KU students need tickets, beg Roy to stay
New Orleans ? Call them the ring team.
Tom Glennon and Tim O’Brien started making the rounds Friday, sizing Kansas University players, coaches and others for Final Four rings.
Glennon, who works for Jostens, dutifully slipped ring sizers onto the fingers of KU administrative assistant Jerod Haase (size 15 1/2), guard Michael Lee (size 12) and the other 24 soon-to-be-recipients of the rings. O’Brien followed his co-worker dutifully, charting the results as the pair visited locker rooms during Friday’s practice sessions.
The NCAA pays for the rings, made from 10-carat gold and detailed with black onyx stone.
Whether another set of rings — national championship rings — will be ordered for the Kansas contingent won’t be known until after Monday night’s game. And KU assistant coach Steve Robinson (size 14 1/2) wouldn’t mind getting one.
“I’ll take as many as I can get,” Robinson said.
Ticket time
Brian Cook and Will Stinson are the envy of all their friends this weekend in New Orleans.
The two KU students already have tickets, secured through the KU ticket office as part of the student lottery.
“I saw a guy selling a low-level pair today for $6,000,” Stinson said as he watched practice Friday from the cheap seats — Final Four practices are free and open to the public.
“I reached into my wallet and said, ‘That’s a good idea … but I have to decline.’ He thought he had a sale, an eager KU student who wanted to get in the game.
6News video: Fans in New Orleans think Roy will stay
Marquette, who?“Yeah, I could’ve sold my car to go to the game. Right.”
Stinson, a junior from Florence, Ala., and Cook, a senior from Overland Park, were joined in the stands by three ticketless classmates: Chris Stubbs, a Topeka junior; Benjamin Williams, a Leawood junior; and Sam Ritchie, a Wichita junior.
Four other guys joined them on the trip — in all, the group used three vehicles — and all are in the market for tickets.
The consensus: Hope to pay $200 for each three-game package, but they know that’s unlikely unless they can stumble upon some generous Williams Fund members at the Sheraton, KU’s team hotel.
“Hopefully they’ll take pity on us,” Williams said. “We’re students.”
Heck no, Roy won’t go
The team of Lawrence residents occupying seats 1-4 of Row 9, Section 42 at the Louisiana Superdome sees KU coach Roy Williams staying put on Mount Oread.
North Carolina? No way.
“He didn’t go three years ago,” Derek Cooper said. “Why would he go now?”
Added Dottie Nordlund, Cooper’s grandmother: “He’s so faithful and so concerned about his friends.”
Mary Ann Williams’ take: “He keeps saying he’s not going, and he shouldn’t have to keep saying it.”
Her husband, John Williams, closed the book on the discussion: “He’s staying.”
But just in case, KU fans Buddy Lloyd and Eddie Lorenzo stood up across the aisle and started a chant much more desperate than the familiar “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” as practice concluded: “STAY! STAY! STAY! STAY! STAY! …”
Coach Williams soon gathered his team and led it off the court, offering no indication about whether the ploy might have worked.
The speculation would rage for another day.
“He’s gone,” Lorenzo concluded.
Je m’appelle Larry
Don’t ask Brett Olson to bother with the French Quarter, New Orleans’ most vibrant, decadent destination.
The KU senior, a walk-on forward on the basketball team, doesn’t need the temptation. Or the confusion.
“I’ve been to France once before, and that’s the real deal,” Olson said. “I don’t need to the Americanized version. I went to Paris my senior year in high school. Some of the people over there thought I was in the NBA or something.
“They have all these people out on the street, trying to get you to come in their restaurant. This one guy was trying to get me to come in, he was asking me about playing basketball and stuff.
“I told him I was Larry Bird. He didn’t know anything.”
Come to think of it, sounds like he’s already been to the French Quarter.
Price is right?
Hollis Price can’t lose.
The Oklahoma guard, whose college career ended last week with a loss to Syracuse, is back home in New Orleans for the Final Four — this time as a fan.
He’s rooting for KU and Texas, but he won’t pick a winner.
“I’m pulling for the Big 12 (Conference),” he said, courtside for KU’s public practice Friday at the Superdome. “I’m not going to pick one because I like both teams. Roy Williams is a great coach, and Rick Barnes is a great coach. I have friends on both teams.
“We have two teams in it, just like we had last year. This year I hope we can win it.”
As for his take on the whole Williams-to-Carolina speculation: “I think coach Williams will make the right decision. Whatever he chooses, I think the world of him, and I respect him. I’m sure everybody’s going to support him. I know I will.”