THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN SPORTS
VOLLEYBALL|3B Jayhawks face No.8 Longhorns
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19,2010
Kansas travels to Austin to challenge Texas' 12-match winning streak, despite only having two days to prepare for the match. Coach Ray Bechard said the team needs to be aggressive.
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HOW MEAN ARE THE GREEN?
Kansas to face North Texas
BY TIM DWYER
tdwyer@kansan.com
North Texas looks, at first glance, like easy fodder for Kansas to get its 62nd consecutive home victory, tying the school record.
The Mean Green, by all the measurables, aren't in the same class as the Jayhawks. The best player on the North Texas roster, point guard Josh White, is listed at 5 feet 10 inches and 175 pounds, but stands about a couple inches shorter than that. North Texas is 129th in the country in field goal percentage. The Mean Green come from the Sun Belt conference.
Add it all up to another easy win for Kansas, right?
Wrong.
Tuesday night, North Texas rode a 32-point night from White past the Big 12's Texas Tech in a 92-83 overtime win.
"They played really well. They got a big win under their belt with Texas Tech," junior guard Tyshawn Taylor said.
Junior forward Marcus Morris also is a little more tuned into the Mean Green after their big win.
White, who through his career is averaging 18.6 points per game against Big 12 teams, is not the only player to watch on the North Texas roster, though.
Senior power forward George Odufuwa is perhaps the best rebounder Markieff Morris and the Kansas frontcourt will face until conference play (although UCLA's Reeves Nelson is certainly in the discussion). Odufuwa is averaging 13 rebounds and has been excellent against Big 12 competition. He pulled down 15 boards against Texas Tech Tuesday and had a remarkable eight offensive rebounds against Kansas State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year.
The layhawks will also have to keep an eye on shooting guard Tristan Thompson, who is averaging 18 points and four rebounds per
game, and sixth man Dominique Johnson, who is averaging 16.5 points and leading the team with four assists per game.
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With four players averaging double-figure scoring, the Mean Green are 15th in the country in points per game.
Likely joining the Jayhawks on the floor for the first time this season is backup point guard Elijah Johnson, who missed the first two games because of what Self called "some off-the-court issues."
Johnson has been missed most when Taylor rests, with Brady Morningstar forced into a point guard role that does not fit his style of play.
"Hopefully, Elijah will be back," Self said Wednesday. "I think there's a really good chance. I'm meeting with some people today to make sure he's got some stuff done. I have every indication that he has, so I anticipate Elijah playing on Friday."
"He's our emergency backup point guard right now," Self said. "He's handled it pretty well. He's not a point guard, though."
Edited by Abby Davenport
GAMEDAY|8B Preview tonight's opponent inside
The Kansan breaks down each team and looks at keys to the game against the Mean Green
Jerry Wang/XANSAN
Junior guard Tishawn Taylor is foiled by Valparaiso guard Erik Buggs as he attempts a layup. Taylor finished with eight points and dished out five assists in the 79-44 victory at Allen Fieldhouse Monday night.
FOOTBALL
Seniors hope to keep up with top OSU offense
BY KORY CARPENTER kcarpenter@kansan.com
Saturday's matchup with Oklahoma State will be the last game in Memorial Stadium for the 20 seniors on Kansas' roster.
Senior wide receiver Johnathan Wilson breaks free against Colorado Saturday. Twenty seniors will play their final name as Lafayette Saturday.
"We were dealt a tough hand," senior wide receiver Johnathan Wilson said at Tuesday's press conference. "This year didn't go the way we planned, but it's a building process and I'm sure everybody here enjoyed their senior year and their experience at Kansas."
This season has been anything but easy, since the team opened with a loss to North Dakota State and started conference play with a four-game losing streak. The coaching change has been tough on everyone.
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN
Like Wilson, many of the seniors began their careers with an Orange Bowl win in 2007. After a win of that magnitude, the last two seasons have been disappointing for the football program.
Even this year, after a record-breaking victory against Colorado, Kansas had three final games staring them in the face: Nebraska, Oklahoma State and Missouri. All three are ranked in the top 15 and only one game is at home. The home game this weekend might be the most challenging, as the
"Their offense is very, very explosive," coach Turner Gill said. "We're going to have a tough time to try and slow them down. That's what you're going to do because you can't stop them."
Cowboys boast one of the nation's best offenses.
Gill hopes to slow them down, but not many teams have been able to accomplish that feat this season. Therefore, the often stagnant Jayhawk offense will need to score frequently.
The offense, led by junior quarterback Brandon Weeden and sophomore receiver Justin Blackmon, is second in the country in passing yards and third in scoring.
Wilson has been the second option for Kansas quarterbacks this season, catching 33 passes for two touchdowns. The first option, junior cornerback Daymond Patterson, echoed Wilson's sentiments on the offense's need to step up this Saturday.
"I get excited because we're going to need to keep up with them to stay in the game," Wilson told reporters Tuesday.
"We're really looking to put up some points after last week," he said. "Not having a good game, we're looking to bounce back."
Patterson will have another year in Lawrence to write his legacy as
a Jayhawk.
4.
"It's very much real for me," Quigley said on Tuesday. "Now, it's like two games and college is over for me. It's right around the corner and I've started to realize that so we'll see what happens."
Beating Oklahoma State won't be easy. But then again, nothing has been easy for this Kansas team, especially for the seniors who experienced so much success early in their careers.
A bowl game is officially out of the question, but a win or two against a couple of ranked teams could work wonders for the players returning next season. As for
this year, Gill thanked the seniors for smoothing the coaching transition.
"They accepted me," he said. "I would say from the beginning their eyes, heart and soul, they have given all of that. And that's all you can ask from a coach's perspective."
Edited by Lisa Curran
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COMMENTARY
Stats show top recruits rarely lead to NCAA titles
BY TIM DWYER
tdwyer@kansan.com
thoughts that I couldn't get out of my head.
First, I love recruiting talk. I love the optimism, love the hoopla, love the reveling in projections of glory and riches and NCAA titles.
I am not alone in this. We are a culture that is as interested in projections as in results, desperate to know what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow.
As signing week drew to a close earlier this week, there were a couple of
It's why recruiting has grown from niche to front page news. it's why I and plenty of others were glued to the TV screen when LeBryan Nash pulled out a big, floppy, orange hat and committed to Oklahoma State. It's why I was watching when Quincy Miller and Deuce Bello announced "I will be taking my talents to Waco," one after the other, like mini-LeBrons with all the ego and a fraction of the world-altering talent. it's why I got hate mail when I wrote that, yes, on paper, Kansas State was the right preseason pick to win the Big 12 Conference.
Exactly zero No. 1 recruits have ever won a national title. No recruit ranked in the top four ever has. Only two recruits ranked No. 5 have: Duke's Kyle Singler, who by no coincidence is also the only top five recruit to wait around until his junior season, and Charlie Villanueva, who out of the 70 top-10 recruits in Rivals' seven-year ranking history is the only one to win a title in his freshman year.
But none of those things really matter. Of course recruiting does, but not nearly to the level it is hyped up to. Because we are such a culture of immediacy and impatience — and I count myself among that — we feel like we need to know 11 months in advance what some 17-year-old kid is going to do with the next one, two, three, four years of his life.
It was with that basis in mind that I started to look into the world of recruiting. And the second idea that was lodged in my head all week was formed: It Doesn't. Matter.
And I know Josh Selby was the top-ranked recruit in the country this year, and I know that Kansas fans will hammer me for this. But barring an NBA lockout that forces Selby to stay a second year in Lawrence, I don't see him competing for an NCAA title.
Rivals.com is pretty widely regarded as the top recruiting analysis site out there, and with good reason. The sites rankings go back to the class of 2003 and not one No.1 overall recruit has stayed more than the required amount in college (2003-06 jumped from high school to the NBA; since then they've all stayed just one year).
But while Rivals has a talent for predicting individual stardom, it's startling how rarely that translates to team glory.
This isn't to say talent is not essential. It is. Of course. You have to have good players to win games. But it's not the guys ranked one through 15 that make up national-title winners. It's the guys ranked 15 through 100; guys like Marcus Morris (No. 29), Markieff Morris (No. 49), Travis Releford (No. 70), Tyshawn Taylor (No. 77), Thomas Robinson (No. 31), Jeff Withey (No. 36) and Elijah Johnson (No. 24).
Those are the types of guys who win championships.
Edited by Alex Tretbar
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