Sports
Coverage to come See Monday's Kansan for men's and women's basketball coverage.
1B
The University Daily Kansan
Selfsays team lacks energy
Friday, February 13, 2004
Six-day break between games gives team time to heal, focus on final stretch of conference plav
Senior power forward Jeff Graves held the ball away from two Missouri players during a home game on Feb. 2. The Jayhawks will travel to Lincoln Neb. to tangle with the Cornhuskers on Sunday.
Kansan File Photo
By Ryan Greene
rgreene@kansan.com
Kansan sportwriter
Freshman guard J.R. Giddens wore a boot around his sore left foot Wednesday and did not practice.
For the Kansas men's basketball team, practice sessions this week have looked like scenes from "M*A*S*H."
Junior forward Wayne Simien is still practicing every other day while nursing a nagging groin injury.
All three will be ready to go on Sunday, but despite health woes, coach Bill Self thinks his team has an even bigger concern heading back on the road this weekend. The first-year Kansas coach wants to see his team play "hungry" basketball on a consistent basis.
"The problem is that when things haven't gone well, we haven't remained a good team." Self said at yesterday's news conference. "I don't think we play with the hunger or energy during those type of situations. I think that's exactly what happened at Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State whipped us."
Sophomore forward Moulaye Niang had tape around his right wrist and hand yesterday.
After the Jayhawks' (15-5 overall, 7-2 Big 12 Conference) 80-60 loss in Stillwater, Okla., Monday night, the team will have had a six-day hiatus before Sunday's tip-off against the Nebraska Cornhoppers (13-7, 3-6) in Lincoln, Neb. The break has given the team time to both heal physically and get focused for the final stretch of conference games.
"We just came off playing two of our best games of the year and then laid an egg in Stillwater." Self said. "I am not trying to make excuses for Monday, but this is not a good Saturday-Monday team for health reasons."
Self changed the pace of practice on Wednesday as his team focused on solidifying its defense. Defending the perimeter will be key for the Jayhawks, as the Cornhuskers are second in the Big 12 Conference in three-point field goal percentage (40.1) and three-pointers made per game (7.0).
SEE MEN'S BASKETBALL ON PAGE 6B
per game (16)
Also, Kansas must get ready to face another rowdy environment this week.
junior trio of Aaron Miles, Keith Langford and Wayne Simien.
end. The Devaney Center in Lincoln is not as intimidating as Oklahoma State's Gallagher-Iba Arena, but Nebraska is 11-2 at home this season. On the road, the Jayhawks will need more contributions emotionally and physically from their
"Myself, Keith and Wayne, we are the leaders of this team, and we have to bring the energy." Miles said.
Self said Miles was the vocal leader. Simien led by example and players fed off of Langford's energy when he was on his game.
'Hawks to take on No.24 Sooners
By Jessa Newell
jnewell@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
Trailing 32-11 to Kansas State early in the game, interim coach Lynette Woodard sent a simple message to her team: Focus on everything but the scoreboard.
Woodard told her players to get a stop and get one bucket at a time. For the next 10 minutes, the Jayhawks responded, closing the deficit to 12.
"We didn't come out the way I wanted us to," Woodard said, "but we couldn't stop playing."
The message to keep playing will come into effect again this weekend, as Kansas will travel to Oklahoma for a 4 p.m. matchup tomorrow. The game will be televised on Fox Sports Net.
The Jayhawks have lost three straight, including Wednesday's 81-51 loss to the Kansas State Wildcats, but will look to leave that loss in the past.
"We have to put this one behind us," sophomore guard Erica Hallman said. "It's going to be tough for a lot of people,
but we can't dwell on this."
Oklahoma enters with a 15-6 record, but only a 5-5 record in conference.
Kansas has also found there is no breathing room in the Big 12 Conference schedule.
The Sooners are ranked 24th in the latest ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Poll, but sit at seventh in the Big 12, showing the league's depth from top to bottom.
Oklahoma is coming off a 68-62 upset victory Tuesday against No. 7-ranked
against No. 7-ranked Texas Tech, ending a 17-game Red Raiders' home winning streak.
Woodard
Hallman
SEE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL ON PAGE 6B
Eric Bream/Kansan
Kansas State players surround Kansas sophomore center Tamara Ransburg during the second half of yesterday's game. The Wildcats held Ransburg to two points and below 17 percent shooting.
Seating plan gets approval
By Joe Bant
jbant@kansan.com
Kansan sportwriter
It's official.
It's obvious. University of Kansas current and retired faculty and staff have a seating plan for next year's men's basketball games at Allen Fieldhouse.
The Senate Executive Committee submitted the final plan yesterday to the University Council for approval. The council accepted the plan after some debate.
The plan describes the method of distributing the 1,822 Allen Fieldhouse seats available to current and retired University faculty and staff. It gives approximately 1,600 seats to current ticket holders and puts the rest into a lottery for faculty and staff without tickets.
Twelve seats behind the opposing bench will also be available in a lottery.
The plan assigns seats according to seniority, giving the closer seats to those who have served the University longest.
have served the University is really pursuing this in a unique manner," said Ray Davis, SenEx chairman.
He said the plan tried to emphasize values of the University, especially fairness and equity.
"People who have had tickets need to be weighed against faculty and staff who want to get tickets," Davis said.
The plan accomplished this balance by allowing current ticket holders to renew their tickets and having the lottery for those without them, he said.
University Council support for the plan was widespread,but not all members were convinced that the plan was fair.
Council member Jeannette Johnson criticized the plan for not allowing people without tickets a chance to get a fullseason package.
The plan gives current ticket holders the opportunity to purchase quarter-season, half-season, three-quarter season or full-season ticket packages. But lottery ticket-holders are limited to only quarter-season packages. When current ticket holders give up their tickets, they will go into the lottery and become quarter-season packages.
"My problem is that you will never ever add another full-season ticket to faculty and staff," said Johnson, a member of the unclassified professional staff.
Defenders of the plan said limiting the lottery tickets to quarter-season packages allowed more people to get tickets. They also said the plan could be amended in five years if it wasn't working well.
Andy Knopp, student body president, supported the plan but raised a concern when he brought up the issue of faculty and staff selling the tickets they acquired from the lottery.
Knopp said faculty and staff should have to show ID to claim seats like students did.
The issue was not resolved in the meeting.
Despite the concerns, the council was approved the plan without amending it.
Council member Marianne Berry said she was impressed by SenEx's efforts to create the plan.
"There are opportunities in this plan for people who have tickets to keep them and people who don't have the money to afford tickets to have four-game packages," Berry said.
Davis said the plan would now move to the provost and chancellor for final approval and then to the Athletics Department to be implemented. He does not expect the chancellor or provost to raise any issues.
—Edited by Danielle Hillix
Criticism: When bad things happen to good people
This week seemed to go by fast, but that was mostly because of my trying to clear my head after the Oklahoma State game. The game was awful, even though I did watch a Kansas game a couple of years ago against Wake Forest that did not turn out so well.
This actually brings me to the point that I want to make. There's a question that I've been pondering for a while: What is it about people that makes them want to justify things that go
Keith Langford
hlangford@hansan.com
sports commentary
wrong:
Take students for example. Any time
wrong?
a student gets an A on an assignment,
what do they say? "Yeah I just got an A."
But when it comes to getting anything
less, it turns into "Man, he just gave me
a D."
I'm not big on politics, but Bush is still trying to justify not finding weapons of mass destruction when all that was found was the pistol Saddam had when he was captured.
Because this is a sports column, and I'm an athlete, we'll relate it to sports.
Why do people who want you to play well sometimes seem like they want you to fail just so they can smack your ass while your face is in the dirt?
After we played OSU, I received phone calls from people I hadn't talked to in weeks just to ask what happened. That's fine, but why didn't they call after we beat Texas Tech by 19? That's the beauty of competition, sports and being a fan.
After 20 years on this earth, I have
come to realize that no one likes to be criticized, so that is why we criticize others. As I think about this, I acknowledge the fact that I, too, am a fan. I cannot count how many times that I've seen the Dallas Cowboys play and started a sentence with the word "damn" in front of a player's name. It's a cycle so to speak.
TALK TO SPORTS: Contact Henry C. Jackson or Maggie Newcomer at SPORTS@KANSAN.COM
SEE LANGFORD ON PAGE GB
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