Hughes. Rick delights in the fact “Sarah . . . is a pure jock who never went to Frozen Smile and Fake Wave School.”

The effervescent, uninhibited way Sarah handled her gold medal feat was delightful, delicious and welcome.

Writes Reilly: ” . . . while (Michelle) Kwan and Irina Slutskaya bonked under finals pressure, Hughes looked like a kid running in a meadow.”

Just joy, no “poor little me,” no “nobody thought I could do it,” no campaign to show how she overcame various degrees of victimhood, though she did.

That’s how I hope this 2002 Kansas basketball team handles what happens . . . not as some allegedly disrespected wayside waif who claims to have risen from the ashes to glory even though the world doubted it. This group from the outset is fully capable of winning the national collegiate championship. Let’s hope it knows how to enjoy it with poise if it happens and deal with it like thoroughbreds if it doesn’t.

Please, none of this “we believed in ourselves even if nobody else did.” Not true. A helluva lot of us think these Jayhawks have everything it takes to bring home the big trophy, and won’t be surprised if they do. KU can’t sneak up on anybody, has only itself to blame if it’s sidetracked.

An old Phog Allenism floats back in regard to the unprecedented 16-0 record by KU in capturing the Big 12 championship. Phog always said he much preferred a title among the people you live with year-around over a national title which is often pie in the sky.

While somebody down the line, maybe even KU again, will duplicate that 16-0, nobody can take away the title that produced the coveted rings nobody on this squad had. They’ll mean more and more as the years pass, long after 16-0 and personal statistics have been pigeonholed.

I’m hoping there’s a Sarah Hughes demeanor for these Jayhawks. They know they’re good, so does everyone else. It would be ridiculous for them to even hint they came from nowhere to succeed.

They know they can win it, we know they can win it. It will take a post-Big 12 Tournament run of 6-0; there’ll be heartbreak if that doesn’t occur. But if the Jayhawks make the winner’s circle, I hope they act as if they expected to be there . . . not boorish or hot-doggy, just confident and dignified.

Kansas will not be a Cinderella surprise as national champion, folks.

 Then there’s that frustrating 0-16 cycle of Kansas basketball, the women’s 2002 slide into oblivion. If Marian Washington’s youthful Jayhawks break .500 or better next season, they can use that old “we knew we could do it even if nobody else thought so.” That’s how far they have to bounce back.

Talk about a guy walking a tightrope, new athletic director Al Bohl might qualify as one of the Wallenda family. He had to fire football coach Terry Allen after four-plus seasons. The handwriting was on the wall for Terry going into his fifth year; not so with Marian heading into her 29th.

Al understood weeks ago that a tough decision was pending regarding the entrenched Washington’s status. Things were deteriorating, alumni and friends were growing increasingly sullen if not mutinous and there was rising sentiment for a change. But tenure was a massive concern.

Bottom-lining it, along with the expanding losing record, is the fact women’s basketball costs a million dollars a year and Washington has about a $230,000 salary-perks package. Sympathetic media people covering the situation studiously avoid those hard-core figures.

Washington in effect has been given a year’s notice. If the promising kids she’s recruited can’t get Kansas back at least to Big 12 respectability, let alone national recognition, then Marian’s 30th season as coach almost certainly will be her last, whatever the fallout.

Bohl has been in a pressure cooker. Washington had two years left on her contract. If she’d been dropped, there might well have been the kind of lawsuit Arkansas’ turbulent Nolan Richardson seems likely to file after lipping off foolishly.

Further, had Marian been terminated, there would have been race cards played immediately, as in the Richardson case. It would not have been surprising to find Jesse Jackson in town wearing a KU baseball cap and marching arm in arm for a media moment with Marian and other Washingtonians, including some players. Attorney Johnnie Cochran might have been in the office sharpening his legal claws. There would have been major turmoil.

Any good coach can have a down year, as Phog Allen, Ted Owens and Nolan Richardson have shown. But when a coach happens to be a minority person and draws heat, the racial issue surges to the fore in a hurry, regardless of other circumstances.

If Kansas women’s talent fell off badly, isn’t a coach with nearly 30 years of experience somewhat responsible? That’s not strictly fate, bad luck or racism.

Al Bohl did what had to be done in the case of Terry Allen. The Marian Washington situation was a lot more delicate and Bohl did about the only thing that would not have caused an instant explosion of vitriol.

Ideally, things will fall into place and next year KU will be 16-0 in the league for both men’s and women’s basketball. Then the women could really brag about a worst-to-first scenario because nobody thought it was possible.

But back to these versatile male Jayhawks, act as if you belong there, because you will. You’re that good.