KU aware of Aggies’ hot start

Kansas University senior Keith Langford hasn’t seen Texas A&M play on TV yet this season.

But the Fort Worth, Texas, native, who knows pretty much everything there is to know about sports in his home state, is aware of the Aggies’ performance — as in a perfect 11-0 record.

“You look at any team that has not lost a game, they have things going their way,” Langford said of the Aggies, who will tangle with KU (9-0) at 8 tonight at Allen Fieldhouse. “They have a new coach who worked with coach Self so we know they’ll play hard and be ready.”

A&M is coached by former Self assistant Billy Gillispie, who left Texas-El Paso for College Station after last season.

The two coaches believe in running the high-low offense, though KU has changed the past two games without All-America candidate Wayne Simien in the lineup.

“We put in some different things,” Langford said, “but the philosophies are still the same. We are winning, so it doesn’t really matter.”

What’s most important, the Jayhawks say, is winning their first Big 12 Conference game.

“I think that our players should be, and I know we’re promoting it this way — this is the start of our second season,” Self said. “This is a bigger game than nonconference games because it affects our goals more.”

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No travel woes: The Aggies, who flew charter, made it to Topeka’s Forbes Field without any travel delays late Tuesday afternoon. They practiced Tuesday night at Allen Fieldhouse.

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Wright’s all right: A&M is led by junior forward Antoine Wright, who averages 18.0 points and 6.4 boards a game.

Wright, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound junior from San Bernardino, Calif., needs 17 points to become the 26th Aggie to hit 1,000 for his career.

“Antoine is having a bounce-back year, and I didn’t know he would be the kind of leader and the kind of teammate that he has become this quickly,” A&M coach Gillispie said of Wright, who averaged 13.5 points a game off 36.8 percent shooting last season.

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Fans turned away: KU athletic department officials are hoping they never will have a repeat of Saturday, when about 100 fans with general-admission tickets were left without seats and denied entry to the fieldhouse for the Georgia Tech game.

KU associate AD Jim Marchiony, who said the game was not oversold, explained what happened:

“Because the crowd was so large, what we call the ‘spread factor’ … we couldn’t get the people to squeeze in a G.A. section,” he said. “We can’t have people sitting in the aisles. We relocated as many as we could to single seats around the building we knew were available. The rest we offered a refund or chance to go to another game.

“Some were terrific about it. Some were understandably upset,” Marchiony said of ticket holders. “We feel terrible about that, but it was a situation of public safety. We don’t anticipate having this problem again.”

Tonight’s game also is a sellout.

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Briefly: KU leads the all-time series, 9-0.

  • KU has won 13 straight conference openers. Its last loss came to Oklahoma on Jan. 8, 1991, in Norman, Okla. A&M has dropped its last nine league openers.
  • KU won last year’s game, 71-65, on Jan. 17 at Reed Arena in College Station, Texas. Antoine Wright paced the Aggies with 25 points. Keith Langford had 21 for KU.
  • The Aggies are 11-0 for the first time since 1919-20 when the team opened 19-0. A&M last had an 11-game win streak in 1921-22.
  • Gillispie is the first native Texan (Graford) to serve as A&M’s hoops coach since J.B. Reid (1929-35).
  • A&M junior Luis Clemente is related to former Pittsburgh Pirates great Roberto Clemente (grandfather’s cousin). Sophomore Acie Law is related to former Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks (mother’s uncle).
  • Junior Antoine Wright has scored at least 19 points in five straight games. Law has scored in double figures in six straight games, including a career-high 25 versus Houston last week.
  • Frosh Joseph Jones has three double-doubles.
  • J.R. Giddens has made three or more three-pointers in four of his last five games.
  • Christian Moody is shooting 63.9 percent from the field.
  • KU is the only Big 12 team to win more than 100 regular-season games. KU is 106-22. That’s 17 more than Texas (89-39).
  • KU is 9-0 for the first time since the 1996-97 season.
  • The Jayhawks have held all nine foes to under 50 percent shooting. KU has outrebounded eight of nine opponents and had 10 or more steals in five games.