JAYHAWK
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Basketball
Inside Sports today
The Denver Broncos won Super Bowl XXXIII, defeating the Atlanta Falcons 34-19. Broncos quarterback John Elway was named the game's MVP. SEE PAGE 4B
Yesterday's game - Kansas vs. K-State
KANSAS
16-6, 6-3
ED NO.24
RANKED NO.24
66
SECTION B, PAGE 1
K-STATE
11-8, 4-5
UNRANKED
45
WWW.JHAWKBBALL.COM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1999
Strong defense helps women rout'Cats
Kansan sportswriter
For the Kansas State Wildcats, just getting a decent shot off yesterday at Allen Fieldhouse was a small victory.
"Their defense really put our younger perimeter players on their heels," said Kansas State head coach Deb Patterson. "Consequently, the shot clock was down a lot and we weren't getting very many shots."
The Kansas women's basketball team defensively dominated its overmatched, in-state rival from Manhattan in a 66-45 rout, the Wildcats' lowest point-total of the season.
The harassing Jayhawk defense made 14 steals, including four by junior Lynn Pride, who also led the Jayhawks with nine rebounds and scored 16 points.
For only the fourth time this season, Pride did not lead the Jayhawks in scoring. Kansas (16-6, 6-3) was paced by sophomore forward Brooke Reves. She hit 11 of 18 shots on her way to a career-high 23 points.
Sophomore guard Jennifer Jackson then hit three consecutive jump shots, opening up a 12-point lead for the Jayhawks.
Pride had the hot hand early, fighting her way inside to score eight of the Jayhawks' first 14 points. The Wildcat defense eventually began to slow Pride and K-State junior forward Nicky Ramage made a jump shot with 4:15 remaining in the half to bring her team within six points at 21-15.
guard me and that's when we were able to get it back into Lynn."
Pride set the stage early in the second half, pushing past defenders for layups on the Jayhawks' first two possessions.
The rest of the game was the Brooke Reves show. The Big 12 Newcomer of the Year candidate was hot from the floor, scoring 15 points during the next 12 minutes before being pulled out of the game with four minutes remaining and the lead securely in the Javhwaks' hands.
Reves made jumper after jumper, many coming after sharply thrown passes from a penetrating Lynn Pride.
"She makes me look awesome," Reves said of Pride. "If I find a hole, she sees me, and she's not afraid to make that pass. A lot of people are afraid to make a turnover and have to sit on the
bench, but she's not afraid because she knows she can get it there."
"I really enjoy playing with Brooke," Pride said. "She always catches my passes. We get that eye contact, and we really feed off of each other."
The dangerous combination of Pride and Reves accounted for more than half of the Jayhawks' points, and Reves could be the scoring threat that could take some of the pressure off of Pride.
The Jayhawks won't be needing too much scoring from anyone if they continue to play defense the way they did in the second half.
Kansas held Kansas State scoreless for nearly seven minutes during a stretch during which it opened up a 62-37 lead.
"We had a game plan, and defensively we really saw it through," head coach Marian Washington said. "We're moving with a lot more confidence. There is a trust that's building, and I think it's pretty evident."
Sophomore guard Jennifer Jackson tries to evade the Kansas State defense. Jack son scored eight points against the Wildcats yesterday during a 66-45 Kansas victory. Photo by Ruben Noguera/KANSAN
Record-holding sprinter comes home for Invitational
By Mike Miller
Kansan sportswriter
Spinner Maurice Greene breaks away from the pack in the 60-meter dash. Greene holds several world records and was in Lawrence Friday for an exhibition race at Anschutz Sports Pavilion. Photo by Graham K. Johnson/KANSAN
World record holder Maurice Greene blew by the competition Friday at the Jayhawk Invitational, winning the 60-meter dash in 6.46 seconds, equaling the fastest time ever on U.S. soil.
Greene dominated the field at Anschutz Sports Pavilion, beating his closest competitor by almost five feet.
The victory, in Greene's first race of the indoor season, was made sweeter in front of a hometown crowd. Greene's family and high school coach were there to witness his win.
"It's always fun to come home and race in front of the fans that you've run in front of for years," he said.
Al Hopson, his former coach in Kansas City, put the race into perspective afterwards when he
reminisced about Greene.
"I watched him run from the beginning," he said. "And I've seen him do a lot of amazing things, but I just want to know one thing:
How does it feel to know that when you were fifteen, you got beat by that man holding the TV camera down there?"
down by all of the TV cameras and microphones of the press conference.
Hopson pointed to a rival from junior high who was crouching
Greene saw him and laughed.
Greene saw him and laughed. As the current world record holder in the 60 meters and a former United States and world outdoor champion in the 100-meter dash, Greene gave the crowd at Anschutz what it wanted — a jaw-dropping performance.
Thirty university teams competed in the invitational, but during two special 60-meter dashes, everything else stopped.
Photographers eagerly awaited the start, despite the announcers warnings to "Please stay clear of the track. No flash photography."
Long jumpers and pole vaulters sneaked over from their corners of the arena to crowd around the track. Coaches and athletes from the other side of the field stopped warming up to claim a spot at the edge of the track.
"It felt like I was running in a tunnel, there were so many people lined up on each side."
Greene said.
Kansas men's basketball coach Roy Williams and assistant coach Matt Doherty vied for a place to sit in the bleachers. Men's basketball players Nick Bradford and Kenny Gregory came over in practice gear, their heads peeking over the rest of the crowd.
Everyone waited for the same thing: pure, phenomenal, eyepopping speed.
Greene delivered
Fast out of the blocks, it took no more than twenty-five meters for Greene to take the lead. Once he did, he just kept making space between him and the rest of the field.
"Anything can happen in a 60-meter race. If you mess up, you've lost." Greene said.
Pleased with his time to start the season, Greene made no bones about his desire to break the 100-meter world record.
"That's my ultimate goal," he said. "But I have to wait for that record to come for me."
Jayhawks slay Buffaloes, end two-game losing streak
Kansan sportswriter
Bv Kevin C. Wilson
With a simple flick of the wrist, Kansas point guard Jeff Boschee broke a 74-74 tie with Colorado and a rare two-game Jayhawk losing streak.
After spending the majority of the second half on the sideline because of poor play, the freshman point guard stepped off the bench and into the limelight when he buried a threepointer with eight seconds remaining, sending the Jayhawks to a 77-74 win against Colorado on Saturday.
The win snapped the Jayhawks two-game losing streak. It also pushed their record to 14-6 overall and 6-2 in the Big 12 going into tonight's game against rival Kansas State. Kansas has won the last 13 meetings, its longest streak against the Wildcats since the 1940s, and has claimed 15 straight games in Manhattan. The Jayhawks never have lost a game in Kansas State's Bramplate Coliseum.
"It felt so smooth coming out of my hand," Boschee said. "It might have been short or long, but I knew it was on target."
"Coach Williams always says when we talk about streaks, you just try to put it off one more year," Kansas guard Ryan Robertson said. "The three years I've won before have nothing to do with Monday night's game. We're going to have to play well, because I guarantee Manhattan will be
rockin' and ready."
"I try to be a spark," said Bradford, who scored a career-high 23 points on 9 of 11 shooting, in addition to four assists and three steals. "I just try to play hard. I don't think about offense or scoring or anything like that. I just play hard, because I want us to win."
Allen Fieldhouse definitely was rocking on Saturday.
Behind an emotionally charged Nick Bradford and three Robertson three-pointers, the Jayhawks went on a 21-6 run and took a 35-18 lead with fewer than five minutes remaining in the first half.
Despite Bradford's effort, the Jayhawks failed to finish off the Buffaloes, scoring only two more points before intermission, and limped into halftime with a 37-24 lead.
"That was an ugly last four minutes of the first half," Williams said. "This team shouldn't be overconfident, but I think at first we thought it was going to be easy. We were up 17 at the time, and then we have five or six possessions when we really stink it up. If we could have played the way we were supposed to it could have been a 20- or 22-point game, and then it really would have been difficult for them."
Instead, Colorado, 11-10 overall and 2-6 in the Big 12, cut the Kansas lead almost in during the opening minutes of the second half.
"Colorado kept coming at us." Williams said.
The Buffaloales scored 50 points in the second half and shot 56 percent as they got back into the game. The Colorado guards, especially junior point guard Jaquay Walls, continuously penetrated the lane and attacked the Jayhawks' interior defense. After scoring only four points and committing four turnovers in the first half, Walls exploded for 19 points and had only one turnover in the second half.
"They were so much more aggressive than us in the second half, they took it right to us."
"He was sensational." Robertson said. "His quickness was hard to stop, and he got into penetration, and that really hurt us."
Despite the Buffalofoos' second-half scoring spree, Kansas held on and beat Colorado for the 19th consecutive time and the 16th straight year in Allen Fieldhouse.
It also gave the Jayhawks an exciting start to a new winning streak, one that Kansas center Eric Chenowith is ready to continue tonight against the Wildcats.
"Thinking about the rivalry tends to get you fired up," Chenwith said. "But you've got to put that aside when game time comes and go out and win."
More men's basketball Freshman Jeff Boschee's only basket was an important one in Saturday's game. See page 38
See page 3B
Ryan Robertson shoots over Colorado's laquy
Walls. Robertson finished the afternoon with 18
points and two steals. Photo by Dan Elvarsky/KANSAN
Commentary
Denver and Atlanta played a professional football game last night.
Watching Super Bowl a unifying experience
Don't get me wrong.I love foot
For the record, the Broncos won 34-19 for the NFL championship, but the game itself was almost a distraction for everybody not from Colorado or Georgia. For me and others not particularly intrigued by the match-up, the football game was something that was on TV between Budweiser commercials. It was a way to know exactly when Halftime Heat would be on USA Network (Mankind pinned Rock under a forklift loaded with beer kegs, recapturing the WWF championship belt).
But the Super Bowl is different. It's not a normal game. No, the Super Bowl is bigger than
ball. Heck, I
spend just
about every
Sunday afternoon from September to January on my couch watching the NFL.
Sam
Mellinger
sports@kansas.com
the NFL, it's bigger than football;
it's bigger than life.
Fox started its continuous pregame coverage at 10 a.m. yesterday, but we've been bombarded by game analysis for the last two weeks.
A gazillion people watched the Super Bowl last night, but the vast majority didn't tune in because they wanted to see if Atlanta's undersized front four could contain Terrell Davis' signature toslef cutback.
Most of the viewers — who watched in just about every country with electricity — probably couldn't tell you what constitutes an illegal formation or what the neutral zone is.
My sister lives in Chicago, and all last year we talked about me visiting her. But she always had to work, money was scarce, and we never did find the time until the sports gods smiled upon me in October.
The Super Bowl represents everything that's great about sports. Nothing—with the possible exception of war—unites people quite like sports.
You don't watch because of the game on the field. You watch because of the 14-day hype that comes before the game, and you watch because of the circus-like atmosphere surrounding the game. You watch because you have to.
And it's not just the Super Bowl that has this power. It's just the clearest example. Sports has the power to bring people closer.
On a Friday afternoon, I get home and check the answering machine.
But that's the thing about the Suner Bowl. None of that matters.
Last night, they danced in the streets of Denver. Complete strangers exchanged high-fives for the simple reason that they both were wearing Broncos apparel.
You're darn right I did. All of a sudden, money didn't matter, and I found $250 to fly to O'Hare the next morning.
"Sam, this is Amanda, I won two tickets to the Cubs playoff game tomorrow. You have to come."
Once I was in Chicago, I exchanged pleasanties with fellow Cubs fans and even got my underage self into a bar on the merit of the Sammy Sosa jersey I was wearing.
We had a great time, and it never would have happened without the game.
That's why I watch
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Mellinger is a Lawrence junior in journalism.
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