BASKETBALL Kansas women's basketball will play Western Illinois tonight. PAGE 3B
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Dec.8
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2004
Junior forward Crystal Kemp goes up strong for a rebound in last Tuesday's game against Denver.
'Hawks lack depth, height
BY PAUL BRAND
pbrand@kansan.com
KANSAN SPORTSWRIETER
At the onset of the season, first-year coach Bonnie Henrickson said her Jayhawks were all freshmen in a way. They were all being introduced to a new approach to basketball, and the learning curve would be steep at
RELATED NEWS
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times.
NEWS
See the story on page 3B about the team's game tonight.
Early in the season, the women's basketball team (3-3) has learned tough lessons and gained a valuable experience that it will
take into the 7 p.m. home game against Western Illinois (2-3).
Sunday's 62-45 defeat on the road against now No.16 Minnesota started off quickly for Kansas, but eventually the Golden Gophers used their deeply talented roster to gain a home victory. Although the Jayhawks dropped the game to even up their totals in the victory-defeat column, both the offense and defense showed promise and progress.
Tonight, Kansas will have to deal with a problem that reared its head against Minnesota and that will likely follow Kansas throughout the season:
"T they were hurting us from their ball
screens. We weren't doing good defensively against those."
Pam Borton Minnesota basketball coach
Early in the Minnesota game, Kansas established a strong offensive scheme and showed confidence, placing the Jayhawks in an unexpected 19-4 lead and a 33-27 halftime lead. Guard penetration and screens aided the Jayhawks, who made their first three shots from beyond the arc and shot 14-29 in the first half.
lack of depth.
"They were hurting us from their ball screens," said Minnesota coach Pam Borton. "We weren't doing good defensively against those."
But the Golden Gophers outscored the undermanned Jayhawks 35-12 after the break, a second-half lag familiar to the Jayhawks this season. Tired players and foul trouble for the front court, including freshman forward Taylor McIntosh, has proved problematic in second-half offensive performances this season.
Self works to include freshmen
SEE DEPTH ON PAGE 5B
BY MIRANDA LENNING
mlenning@kansan.com
KANSAN SPORTSWRIVER
Four games into the basketball season. coach Bill Self has had more time to evaluate his three freshmen big men.
Self noticed one underlying theme.
"We have got to play our young guys more." Self said.
Sasha Kaun, C.J. Giles, Darnell Jackson and Alex Galindo have combined for an average 32.6 minutes per game. That is about 18 total minutes less than Self would want to see from the them.
"In a perfect world, it would be to get 50 minutes out of those four guys," Self said. "If you can get 15 points and 15 rebounds out of those 50 minutes, you basically have a productive two guys, except we are doing with four."
"My role hasn't changed, I just need to keep playing defense and rebounding," he said.
Jackson said he thought Self was making an effort to give the freshmen more playing time, but Jackson said his job was the same as it was at the start of the season.
Self said the three individual freshmen were consistently improving. He said Kaun played the best in practice last week but Jackson contributed the most to Saturday's game. Self said he would use
the freshmen, not including Russell Robinson, depending on how they practice before the game and depending on the pace of the game.
Self said he would like one of them to emerge as the front runner for playing time or even a starting role. But for now, it looks as though Self is going to stick with starting junior walk-on Christian Moody — at least for awhile.
"Christian is just better than the other three right now, but that is only time away and we anticipated that all along." Self said.
Self and Moody have talked about his current role with the Jayhawks and the how his role may change in the future. Self told Moody even if one of the freshmen worked into a starting role, it would not be a knock on Moody.
Moody's biggest disadvantage is he's smaller compared to Kaun, Jackson and Giles. Self said when the Jayhawks started playing bigger teams, it would be ideal to have more size on the court so Wayne Simien could guard the power forward position. In most cases, that would create a size advantage for Simien.
"Christian deserves the minute he is getting and deserves to start,"Self said "But we would be better we if played bigger."
In the immediate future, however, size is not that important. Thursday's opponent, Texas Christian University, will be
one of the smallest teams the Jajhwaks will face all year, Self said. So Moody's ultimate weakness will be a strength for him Thursday.
Self has said the Jayhawks struggle defensively against the quicker and smaller teams because they force Kansas' post players to guard on the perimeter. In that case, what the Jayhawks gain in size, they lack in quickness.
"We struggle the most when their four one is a perimeter plover." Self said.
Self said Pacific's Christian Maraker was an example of a player who caused defensive problems for Kansas. Maraker scored 22 points against the Jayhawks Saturday in 31 minutes. Although Mararker played the four position, he scored most of his points from the perimeter.
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If Self is right about TCU's quickness, it could be difficult for Jackson and Kaun to defend the four player.
"Darnell is definitely better off when he can hit someone." he said.
Self said Jackson played best in physical situations.
But Giles' shot-blocking ability and athleticism will come in handy against an undersized TCU.
Winter break would be the ideal time for the freshmen to step up into a more assertive role. This is normally the time when a team excels the most because of no school or social distractions, just basketball. Self said.
Kansan File Photo
Freshman forward Darnell Jackson lays on a fast break. The Jayhawks went on to win the game against the St. Joseph's Hawks on Nov. 23, 91-51. Jackson had eight points and three rebounds.
Until then, Kansas fans should expect to see a lot of Moody.
- Edited by Rupal Gor
KANSAN File Photo
Irish may consider Mangino
Kansas coach Mark Mangino looks over the field at Iowa State as the Jayhawks run out of the locker room on Oct. 30.
Mangino told The Kansas City Star that he had not spoken with any members of the Notre Dame administration. He indicated he probably wouldn't be interested in the position.
Kansas football coach Mark Mangino's name is circulating on the list of candidates to replace the fired Tyrone Willingham as coach of Notre Dame, according to an article in yesterday's South Bend Tribune.
"I'm bent on making Kansas a top 25 program," Mangino told The Star. "That's all I'm concerned about. I don't deal with hypothetical issues."
The South Bend Tribune listed Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez, Northwestern coach Randy Walker, Connecticut coach Randy Esdall, Boise State coach Dan Hawkins and
New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis as other potential coaches.
The Athletics Department is not worried about its football coach, however.
Marchiony said Kansas athletics director Lew Perkins spoke with Mangino last night, and that Notre Dame was not an issue.
"Just because a newspaper prints names doesn't mean those names are anywhere near accurate," associate athletics director Ilim Marchionv said.
"I think it would be pointless to comment on something so hypothetical," Marchiony said.
When Notre Dame fired Willingham last week, it was widely assumed that Utah coach Urban Meyer would head to South Bend, Ind., to take the job at
Meyer, however, elected to go to Florida and to replace fired coach Ron Zook.
a place where he previously coached. Meyer even had a clause in his contract eliminating the buyout if he went there.
Mangino has received contract extensions after both of his first two seasons, but no extension has yet been made this season.
Mangino has said that he and his staff are not in Lawrence just to wait for a bigger job, but rather to build the program into something bigger.
"I'm not entertaining any kind of thoughts like that at this point in time," Mangino told The Star."My family and I love living in Lawrence."
Jonathan Kealina
ALISSA BAUER
abauer@kansan.com
Nice and easy, just as it was meant to be.
Rank system strips teams of postseason opportunities
Then the teams who have collected the most victories at the end of the season get to play each other to determine the best winner of them all.
The beautiful thing about sports is their simplicity. People who understand nothing otherwise know that the team with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
Well, not exactly-at least not for Division IA college football.
Not only does Division IA football refuse to use easy-to-understand playoff brackets, but the sport opts instead to use what may be the most complicated monstrosity on the planet: the Bowl Championship Series system. The BCS system ranks the top 25 teams using four components: polls (done by sportswriters and coaches), computer rankings, difficulty of schedules and each team's record.
A typical college football fan has to be wondering what all the polls and number-crunching has to do with the game itself. Who is to say which undefeated team is the best, and of those teams, who should play for the national title?
The computer rankings look at factors such as a team's previous year's rank, the strength of its conference and nonconference opponents, home-field advantages and actual game outcomes versus the probability of those outcomes.
In the BCS system, there are eight spots to be filled by teams competing in one of the four major bowl games: Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange. Six of those spots are given to the teams who won their BCS conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern).
Even worse is the fact that the coaches involved are also a big part of the rankings, which they can easily play to their advantages. Like in 1997, when the coaches collectively changed their vote, changing the No. 1 team from undefeated Michigan to undefeated Nebraska in honor of retiring 'Husker coach Tom Osborne.
After that, two more teams will be selected if they finished first or second in BCS rankings, finished in the top six of the BCS rankings as a non-BCS conference team or if they are the highest rated non-BCS team, finishing either third or fourth in the rankings.
So a collaboration of 63 sportswriters, 61 BCS conference football coaches and six computers — or 130 different opinions — tell us who we will watch in this year's Orange Bowl.
Why not form a playoff bracket? Why not give the teams who have gone undefeated an opportunity to show that it's not who they play that matters? If these teams are only as good as their weak schedules show, then we don't need to see it on a poll or a computer screen.
So now, in the 2004 postseason, we are looking at teams such as Auburn (12-0), Utah (11-0) and Boise State (11-0) who finished undefeated and will not have the opportunity to play the best of the best and compete for a national title.
The entire Division IA couldn't rely on these confusing BCS rankings without a confusing formula to calculate them. The point total from the Associated Press poll, the coaches' poll and the computer ranking systems all average together to give a point total for each team.
Starting to see the need for playoffs?
The BCS system is telling teams such as Auburn and Utah that they will have to do better than perfection to play for a national title, and that simply isn't right.
Bauer is a Winfieldjunior in journalism.