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/ SPORTS / WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Gill focuses on present, unconcerned with next year
BY KORY CARPENTER
kcarpenter@kansan.com
Junior quarterback Quinn Mecham rushes the ball upfield while covered by senior offensive lineman Brad Thorson. Coach Turner Gill says Mecham is ready to continue improving this week and will start this Saturday against Oklahoma State.
Last Saturday's 20-3 loss to Nebraska officially eliminated the Kansas football team from postseason play. They needed to win three in a row to finish 6-6 and be eligible for a bowl game. Now, the best case scenario for the Jayhawks is a 5-7 finish, and even that would be a
Webt
With the season nearing an end however, coach Turner Gill still isn't ready to start talking about next year.
stretch considering their final two opponents, Oklahoma State and Missouri.
"Our objective here still is to continue to win football games," he said Tuesday. "We're not totally it here talking
about what's in the future and all that, we're trying to beat Oklahoma State."
Gill proved this mentality in hinting that freshman quarterback Jordan Webb could play this weekend, as well as starting junior quarterback Quinn Mecham.
"We may play both guys, but we're gonna go ahead and start Quinn this ball game and kind of go from there."
go from there.
Playing Webb alongside Mecham the last two games officially opens up the starting quarterback position going into next year. Not that Mecham was a lock to start next season anyway, but Gill is showing fans he's not worried about next year. He wants to win every game, and he's proving that by starting a de facto quarterback controversy the last two weeks of the season in games that won't matter much in the long run.
the long run.
Six weeks after his coach claimed, "he's our quarterback," after the 28-25 upset over Georgia Tech. Jordan Webb was knocked out of the Texas A&M game and he hasn't
played since.
played since.
It was partly due to his shoulder injury, but not completely. Gill noted that Webb was near 100 percent before the Nebraska game.
"Last week he was a little bit limited. He did get some reps, he got quite a bit of reps. But this week there's no issue injury-wise; he's ready to go."
Even if Webb was near perfect
health, Mecham starting in Lincoln wasn't a huge surprise. He managed the Iowa State game very well, and after an average first half against Colorado, he led the team to the next comeback in school history.
The wheels fell off last Saturday against Nebraska, however. After Mecham completed only three passes for 15 yards and no touchdowns, things are getting shaken up
once again at the Anderson Family Football Complex.
his arm against Nebraska, opting to throw the ball only 15 times all night. When they did decide to throw deep, Mecham badly underthrew sophomore wide receiver DJ. Beshears for an interception. Beshears had his man beat and could have easily scored with a good throw.
Football Complex.
After that embarrassing performance, Gill claimed that Mecham wasn't too hard on himself, and that he was ready to continue improving this week.
If he wants to win, or at least stay in the game Saturday, Mecham will need to improve fast. It was obvious that the coaches didn't fully trust
The old saying, 'If you have two quarterbacks, you really have none'
If Mecham struggles against the less-than-starell Cowboy defense, expect to see Webb try and recreate the magic he delivered against Georgia Tech way back in week two.
isn't fazing Gill or his coaching staff, who don't seem concerned with next year right now.
Edited by Kelsey Ni
MARSHALL (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
every other week for one day of treatment and one day of tests for 12 weeks. His parents, Heather and David Marshall, live in Dallas, which made it possible for them to visit him at the Tulsa treatment center. However, Marshall's father was normally the only parent that was able to make the trip, as his mother had to stay at home and look after Marshall's three younger siblings.
The numerous four-hour drives to Tulsa was one of the hardest parts for Marshall. Most of the time he rode with a friend, but he occasionally had to make the drive to chemotherapy treatments by himself.
"That was really hard for me," he said. "I was 19 at the time. I just felt like the road gives you a lot of time to think. You just think about everything that is going on around you and how your life could change in any second."
Marshall ended up taking incompletes in his classes during the fall 2009 semester when he was first diagnosed with cancer. To make up for the lost time, he took 21
New York City style. Kansas practicality.
The W's East Village Jacket
credit hours during the spring 2010 semester, in addition to attending, but not participating in, football practices. All of this was going on in the midst of his chemotherapy treatments in Tulsa.
Marshall struggled to find people to turn to that could offer him support during
had the time to focus on me and focus on developing a relationship with a new coaching staff"
Because he was gone so much, he became distant from the football program that was basically his life before the incident. He needed help from his friends.
"My team was there," Marshall said. "But they were also going through their struggles transitioning to a new coaching staff and, for the most part, I don't feel like they
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this difficult time in his life
One of those people turned out to be sophomore offensive lineman Joe Semple. Marshall ended up moving in with Semple and they became best friends. Semple was one of the few people who was there for Marshall the whole time.
"... you can see death and you can beat death."
when hed come home from cancer (treatments), he wouldn't be in the best of shape," Semple said. "I just felt like I had to keep his spirits up and make him laugh the best I can and get his mind off
the cancer and just be there for him to talk to about whatever he's going through"
D. J. MARSHALL Sophomore defensive end
"At times there was only like one or two people I could talk to," he said.
Then one day at practice, Marshall met someone else that he could talk to. This person, Connor Olson, ended up being one of his biggest inspirations during this entire ordeal.
Orlson was a student at Tonganoxie High School in Tonganoxie. He had been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. One day he came to a Kansas football practice. Olson had played football when he was younger but now, with one leg amputated and
Marshall and Olson met at practice and there was an instant
struggling with the effects of a terminal cancer, all he wanted to do was play ball again and be around football players.
bond between the two. Besides the cancer, they had something else in common. Both Olson and Marshall wore many types of cancer bracelets. Marshall wears Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong bracelets, others from his parents and one that says "believe." The two friends exchanged bracelets and every day Marshall looks at the one that Olson gave him that reads "Cure for Connor."
Olson and Marshall maintained a friendship after they had met. They kept in contact through texts and phone calls, but eventually Olson began texting less and less. Marshall knew something was wrong. Olson had had a stroke and Marshall said he died a couple days after.
"Me talking to him, knowing that my life is on the line just like his was — I could not be here just like he isn't," Marshall said. "That was one of my main driving forces for me to come back, for people, to be an inspiration to people with cancer or people without cancer."
Today, Marshall has the chance to be that inspiration. When chemo treatments became less severe, he knew he was getting better. He
ound out in August that he's now cancer free.
"I feel like I came out a better person, a stronger person," Marshall said. "I was always a very confident person but after I got diagnosed with that I feel like my confidence was stripped away from me and then as I'm coming back now I feel like rejuvenation."
"It is really great to see a smile on his face; it is really good to see a young man who has had a lot of tough times get better," coach Turner Gill said. "I am happy for him, but I am also happy for our football team as he continues to make progress."
Football is once again becoming a huge part of his life. Marshall has gone from chemotherapy treatments last semester to being dropped right back into the grind of things this semester. He's been attending meetings, class and practices; everything a healthy football player would do. The only exception is that he hasn't been playing. He's being slowly worked back into the physical aspect of the game. Two weeks ago Marshall only wore a helmet during practice. Last week he wore a helmet and shoulder pads. This week he's in full pads and next week he will participate in his first full practice, less than a year removed from having cancer.
Thanks to the help of head trainer Murphy Grant and Marshall's academic adviser Glenn Quick, he is slowly but surely moving back into a normal college football player lifestyle.
mstyle.
For Marshall however, his work with cancer isn't complete. Now that he's a survivor, he wants to help other people. He encourages anyone struggling with anything, cancer or otherwise, to reach out to him for support. He wants to use his experience to inspire people through troubles in their own life.
through troubles in life.
"People with cancer," he said,
"once you're in the meat of it, when it's like your fourth treatment and you can't see the end of it, just know there's an end and you can see death and you can beat death."
Edited by Tim Dwyer
WOMEN'S (CONTINUED FROM 8A)
field, including 2-3 from behind the arc, along with three free throws.
"It feels good to come out there and help my team out," Jackson said. "I have focused on my three-point shot a little bit more this year and during the summer so it felt good to go out there and show my three-point skills."
Kansas had a more difficult size matchup in the post than it has seen so far this year.
"For me it would be containing my player one-on-one and just being helpful and communi-
"I wouldn't say it was intimidating at all for me because I am an aggressive player, but for the post players as a group we battle each other every day so this wasn't anything new for us," Jackson said. "I think we learned to adjust to how they were playing us and made points to the adjustment.
jackson still sees areas for improvement on defense before taking on Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
cating with the guards and post players," Jackson said.
players, like Defensively the Jayhawks had 10 blocks and seven steals, but on offense Kansas had 16 turnovers. Freshman guard Keena Mays attributes this to the team moving too fast. The majority of the turnovers were caused by miscommunication during passes that would fly out of bounds.
"We have to slow the game down and let it come to us, not try to rush," Mays said. "We are getting good looks at the post, but maybe the wrong angle."
Edited by Tim Dwyer
"That just shows how big of a threat we are," Jackson said. "It is good that we can all score because we can all contribute something together and once we all develop what we are supposed to do and what our roles are, we are going to be an unstoppable team."
For the second straight game all 11 laj hawks that played were able to score. This was due in part to Kansas' 19 assists.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Tight game ends in win for Wildcats
MANHATTAN.Kan.
MANHATTAN, Kan. — Martavious Irving hit three 3-pointers during a decisive second-half run that turned a tight game between two cold-shooting teams into a laugher and sparked No. 3 Kansas State to a 73-57 victory Tuesday afternoon over No. 22 Virginia Tech.
Two technical fouls were called on Virginia Tech as Kansas State (2-0) was taking charge in the second half.
Malcolm Delaney, the Atlantic Coast Conference's leading returning scorer, had 22 points for the Hokies (1-1). His bucket gave Virginia Tech a 40-38 lead early in the second half. then
Rodney McGruder's 10-foot jumper ignited the Wildcats on the 28-9 run that gave them an insurmountable lead.
After another bucket by McGruder, Freddy Asprilla blocked Victor Davila's shot and Irving drained the first of his 3-pointers. Delaney's 3-pointer a moment later was answered by another trey by Irving. After a free throw by Jamar Samuels, McGruder hit a 3-pointer to give the Wildcats their biggest lead, 53-44, with 8:40 to go.
Jacob Pullen, the Wildcats' preseason All-American, was benched all but 2 minutes of the first half with three fouls, but scored 13 points.
Associated Press
.