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Sports THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Jayhawks' offense struggles
Eastern Michigan's poor pitching gives Kansas a boost. BASEBALL | 5B
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010
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Sunflower dominance
Kansas and Kansas State are the best in conference.. BIG 12 STOCK REPORT |4B
LEGENDARY STATUS
Collins secures his legacy
Senior guard achieves most wins in history
ROGERS BUSH PARKS
Senior guard Sherron Collins will play his last game in Allen Fieldhouse next Wednesday against Kansas State. His 124 victories as a Jayhawk are the most of any player in Kansas basketball history.
BYTIM DWYER
tdwyer@kapcan.com
tdwyer@kansan.com
PAGE 1B
Sherron Collins was having a great February before Monday night.
He had a healthy baby daughter, Sharee'i Monea Collins, who he says already has him wrapped around her little finger. He and the Jayhawks had six victories. And Kansas has gone the entire month as the No.1 team in the country.
Monday night was simply a bonus. He posted 17 points and six assists as the Jayhawks routed the Oklahoma Sooners in a game that was far more lopsided than the 81-68 final score.
But none of those are the numbers that matter. The important numbers from Monday were two-fold.
The first is 124. The other is six.
Adam Buhler/KANSAN
Kansas' victory Monday night was Collins' 124th in the crimson and blue, the most in any four-year stretch in Kansas history.
The senior point guard from Chicago would need to average just shy of 400 points per game for the rest of the regular season to become Kansas' career-leading scorer. He'd need to average well over 100 assists per game to leave the University with that crown. Collins' legacy will never be — and never was going to be — statistics based.
Instead, in a fashion that would make Al "just win, baby" Davis, the famous Oakland Raiders owner, weep with pride, Collins will be remembered for one thing alone. When he steps off the floor at Allen Fieldhouse for the last time next Wednesday, he will leave Kansas as the man who won more games than any other Jayhawk.
"He gets it," coach Bill Self said. "He gets that his legacy is only going to be on one thing — wins and losses. He's not going to be the all-time leading scorer here or the all-time leading assistant man or be a guy that's going to lead us in steals all-time. What he's going to do — he's going to win more games than anybody else. He's the best guard, by far, that I've coached since I've been here."
"I tried not to think about it too much before it happened just because it'd be a distraction," Collins said. "But it means a lot. A lot of greats have come before me, and a lot of people that paved the way for me to even be here."
Collins is quick to shed most of the credit, though. He'll acknowledge Self's ability to turn top recruits into team-oriented players (see: Xavier Henry). Collins will give credit to his teammates — Mario Chalmers and company — in his early years, Cole Aldrich and the Morris twins and Tyshawn Taylor more recently — in helping him get to this point.
"I've been a player who loves to win, an Ive tried my hardest," Collins said. "There's never 'I' in the team. There's other players who helped me, with different teams, and this shows just how good coach has been."
To only mention Collins' most recent
SEE COLLINS ON PAGE 6B
Down and out
Abraham Bailin, a senior from Chicago, puts Jared Doke, a graduate student from Goodland, in a headlock. Bailin and Doke are members of Juitsu Club, which meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening at the Ambler Student Recreation Center. Bailin won the match by a submission hold, in which the opponent is forced to surrender as a result of manipulating the joints into a compromising position.
Jerry Wang/KANSAN
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
Kansas wobbles on tournament bubble
BY MAX ROTHMAN
mrothman@kansan.com
twitter.com/maxrothman
One more loss and Kansas NCAA tournament bubble may pop. Unless that loss is a pretty one.
If the layhawks don't win against Iowa State at 6 tonight at Allen Fieldhouse, they would be wise to keep it close.
Fringe tournament teams from power conferences hold a strange yet valuable and intangible factor to their postseason hopes — the good loss. It sounds oxymoronic. No team holds its head high after a hard-fought battle only to come out
on the losing end. Yet because Kansas has played against the nation's finest and narrowly missed a victory so many times, its tournament odds have sunk but not disappeared.
"When it comes down to the last few teams, you're looking at the bad losses," said Lymn Parkes, former chairman of the NCAA tournament selection committee.
COMMENTARY
Win or lose, as long as it's not a bad one, the Jayhawks may squeak in. Only four times this season have they lost by more than 10 points. They have lost
SEE PREVIEW ON PAGE 5B
Scouting combine includes Jayhawks
BY ALEX BEECHER
abeecher@kansan.com
this weekend's NFL combine is a shared guilty pleasure for
It is a small guilty pleasure for sports fans. It's that song every one always turns up, unless of course someone else happens to be around. Blaring "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga in front of others might be embarrassing, despite the fact that it's stuck in their heads too.
But Kansas fans don't need to watch this year's combine with the usual mix of anxiety and trepidation. There will be no need to change the channel to Animal Planet when someone else walks in the room and loudly proclaims "Penguins are so fascinating, don't you think. Mom?"
As for Kiper's hair, its perfection is a national treasure. And the spandex merely allows for greater flexibility while working out.
This year Kerry Meier, Dezmon Briscoe and Darrell Stuckey will participate in the event, showcasing their abilities in an attempt to raise their draft stock.
Those concerns all ignore the real reason the combine draws the interest it does.It's the ultimate viewing experience for the growing number of wannabe general managers and armchair scouts.In this age,where fans' allegiance often lies with whichever player is on their fantasy team,sports geeks revel in all the offseason details.
Granted, that sentence provides adequate ammunition for combine nay-sayers. "So what if they're KU players?" our hypothetical critic might say. "The combine is stupid anyway. Who cares how fast you can run 40 yards or how many times you can bench 225 pounds? The whole thing has nothing to do with football, and you only watch for Mel Kiper's hair and the muscular dudes in spandex."
That argument against the combine's validity, variations of which you've probably heard — and perhaps even recited yourself — does have merit. Meier, Briscoe and Stuckey can all play football, regardless of what a stopwatch says. And it is perhaps true that seemingly arbitrary measures can unwisely take precedent over prior performance. But it's also the case that 2,000-yard rusher Chris Johnson was little more than a blip on many radar screens until he blazed his way through an impressive workout, including a 4.24-second 40-yard dash, the fastest ever. The point is, that while no same person would argue that workout numbers ought to supersede football numbers, both should be considered.
But the combine is still ultimately about football. It gives fans the opportunity to fantasize about how awesome so-and-so would look in their favorite NFL team's jersey, to indulge in the dream that the mystical "next year" might actually be this coming year
For Kansas fans, this year's combine further extends the opportunity for fandom. The combine represents the last time Meier, Briscoe and Stuckey will compete as Jayhawks. After the draft, their sports identity will be forever divided. Sure, Meier running a 4.5 40 wouldn't bring the same exultation that his catch against Missouri in 2008 did. But at this point, it's the best we can hope for.
So this year, watch the combine with pride. Bring on the 40-yard dashes, the bench pressing, the helmet hair and, yes, even the spandex.
- Edited by Jesse Rangel