Sports
Coming tomorrow
Coach Bill Self provides a look back at the Kansas Jayhawks' Elite Eight basketball season.
1B
The University Daily Kansan
PETER SCHNEIDER
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
New coach brings history of success
By Jesse Newell
jnewell@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Lew Perkins is a man of his word.
The Kansas athletics director had one promise for the Jayhawk women's basketball team earlier this season when former coach Marian Washington retired.
"Mr. Perkins told us from day one, after Coach Washington had announced that she was going to step down, that he would get a good coach—one of the best coaches in the country," sophomore guard Erica Hallman said. "That's what he's done."
Perkins' promise became reality yesterday with the announcement of Bonnie Henrickson as the new women's basketball coach.
Henrickson comes to Kansas established as a top-notch coach. Her teams recorded at least 20 wins during each of her seven years at Virginia Tech and she guided the Hokies to the NCAA tournament five times. Her best season came in 1998-'99, when she led the Hokies to a 28-3 record and a Sweet Sixteen appearance, earning Atlantic
10 Coach of the Year honors.
At Virginia Tech, Henrickson ran a system very similar to what Kansas fans were used to with Roy Williams. Her teams are known for their ability to run and score in transition while playing tough half-court defense.
"We think its a style they like to play and fans like to watch," Henrickson said.
Henrickson said the up-tempo play benefitted players and fans
"We really felt like we had the perfect match and the perfect coach," Perkins said.
Henrickson signed a five-year deal which will pay a base salary of $150,000 per year. With endorsements from the media and apparel industries, the figure will reach close to $530,000.
The 40-year-old Henrickson brings with her a staff from Virginia Tech; assistant coaches Katie O'Connor and Karen Lange, along with Trena Anderson, director of basketball operations.
SEE HISTORY ON PAGE 6B
Abbv Tillerv/Kansan
Newly hired women's basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson spoke dur ing a press conference at Hadi Auditorium. Yesterday afternoon's event began a new era of Kansas women's hoops.
Past Virginia Tech leader plans for team's season
By Jonathan Kealing
jkealing@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Since Kansas women's basketball season-ending loss to Baylor in the Big 12 Conference Tournament, the team has felt lost.
"It's kind of been a sense of no direction," juniorguard Blair Waltz said.
At yesterday's news conference, new coach Bonnie Henrickson shared her vision and direction for the team.
Her first order of business will be to go out on the road and recruit. When the women's Final Four wraps up, Henrickson and her assistants will be talking with potential players.
"She means business," Waltz said. "She has a great personality, but at the same time she wants to get down to business."
"We will take phone calls and emails from anyone across the state who thinks they saw a player somewhere," Henrickson said.
And while she did say that she would be more than happy to win a championship with a team of Kansas-bred players, she also indicated she would recruit regionally and nationally.
"We certainly have an opportunity to do something in the spring," Henrickson said. "We are aware of talented players we have and will communicate with them about getting them to campus this spring."
One of the biggest question marks facing this program in the coming days and weeks is who will and will not be returning.
While no players have come to either athletics director Lew Perkins or Henrickson to announce their intention not to return, Henrickson is preparing to make replacements if needed.
"We'll know in time what our numbers here are exactly," she said. "We don't know what our numbers are right now."
Local shops out of luck
SEE LEADER ON PAGE 6B
'Hawks' loss translates to lost financial opportunity
By Steve Vockrodt svockrodt@kansan.com Kansas staff writer
Instead of ditching plans for parties and road trips to San Antonio, the businesses had to scrap plans to sell Final Four T-shirts and other merchandise.
Some local clothing retailers were just as disappointed as Jayhawk basketball fans were after the Kansas' loss to Georgia Tech Sunday.
"It's a big deal for everybody," said Tom Wilkerson, owner of Jayhawk Spirit, 935 Massachusetts St. "It's like a second Christmas."
Wilkerson planned to sell shirts as well as pennants, hats and dozens of other items. His merchandise order faded as Georgia Tech pulled away from the lavhawks in overtime.
"I don't lose any money," Wilkerson said. "I lose a lot of phone time, fax time, just a lot of time."
The main cost for Wilkerson in light of the defeat is hours of lost time preparing in advance for orders. Wilkerson said deciding which items to purchase and how many of each was time consuming in the weeks before the basketball tournament started.
The store had been able to cash in on the team's previous two trips to the Final Four but now does not expect to see an increase as business goes back to normal for the rest of the year.
"We're a KU business 365 days a year," Wilkerson said. "We don't see a
"This season was so exceptional with the first two games at Kemper Arena and the last game at St. Louis. It's hard to go wrong when you're selling Jayhawk merchandise."
Carson Brackney Manager of Ace Sporting and Tickets
big insurgence unless they make the Final Four."
Other businesses were waiting for the buzzer to signal a Kansas victory,to have immediate prints applied to shirts.
Toni Retonde, store manager of Jayhawk Bookstore, 1420 Crescent Rd., developed two unique prints for Final Four shirts that would have been ready hours after the game if Kansas was victorious. The store also had orders for other shirts to come the following day.
The loss on the court won't necessarily be a loss for the Jayhawk Bookstore. The unprinted shirts will go back on the shelves and overnight orders will be canceled.
Wilkerson said it was good for business in 1988 when the Jayhawks won the National Championship.
Nevertheless, having Final Four merchandise would have helped businesses.
until three in the morning," Wilkerson said.
Jarod Kastning, manager of Francis Sporting Goods, 731 Massachusetts St., said his store had not ordered any shirts ahead of time. He said that the store had made some profit in previous years with Final Four merchandise but does not lament the loss of business.
"I can remember in '88, we were open
"It's not too bad," Kastning said. "We would have made some money, but oh well."
Ace Sporting and Tickets, 647 Massachusetts St., had a vested interest in the Jayhawks going to the Final Four. Carson Brackney, manager, said his store was planning on making extra money on merchandise in it's first basketball season after opening in last November.
"This season was so exceptional with the first two games at Kemper Arena and the last game at St. Louis," Brackney said, "It's hard to go wrong when you're selling Jayhawk merchandise."
In addition to merchandise, Brackney said his ticket brokerage would have been able to sell a couple dozen tickets to local fans making the trip to San Antonio. Brackney said he estimated tickets to the Final Four through brokerages would cost $500 apiece. He said the tickets probably would cost a little more in Lawrence with the high demand for tickets.
— Edited by Joe Hartigan
Racquet buster
Abby Tillery/Kansan
Dan Walsh, Overland Park freshman, practiced his serve yesterday at the tennis courts outside Robinson Center. He said he just played tennis for fun and not with an intramural team.
Disappointed fans have no reason to hang their heads
By Henry C. Jackson
hjackson@kansan.com
Kansan sports editor
Maybe four straight Sweet Sixteens have left Kansas fans with unrealistic expectations. That's the only way to explain the general feeling of malaise on campus after Sunday's 78-71 loss to Georgia Tech in the Elite Eight.
"I'm going to go to bed and cry," Amanda Lewis, Rosehill junior, said in yesterday's Kansan. "I seriously feel like crying. I can't believe we lost."
It will sound trite, but Kansas fans should feel fine. They are in the overwhelming majority of college basketball fans this time of year. There were 65 teams when the NCAA tournament began. Heading into Final Four weekend, there are 61 sets of wistful fans.
Can a season really be Sweet, Elite and vet still incomplete?
sports commentary
Many of these fans have more reason for disappointment than their Kansas counterparts. There are the underachievers: Kentucky, Providence and Gonzaga (and that's just in Kansas' region). The we-had-a-good-team-but-the-committee-jobbed-us crowd: Pittsburgh, Wisconsin and Utah State, a team that didn't even get to play in the tournament despite a 25-4 season and the regular season title in the Big West conference.
Henry C. Jackson hjackson@kansan.com
Or how about the we-could have been...500 crowd: The Florida A&M Rattlers, which sat at 15-16 and poised to break even, only to lose to top-seeded Kentucky and drop into the indignity of a losing season.
Then there's the saddest group of all, the I-swear-the-regular-season-matters-crowd whose two members, St. Joseph's and Stanford, spent the majority of their seasons undefeated but still didn't make it to San Antonio.
The Jayhawks' over-achieving tournament run saw them go one more round then they were seeded to go, whoop media darling University of Alabama-Birmingham by beating the Blazers at their own game, and for a final salvo, produce one of the tournament's best games before making a graceful exit.
Sure, there's some disappointment when a team gets this close to its third
Fans got it all this season. There were lows: losing at home to Richmond in January, a horrid stretch in February, when Kansas barely looked like a tournament team after back-to-back blowout losses to Oklahoma State and Nebraska; and, of course, Sunday's overtime loss.
straight Final Four. But being bummed out for too long puts a damper on a spectacularly up-and-down basketball season.
But there were plenty of highs: three victories over Missouri. Three! And one of them on a last-gasp buzzer beater that probably bumped the Tigers from the NCAA tournament.
The collective omigosh-we-didn't
Players developed too. Freshmen J.R. Giddens and David Padgett matured as the season went along contributing highlight-reel dunks, buzzer beating shots and quality minutes.
There are a lot of people typing at their computers or sitting in their dorm rooms — people on the outside looking in — who don't understand what this team really accomplished. There's a lot, as junior guard Michael Lee put it after the game, that no one else can understand.
make-it-to-the-Final-Four mentality loses credibility when one considers what this team overcame: a new coach, the loss of two NBA lottery picks and nearly every major player being injured or suspended at some point.
"You have to smile," Lee said after the game. "Life's not easy, everything's not fair. Struggle helps you appreciate the good times much more. I don't regret anything about this season."
Kansas fans shouldn't either
Jackson is a Long Valley, N.J., senior in journalism and sports editor.
IALK TO SPORTS: Contact JJ Hensley and Shane Mettlen at SPORTS@KANSAN.COM
---
.