No matter the temperature on the outside, it never grows cold in the dining area inside the Hy-Vee on Sixth Street. Hot air forever is in stock there, with men talking sports the day after games, big and small.

The pressure to turn over the tables that hangs over diners at fancier eating establishments doesn’t exist there, so the men talk and talk and talk and talk. When they are done talking, they talk some more.

Sometimes, the talkers even have impressive-enough backgrounds to bring a ton of credibility to the tables.

Such was the case Tuesday afternoon when four former Kansas University basketball players representing the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s gathered for lunch and shared their thoughts on this season’s inconsistent team that is packed with promise.

Kansas natives Jerry Waugh (1948-51), Bill Hougland (1950-52), Al Kelley (1953-54) and Harry Gibson (1962-64) all agreed the team they would watch in the latter half of the season would be more pleasing on the eyes than the one they’ve seen thus far. Three of them were captains of the KU team, and the fourth, Hougland, was captain of the U.S. Olympic team. All could be called captains of industry.

Picking favorites

The first topic tossed up for discussion: Name your favorite player to watch on the team and explain why.

A Kansas City, Kan., native, Gibson assisted Ted Owens for one season before deciding he’d rather pursue an engineering career. He batted leadoff in the discussion.

“It’s close between Brandon (Rush) and Darrell (Arthur),” Gibson said. “I’ll say it’s Brandon because when I was in college, I was a rebounder, primarily, a rebounder and a defensive player. As far as rebounding goes, Brandon, I think, does a tremendous job. He’s got a long body. He gets to the ball well, and he has great timing. He made a play the other day against USC where he shot the ball on one side, followed his shot, and got a rebound on the other side of the basket.

“I like the way he plays defense. He’s on his man, gets good position on his man most of the time, and he usually gets assigned the toughest shooter. He’s long. He’s tough. He battles them all the way.

“At the same time, he’s trying to carry an offensive load. When you’re playing that hard on defense and you’re playing that hard on offense, it’s tough, and I admire him for the effort. That’s all apart from when he shoots. When he shoots it in, everybody loves him. What he’s doing now, even not scoring, he’s been a valuable contributor.”

Jerry Waugh, nicknamed The Sheriff during his playing days, came to KU from Wellington. He was an assistant basketball and head women’s golf coach at KU. He’s fond of quoting his college coach, Phog Allen, has been known to beat his age on the golf course and brings a dry sense of humor to the table.

“(Russell) Robinson,” Waugh said. “I like Robinson. He’s an unselfish player. He plays hard, and defensively he’s getting better all the time. I just like a kid who goes out and busts his (tail) all the time. He’s got quick hands. He gets them in there all the time. And he helps out well and yet can recover and get back to his man. He’s very competitive at the defensive end.

“The criticism is, we think he needs to score more, but I don’t think he sees his role that way. A player has to play within himself and be who he is. I think that’s who he is. He’s never going to be a scorer, and I don’t think he needs to be.”

Hougland, nicknamed “Wormy” by Allen because, according to Waugh, “He could worm his way in there and get rebounds,” won a national title at Kansas and two Olympic gold medals before enjoying similar success for Koch Industries.

“I’m going to go with Jerry on Robinson, and the reason I say that is I’d rather watch defense than offense any time,” Hougland said. “And I think it’s fun to watch our defense when those two guards are out there battling the other guards. You don’t know what’s going to happen. They cause so many things to happen. The forwards don’t do that. It’s those two little guards (Robinson and Mario Chalmers) swatting at the ball. If you watch them, they’re always hitting something, and they’re fun to watch. They make our team something special because not many people have two little guards who are that good at stealing the ball. Whenever they make a big run, it’s usually caused by those guards stealing the ball, driving to the bucket and passing it off.”

Hougland said he loved the way Robinson never surrendered and never considered himself out of a play defensively.

“Every now and then he’ll get cut off, something will happen, and boy does he run to get back to that player, and he knows where to go,” Hougland said. “He’s good at that. And he’s not afraid to stick his head in there.”

Kelley, who came to KU from McCune, earned the nicknamed Machine Gun after he proved he wasn’t afraid of fouling anybody as he hacked his way through an exhibition game the KU freshmen played against the inmates at the penitentiary in Lansing. (Waugh demonstrated the hacking with karate chops up the arm while making a machine gun sound).

Machine Gun Kelley earned a gold medal for the U.S. Olympic team and would have hacked the guards playing in front of him in practice, if only he could have caught up to them. Their names: Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.

“All the players on the team have special talents, but I’d guess I’d have to pick Julian Wright because of his potential, because he has some moves I haven’t seen before, especially the one coach didn’t like, the one where he started to wrap it behind his back, then brought it back and ended up losing the ball,” Kelley said.

Marveling at the way Wright can contort his body, Kelley pinned the nickname “Noodle” on him. KU students have taken to calling Wright “The Raptor” because of his tendency to stand slightly hunched over at the waist with his hands hanging perpendicular to the floor.

“He’s got a lot of untapped ability,” Kelley said. “He gets very nervous sometimes, but he’s a good rebounder, a good passer. I think when it gets instilled in him it’s not the way the pass looks, it’s whether it gets there, he’s going to be a great player. I think he’s going to be a great player anyway. He’s an unselfish player.”

With so much to like about the aforementioned players, why is the 12th-ranked team struggling?

“Let’s premise this,” Waugh jumped in. “We don’t see these guys in practice very often. We don’t see them as a coach sees them. Our statements are interest statements. They aren’t criticism. That’s what makes it fun. Were all of us to get together after a game or the next morning at coffee and talk about why he did this or he did that, that’s what keeps basketball so important in this community. Interest.”

Hougland chimed in: “And not everybody has the same opinion after a game. That’s what keeps it interesting.”

OK, with the qualifiers out of the way, it’s time to go back to the question of why this team isn’t performing better.

“I think this team, once they get all the kinks worked out of their system, is going to be very fun to watch, and they’ve got a lot of natural ability,” Kelley said. “I think it would have been better for Kansas if we hadn’t been ranked No. 1 in the country and had several of our players picked for honors. You can’t live in the past. Every team rises to play against Kansas because of the tradition. They can do it, but they have to put their minds together. Somebody’s got to be the leader and he’s got to earn that. They don’t hand that out.”

Gibson offered his take: “I think with young players it’s hard to understand that when the first season ends and you’re league champions and you won the league tournament, that doesn’t necessarily just carry on to the next year, and you don’t start out at the same place. You have to work just as hard as you did the year before and sustain that effort every day in practice and sustain it in the games. And you have to get up for every single game. As Al said earlier, when somebody plays Kansas they’re going to play their best game of the year because it’s the game of the year for a lot of these schools, and if they beat Kansas it’s a real positive for their program. Our guys, it looks like they look at some of these schools and figure if they just show up they’re going to win easily. I think they’ve found out you’ve got to show up and you’ve got to play your ‘A’ game or you’re going to come out on the short end of it. I think it’s taken time for them to get that message. They don’t have any seniors on this team to say we’ve been through this before and how hard we have to continue to work like we did last year. What you do in practice shows up in the games. You’ve got to play just as hard in practice.”

Hougland offered insight that showed times hadn’t really changed all that much.

“You play down to the level of the people you’re playing,” Hougland said. “It’s human nature. You don’t put out quite as much. You might think you are, but you’re not. We used to be the same way.”

Could it be there aren’t enough pure shooters on the roster?

“I think they have plenty of shooters,” Gibson said. “It’s just confidence. It’s going to go. Just have to have patience. … I think part of it is there’s a tendency for them to overpass sometimes. I’m no expert. But if they had the confidence to just step up there and take a shot within the flow of the offense early on, it seems like sometimes we pass that up and later in the same possession the clock’s running out and you end up having to take a worse shot. I’m not talking about forcing a shot. I’m talking about when there’s a shot in the offense we have to have the confidence to shoot that and when we do the shots are going to start falling. It’s all going to fall into place. I’m fully confident of that.”

Added Kelley: “To extend a little bit of what Harry said as far as passing the ball, I don’t claim to be an expert, but it seems they do pass the ball an extra amount. To me, if they could penetrate, two or three dribbles, break the plain, go up for a close shot or pass off. … It seems like it goes around the perimeter a lot.”

Hougland predicted the return of Sasha Kaun would mean better times soon.

“He helps everybody on defense,” Hougland said. “He may foul a lot, but you get around somebody, he’s right there with his arms up.”

The men repeatedly made references to Phog Allen. At one point, Waugh asked: “Does anyone else remember Doc saying, ‘An athlete must say no a thousand times to temptation before he says yes once to victory?”’

Hougland broke up laughing and said: “I’ve used that line in every speech I’ve ever given.”

That means the KU players must say no 22,000 times apiece to reach 30 victories. Do they have that in them?