Big 12 Football
THE.UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sports
Cornhusker defensive end Grant Wistrom was named the Big 12 Conference's defensive player of the year for the second-straight year.
Pro Football
Linebacker Anthony Davis became the third Kansas City player to be fined by the NFL. He must pay $7,500 for his hit on 49er quarterback Steve Young.
Thursday
December 4, 1997
Section:
B
Page 1
College Basketball
Page 1
No. 1 Duke defeated North Carolina-Greensboro 93-37 last night. Freshman Elton Brand led the Blue Devils with 23 points. The Spartans had 16 turnovers in the first half.
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'Hawks won't overlook smaller school
Kansas still motivated for Emporia State game
By Tommy Gallagher
tgallagher@kansan.com
Associate sports editor
The second opponent of the week for the Kansas men's basketball team will be a lot different from the first.
The Jayhawks defeated defending national champion Arizona 90-87 Tuesday. Kansas will face Division II Emporia State at 7:07 tonight in Allen Field House, and the players are guarding against a letdown.
Forward Paul Pierce, who is questionable for tonight's game, said no opponent should affect how the team approached each game.
"If you're not motivated to go out and play against Arizona or anybody else, then why step on the court?" Pierce said. "We need to take it upon ourselves and just be ready to go out and play."
The Jayhawks will face a vertically challenged Emporia State team. Of the 14 players on the队 roster, the Hornets have just three players who are 6-foot-6 or taller.
Besides the height difference, the Jayhawks and Emporia State provide a stark contrast in scheduling.
Four Hornets are less than 6-feet-tall, and no starter is taller than 6-5. Kansas has a size advantage at every position, and it has a taller bench.
Kansas already is 7-0 and will play its second game in three days. The Hornets are 1-1 and will play for the first time since Nov. 24 when they defeated Ottawa 94-54 in a home game.
This will be Emporia State's first road game of the season, while the Jayhawks have played two games at Madison Square Garden in New York and one at the United Center in Chicago.
Although his team could have played other opponents, Kansas coach Roy Williams said smaller, instate schools deserved the chance to draw a sizable paycheck and to beat the Javhaws.
"Some know the story of why we play the in-state schools," Williams said. "If we're going to play a non-Division I school, why not play the ones in your state and give them the money?"
Kansas and Emporia State have met 14 times since 1904, but the teams have played just once since 1947. Kansas defeated the Hornets 91-56 in 1992, the last time the teams met.
Emporia State is led by two forwards — Omar Muhammad and Sebastian King. Muhammad averages a team-high 23.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, and King averages 12.5 points and 8.5 rebounds.
The Jayhawks conquered a major obstacle in Arizona early in the season, but now they must hurdle smaller ones the rest of the season.
Guard Billy Thomas said the Jayhawks had put last year's tournament loss out of their minds.
"You cannot dwell on last season," Thomas said. "We can make the most out of this season. We're going to be competitive again, so we'll go through the season and see what happens."
Kansas forward Reef LaFrentz dunks over Arizona's Miles Simon while Paul Pierce and Arizona's Justin Wessel watch during the first quarter of the game in Chicago. The Jayhawks returned to Kansas yesterday for an intrastate match against Emporia State at 7:05 tonight in Allen Field House. Photo by Geoff Krieger/KANSAN
Point guard finds niche on team
Division I women's basketball challenges Kansas freshman
By Penny Walker sports@kansan.com Kansan writerwriter
For Jennifer Jackson, playing point guard during her freshman season at Kansas has been like living a dream.
"To step out on the floor and be calling the plays in a Division I college basketball game was something that I'd been working toward for such a long time," said Jackson, a Tuscaloosa, Ala., native. "It was just one of those things that I was so thankful for every time I step out there. It's almost surreal."
- For Jackson, the points she's scoring for Kansas are decidedly real.
Jackson hit a career-high 18 points against Cal-State Northridge in the Prairie Lights/Hawkeye Classic on Sunday, and she has averaged 34.3 minutes per game.
"Jennifer has come into this program and played more basketball than I had ever dreamed she would," coach Marian Washington said. "However, it is what I hoped for."
Jackson wasn't recruited as a point guard, but after Erinn Reed left the team for personal reasons, the Jayhawks were left without an experienced point guard. Washington selected Jackson to fill the position.
"She is a freshman, and she will make mistakes," Washington said. "But I get on her as if she were one of my sisters. She is a courageous and determined young woman, and that is what athletics is all about."
"In high school, I played the same people for six years," Jackson said. "You go out on the court, and you're playing the same people you've been playing since you were 13 or 14 years old."
Cansas guard Jennifer Jackson calls a play during a game against Athletes in Action. Photo by Geoff Krieger/KANSAN
"You step out there now, and you're playing people you've never seen in places you've never been," she said. "You never know what to expect. I think that's something that's exciting, but something that's definitely a little bit scary sometimes."
Making the change from high school to college athletics has taken some getting used to, Jackson said.
"Going out and playing in gyms where my family is not making up the whole back row of the stands is a little bit strange sometimes," she said.
Jackson's father and two of her uncles have traveled from Alabama several times to see her play this season. In high school, Jackson was used to her family coming to the games, so seeing them now makes her feel more comfortable.
It also helps to have a familiar face in the crowd
The Jayhawks are 3-1, and Jackson said that she was happy with their performance on the road during Thanksgiving break. Even though she hit that 18-point high during the Cal-State Northridge
game. Jackson committed five turnovers.
Despite the intimidation of college play and the frustration of turnovers, Jackson has no trouble getting peached up for each game.
"If you're a basketball player, and you're playing at the Division I level, and you're not excited about getting to go out there and play every day, then you're not supposed to be out anyway," Jackson said. "It's Wednesday, and I'm ready to play Saturday's game right now."
Migratory Jayhawks: Mascots fly far from home
By Kristie Blasi
By Kristie Blasi
kblasi@kansan.com
Sports editor
The Kansas men's basketball team has had a hectic travel itinerary, playing Wednesday and Friday in New York City and Tuesday in Chicago. But the players haven't been the only Jayhawks making the trips.
Baby Jay cajoled the crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York, and Big Jay was the largest bird in sight at the Great Eight at the United Center in Chicago.
Tuttle said playing for the crowds in neutral arenas was different from being a mascot in Allen Field House. And Tuttle would know because she filled the Baby Jay role at the Chase Preseason NIT in New York.
"I was really pleased with how things went on both trips," said Le-Thu Tuttle, mascot coach.
"First of all, it's a neutral playing field, so you don't always have KU fans that live that far away," she said.
And the logistics of planning antics changes as well, even though mix-ups can occur in the field house — both Big Jay and Baby Jay were on the court during the Nov. 21 UNLV game while the teams were playing on the opposite end of the court.
But unfamiliar arenas and tournaments challenge the mascots.
"The cheerleaders are there, but they're kind of doing their own thing," she said. "Mainly, it's feeling comfortable in the environment."
"You don't know your breaks," Tuttle said of when to perform. "You have to know how to get around and whom to ask. It's nice to know the KU administration because when you get to an away game, they will help you out."
Tuttle said that she did more coaching
than actually playing the mascot, but that she did fill in as Baby Jay when needed.
"I don't want to take it away from the kids," she said. "I want them to travel."
She went to Chicago to coach Brice Zogleman, Wichita sophomore, as Big Jay.
"It was a lot bigger," he said of the United Center, which held 19,161 spectators for the Kansas-Arizona game. "It had a lot better locker room. The mascots had our own locker room with a shower, a bathroom, leather couches and closed-circuit TV."
Zogleman said that playing the mascot on the road had some advantages to the field house.
But Zogleman said that there were more intangible differences.
"Actually, it was a lot different because the students weren't there, and the students normally have a lot of energy in Allen Field House," he said. "The fans in the middle — the alumni — don't cheer that much, but there were KU fans all over the arena cheering in Chicago."
Another difference, he said, was that during Arizona's second-half comeback the crowd cheered for the Wildcats.
"That just doesn't happen in Allen Field House." Zoggleman said.
One similarity between occasional home games and both of the trips this season is national television exposure. Often this includes ESPN commentator Dick Vitale, who has not been to the field house yet this season but was in both New York and Chicago.
Tuttle said Vitale wanted Baby Jay to be on camera with him.
"He just grabbed me, and we started dancing," she said.
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