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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
12290
12A
WWW.KANSAN.COM/SPORTS
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2003
SPORTS COMMENTARY
Ryan Malashock rmalashock@kansan.com
Eleven NCAA Tournaments. Three Sweet 16s. Six league championships. Seven conference championships. Four All-Americans. An Olympic gold medal. 547 career victories.
Gray hairs stalking KU coach
Marian Washington's list of achievements rivals that of almost any coach in women's basketball history. And through her 30 years at Kansas, the legendary coach avoided the mark of her age; a gray hair.
This Kansas team will stretch her beyond any coaching bounds she encountered in the past. Those accolades above will prove meaningless.
Well, this season, as was vividly exemplified in Kansas' teethpulling 61-49 loss to No. 23 Oklahoma Wednesday night, Washington may not be as lucky.
Washington can write a new chapter in her coaching history this year because the 2002-2003 Jayhawks provide an unprecedented opportunity.
12 of Kansas' 14 women are 20 years old or younger. Just babies in Washington's mind, an element Washington brings up in almost every conversation with the media.
Every day is like school. No bell rings as practice begins but there might as well be one. In the afternoons, the court at Allen Fieldhouse turns into Mrs. Washington's classroom.
"A lot of our players are straight out of high school," Washington said. "And this is nothing like high school."
Therein lies the challenge. Kansas is raw. Raw meaning talented at all positions, but lost where it counts: between the ears.
Four newcomers start for Kansas, sophomore Aquanita Burras and freshmen Crystal Kemp, Tamara Ransburg and Erica Hallman. All four have eventual All-Big 12 potential. Burras is a slasher, Kemp an inside presence and scorer, Ransburg an imposing shot blocker and Hallman a ball-handling wiz.
Potential doesn't even begin to describe Kansas. But potential means squat when decision-making skills are lacking.
Wednesday, Kansas' inexperience and talent crashed disastrously into one another. The Jayhawks came out firing, hounding the Sooners into five early turnovers and sprinting to a 10-2 advantage. The two teams battled back and forth, and the Jayhawks led 23-14.
But then, their brains completely shutdown.
The result was a 14-0 Oklahoma run, 30 turnovers and one discouraged coach.
"We have got to work on our mental toughness," Washington said. "We never had five players working together at the same time. We know we can play with anybody. But, at times, we get tired and we stop thinking. You have to be able to think when you're tired."
So, Mrs. Washington knows where she must persist with her tutoring. So do her players.
"We're going to work on getting as tired as we can in practice and then being able to make smart decisions in game situations" said sophomore Blair Waltz, Kansas' top returner from a year ago.
All Waltz can do is exude the same upbeat attitude today that she and her teammates brought to practice all year. That's what Washington preached. Lessons learned now, considering Kansas' talent level, could bring championships in years to come.
But as Washington knows, gray hairs could start sprouting if anymore lessons go unlearned.
Ryan Malashock is an Omaha senior in journalism.
Our kingdom for a foul
Last minute no-call decides close game
By Doyle Murphy
dmurphy@kasan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Boulder, Colo. - Through Kansas' first 16 games of the season, coach Roy Williams could only guess what would happen if all his starters had off-nights in a game because it never happened. Now he knows.
After making 51 percent of their shots heading into the game with Colorado (12-5,1-2), the sixth-ranked Jayhawks (13-4, 3-1) were colder than the snow outside the Coors Event Center. Kansas could muster just 32 percent from the field in the game. To make matters worse, junior forward Jeff Graves picked up his fifth foul with 1:27 left in the game.
The Buffaloes, on the other hand, netted 48 percent of their shots, while physically punishing the Jayhawks on the backboards.
"We had no answers for what they did to us," Williams said.
Still, Kansas had a chance until the very end. Graves' replacement, sophomore guard/forward Michael Lee drew a foul on Colorado senior forward Stephane Pelle and went to the line. Lee calmly sank both free throws, putting Kansas ahead 59-58 with 39 seconds left to play. Pelle would not let himself be the one who let Colorado coach Ricardo Patton's first win against Williams slip away. Just 14 seconds
later, Pelle dropped in 2 of his game high 27 points from the baseline, shifting the lead to Colorado.
Trailing by 1 point, Kansas planned to put the game in the hands of one of its two All-American candidates. Senior guard Kirk Hinrich looked to pass the ball to his teammate, senior forward Nick Collison. Finding Collision covered, Hinrich dribbled and fired a jump shot. The ball bounded off the rim into the waiting hands of Lee. This time he could not save Kansas.
"Once it left my hand, it didn't feel good," Lee said. "It didn't look like it was going to go in."
If the Jayhawks were meant to lose the game, they wouldn't do so without one more shot.
With one second left, Hinrich caught Lee's miss and tossed it toward the basket. The ball never found its mark, as a Colorado player bumped Hinrich. Williams, his players and the Jayhawk fans in attendance all pleaded with the officials, but the officials did not call a foul.
"It happened so fast," Hinrich said after the game. "I thought I got fouled. I don't know. We just didn't play well enough to win."
Time ran out on the Jayhawks with the score exactly as it had been 25 seconds earlier - Colorado 60, Kansas 59.
— Edited by Andrew Ward
Kansas senior guard Kirk Hinrich attempts a heavily-guarded shot over Colorado's David Harrison and Blair Wilson. Hinrich scored 10 points last night, less than his season average, as the Jayhawks lost 60-59 to the Buffaloes.
Cliff Grassmick/The Daily Camera
Women flare but fizzle out
Courtney Kuhlen/Kansan
Crystal Kemp, freshman forward, stretches for the ball past Oklahoma defender Theresa Schuknecht, senior center. The Jayhawks lost the game against the Sooners 61-49. Kemp led the team in scoring with 15 points.
Another Big 12 Conference game, another hot start, another sputtering finish.
By Ryan Greene
rgreene@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
What does that add up to?
Another loss.
The Kansas women's basketball team, (7-9, 0-5), fell last night, 61-49, at Allen Fieldhouse to the 22nd-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, (12-5, 3-1). The loss for the Jayhawks ran their Big 12 losing streak to 21 games.
"You can't win a lot of games with 30 turnovers," coach Marian Washington said. "It's just an indication I think of our inability to sustain the kind of intensity level that we need down the stretch."
The Jayhawks led 23-14 with six minutes left in the first half. After building up the advantage, Oklahoma came back and then pulled away with a 14-0 run.
The Sooners took a 30-26 lead into the half and never relinquished it.
For Oklahoma, junior guard Maria Villarroel made scoring 23 points look easy with her production coming predominately from free throws and layups. Sophomore guard Dionnah Jackson also chipped in with 15 points and nine rebounds.
Even in victory, Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale pointed out that her team's performance made it a bitter-sweet win.
"I felt like I should apologize to Dr. Naismith, Phog Allen, all the great history of this incredible place," Coale said. "I thought the game was ugly; I didn't think we played well at all."
The Jayhawks' statistic sheet showed some positives with three players scoring in double figures, but turnovers played the role of the scarlet letter.
Freshman forward Crystal Kemp led the team in scoring with 15 points but turned the ball over five times. Sophomore guard Blair Waltz also had five turnovers but added 10 points.
Kemp has had trouble with her shooting as of late, but she is becoming more in tune with the Big 12 style of play.
"I'm used to the fact that I may be double-teamed," Kemp said. "It was a matter of relaxing and being confident."
Sophomore guard Stacey Becker had another solid performance off the bench by hitting four three-pointers. She finished with 12 points.
The Jayhawks will travel next to College Station, Texas, to square off with Texas A&M Saturday night. The team knows it has to work on staying consistent throughout the course of an entire game.
"Basketball is a game of runs, and basketball is a game of momentum," Waltz said. "They got our momentum and we didn't get it back. That's part of being mentally tough."
Edited by Todd Rapp
$2 million given for softball stadium
By Steve Schmidt
sschmidt@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
What a difference $2 million can make. A new softball stadium was a dream four months ago. Cheryl Womack, a Mission Hills businesswoman, turned the stadium wish into a reality with a $2 million donation in November last year.
"We've had plans for a ballpark for several years, but it really got accelerated after the donation," said Gary Kempf, assistant athletics director.
Now the stadium is on the athletics department calendar. Groundbreaking is
The University hired Sports PLAN Studio, a Kansas City based architec-
scheduled for May 17, Kempf said.
tural firm, to design the facility. Turner Construction will build it.
Kempf said the stadium should be fully operational by March 2004.
What remains unknown is how much of the stadium will be built with Womack's donation alone.
softball coach, Tracy Bunge, said the construction of the stadium would be a two-phase process, depending on whether another donor comes around with another $2 million check.
The total cost for the basic facility plus amenities is estimated to cost $4 million. Phase one will consists of building the infrastructure, field, seating and then additional items such as bathrooms and concession stands, Bunge said.
The field includes the actual playing surface, drainage system, sprinkling system, dugouts, fencing, bullpens and batting cages. Bunge said the stadium would probably start off with 800 seats with the hope of adding 400 seats in the second phase.
The second phase consists of building luxuries such as locker rooms, a training room, an equipment room and a video room. Jayhawk Field, the current softball stadium, faces away from Hoglund Ballpark.
"We feel like with phase one we will be able to build a marvelous ballpark we could live on," Kempf said. "Whatever we build in phase one can get us by very well. Phase two gives us the amenities that will continue the progress of our program."
The home plate of the new facility will be located in the current center field of Jayhawk Field. The outfield of
the new ballpark will directly face Hoglund. This change of location will allow room for a new mutual entryway for both the new softball stadium and the SuperTarget Field, home of the soccer Jayhawks.
Bunge has been talking with Lawrence city officials to find a park to play exhibition games in the fall of 2003 when the stadium is being built.
She knows the fall accommodations won't be the best, Bunge said, but she thinks her players will forget about all that once they step into the new facility.
"We probably won't have ideal practice conditions but it's easier deal with when you have a finished stadium coming," Bunge said.
Edited by Melissa Hermreck
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