Excellent Articles On Jayhawk Basketball

SPORTSTICKER PREVIEW
Kansas: Leading By Example in the Big 12

From the rolling hills of Oklahoma to the plains of Texas, and from the fields of Iowa to the Rocky Mountains, the key for any team to win the Big 12 is to go through its heart.

And its heart is beating as strong as ever in Lawrence, Kansas.

Kansas enters its 100th season of men's basketball clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the Big 12. The Jayhawks enter the season with a 44-game home winning streak and have won 69 games overall the past two seasons. more...

KANSAS CITY STAR
Kansas basketball is something special

Pat Riley was in one of his thoughtful moods, and when you catch him like that he can fill your notebook with humor, with history, with honesty and some wonderful insights. This was three years ago, middle of the NBA playoffs, and Riley was talking about himself, about his career and his place in the pantheon of basketball coaches. more...

USA TODAY
Naismith laid foundation for Jayhawks' reputation

LAWRENCE, Kan. — The banner counters at UCLA won't like this.

Nor will the legions in the commonwealth of Kentucky who've sworn by Adolph "Baron'' Rupp, and Rick Pitino, too.

Complainers in Carolina blue, line up here. In royal Duke blue, over there. Right next to those Hoosiers in the crimson sweaters.

We're here to identify college basketball's premier program-- not just for this season, but for all time.

We're taking everything from sustained excellence and impact to game-day ambience to decorum into account — and we're not stopping at Westwood, Lexington or anywhere along Tobacco Road or Bloomington.

The call is: Kansas.

"Right in that building,'' Kansas coach Roy Williams says, pointing from his office to adjoining Allen Fieldhouse, "is the best place to play and coach in college basketball. I truly believe that.''

Of course, you'd expect him to. His name's on the door. He'd like every hotshot recruit in the nation to buy into the belief Kansas (KU) is hoops heaven on earth.

Williams, however, also might be expected to hedge. He was born in Asheville, N.C., and graduated from North Carolina, where he played a season of basketball and later sat for 10 years at the right hand of Tar Heels coach Dean Smith. As Smith approaches retirement, it's Williams who's almost universally speculated as his successor.

But he emphasizes: "I said best. I didn't say second-best.''

Kansas.

This is the program founded by James Naismith in 1898, seven years after he tacked a couple of peach baskets to the walls and invented the game of basket ball in Springfield, Mass.

This is where F.C. "Phog'' Allen, who succeeded Naismith as coach, helped build the game, selling it as an Olympic sport and helping get the NCAA tournament off the ground.

This is the school with 13 Hall of Famers; a nation-high 12 Olympians; 10 Final Four teams; two NCAA tournament champions; and two more teams recognized as national champions.

It's where the No. 1 ranking in the USA TODAY/CNN Top 25 Coaches' Poll rests at the start of this season, where the winningest program of the 1990s (record: 194-44) is expected to launch another run at a title Nov. 22 against Santa Clara at San Jose, Calif. It's where Jacque Vaughn, the star point guard, is a devotee of poet Maya Angelou and quotes Robert Frost at news conferences.

"To me,'' says Vaughn, one of six current players who migrated from California to play in the Land of Oz, "it's the perfect place to be.''

Says a less biased observer, CBS' Billy Packer, "If you're talking about the total history of the intercollegiate game, 100 years of basketball . . . the premise is pretty well taken.''

Contenders' credentials fall short

UCLA has more national championships than anybody, 11. But that addresses just one of the many factors in determining the nation's pre-eminent program. The Bruins are too schizophrenic now, with as many coaches (seven) since John Wooden's retirement in 1975 as Kansas has had in its 99-year history.

Keep in mind, too, that UCLA was a losing program (256-263) in its first 27 seasons, not pulling above .500 until 1946-47. Wooden got there two years later.

Kentucky? There's simply too much uncomfortable history, from the racism of Rupp to the point-shaving scandal that brought a one-season suspension of competition in the early '50s to the more recent infractions case that barred the Wildcats from the NCAA tournament in 1990 and '91.

Duke? Its history is backloaded, with 11 Final Four appearances and two national championships since 1963 but nothing before that.

Indiana? The Hoosiers have ebbed. They last won a national championship in 1987, a year before Kansas' last title, but have been back to the Final Four once. And they've lost in the NCAA tournament's first round the last two years. Their 33 losses the past three seasons are the most in that length of time in Bob Knight's tenure as coach.

North Carolina? Michael Jordan's alma mater comes closest to Kansas in all pertinent categories. But by the time the school discovered the sport in 1910, KU had played 12 seasons and won three conference championships.

Moreover, where did Dean Smith come from?

Uh-huh. Kansas. Class of '53.

Building Jayhawks' case

The Jayhawks' resume isn't spotless. NCAA studies of players' graduation rates have been less than flattering, with Kansas' most recent four-year average of 30% (for students entering from 1986-89) seventh-lowest among the top 25 basketball programs ranked at the end of last season.

While Wilt Chamberlain spent his two-year college career at KU, his recruitment from Philadelphia generated questions of impropriety and helped draw a year's NCAA probation. The Jayhawks also were slapped by the NCAA after winning the 1988 national championship, barred from defending the title for recruiting irregularities under former coach Larry Brown.

In the latter case, however, Brown was gone and Williams hired by the time the penalty was handed down. There hasn't been a hint of scandal since, to the point that only one off-the-court incident (never officially spelled out) has warranted a player's suspension since Williams' arrival. And that was in 1991.

Continuing to build the case for Kansas:
• Tradition. There's Naismith, who's buried in Lawrence. (Ironically, he's the only KU coach to post a losing record.) There's Allen, who in 1927 successfully led opposition to a pending rule change that might have altered the course of the game, limiting dribbling to a single bounce. There are three graduates among the six winningest college coaches of all time: Rupp, North Carolina's Smith and Allen, and Ralph Miller ranks 16th.

Has any program left a more lasting imprint on the game?

"I've never been able to sell a recruit on tradition,'' Williams says. "But if you can get him here, either for a visit or you get him to come here (to play), it's a feeling you have that you're playing in an awful special place.''

• Current stature. The preseason No. 1 ranking speaks to that. So do four appearances in the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16 the past four years and three regional final berths in the past six seasons. The latter is matched by Arkansas, Cincinnati, Duke, Michigan and North Carolina and bettered only by Kentucky (with four).

Critics point to the lack of a more recent national championship. "As players, we do it, too,'' center Scot Pollard says. "I'm in that stage right now where I'm going, 'Geez, Sweet 16. It's not that great. I've been there, done that.' ''

But there's no bigger crap shoot in sports than the 64-team, single-elimination NCAA tournament. And that '88 title is hardly ancient history.

• The coach. Ask schools which coach they'd most like as their own, and the only uncertainty is where in the top five Williams would be. At 46, he's a two-time national coach of the year. He tied North Carolina State's Everett Case for the most wins in his first eight seasons in Division I (with 213, an average of almost 27 a season).

The only question is whether Kansas can keep Williams when Smith finally steps down at Carolina — to which Williams offers little more than a smile as a clue. "I never even entertain those thoughts,'' he says.

• The setting. Allen Fieldhouse is 41 years old and "isn't shiny, pretty and new like some places we've been to and played in,'' Vaughn says.

But therein lies a charm that doesn't exist at North Carolina's beautiful-but-too-pristine Smith Center, among other newer arenas. The game-time noise level and electricity match that of Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium without the how-do-we-top-ourselves choreography.

Listen to the unique "Rock, Chalk'' chant. Note the faded banner draped on the upper north wall, cautioning, "Pay Heed, All Who Enter: BEWARE OF 'THE PHOG.' ''

"As long as it meets fire standards and security standards,'' Vaughn says, "I wouldn't change it for the world.''
Agreed.

We rest our case.

By Steve Weiberg, USA TODAY

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Revised: 07 February 1998

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