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HINRICH TO COME TO LAWRENCE
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Former basketball star will return to the Fieldhouse to see his jersey retired SPORTS BRIEF | 3B
SOCCER TEAM SPLITS TWO IN FLORIDA
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Kansas finishes non-conference schedule 6-2
SOCCER | 8B
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
COMMENTARY
PAGE1B
Edited by Rachel Burchfield
Reesing more than a 'little' magical
So here's the story. It's a story about the little guy.
Mark Mangino had seen enough. He'd seen his team cough up a 20-3 lead against South Florida.
Mangino didn't like that very much. Figures. Mangino likes his teams tough. Of course he does. The guy was raised in the Rust Belt, a place where people are taught to grab the lunch pale and go to work. And Mangino's a football coach. And his team couldn't run the ball. Couldn't hold onto a 20-3 lead.
So on Saturday night against Sam Houston State, Mangino decided his team was going to run the damn ball.
So that's what they did. They ran the ball. And their first three offensive drives went fumble, punt, punt.
Kansas seemed completely unenthusiastic about blowing out Sam Houston State. And Sam Houston State's offense seemed completely overwhelmed by Kansas' talent.
And that's when the little guy comes in.
Kansas' 5-foot-11 funslinger saved the night.
The clock said 00:47. Kansas was at their own 43 yard line. Reeing dropped back, saw an opening to the left and scooted forward. Oops. Nothing there. So he stepped back and started to duck left. Nope, nothing there either.
"I just kept running around." Reesing would say.
He reversed back to the right, and a few seconds later, chucked a 60-yard parabola high into the night.
And Dezmon Briscoe answered the prayer on the goal line and fell into the end zone. It was pure flag football.
Why do we love fairy tales so much? Why do we pull so much joy from little guys make big plays?
Americans sure do love the little guy. We love the against-all-odds story. David vs. Goliath and Cinderella and Charlie Conway's triple deak. We love Jim Valvano running around looking for someone to hug and the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team knocking off the mighty Soviet Union.
There's something singular about tiny Spud Webb winning the NBA dunk contest or a run like David Eckstein being named MVP of the World Series.
Somebody who could shop in the boys section at J.C. Penney's shouldn't be able run around the field and make plays like Reesing does. He shouldn't be able to throw a leather projectile 60 yards in the air. But Reesing does.
Type 'Todd Reesing' and 'scramble' into Google and you'll get 2,960 results. He's made a lot of magic the last two seasons.
There's a wonderful quote from an old French artist named Henri Matisse about the genius of improvisation.
Of course, Todd Reesing took over the starting job at Kansas in 2007, and you probably know that since then the Jayhawks have gone 15-2. And since then, Reesing has thrown 44 touchdown passes and nine interceptions. But the stats, as always, don't tell the entire story. Reesing isn't some mechanical appliance. He's a futbol artista. An improvisational wizard. He makes music with those feet.
"There are wonderful things in real jazz," Matisse said, "the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience."
Matisse, obviously, was talking about music. But I think Matisse would have enjoyed Reesing. Reesing doesn't play quarterback, he's at one with it. He makes it performance art. He's Louis Armstrong in cleats.
And then when the game was over, and Kansas had another victory, Reesing's line looked — well, like a Reesing line. 356 yards and two touchdowns. But what about the play? What about eight seconds where Reesing saved us from an otherwise ordinary night?
"I guess," Reesing would say, "I just pulled a rabbit out of the hat there."
LINEUPSHAKEUPIMPLEMENTED
Weston White/KANSAN
nior quarterback Todd Reesing dives forward after a quarterback reverse to get the first down on Kansas' first drive of the game. Reesing threw for 356 yards and two touchdowns in Kansas' 38-14 win over Sam Houston 2017.
Bye week comes just in time, Mangino says
BY B.J. RAINS
rains@kansan.com
Kansas coach Mark Mangino tried just about everything.
He started seldom-used wide receivers Raymond Brown and Raimond Pendleton to shake up the wide receiving corps. He started Angus Quigley at running back over Jake Sharp and Jocques Crawford. He even started linebacker Arist Wright over team captain Mike Rivera.
But for more than a quarter of Saturday night's 38-14 victory over Sam Houston State, the changes didn't seem to be
enough. So Mangino did what any good coach would do — he made more.
He subbed in linebacker Dakota Lewis for James Holt on Sam Houston State's second drive of the game. He brought in Olaitan Oguntodu for a key third down play. And after cornerback Isiah Barfield got beat on a couple of pass routes,
margaine brought in redshirt freshman Ryan Murphy for a try.
But still, with almost five minutes gone in the second quarter, the score with Division I-AA Sam Houston State remained tied at 0-0.
shakeup. "When you don't do that, you don't play. It's a privilege to play here, not a right."
That meant it was time for team leader and safety Darrell Stuckey to step up once again and get his teammates back on track. The junior intercepted a Rhett Bomar pass at the Bearkats' 15 yard line and returned
"At KU, you have to play every play like it's your last," Mangino said of the
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it to the one, setting up a one-yard touchdown run by quarterback Todd Reesing that put the Jayhawks up 7-0.
"If you were a starter and all of a sudden you rode the bench tonight, obviously you see that
Coach is serious," said Quigley, who rushed for 61 yards and a touchdown in the first start of his Kansas career.
"Like, 'Hey. I need to pick my stuff up. I can't help this team from the sideline. Obviously I wasn't productive enough and I need to get it together. Competition is always health."
On the ensuing Sam Houston State drive, Barfield returned from the bench to intercept a deflected pass, giving the KU offense the ball near midfield.
It took just 41 seconds for Reesing and company to score again — this time on a 68-yard pass from Reesing to Kerry Meier, who had eight catches for 136 yards in addition to the touchdown.
After going scoreless for almost 20 minutes, the Jayhawks put up 14 points in less than three-and-a-half minutes to awaken a subdued sellout crowd and take
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Championship team receives its rings Friday
BY CASE KEEFER ckeefer@kansan.com
Brandon Rush kept flipping the fancy wooden jewelry box open and looking down at what was inside of it.
He couldn't help it. Rush had just received his national championship ring Friday night at a private ceremony held in the Naismith Room at Allen Fieldhouse. He stopped on the way out to his limousine to speak with reporters and continually glanced down at the blue 'KU' imprinted in the middle of a bed of diamonds.
"They're kind of beautiful as you can see." Rush said.
Former Kansas guards Rodrick Stewart, Brandon Rush and Mario Chalmers react to a highlight video of the championship season during the first quarter break in Saturday's game at Memorial Stadium. The team members were back on campus to their rings.
Fourteen of the 17 players on last year's championship roster were in Lawrence to attend the ceremony. Russell Robinson and Sasha Kaun missed it because they are overseas playing professional basketball. Darrell Arthur couldn't make it because he had a team function with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Jon Goering/KANSAN
Older former Jayhawks also came to watch the team receive their rings including current NBA players Kirk Hinrich, Nick Collison and Jacque Vaughn.
"It wasn't a pep-rally by any means," coach Bill Self said. "It was a very appreciative group of people tonight who were able to get their rings."
Rush is clearly a better ball-handler than ring-handler. The former Jayhawk guard and current Indiana Pacer dropped his ring to the hard Allen Fieldhouse concourse floor twice in less than a minute after the ceremony.
Perhaps that's part of the reason why he doesn't plan on keeping it for very long.
"I'm going to give it to my grandma," Rush said. "My grandma has all my rings framed in glass so she's going to put it up there."
Darnell Jackson, who currently plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, is keeping
his ring. He isn't going to wear it, but figures it would be safer under his own control.
Jackson said he feared what might happen if he followed Rush's lead and gave it to his family.
"I can't give it to my mom, she'll lose it," Jackson said. "She'll carry it around in her purse and leave her purse somewhere and somebody will take it out of there."
Self used the same word as Jackson and Rush to describe the silver ring — "beautiful."
But that doesn't mean the national
championship coach is going to wear it around. Well, at least not most of the time.
"I doubt I'll wear it much," Self said. "I may wear it on recruiting visits, though."
Three top recruits were in town this weekend and went to the ring ceremony as part of their visit. John Wall, the No.1 high school player in the nation according to Rivals.com, watched the lahawks receive their rings along with No. 18 Thomas Robinson and No. 22 Daniel Orton.
Jackson hopes to see the younger Jayhawks win another national championship at some point. He said they would just need to learn it takes time and hard work.
For now, jackson is content reflecting on this year's championship.
"A lot of guys put hard work into this," Jackson said. "Even the older guys who were before us. They tried to go after the same thing but couldn't pull it off. I guess it was just our turn."
- Edited by Ramsey Cox
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