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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MEN'S BASKETBALL
ASHLEIGH LEE/KANSAN
Junior guard Elijah Johnson prepares to pass the ball to his teammate as he moves around an opponent from Texas Tech during Saturday night's game against Texas Tech. Despite a tough second half, the Jayhawks won 83-50.
Second-half bad habits still plague the Jayhawks
MAX ROTHMAN
mrothman@kansan.com
The layhawks did just about everything right in the first half on Saturday against Texas Tech. They made 57.7 percent of their shots. They stole the ball six times. Their often invisible bench outscored Texas Tech's reserves 13-2. The fans in Allen Fieldhouse enjoyed the dunk-happy show, and Kansas headed into halftime with a 44-22 lead.
Then in the second half, perhaps thinking that the Red Raiders never had a real shot at a comeback, or perhaps forgetting that scrapping game plans can lead to bad habits, the Jayhawks fell apart.
Texas Tech outscored Kansas 15-14 in the first 12 minutes of the second half. After the game, content with his team's abilities but frustrated with its mental lapses, coach Bill Self offered an explanation for the second-half errors.
"I knew we were in trouble in the first half whenever they put
the Thomas video on the board." Self said of junior forward Thomas Robinson's video for the fans. "Everybody watches it and they are laughing and giggling."
Unlike his team, Self wasn't tickled by the video. He said all he wants is consistent focus.
Something similar happened when the Oklahoma
"I knew we were in trouble in the first half whenever they put the Thomas video on the board."
With Texas A&M up on Wednesday, senior guard Tyshawn Taylor knows the importance of fixing this issue.
State Cowboys visited Lawrence on Jan. 11. The Jayhawks won 81-66, and there was never really a doubt about who was going to win the game. But just like on Saturday, Self was frustrated when his team struggled in the second half against the Cowboys. The Jayhawks led 51-24 going into halftime, but they were outscored 42-30 in the second half, which was marred with 11 turnovers, most of which resulted from full-court pressure.
"We didn't play the second half
BILL SELF Coach
the same way that we played the first," he said. "We have to finish out games. I think that is the biggest thing."
Robinson wasn't pleased with the second half either, but he
thinks that his team is improving in that regard.
"I think we're better at it - we're still not good at it - but you know, right now it's winding down and getting close to tournament time," Robinson said. "We can't use the excuse that it's still early anymore because regular season is almost over."
— Edited by Jeff Karr
OLYMPICS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SALT LAKE CITY — Over and over, Mitt Romney takes credit for turning around the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City after a bribery scandal and says the success of the games is one big reason he should be president.
"My leadership helped save the Olympics from scandal and give our American athletes the chance to make us all proud," Romney said the night he won the Florida primary, his biggest victory of the Republican nomination fight so far.
Romney still credits himself for 2002 Winter Olympics
But is the credit deserved? And how much credit really goes to the federal government, which ended up paying nearly $600 million directly to support Olympic projects, much of it after Romney's urging?
He was putting his Olympics tenure back in the spotlight Saturday, speaking Saturday night at a celebration honoring the 10-year anniversary of the games. Romney planned to explain that his time running the Olympics is a fundamental part of the resume he's relying on as he runs for president.
Presidential rival Rick Santorum seized on just that, telling a tea party rally in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday that one of the things that Romney "talks about most is how he heroically showed up on the scene and bailed out and resolved the problems" of those Olympics.
"He heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympic Games by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions of dollars to bail out the Salt Lake games — in an earmark, in an earmark for the Salt Lake Olympic Games."
The Romney campaign does not dispute that congressional earmarks helped save the games. But the campaign noted that Santorum voted for those earmarks, among many others, when he was a senator.
"Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you end up shooting yourself in the foot." Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. "There is a pretty wide gulf between seeking money for post-9/11 security at the Olympics and seeking earmarks for polar bear exhibits at the Pittsburgh Zoo."
People who worked on the games with Romney do give him credit while emphasizing he had help.
"Did he save the games on his own, no," said Lane Beattie, who was the president of the Utah state Senate at the time and was the state's liaison with the committee Romney ran. But he "absolutely" made them more successful.
Romney took over the games in 1999 after its leaders were accused of sending money to members of the International Olympic Committee to help Salt Lake City win the games.
Romney ran the Olympic committee "like a business," Beattie said. "He demanded excellence and he brought in incredible people. ... It wasn't all Mitt. What he did was bring in the best and the brightest he could find and put them in the right place."
Romney acknowledged he had help.
The Salt Lake Olympic Committee ran a more than $1.4 billion effort conducted over many years and involving thousands of people. Still, he has made himself the very public face of the effort, claiming he personally cut millions from the budget, wooped major companies and won sponsorships himself and pulled the whole endeavor back from the brink of failure. His record in Salt Lake was the cornerstone of his run for governor in Massachusetts,
"He demanded excellence and he brought in incredible people ... It wasn't all Mitt."
LANE BEATTIE
President of Utah state Senate in 1999
a campaign he announced in March 2002, just weeks after the games concluded. And now, in the presidential campaign, he is unambiguous.
"I led an Olympics out of the shadows of scandal," he told conservative activists in a speech in Washington this month.
The games were held about five months later and security costs rose astronomically afterward.
Some critics say that's an oversell, and that fixing Salt Lake's problems was primarily an image problem.
But Romney doesn't mention the commitments the government had already made to cover costs associated with the games — or elaborate on his role in persuading congressional appropriators and critics to give the games more money.
He met Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, then the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. And he wooed Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who along with Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan had inquired about wasteful Olympic spending, resulting in a critical federal audit.
In the 2004 book he wrote about the games, called "Turnaround," Romney outlined how he revamped the Salt Lake Olympic Committee's lobbying operations in Washington. He directed plans to hire experienced transportation lobbyists — even highlighting how he poached one from another group that was trying to win earmarks for non-Olympic projects in Utah.
"Mitt, he was a great image for the games, he did instill confidence in people, but to say he saved us, that's misplaced," said Ken Bullock, who served on the organizing committee board. "It's something you can put on your resume, but I think you have to be careful of embellishing or padding your resume."
Romney also got some help he never acknowledges on the trail: millions from the federal government. His aides say much of it was for increased security costs after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In one instance, Romney highlights how he made arrangements for different states to send experienced bus drivers to Utah to help transport people. Romney helped arrange to have them paid union wages, he wrote in the book, and he persuaded the federal government to pick up the tab.
One of the lessons he learned: "If you work at it long enough, there is always another way to get the help you need in Washington."
Democrats have already seized on Olympic spending under Romney's tenure. They point to the audit report that said the government planned to spend about $1.3 billion on the games, more than it had spent on previous American-hosted Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996. In a web video released Friday, they called federal spending a "bailout" and pointed to scathing comments McCain made about the games.
McCain eventually called the games "an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs."
NBA
Rose recovers, helps Bulls defeat Hawks
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO — Derrick Rose scored 23 points in his return from back pain, and the Chicago Bulls beat the struggling Atlanta Hawks 90-79 on Monday.
The Bulls were clinging to an 85-79 lead after a late 3-pointer by Jannero Pargo before Luol Deng nailed a 3 of his own to make it a
Rose looked sharp after missing the previous five games, and the Bulls played more like championship contenders after a brutal loss to New Jersey two days earlier. They led by 18 through the first quarter and were up 55-37
at halftime, but found themselves hanging on in the end after a big push by Atlanta.
nine-point game. Rose then buried a turnaround jumper to make it 90-79 with 2:10 remaining and Chicago prevailed, sending Atlanta to its seventh loss in 10 games.
Rose also had six assists and five rebounds. Carlos Boozer added 16 points, Ronnie Brewer had 13, and Deng and John Lucas 10 apiece; Joakim Noah chipped in with 16 rebounds.
Pargo provided a big spark off the bench for Atlanta with a season-high 19 points, hitting five 3-pointers. Josh Smith added 12 points and 12 rebounds, but the Hawks came up short again.
They showed little life in the early going after being blown out by Portland on Sunday and paid for it in the end. They were without Marvin Williams, who missed the game because of a death in the family, but it's hard to believe he would have made that big a difference with the way the Bulls played early on.
Coming off one of their ugliest performances in two seasons under coach Tom Thibodeau, they quickly rediscovered their form while taking control.
Rose was his usual explosive self, whether he was freezing Jeff Teague with a wicked crossover or burying jumpers. He scored nine in the first quarter as the Bulls grabbed a 35-17 lead, and he had plenty of help with Deng and Brewer each adding seven points. It was a big difference from Saturday, when Chicago fell behind 22-3.