Volume 128 Issue 50
kansan.com
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
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COMMENTARY
Kansas football forms identity in senior day loss
By Dan Harmsen
@UDK Dan
At 5:34 p.m. Saturday in Lawrence, a southerly wind blew through a frosty Mount Oread.
Down in Fort Worth, Texas, TCU Horned Frogs fans exhaled a collective sigh of relief, a sigh large enough to be felt 500 miles north, as the highly favored Frogs needed a 24-point second half performance and 10-point comeback to preserve its team's hopes of a bid to the inaugural College Football Plavoff.
In the final home game for 21 Kansas football players, the jayhawks almost pulled off the unfathomable.
Surviving a fierce passing onslaught and an opportunistic Kansas defense, the Horned Frogs moved to (9-1, 6-1).
As the clock trickled down, the Kansas seniors looked up at the scoreboard, on the losing end once again. Ben Heeney, JacCore Shepherd, Jimmy Mundine, Tony Pierson — they've been a part of just nine victories as Jay-hawks. This loss, though, was so much different than those that preceded it. It provided a great paradox: hope in defeat.
About an hour after the game, Shepherd walked out to the stadium to look up at the stadium lights one last time.
"I just want us to be remembered as guys that didn't give up," Shepherd said. "No matter what, we stayed together."
With the four-point loss, the Jayhawks' bowl game possibilities were nixed.
"It was a great effort by everyone today," Heeney said. "I felt like everything was going our way, but this one is a tough one."
Even when the football gods seemed to be smiling on the home team, when Kansas recovered the oblong football right along the sideline twice, when Nick Harwell and Nigel King hauled in tipped passes for big plays, and when a broken field goal attempt resulted in a first down pass, TCU was just a little too much.
Ultimately, Kansas lost this game because of a talent disadvantage. Kansas was unable to get the ground game rolling against a nasty TCU front-seven. Kansas was held to just 76 yards rushing on 36 carries.
But the moral of this story is that Kansas was in it until the end and had a chance to defeat its first ranked opponent since 2008. There was heaps of hope on a cold November Saturday in Lawrence. A newly formed identity headed by interim head coach Clint Bowen was the culprit.
Bowen, who has been with Kansas football through thick and thin, highs and lows, as player and coach, won't listen to the critics, though. When he first took the job after the Charlie Weis firing the mes-
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Sonhomore forward Landen Lucas fights for the ball against Kentucky on Tuesday night. Lucas grabbed five rebounds in the 72-40 loss in Indianapolis
SUPERSIZED
Kansas smothered by Kentucky's height, loses 72-40 in Champions Classic
BRIAN HILLIX
@BrihanHillix
@DoubleHillix
It's a problem that knocked Kansas out of the NCAA Tournament Round of 32 last season. It's a problem that prevented No.5 Kansas (1-1) from even challenging No.1 Kentucky (3-0) in the Champions Classic on Tuesday.
Height — or Kansas' lack thereof — allowed Kentucky to have its way inside all night long. The Wildcats bullied and swatted their way to a 72-40 win against the Jayhawks at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
"You get long athletes that like to guard, and they can cover up from mistakes as well as anybody I've ever seen," Kansas coach Bill Self said of Kentucky's length.
Kentucky outscored Kansas 30-12 in the paint and tallied
10 more second-chance points. The Jayhawks only made six field goals around the basket the entire evening, seeing 11 shots turned away by Wildcat defenders.
In the game against Stanford that ended Kansas' 2012-13 season, the offense wavered against a Stanford fleet that consisted of five players at 6-foot-10 or taller. Without 7-footer Joel Embiid, the Jayhawks were shut down around the basketball as they lost 60-57.
The Jayhawks faced the same issue Tuesday, only with bigger and more athletic players.
Last year at the Champions Classic, Kansas defeated Duke by 11. Perry Ellis was primarily guarded by the 6-foot-8 Jabari Parker, and he took advantage. Ellis logged nine rebounds and 24 points, easily finishing around the
basket.
Facing two 7-footers and another at 6-foot-10 Tuesday, Ellis vanished. A player who finished second on the team in scoring last season, Ellis ended with two points on six field goal attempts.
It wasn't just Ellis who went missing.
The Kansas frontcourt combined for 14 points and shot 15 percent from the field. As a team, Kansas shot 20 percent in the game — the worst team field goal percentage in a game by a Self-coached team at Kansas.
Self said his team is best playing in a system on offense, but Kansas couldn't get any sort of flow. Players rarely got open shots, and nearly every drive ended in someone running into a wall of Kentucky players, ready to alter every shot.
The three post players who
should log the most minutes for Kansas this season — forwards Ellis, Jamari Traylor and Cliff Alexander — all stand at 6-foot-8. Moving forward, they will need to learn how to score against bigger players, especially against Big 12 foe Texas, who has three bodies at 6-foot-9 or taller.
Kansas saw its freshmen combine for 18 points in their first big game in the national spotlight. Alexander, despite foul trouble, still managed to score eight points and make eight trips to the free-throw line. Kelly Oubre Jr. shot 67 percent and was the only Kansas player to shoot better than 33 percent.
"Those young players will be good in time, no question," Self said.
Sophomore Wayne Selden Jr. led Kansas with nine points as no player reached
double-digits in scoring.
Self didn't put too much stock in this one early-season game, noting that some good teams start the season slow.
"I'm a little discouraged," Self said. "But it's too early in the season to get discouraged. If I'm not mistaken, the [Kansas City] Chiefs weren't very good to start the season, either."
Kentucky coach John Calipari said Kansas just ran into a buzz saw.
"This team, by the end of the year, will be fine," Calipari said.
Looking to put a miserable offensive performance behind them, the Jayhawks return home to play Rider on Nov. 24.
"If anything, [this game] will make us a litter tougher," Self said.
- Edited by Kelsey Phillips
Jayhawks' bench produces in TSU win
KIRSTEN PETERSON
@KeepUpWithKP
The lajayhawks were on fire Tuesday night, defeating the Texas Southern Tigers 69-44.
Freshman guard Lauren Aldridge drives to the basket during the first half of Tuesday's game at Allen Fieldhouse. Aldridge finished with seven points in the Louisiana 69. 4A victory against Texas Southern University.
Kansas freshmen accumulated 33 of the 69 points for the Jayhawks. Freshman guard Chayla Cheadle totaled 15 baskets and was 4-for-5 from 3-point range.
"I just thought if I bring a lot of energy and have confidence, that my game will come to me, and that's exactly what happened," Cheadle said.
MISSY MINEAR/KANSAN
There was an obvious leader missing on the court for most of the first half. Senior forward Chelsea Gardner only played 18 minutes, but she grabbed five rebounds and scored a game-high 14 points.
With three games scheduled for this weekend, coach Bonnie Henrickson thought she would play deep into the Jayhawks' bench and keep the key players off the court.
"For us, it was a great opportunity to get the young kids in the game and get to the bench, and let those guys get on the floor," Henrickson
The Jayhawks' bench scored 30 points in the game, with 26 of those points coming from freshmen guards Cheadle and Terriell Bradley. Henrickson wanted to even out the minutes among the entire bench and get the whole team
said. "It's good to not get as many heavy minutes with some kids, knowing what we got coming up Friday, Saturday, Sunday."
involved.
"It's hard to prepare and have confidence [playing the bench] once you get to January," Henrickson said. "It's really important for us, and I've made a commitment to try to play that way early. We're four-player switching more than we ever have typically in nonconference."
Sophomore forward Jada Brown performed
Freshman forward Lorraine Enabulele seemed to have hurt her leg and had to be helped off the court while the Jayhawks were up 20 points late in the game, but she was quickly brought back in five minutes later.
"Thank
exceptionally well defensively for the Jayhawks with eight of her nine boards being defensive rebounds.
[1]
goodness
[Lorraine's] OK. It scared everybody," Henrickson said. "But yeah, she's fine. I might not have put her in quite honcstly, [but I] let her go get a couple more rebounds; let her go get a couple more plays."
The Jayhawks will return to Allen Fieldhouse on Friday at 6 p.m. to take on Alabama.
Edited by Kelsey Phillips
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