Woodling: Kansas wakes up in time
Dallas ? You’re sleeping soundly in your hotel room, and suddenly the clock-radio begins to blare music. Rats. The previous occupant had set the alarm, and you forgot to check it before you hit the hay.
Has that ever happened to you? Sure it has.
The point is, sometimes you never know when the alarm will go off. Case in point: Kansas University’s men’s basketball team in Friday night’s Big 12 Conference quarterfinal clash with Missouri at American Airlines Center.
As hard as it is to believe by the final score — Kansas romped, 94-69, posting its second-highest point total of the season — the Jayhawks were sleepwalking through the first 10 or so minutes.
Gawd, they were bad. The Jayhawks were turning it over, fouling, whiffing on the boards, shooting bricks.
How often have you seen a coach call a timeout after only 81 seconds had elapsed? KU’s Bill Self did after Jeff Graves missed a point-blank shot under the basket moments after the opening tip and Keith Langford turned the ball over on the next two possessions.
Uh, oh … maybe Kansas was going to be afflicted by that old college basketball axiom about how difficult it is to defeat a team three times in one season.
With 9:39 remaining before intermission and Missouri ahead 24-12, KU’s legions of faithful watching at home on television must have wondered if the next game they watched would be from Buffalo or Columbus or Raleigh or some other far-flung NCAA Tournament first- and second-round site.
For all intents and purposes, it appeared the Jayhawks were about to suffer one of those sinking spells reminiscent of the stunning earlier losses to Nevada and Richmond.
Missouri's Arthur Johnson (50) beats KU's David Padgett to a rebound in the first half.
“The first 10 minutes,” Self said, “we were pretty bad on both ends.”
Pretty bad? That’s like saying the Johnstown flood, the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire were pretty bad. The Jayhawks were awful.
And then, just like in my hotel room earlier that morning, the alarm went off, and the Jayhawks arose to meet the day — if indeed you can say a day begins about 9:30 p.m. CST., which is when Self’s troops began to turn Missouri into mincemeat.
After scoring 12 points in the first 10 1/2 minutes, the Jayhawks scored 84 in the last 29 1/2.
“The last 30 minutes,” Self said, “were about as good as we’ve played.”
How the Jayhawks were able to morph from a lethargic, seemingly inept gang of bumblers into a running, jumping, shooting and high-fiving group of overachievers isn’t easily explained.
Self mentioned that usually when a team plays the night before — as Missouri had in dispatching league sad sack Texas A&M Thursday night — that team usually comes out and plays better than a team that has been off for nearly a week, as the Jayhawks had.
What Self didn’t say is that the team that played the night before usually runs out of gas after awhile, and that theory, more than anything, may explain why the Jayhawks were able to rally to post a 35-33 halftime lead, then blow the Tigers to smithereens midway through the second half.
As each half progressed, Missouri — long whispered in hushed tones as a team with no heart — evolved into a team with no legs, and the combination proved fatal.
We’ll find out today if Kansas, a team hardly lacking in heart, will suffer similar leg weariness when it meets Texas in one of the afternoon semifinals. Texas doesn’t have the first-string guns Kansas has — the Longhorns, for instance, have no one resembling Wayne Simien (few do) — but the ‘Horns have the bodies to wear the Jayhawks down.
Notably, one of KU’s most embarrassing losses — the 75-61 thumping at Nevada — occurred after the Jayhawks had played the night before, so Kansas still has to prove it can cope with the short turnaround.
Kansas, too, would like to do a little paybacking today and Sunday. If the Jayhawks can knock off Texas today and Oklahoma State the next day, they’ll avenge two road losses to the two teams that finished ahead of them — well, Texas tied — in the regular-season standings.
At the same time, the Jayhawks would take a giant step toward an NCAA assignment in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena instead of a gigantic road trip to Buffalo or Raleigh or Columbus, or wherever.
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