LY KANSAN
Y 29, 2009
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY, JULY 29.2009
SPORTS
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Associated Press
FOOTBALL
Looking ahead, without Crawford
Will Sharp, Sands and Briscoe perform?
By most accounts, Jocques Crawford's departure from the Kansas football team was a foregone conclusion and welcome for all parties involved.
The junior college transfer failed to live up to his lofty personal expectations — he fell 1,768 rushing yards short of his own preseason prediction — and even though he was the first Jayhawk to score in 2008, he would do so just three more times that season.
Reports of a strong showing in spring practices went for naught when Crawford was suspended for the spring football game and the subsequent practices for a violation of team rules — his second transgression in a short period of time under coach Mark Mangino's jurisdiction.
What exactly those transgressions were are still unclear and not used in sentences without terms like "apparently," "allegedly" and "reportedly." What is certain is that this breakup is both in Crawford's and the team's best interest. It's not you, it's me. We're growing apart. I love you, but I'm not in love with you.
With Crawford gone and fellow 2008 backup running back Angus Quigley tackling rather than being tackled, the sweepstakes to supplement senior lake Sharp this fall just got interesting. Sharp is one of, if not the fastest player on the team, and
as he exhibited in his breakout game against Iowa State (79 rush yards, 107 receiving, 2 TDs) and against Colorado (118 rush yards, 3 TDs) and Kansas State (181 rush yards, 76 pass yards and 4 TDs). The man is a game changer.
But at 5-foot-10, 190 pounds, Sharp is not an every-down back. After an inauspicious string of performances during non-conference play (26 carries, 86 yards) Sharp went on to average 25 carries per game in Big 12 play and in the Insight Bowl. But remove the outlier that is his 31-carry performance against Colorado, and Sharp averaged a hair above 16 carriers in his eight other Big 12 and bowl games which seems to me a fair estimation as to what his 2009 carries total per game should be.
And so the task of keeping Sharp fresh will fall on sophomore Rell Lewis, and freshmen Deshaun Sands and Toben Opurum.
Lewis, a 6-1, 201-pound converted wide receiver, impressed in the spring game with a game-high 66 yards on 14 carries. It remains to be seen how he'll perform in an actual game.
Sands is smaller than Sharp at 5-9, 182 pounds, but runs like he's much
bigger. He could turn some plays into sizeable gains every now and then, but he doesn't offer the delicious potential of Opurum's 6-2, 235-pound frame assaulting a defense winded by chasing Sharp upfield the play before.
Of more concern is the status of junior wide receiver Dezmion Briscoe, who recently earned First Team All-Big 12 honors. That distinction is obviously more a testament to his record-smashing 2008 season than anything he has done since as he was suspended the entire spring for a violation of team policy.
During a summer tour stop in Topeka, Mangino told local media that Briscoe's status on the team was "day-to-day" and that "he's got work to do and he's got to take care of it."
That a player who set a team record with 1,407 receiving yards and is 364 yards away from being Kansas' alltime receiving leader still elicits questions of his standing with the team should be embarrassing.
Will Briscoe again amass another season of hefty statistics or go down the path toward becoming one?
Edited by Adam Schoof
Associated Press
Woods prepares for slew of tournaments
This year looks like it will be different. Woods decided to play this week at the Buick Open, where he is a two-time winner and has never finished worse than 11th in eight previous starts at Warwick Hills.
PGA
Next week is the Bridgestone Invitational, and while Woods has yet to make that official, he has never missed a World Golf Championship in America when he wasn't on crutches. Besides, he is a six-time winner at Firestone, one of his favorite golf courses.
Barring any scheduling surprises, Tiger Woods is about to try something new.
BY DOUG FERGUSON
That third consecutive tournament, however, has never been a major.
He had played three weeks in a row on the PGA Tour in every season since he was a rookie — including a career-high five straight weeks in early 1999 — until last year, when two knee surgeries crimped his schedule.
And there is only one major left.
Woods rarely plays the week before a major, but there has always been an exception or two for the PGA Championship. He has played five times the week before the PGA Championship, and in 2007 won at Firestone by eight shots before winning the PGA at Southern Hills.
Woods is at the halfway point of his schedule - that includes The Presidents Cup, tournaments in Asia and Australia, and his Chevron World Challenge in December - but he has only two months left in the meat of the PGA Tour schedule.
Woods has not played more than two weeks in a row since returning from reconstructive knee surgery. Even though he is leading the PGA Tour money list by more than $500,000 and his three victories are more than anyone else, he has played only 10 times this year.
Then it's off to Hazeltine for the PGA Championship, his last shot at winning a major this year.