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SPORTS
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2002
Jayhawks, Bears share similar pains
Levi Chronister lchronister@kansan.com
Last week, the Kansas football team earned its second victory of the season with a 43-33 defeat of Tulsa.
Two weeks ago, the Baylor football team earned its second victory of the season with a 37-25 defeat of Tulsa.
The similarities between the Jayhawks and the Bears don't end there, but the Jayhawks come out on top in most comparisons.
The Bears defeated the Golden Hurricane at home, in front of 30,337 of those rabid Texas football fanatics. The Jayhawks had to go into unfamiliar territory for their victory, playing in Tulsa for the first time since 1992.
Both Baylor and Kansas finished 3-8 last year, although the Jayhawks picked up a Big 12 Conference victory in the double-overtime thriller against Texas Tech almost exactly a year ago Saturday.
Neither team has had a winning record since 1995, a year before the beginning of the Big 12. While Baylor was 7-4 and didn't make the post-season, Kansas went 10-2 and defeated UCLA in the Aloha Bowl.
Neither team has had a winning record in the Big 12. Baylor has finished in last place in the Big 12 South all six years, including a current 29-game losing streak. Kansas, the last Big 12 team Baylor defeated, finished in the conference cellar for the first time last season, finishing 1-7.
This will probably be the second straight finish in the Big 12 basement for the Jayhawks, but they should finish at least one conference victory this weekend. A victory Saturday would even Kansas's record against Baylor at 3-3 and be the Jayhawks' first victory in Waco in three attempts.
Although the Bears had a larger margin of victory than the Jayhawks against the Golden Hurricane, that game was a home contest in which Baylor never trailed. Kansas, on the other hand, fell behind 13-0 early in Saturday's game but came back with 28 unanswered points and took a 43-19 lead before allowing two late touchdowns.
Being at home and ranking higher in both total offense and total defense in the Big 12, Baylor looks like the favorite, but those ratings deserve closer scrutiny.
The Bears are eighth in total offense (376.2 yards per game) and sixth in total defense (340.8 yards per game), while the Jayhawks are last in both offense (311.6 yards per game) and defense (439.2 yards per game).
Both teams have benefited from playinga Div. I-AA school — Southwest Missouri State for Kansas and Samford for Baylor, but Kansas has played Iowa State, now 5-1 and ranked No. 15, while Baylor has played New Mexico (2-4) and California (3-2).
Even though the lahawks are ranked last in the conference, they come in off the victory against the Golden Hurricane in which quarterback Bill Whittemore gained a combined 395 yards rushing and passing. Kansas gained a total of 523 yards against Tulsa, 79 yards more than against Iowa State and UNLV combined.
Kansas did give up 452 yards to Tulsa, but 239 of them were after the game was already decided.
With Whittemore and the offense headed in the right direction and Kansas coach Mark Mangino wanting his players to be more reactionary and less cerebral, Saturday should be the 30th straight conference loss for Baylor, and Kansas can't claim that kind of ineptitude, no matter how many problems the team has.
Chromatist is a Lawrence senior in journalism. He is the Kauanese editor.
Big 12 showdown settled on screen FACE-OFF
Baylor University Bears
Hwang entered the contest with the same level of confidence
"It's nice to know there are so many hometown fans to see a funeral procession for the Beans."
that sports editor Levi Chronister had the week before
University of Kansas Jayhawks
SEE FACE-OFF AN PAGE RA
Kansas hoops snags top-notch recruits
By Doyle Murphy
dmurphy@kansan.com
Kansan soortswriter
The University of Kansas basketball team received an oral commitment from its second high-profile recruit in two days yesterday.
Loyola High School (Los Angeles) shooting guard Omar Wilkes announced he would be the newest addition to the Jayhawks. Wilkes, 6-foot-3-inches, 172pounds, made the announcement in front of a group of about 70 classmates, teachers, coaches and members of the media at 4:30 p.m.yesterday at his high school. The press conference was broadcast live on radio in Lawrence.
Kansas beat the University of California-Los Angeles in the battle for Wilkes' services.
Wilkes joins his friend David Padgett from Reno (Nev.) High School on the Jayhawks' roster. Numerous Web sites, including Sportsillustrated.cnn.com and PrepWestHoops.com reported Padgett orally committed to coach Roy Williams last night by phone.
Padgett, a 6-foot-11-inch, 240-pound center, chose Kansas over the University of Arizona and the University of North Carolina.
The commitments by Wilkes and Padgett mean the Jayhawks have already assembled a nationally recognized recruiting class. Espn.com ranks Padgett as the fifth-best high school senior in the nation. Wilkes ranks 93rd, and Oklahoma shooting guard J.R. Gibbons, who committed this summer, is ranked 25th. Add in another
Oklahoma guard in Jeremy Case, and Kansas has already taken care of four of its five available scholarships before the first of two signing periods.
None of the four have signed a national letter of intent, which binds a player to a school. Nov. 13 is the first day athletes can sign a national letter of intent.
Both Padgett and Wilkes enjoyed extremely successful junior seasons last year.
Padgett averaged 23 points,14 rebounds and eight blocks per game. He also was a member of the USA Basketball Men's Junior World Championship qualifying team.
For his part, Wilkes scored 22 points, dished five assists and stole the ball four times per game last season.
Loyola's athletic trainer of 14 years, Tim Moscicki has watched Wilkes mature through the system. He said Wilkes was one of the best players he had ever seen at Loyola, which also boasts former UCLA star Toby Bailey as an alumnus. Moscicki said the Jayhawks were getting a class individual with a strong family background along with a great player in Wilkes.
"He's one of the nicest people I know, and the same goes for his parents," he said. "I wish all parents could be like his."
Wilkes's father, Jamal, is a west coast legend. He played for the UCLA Bruins and then the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1970s and '80s.
Edited by Lauren Beatty
Andy Barron/Reno Gazette-Journal
Reno High School's 6-foot-11 center, David Padgett, shoots
against McQueen High last season.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
By Jason King
The Kansas City Star
There's a box in the Kansas football office that's filled with thumbtacks. But, so far this week, coach Mark Mangino hasn't been able to find a use for them.
For the past few days, Mangino has been hunting for quotes, headlines, stories anything that suggests Baylor may enter Saturday's showdown in Waco, Texas, with a lack of respect for Mangino's Jawhawks.
"We've been searching the newspapers and the Internet," Mangino said. "And right now there's (nothing)."
Still, as the game draws closer, KU's bulletin board remains blank.
Of course there's not. Any team as bad as Baylor knows better than to talk any snack. The Bears, 2-2, have lost 29 straight Big 12 games and are 8-29 in Kevin Steele's four-plus years as head coach.
By David Mitchell
Lawrence Journal-World
Mark Mangino doesn't like to talk about injuries.
He must dislike being asked about them even more.
Kansas University's football coach broke his own policy at his Tuesday news conference and revealed that junior running back Reggie Duncan has a hamstring injury.
Duncan, who was a starter last year, hasn't played since the second game of the season. In the interim three weeks, Mangino said Duncan had an unspecified "nagging injury" each time he was asked about Duncan's status.
"I keep telling you he has a nagging injury," Mangho said with a chuckle. "Well, now it's starting to nag me a little bit that I have to tell you that every
time we meet. The nagging injury is a hamstring, and it's not ready. We're hoping he'll be ready to see some action this weekend, but I can't promise you that."
By Ric Anderson
The Topeka Capital-Journal
LAWRENCE — Kansas linebacker Leo Etienne wasn't even alive in the mid-1970s, but he certainly can tell you a thing or two about being exposed to streakers.
OK, so we're not talking about people who run around in nothing but sneakers and a smile,but rather teams like Tulsa,which KU beat last week to extend the nation's longest losing streak to 15 games,and Baylor, which has lost 29 straight Big 12 games heading into Saturday's meeting with the Jayhawks.
"It does motivate us," Etienne said. "We don't want to be the team that ends the streak, because if we do that it's all over the nation. 'Kansas loses to Baylor' (or) 'Kansas loses to Tulsa.' We don't want to be that team."
Against the Jayhawks, the Bears have a chance to bookend their run of futility, which began in 1998 after a 31-24 victory over KU in Waco. Five straight conference losses followed under former coach Dave Roberts, who won one league game in each of his two seasons before being replaced by Kevin Steele in 1999.
By John Allen
Baylor University
As the Bears prepare to open Big 12 play Saturday against the University of Kansas, a review of the team's performance in non-conference games is in order.
With a 2-2 record through four games, the Bears' two wins came against a Division I-AA (Samford) and a Division I-A team with the longest current losing streak in the country (Tulsa). The two losses were embarrassing road defeats. The University of California hung the speed limit on the Bears
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