THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN SPORTS
Jayhawks win three-game set
BASEBALL | 10A
MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2011
After defeating Arkansas-Little Rock at home, the Jayhawks lost three games at College Station. The team will play against Missouri State on Wednesday before taking on Baylor this weekend at home.
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TOURNAMENT TROUBLE
PAGE 12A
Missed shots bring No.1 down
BY MIKE LAVIERI
mlavieri@kansan.com
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Minutes before the game was over, the Jayhaws knew what was coming. Marcus Morris was on the bench sulking with a towel over his head before the final buzzer sounded as Kansas lost 71-61 to No. 11 seed VCU.
The mood in the locker room was complete shock and somberness. None of the players wanted to talk, but they had to. They were looking at the ground with a soft glisten over their eyes. Some fully crying and some in just total disbelief of what just happened. Morris thought he let his teammates down, but it's not his fault.
"We didn't get the win, so I let them down," Morris said.
But he can't take the full blame. Morris recorded another double-double, scoring 20 points and grabbing 16 rebounds, but he was 8-for-19 shooting. The problem was that Kansas missed three pointers, free throws and easy layups.
The Jayhawks went 2-for-21 from behind the arc, but coach Bill Self said that it was more like 2-for-17 because some came late in the game when VCU had it wrapped up.
VCU looked like it was shooting into the ocean, while the basket for Kansas seemed to shrink, even though the hoop was still 18 inches in diameter. Everything was going in for the Rams. At one point in the first half VCU was 9-for-15 from three. It could throw something up from Richmond and it would go in. It was just one of those days for the Rams.
Senior guards Tyrel Reed and Brady Morningstar played their last game as Jayhawks and were shooting 41.7 percent and 53.3 percent from three in the tournament, respectively. Reed was the only one to knock one down between the two. He went 1-for-7, while Morningstar was 0-for-3.
"I don't think we've shot that bad from the three point line and from the field," Reed said. "We had good looks. We got some open shots and the bowl down low, the ball wouldn't
Jerry Wang/KANSAN
fall in. I don't think we ever lost confidence that we weren't going to make shots. We kept shooting them, but they just didn't go in."
Shots weren't the only thing not going in. Free throws weren't either. The team went 15-for-28 from the line. It's hard to blame the loss on free throws and three pointers, but poor shooting in both facets don't help.
"As poorly as we played in the first half, if we make some layups and free throws, we're behind, but it's probably a seven-point game instead of a 14-point game," Self said. "We shot it miserably. I don't usually talk to guys about making shots or missing shots. I talk to them about doing the other things and it seems like to me you shoot better when you concentrate on other things, to help make winning plays."
Junior guard Tyshawn Taylor said it's hard to win when you miss that many free throws. And he's right. Most of them came in the 10 minutes of the game.
The whole game dynamic might have changed. The game plan could have been different. The way Kansas cut into VCU's lead might have changed. But that all hypothetical.
"You have to give credit to VCU, they had an incredible game." Morningstar said. "I wish them luck next weekend. As a team we didn't perform as well as we could have and as well as we should have and that's why we're going home."
The Jayhawks didn't get it done and they lost. They go home sad, like they did last year. But this year, they were one step from the Final Four.
- Edited by Samantha Collins
REWIND | 6A&7A
Check out more coverage of the Jayhawk loss
Junior center Markieff Morris drives inside for a basket during the second half. Morris finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds for his thirteenth double-double of the season. Highly favored to make it further in the tournament, the Jayhawks were the only one-seed left until a heartbreak loss to the eleven-seed VCU Rams.
SOFTBALL
After losses during spring break, team moves on
Sophomore outfielder Maggie Hull attempts to make a diving catch in the first game Wednesday. Kansas lost both games to Missouri and is now 0-2 in conference play.
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN
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Wednesday, the team faced No. 13 Missouri and fell 3-2 and 6-5. The team came out of the doubleheader with a positive outlook. They went in, fought for each and every run and led for several innings in the nightcap of the doubleheader.
The Jayhawks started off at a high point with their win in Carolina and senior catcher Brittany Hile's recruitment into the Pro Fast Pitch League. That was at the very beginning of spring break and the team had more confidence than ever.
"Obviously Texas is a top ten team in the country and we knew they were going to be tough," coach Megan Smith said, "Their pitcher is one of the best pitchers in the country. She was actually the national player of the week this past week."
BY HANNAH WISE
hwise@kansan.com
That Longhorn pitcher is Blaire Luna.
She is now 18-2 from the circle. She struck out 11 Jayhawk batters over the course of the weekend. Until the Sunday contest, Luna was on a 33-inning hitstreak.
Saturday and Sunday the team faced No.8 Texas in Austin and fell hard with losses 12-0 and 10-2.
The softball team went from winning the Coastal Carolina Chanticleer Challenge 5-0 two weeks ago to losing both doubleheaders against Missouri and Texas during spring break.
"Really, we made really good offensive adjustments against her." Smith said.
The Texas batters could not be stopped in either contest. They ended the weekend with 21 hits for 22 runs.
In Saturday's contest, the Jayhawk batters could not collect a hit until freshman Kendra Cullum and sophomore Alex Jones hit back-to-back singles in the fifth inning.
Kansas did not make contact again and both runners were left stranded. Both hits were made against Texas' closer Rachel Fox.
Sunday, the Jayhawks came out ready to fight and earned two runs off two hits in the top of the first inning. However, they would only make contact two other times in the fourth and fifth innings and neither hit converted into a run.
"We came out fighting which was our game plan. We were just going to come out fighting because we had nothing left to lose after yesterday and I think in the first inning we really executed that," junior outfielder Liz Kocon said.
The story behind the loss is that the Kansas pitchers were not aggressive enough for the caliber of batters they were facing. On the weekend all four major pitchers, freshman Kristin Martinez, sophomore Alex Jones, junior Ashley Spencer and senior Allie Clark, were utilized and totaled two strikeouts. The strikeouts came from Jones on Saturday and Spencer on Sunday.
"I think our pitching staff needs to step it up this week. To me, that was what we were really lacking and we hope that they are going to step it up Wednesday and then this coming weekend against Nebraska," Smith said.
Like all games in athletics, there is no time for the team to dwell on the slippery slope they traveled down last week. This upcoming week they will play in Kansas City, Mo., against UMKC and at home against Nebraska during the weekend.
"What we are trying to take away from the loss is just to move forward. Good teams are always going to go through adversity during their season. We just played the top two teams in the Big 12, arguably the best conference in the nation. So we are going to try to not get down on ourselves and remember we are still a really good team," sophomore Maggie Hull said.
COMMENTARY
Edited by Samantha Collins
Luck of the draw
BY COREY THIBODEAUX
tcbibodeau.kansan.com
You can't win six tournament games on talent alone. Ask any coach what it takes to win a championship in any sport and they will throw out all the staples: an amalgamation of talent, discipline, intelligence, experience, etc.
It's a simple concept. At some point you aren't going to be at your best. No team can be at its best 100 percent of the time. That's when you scrape by with a lucky break.
But if you ask the coaches who have been there, who have won the biggest game of their sport, they will give you another ingredient: Plain, dumb luck.
A lot of these experts are saying there wasn't a great time in college basketball this year. That is false. Ohio State and Kansas, when at their best, were better than everyone. The a couple of things don't go your way, and then you have a situation where a No. 1 seed isn't in the Final Four. That's the third time that has ever happened.
Look at No. 8 Butler when it beat No. 1 Pittsburgh last week. The game looked like it was Butler's for the taking, but a dumb foul put Pitt at the line and it took the lead. But an even dumber foul gave the Bulldogs the free throws to win the game. Now they are in the Final Four, escaping a threatening circumstance just by chance.
On Sunday morning, the Kansas Jayhawks looked like they had all the luck in this tournament.
One team has to win the NCAA tournament. So it just had to be the last remaining No. 1 seed with the easiest potential bracket in NCAA history. They beat a 16-, an 8- and a 12-seed. Then it had an 11-seed and an 8-seed in the way of a championship game.
Even the 2008 champion Jayhawks had some missed Memphis free throws and a miraculous shot go their way. Fate was with Kansas that year.
But this whole season just doesn't make sense. The Jayhawks had one of the most crushing defeats in tournament history last year against UNI.
And though this loss to VCU is painful, it's not as devastating as last season.
Kansas was 2-for-21 on three-point shots. Tyreel Reed, who had a chance to tie Shane Battie for the winningest player in college history, couldn't get anything to go down. Some shots completely bounced out when they were halfway down the basket. That has nothing to do with skill or intelligence or passion. That's just bad luck.
In the same fashion as Kansas lost to Northern Iowa last year, VCU hit an onslaught of threes. For the season, VCU hit 35.7 percent of its three-pointers. Against Kansas, the Rams hit 48 percent. That was 12 three-point makes that the Jayhawks just couldn't answer.
That UNI loss was the motivation this year. The Jayhawks had the talent. They had the swagger in this tournament. They had the perfect bracket situation. It defies explanation why they couldn't put it all together.
Somewhere between Kansas' game with Richmond and Virginia Common Wealth, the Jawahires lost their luck.
The free throw woes are a different story. That was the product of the individual succumbing to pressure.
A Kansas fan wants some sort of closure for this season. It's the same old story: You won the Big 12 tournament and the title seven years in a row now. But it's not good enough for the players, the coaches, or the fans.
"We won the league seven years in a row, we did a lot of good things this year," coach Bill Self said. "But we didn't accomplish what we set out to accomplish."
On Sunday, the luck was with VCU and not with Kansas. That's just the best explanation.
Edited by Becca Harsch