St. Louis ? If spitting in the Mississippi River once is good luck, then spitting in it twice might be a good excuse to purchase some lottery tickets.

Kansas University basketball coach Roy Williams  never one to pass up a good superstition  spit in the fabled river twice on Saturday before his top-seeded Jayhawks routed No. 8 seed Stanford, 86-63, in the second round of the Midwest Regional.

“Because of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, this morning when I went out for a walk with my wife (Wanda) we went down Market Street and, yes, I did spit in the Mississippi River,” Williams said. “I turned around and there were three people from Leavenworth behind me, and they did (spit) also.”

No doubt KU fans across the nation will be expectorating in their nearest bodies of water in the next week before KU’s game Friday in the Sweet 16 at Madison, Wis.

Williams, who first spit in the Big Muddy in 1982 as an assistant coach with a North Carolina team that made it to the Final Four in New Orleans, revived the superstition in 1993 when his own KU team stopped in St. Louis on its way to another Final Four in the Big Easy.

The coach wasn’t the only Jayhawk spitting. Later Saturday, Williams and his team were on the bus headed for the Edward Jones Dome and a date with the Cardinal.

Guess what attraction was on the way?

“I thought we were through with superstitions,” said freshman Wayne Simien, who was not pleased with the results on Thursday when KU players rubbed the belly of a Billiken statue at Saint Louis University for good luck before a narrow victory over No. 16 seed Holy Cross. “But on the way to the dome the bus was driving this way, and I knew something was up.”

Indeed, it was. Once again, the parade diverted the bus toward the river. Once again, Williams had to stop.

“We were driving that bus through there right by the river and the casino, and the river was calling me, ‘Roy,'” he said. “So, I stopped the bus and everyone got off.”

You know what happened next.

“I didn’t know it was lucky before,” freshman guard Aaron Miles said. “I do now.”