JAYHAWK
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Basketball
Inside Sports today
Home court advantage proved to be significant for the top seeds of the women's NCAA basketball tournament. The sweet sixteen offers no surprises. SEE PAGE 2B
Yesterday's game - Kansas vs. Purdue
KANSAS
23-10
RANKED NO. 25
WWW.JHAWKBBALL.COM
SECTION B, PAGE
PURDUE 30-1 55
RANKED NO. 1
RANKED NO.1
TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 1999
Late surge propels Purdue past Jayhawks
Senior center
Nakia Sanford
receives a hand
after being
knocked to the
floor. The
women's team
lost to Purdue
last night, 55-
41. Photoy
Augustus Anthony
Piazza/KANSAN
By Matt James
mjames@kansan.com
Kansas Sportswriter
By Matt James
For sophomore forward Brooke Reves, it wasn't enough just to make the trip to the NCAA Tournament. She wanted to make an impact.
Because of the NCAA transfer rules, Keves nai to watch her team advance to the Sweet 16 last season from her living room in Lawrence. But last night in West Lafayette she provided an offensive spark for her Jayhawks, but no one else was able to catch fire.
Kansas, the No. 9 seed, struggled offensively the entire game and fell to the top-seeded Purdue Boilermakers, 55-41, in the Midwest sub-regional last night in West Lafayette, Ind.
The 41 points marks the Jayhawks' fourth-lowest scoring total of all time.
"We weren't comfortable," Reves said of the Jayhawks' offense. "It wasn't flowing. If they stopped us one way, we didn't have another option. We just froze. Everybody stopped cutting, including myself."
Reves finished with a team-high 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds, but the team shot only 38 percent from the floor. Leading scorer Lynn Pride was held to just nine points, only the fourth time all season she hasn't reached double figures.
"If Lynn has the ball and they all squeeze to her, somebody needs to cut to the basket," Reves said. "They really tried to stop Lynn, and the rest
of us should have been working to get open. We didn't seem to do that. Our depth kind of slowed us down."
Lack of depth has been a problem for the team since the beginning of the season, and last night was no exception. The Kansas bench managed only two points in 24 minutes of play.
"The fact that they were switching on everything caused a lot of problems for our offense," Pride said. "We can say that defensively we did a great job. We held a great team to a low percentage."
The Jayhawks held the top-ranked team in the nation to its lowest point total of the season and just 26 percent first-half shooting, and trailed just 22-16 at the half.
"We really worked hard on defense," Reves said. "We felt we controlled the tempo of the game for a while. We were really confident, and it somehow slipped away from us."
The score was 30-28 with nine minutes remaining in the game when Pride left the game with her fourth foul. The Boilermakers proceeded to go on a 15-2 run during the next five minutes as Purdue's talented, three-guard attack led the way. Ukari Figgs, Stephanie White-McCarty and Katie Douglas totaled all but two of their teams points during the crucial run that put the game out of reach. The trio finished with 14, 13 and 15 points respectively.
Season of highs and lows ends in disappointing blow
See WOMEN on page 3B
By Kevin C. Wilson
kwilson @kanson.com
Kanson swisspriter
The roller coaster ride is over.
The Kansas Jayhawks' most unpredictable season in the 1990s ended Sunday with a heartbreaking 92-88 overtime loss to the Kentucky Wildcats, the defending national champions, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"I have never been as proud of team as this one here," Kansas coach Roy Williams said. "We were so close to getting what we wanted. To come through and improve down the stretch like they did, makes me very proud."
The Jayhawks, who finished the season 23-10, had won seven of their last eight games and won their third consecutive conference tournament championship prior to the heart-breaking loss to the Wildcats.
For most universities, a 20-win season and a berth in the NCAA Tournament would be cause for celebration but not for the winningest men's college basketball team in the 1990s. This season the bipolar Jayhawks suffered through extreme highs and lows.
Kansas' 62-game home winning streak came to an end when Iowa rallied from an 18-point second-half deficit to defeat the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse for the first time since the 1993-94 season.
The Jayhawks dropped out of the Associated Press' top 25 poll Feb.1 for the first time since Jan. 21, 1991. They were ranked in the poll for 144 consecutive weeks.
The Jayhawks were embarrassed by the same Kentucky team that ended their season in early December at the Great Eight in Chicago, and Nebraska ended a nine-game losing streak to the Jayhawks by sweeping both regular
season games against Kansas.
Rayford Young exploded for 41 points as Texas Tech beat Kansas for the first time in 10 tries, and St. Louis and Iowa State surprised the Jawhavks as well.
Kansas not only suffered its most losses since Williams' inaugural season but also had to do deal with a season-long rash of injuries to their already depleted front line. Senior T.J. Pugh sat out the first three games of the season because of an ankle injury, junior college transfer Ashante Johnson missed the first 15 games because of a knee injury, and junior Lester Earl was unavailable for 11 games throughout the season because of various injuries.
Williams not only had to find replacements for his wounded players, but he also was faced with the daunting task of replacing two All-
See SEASON'S on page 3B
Redshirt freshman Jeff Carey, senior T. J. Pugh, junior Ashante Johnson, and junior Nick Bradford react with dismay during the closing minutes of their postseason loss to Kentucky. The Jayhawks' up and down season with a loss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row. Photo by Graham K. Johnson/KANSAN
Softball pitches its home opener in doubleheader against Arkansas
By Brandon Stinnett Kansan sportswriter
The Kansas softball team is hoping to give its season a boost today in its home opener, a doubleheader against Arkansas.
The Jayhawks (11-10) are coming off a 3-2 eighth-inning loss to Virginia Sunday in the semifinals of the Silver Bracket of the Lady Seminole Invitational in Tallahassee, Fla. Kansas finished the tournament with a 2-3 record, losing three games by a total of four runs.
"So far we haven't been very consistent," said junior shortstop Christy McPhail. "We have to find a way to play with the same intensity every game. So far, we're not doing that."
"We're struggling right now," said coach Tracy Bunge. "Obviously, we're not happy with the way we are playing. I think it's just our youth and inexperience coming out."
After jumping out to an 8-3 record to start the season, Kansas has dropped seven of its last 10 games.
Two of the Jayhawks losses at the Lady Seminole Invitational
"We haven't been hitting very well, but our defense and pitching was good," McPhail said. "I don't know what it is. We've been blowing leads in the late innings."
Kansas has had trouble producing with runners in scoring position. The team stranded 32 runners in five games this past weekend.
came after squandering leads in the seventh inning.
The Jayhawks will try to get back on track against Arkansas before playing in the Airtouch Cellular Capital Classic in Sacramento March 18-21. McPhail said playing at home should give Kansas an advantage.
"It seems like we always have runners on base, but we can never get them," McPhail said.
"We lost two games to Arkansas last year that we never should have lost," McPhail said. "I'm
Kansas will be fighting fatigue facing the Lady Razorbacks. The team arrived in Lawrence from Tallahassee at 4 a.m. Monday morning and many players spent Monday afternoon taking midterms and catching up on school work.
really excited to get to play at home and the weather will be nice. Not having to travel takes a lot of pressure off us."
"The kids are dead tired," Bunge said. "But we can't let that be an excuse. If we come out and play like I know we can, we will come away with two wins."
Bunge said that the players can't afford to let lack of rest get them down.
"Spring break is usually a time when the team does a lot of bonding." McPhail said. "We need to get everything together before the Big 12 play starts next weekend."
The Lady Seminole Invitational kicked off a two-week stretch where Kansas will play at least 14 games.
Kansas opens conference play against Oklahoma State March 27 in Stillwater, Okla.
- Edited by Tara Hinkhouse
'Hawks rip through Iowa State for first sweep in two seasons
By Matt Tait
After Sunday's win against the Iowa State Cyclones, coach Bobby Randall was pleased but said his team could play better. Apparently, he was right.
The Jayhawks concluded the Iowa State series at Hoglund Ballpark with two wins yesterday, including a 12-5 win in game two that Randall called the team's best performance of the season. The wins earned the Jayhawks their first conference sweep in two years.
mtait@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Even though Kansas played on its own field, the Jayhawks were the visiting team because the games that were originally scheduled to be played in Ames, Iowa, had to be moved because of bad weather.
The Jayhawks provided Philbrick with two runs in the first and extended the lead to 5-1 going into the ninth. In the ninth, the "Hawks tacked on four insurance runs, thanks in part to a circus of errors committed by the Cyclones and won the first game 9-1.
"After the Texas series, I was really concentrating on hitting the corners," Philbrick said. "I think mentality wise I go at it the same, but since I didn't give up any runs in the first, I was more confident."
In the afternoon game, Kansas starter Rusty Philbrick pitched eight dominating innings to earn the win.
"The defense played really well behind me," Philbrick said. "If guys got on, the defense helped me get out of it."
If a 9-1 victory wasn't enough improvement, the Jay hawks decided to save the best for last, as they again defeated the Cyclones in convincing fashion, 12-5.
The Jayhawks didn't make an error in the first game and played an all-around excellent defensive game.
"This was our best game," Randall said. "We got a good performance by a lot of guys, and truthfully, I did.
Junior Ryan Schmidt started game two and pitched four innings allowing three runs on six hits before giving way to freshman Ryan Klocksien who finished the game allowing only two more hits.
"Schmidt pitched real well, and then Klocksen came in and did a good job for us," Randall said.
Offensively the Jayhawks pounded out 14 hits. Sophomore John Nelson and junior Brett Kappelmann led the charge as they delivered three hits a piece. Included in Kappelmann's was a home run, his first of the year.
Despite the explosion of hits and runs throughout the series, Randall said that the key to sweeping the Cyclones was the solid defense.
"Nelson played a great shortstop all weekend, and Harrison Hill played good in center field, as did Chad King at first and Brandon O'Neal showed some signs of maturity," Randall said. "We're playing better, and I knew we would. It wasn't a panic deal. I'm just glad we started it."
The Jayhawks next action comes this weekend as they play host to the Nebraska Cornhuskers for a three-game series.
Edited by Jodi Smith
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