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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011
MEN'S BASKETBALL
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Recalling memorable events from 2008
Tyrel Reed reflects on heartbreaking losses to Kansas State, Texas and Oklahoma State and an important team meeting
In today's excerpt, Tyrel talks about his freshman year, the march to the 2008 Final Four and a players-only meeting that changed a season and lifting the "Final Four Monkey" off his coach's back.
Our first big road test that year was at Southern Cal, which had
"official" about this meeting. It was just sort of like, "Hey, we're going to Henry T's," and everybody showed up.
I imagine the other people in the restaurant were pretty curious about all this. Because we all have different schedules, it's pretty rare to see the entire basketball team
16. Which put us in the Elite Eight, where we had lost the year before, against Davidson, who was everybody's Cinderella story.
As much as you try to ignore everything, there are certain facts that people just won't let you forget. We were aware that all of coach Self's best tournament runs
HEALTH
> Dude...gross.
Six months ago, Max Clarkson's wart on the bottom of his left middle finger disappeared. Clarkson, a fifth-year senior from Prairie Village, says he had the wart for more than a year before it went away. He says the wart was bother-some, so he would pick off the top layer to try to get rid of it. But each time, it came back, so he let nature take its course.
THAT'S DISGUSTING // COMMON WARTS
Although the whitish, rough bump sitting on Clarkson's finger was annoying and unattractive, warts are not dangerous, just disgusting. Warts are a virus from the Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, and get into skin cells through minor cuts, says Matthew Buxton, a dermatologist at Free State Dermatology in Lawrence. Once inside, the virus replicates the cells multiple times, turning it into a mound. There are more than 100 types of HPV, but common warts are the least harmless, according to the Mayo Clinic's website.
HPV is contagious, but people get it depending on their immunity to fight off the virus, Buxton says. Once you get one wart, it can easily spread by picking the wart or hiting a nail that
If a particle from a wart falls off in the shower, it can be easily picked up by the next person if he has an open cut on his foot. Also, if you shave over a wart, the razor will carry the virus and can spread to open parts of the body, Buxton says.
has one near it. If you're a nail-biter, warts can spread to your lips.
Washing your hands, wearing shoes in communal showers and not sharing hygiene products and towels decrease your chances of getting the virus.
| KYLIE NUTT |
Photo by Kyla Nutt War on Warts: Washing your hands and wearing shoes in communal showers helps prevent the spreading of common warts.
GET YOUR UGLY HOLIDAY SWEATERS EARLY
for us, especially Darnell. He had been through a lot of tragedies already in his life, and his cousin had been killed earlier in the week. Sherron was hurt too, and didn't play much (11 minutes).
That loss shook us up a little bit. We realized we weren't invincible, and one of the outcomes was the realization some things needed to be said, some things needed to be heard and we needed to sort it all out as a team. The manifestation of this was that some guys on the team — I can't remember who — decided we ought to go to Henry T's for dinner as a team, an event which I am now aware has taken on something of a legendary quality. I assume this is at least partially because nobody outside the team knows exactly what happened there, except that we never lost again that season.
So here's the story; Henry T's is a sports bar known for its wings and burgers. It has one extra large booth in one of the corners, which suited us fine. There was nothing
The NCAA Tournament is a totally different animal from the regular season. You get funky game times; you don't know who you're going to play. It's weird. The stands are often half full and even the half that is there is a mix of a few different teams' fans.
We had one more chance for a revenge game that year, and it came in the Big 12 championship game against Texas. The memorable thing about that game was how well both teams played. It was almost surreal to watch. If you're a basketball fan, that had to be fun to watch because of the pure skill and talent on display. That's one of the better halves of basketball that I've witnessed.
We played Portland State in the first round. Then we had a nice game against UNLV and whipped Villanova pretty hard in the Sweet
him at that time. I can only imagine coaching in college basketball for so long and coming so close. You're so defined by that last game in college. I think we need to be held accountable for losing in the NCAA Tournament, but we try not to let it define us as a team. Things happen. It's tough when people say we had a bad season. You wish it wouldn't be that way, that you went 35-3 but didn't have a good year. I think at a lot of places that would be a pretty good year.
Kansas got up by 24 in the second half and won 88-74.
bigger target for our fans than he already was (which was pretty big).
The Davidson win was really a pressure release in a lot of ways. I felt like once we got to the Final Four, there was a sense of calmness.
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© Reed All About It:
Driven to be a Jayhawk
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