6B
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPORTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 15. 2005
INTRAMURAL BASKETBALL
Intramurals play in semifinals
By MICHAEL PHILIPS
mphillips@kansan.com
KANSAN SPORTWRITER
The matchups are set for tonight's men's and women's intramall championships.
Physical play was the common theme last night in the Student Recreation Fitness Center, with the referees staying busy all night.
In the men's division, the Seminoles defeated Phi Slamma Jamma 55-49 in a game that came down to the wire.
The Seminoles took advantage of open shots in the first half and held the upper hand by 16 points at halftime.
"We felt like we were in control the whole half," Mark Moxley, St. Louis senior said.
In the second half, Phi
Slamma Jamma slowed down
the pace of the game.
They succeeded in getting inside shots and slowly chipped away the lead, outscoring the Seminoles 19-4 in a six-minute stretch.
The Seminoles got into foul trouble early in the half and finished the game with five players.
In the last minute, ahead by three, they stopped Phi Slamma Jamma from making a three-point shot that would have put them within striking distance.
Phi Slamma Jamma ends their season 9-1 overall. The Seminoles will go into the finals at 8-0.
They will go up against defending champions Johnny Kilroys. The Kilroys blew away the Young Gunz with 17 uncontested points in a six-minute stretch in the first half.
both teams, and the Killroys took the victory 68-49.
Two Young Gunz players
fouled out during the game.
It was a slow second half for
In the women's half of the bracket, the Hawks punched their ticket to the final with a 65-27 stomping of Thunder Thighs.
Keep Shooting defeated Chopper City 38-55 after trailing for most of the game.
They, too, will have to face a defending champion in the finals.
Just eight minutes into the game, the Hawks had already established their dominance with a 19-2 lead.
The team is 5-1, and has won by an average of 25 points in its tournament games.
The first half played out slowly, with each team using a timeout to slow a rally by the other. At halftime, Keep Shooting was trailing by three.
"We chilled out, slowed down, and started taking our time," Lauren Jenkins, St. Louis sophomore, said.
Changing the pace worked, and in the second half, Keep Shooting broke the stalemate with 10 minutes to play.
Keep Shooting was dominant from the free-throw line, shooting 67 percent for the game and 75 percent in the final two minutes.
They enter the final with an overall record of 5-1. Chopper City ends their season at 5-1.
They never led by more than five but held onto the lead down the stretch.
The women's final will tip off at 8 tonight, followed by the men's and co-rec finals at 9 and 10 p.m. All games are in Allen Fieldhouse.
Edited by Megan Claus
Forward
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1B
Kansas training room to see what was wrong with his knee. Trainer Billy Cowgill 1 had X-rayed it over the summer when Nash first started feeling pain but hadn't seen anything wrong.
This time, Cowgill discovered that two pieces of bone had broken off inside Nash's right knee and his meniscus was torn. The X-ray taken in the summer had apparently not been held to the proper light, and the injury had gotten much worse over time.
Nash needed surgery
Grendia Forshee, Nash's mother, had the surgery delayed a few days so she could come up from Coppell, Texas. She wanted to be in the recovery room to hold her son's hand when he woke up.
She said that when Nash was little, he was scared of everything: butterflies, piggy banks, you name it.
when he was three years old and they were living in Chicago. She received a call from her sister, who was babysitting little Bryant. He just wouldn't stop crying.
"I didn't know what to do," Forshee said. "She said he was looking at a straw that was sticking out of a vase. He saw the shadow of the straw, and it scared him."
Yes, he was even afraid of shadows.
Luckily, his family was there to care for him while he grew up in Lake West apartments, a housing project in West Dallas, where he lived from preschool to middle school with his sisters Conchetta, who is two years younger than him, and Michole, who was born when he was 14.
Nash's parents got divorced when he was about 10, and after that he only saw his father, Bryant Sr., a couple of times a
"Most people don't believe me, but it was pretty rough," he said. "Cops patrolling the neighborhood all the time, gangs and stuff."
"As strict as my mom was, she kept me away from all that stuff," he said. "If she wasn't there, I was with my aunties, and they would whoop my butt when I was acting bad."
week at most. But his mom was always there, along with a support crew of aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Sitting on the balcony of the Wagnon Student Athlete Center, Nash told a story about being stuck in an elevator during his trip to Sweden.
He was on a tour of Europe with a Big 12 Conference all-star team the summer after his sophomore year. As the team was about to leave a Swedish hotel for a game, Nash stepped into the elevator alone. It abruptly stopped between floors.
When someone finally opened the door, he ran out as fast as he could.
Afraid of being left behind, he called back, he picked up the elevator phone and called the desk clerk.
These days, he takes it pretty easy. He's taking his final two classes: "Introduction to Social Research" and bowling. He spends a lot of time with Ashley Michaels, his girlfriend of nearly three years and a senior middle blocker this past fall on the Kansas volleyball team.
stuck in place while everyone else is out there playing.
Since his knee surgery, it's like he's back in that elevator.
He said the bad part was that he had way too much time to think about basketball.
"Oh God, I talk about it like three, four, five times a day," he said.
The doctors say his knee should be healed by May 11. Eleven days later, Nash will receive his diploma for a bachelor's degree in sociology.
He could be back playing for the Colorado Storm next fall. The team recently told him it wants him around next season.
"Unless something better comes along, I might take that," he said.
For now, all he can do is watch.
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