Kansans who believe they are more genteel and civilized than the rude, harried denizens of New York City have a reinforcing advocate in Russell Robinson.

“People are way nicer here,” Robinson remarked the other day. “Things are slower here, and people show a lot of love.”

Robinson is a Kansas University freshman basketball player from the Big Apple. He was a hotshot backcourt performer at Rice High, a Catholic boys school located in the Harlem section of Manhattan.

Kansans, at the same time, have their own perception of New York City-bred basketball players — that they play day in and day out on high-fenced asphalt playgrounds located next to tenement buildings, shucking and jiving in endless games of one-on-one until it’s too dark to see the metal nets.

Not necessarily. Playground ball, Robinson learned after awhile, is best avoided.

“As I got older, I kept it indoors,” Robinson said. “You get fewer injuries that way, like twisted ankles.”

Still, to reverse the old Dorothy-Toto lament, Robinson isn’t in New York City anymore and, while the pace may be slower here and the people nicer, he is no different than countless other freshmen who have enrolled in a college or university far from home.

“Yeah, I’m a little homesick,” he confirmed. “The first couple of days were tough.”

You’ve read and heard enough about Robinson to know he possesses a variety of on-the-floor talents. How those skills will translate to the major-college level remains to be seen, but the tributes have been glowing.

They say Robinson can handle both backcourt positions — shooting guard and point guard. Not many can. Kirk Hinrich could, and he was an NBA first-round draft choice. Nobody is saying Robinson is the next Hinrich, but from all reports he does possess Hinrich-like toughness.

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“The thing I like most about him is his tenacity,” KU coach Bill Self said. “He’s tough. He can really, really defend. He could be a stopper-type defender.”

No doubt Self wishes he had the luxury of a stopper-type defender like Robinson last March in St. Louis when point guard Aaron Miles logged a lung-searing 43 minutes in the Jayhawks’ 79-71 overtime loss to Georgia Tech in the NCAA Elite Eight.

Robinson, who had considered signing with Georgia Tech as well as Kentucky a few months earlier, watched that game on television at a friend’s house back home.

“I was rooting for Kansas,” Robinson recalled. “You always wish you could be out there playing, but my time will come.”

Surely, if Self had been able to give Miles more bench time, Miles would have been more effective against Tech point guard Jarrett Jack, who led the Yellow Jackets in points (29), rebounds (9) and assists (6) in the game that prevented the Jayhawks from making a third straight Final Four appearance.

This much is certain: Self didn’t recruit Robinson just so the versatile 6-foot-1 New Yorker could sit on the bench and watch Miles play 35 minutes a game this season. Self wooed Robinson for two reasons — 1) to relieve Miles and 2) to provide punch off the bench. A lack of bench scoring was a glaring weakness in 2003-2004.

Miles, for one, has no doubts about Robinson.

“I like the kid, I like him a lot, both on and off the court,” Miles said. “I think as the year progresses, he’ll develop. He’s talented, he’s tough and he has a lot of heart.”

At the same time, Robinson is obviously his own man. With the proliferation of colleges in the New York City area, he could have easily stayed home — and very well may have if KU aide Norm Roberts, the point man in his recruitment, had been named head coach at St. John’s six months earlier — but opted to go halfway across the country instead.

Many of his friends couldn’t believe it.

“Their reaction was, wow. They were surprised I decided to go so far from home,” he said.

Now Robinson will go even farther from home when the Jayhawks travel in 10 days to Vancouver where he will make his collegiate debut.

“I’m happy to have the opportunity,” he said. “I expect to try to play hard and help the team. I have Aaron to learn from, and I hope to make the best of it.”