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The Kansas Jayhawks took care of business today in Allen Fieldhouse, adding the Texas Longhorns to their list of conference victims with an 82-66 victory. It wasn’t the prettiest of wins, but it was still a good win against a solid opponent. The first half was not overly entertaining. Each team traded baskets and Texas hung around by getting putbacks on the offensive glass and by hitting medium-range jump shots. There were a few minutes of the first half where the Jayhawks were out of control, throwing bad passes, taking bad shots, and forcing things. Those few minutes eerily reminded me of the Wake Forest game and the first half of the MU game. I get very uncomfortable when the team gets caught up in the whirlwind of emotion and has these "lapses". I can only hope the duration of these "lapses" becomes smaller and smaller as the season goes along. The Jayhawks could have put the Longhorns away early, but the defensive intensity really wasn’t there in the first half. That was a big reason KU jogged into the locker room with a narrow 2 point lead: 34-32. Kenny Gregory and Jeff Boschee kept the Jayhawks in the game in the first half, notching 11 points a piece. According to Coach Williams, "In the first half, if you take away Kenny Gregory and Jeff Boschee, I think everybody else was 4-24 or 4-26." Personally, the lack of offensive and defensive execution was disturbing, particularly with so little offensive production coming from Nick, Drew, Eric and Kirk. I expected this team to come out much more focused and intent on quickly getting the bad taste of the MU loss out of their mouths. It just didn’t work out that way. Is it me or, as a fan, is it really hard to "get up" for a game against a school from Texas? I miss the Big Eight and the intensity of those old Big Eight rivalries. I’m not going to dwell on this much, but I do want to point out that portions of the officiating in this game were pathetic. Officials never cease to amaze me. I absolutely cannot stand when they totally disturb the flow of play by calling a foul each time down the court, particularly when the fouls are questionable. Zebras belong in zoos, plain and simple. Coach Williams shared his displeasure with the officiating by taking his jacket off and throwing it into down the bench during the second half. The zebras hit Coach Williams with a technical, which was one of the factors that helped Texas cut the Jayhawk lead from 17 to 10 during an ugly few minutes of the second half. Of the technical, Coach Williams said, "It was frustrating for me because I never want to do something stupid, period, but I never want to do something stupid that will hurt our kids. And that had a chance to be that kind of mistake. Luckily the guys bailed me out, because that would've been one that I remembered for a long, long time if I do something stupid like that and hurt our kids." The question is: Will Coach Williams have to do a little extra running in practice for his "stupid" mistake? In reality, I’m not so sure it was stupid because it fired up Coach Williams, the players and, most importantly, the fans in Allen Fieldhouse. Why do I get the feeling that Coach Williams knew exactly what he was doing? One thing that is easy to overlook in this game is how poorly KU shot from the free throw line (22 of 37 for 59. 5%). It’s not something that people immediately look at after a 16 point win. It needs to be looked at and Coach Williams and the players need to get this problem fixed soon. If not, it will likely cost this team dearly in the conference race and in the NCAA tournament. Prior to the game, there were a lot of stories and talk about Maurice Evans, the high scoring Longhorn guard who transferred from Wichita State. Evans had chosen WSU over KU and now was his chance to shine in front of the KU fans. I wasn’t impressed. Evans put up a quick 7 points in the first half and then disappeared. He did get into foul trouble and ended the game with four fouls. He also shot a horrendous 4 of 13 from the field on his way to a 10-point day. Oh, and one more thing, he doesn’t play that great of defense. It certainly had to be tough for Maurice to walk out of Allen Fieldhouse with a loss under his belt, knowing that he could have been a Jayhawk. Oh well, live and learn Maurice…..live and learn. The Longhorns are not a very good shooting team. For the game, they were 23-72 (32%) from the field and 5-18 (28%) from 3-pt range. They will not go very far this year if they continue the poor shot selection they displayed today. Texas had four guys in double figures, but let’s look at the numbers: Evans: 4 of 13 Owens: 4 of 15 Kelly: 6 of 18 Mouton: 5 of 14 Ugh. That is just painfully bad. Of course KU’s defense had something to do with it as well, but offensively Texas is just not a very disciplined team when it comes to taking smart shots. Now let’s take a look at the Jayhawk performances: Drew Gooden racks up another double-double and another "Stud of the Game" award. After being virtually non-existent in the first half (5 points), Drew came out and took control of the game for a few minutes. Drew ended up with 19 points on 7 of 14 shooting and grabbed 12 rebounds (6 offensive) and stepped up when the team needed him. He did pick up 3 quick fouls during a 20 second period, but I give him credit for not fouling out of the game. Nice game, Drew. Kenny Gregory also gets a "Stud of the Game" award. Actually, Kenny should get the "Stud of the Year" award for this Jayhawk team. Captain Consistency came up big again with 16 points on 6 of 9 shooting, 3 assists, 3 steals and 8 rebounds in 32 minutes. In addition, Kenny played very good defense, which is something he has been doing for most of the year. It seems like every time I sit down to write about Kenny, I’m writing the same thing. He has been so consistent and so good this year and is miles ahead of where he was last year at this same time. I really enjoy watching him play. The only "bummer" was that the Allen Fieldhouse faithful didn’t get to see one of those patented Kenny dunks. It didn’t bother me too much, though, because I’m really starting to enjoy the pureness of Kenny’s game. Nice game, Kenny. Eric Chenowith: Excellent game on the boards (14 rebounds, 5 offensive) to go with 8 points and 4 blocks in 28 minutes. Eric did go 2 for 7 from the field and continued his trend of missing easy buckets down low. That’s ok, though, because Eric gave this team as good of a game as we can truly expect from him. Nice game, big man. Keep it up. Jeff Boschee has to be another "Stud of the Game" for the knocking down three 3’s in the first half and keeping the Jayhawk offense alive. He added one more in the second half to give him 4 for the game. Hasn’t Jeff pretty much averaged 4 threes a game over the last 4 or 5 games? Boy, that’s nice to see. For the game, Jeff scored 16 points (6 of 9 shooting, 4 of 6 from 3-pt range), had 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block and 2 steals in 36 minutes. I am more and more impressed by the way Jeff is able to play so many minutes each game and produce on the offensive side of the ball along with applying defensive pressure the way he does. Jeff forced one 5-second call this afternoon and almost got a couple more. Great game again, Jeff. Many people will look at Kirk Hinrich (3 pts, 3 rebs, 3 turnovers, 3 fouls) today and say he struggled. Kirk was 0 for 5 from the field today, which included an ugly one handed hook shot that missed and a long range 3-pt attempt that missed the mark. Offensively, it’s fair to say Kirk struggled for the second game in a row. However, Kirk had 8 assists and otherwise played the role of the dutiful point guard. I’m hoping that Kirk continues to play solid defense and do the "little things" until his offense kicks back in gear. I have complete confidence that is exactly what Kirk will do. Nick Collison started slow in this game (was it because he didn’t start?), but finished with Collison-like numbers: 14 points on an un-Collison-like 5 of 12 shooting, 8 rebounds (4 offensive), 1 assist and 2 blocks in 25 minutes. Nick struggled with the rest of the team in the first half trying to get the ball in the basket and ended up with only 2 first half points. He came out strong in the second half and picked up the offense where Drew left off, converting two three-point plays (BUCKET…….AND THE FOUL!!). At half-time, I turned to my friend Steve Klein (thanks for the ticket, Steve ol’ boy) and said: "Who do you think will step it up in the second half?" He said Drew. I said Nick or Drew. Better yet…….How about both of them? I was glad to see the sophomores take control on the offensive side of the ball and put this game where it should have been earlier…….out of reach. Kudos to Luke Axtell, who played 14 pain-in-the-back minutes, scoring 6 points and grabbing 4 rebounds. Those numbers may not look like much, but they were some of the best numbers Luke has put up in a long time. I was glad to see Luke get more involved in this game against the school that he still harbors ill feelings toward for the way he was treated by former coach Tom Penders. Of particular interest was Luke’s dunk off of an alley-oop pass from Jeff Boschee. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. AN ALLEY OOP DUNK FOR LUKE! It was pretty and I felt good for the 6’10’ injury-plagued senior. Nice job, Luke. Please, please, please……keep it up. I’m not going to harp on this much more this season, but I don’t like Jeff Carey’s numbers (0 pts, 1 foul, in 3 minutes). What is up with that? 3 minutes? Surely Jeff deserves more than 3 minutes. For whatever reason, Jeff has not gradually worked his way into more minutes as I thought he might. My only concern is that it will cost this team down the road when 1 or 2 of our regular big men get into foul trouble. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in Jeff’s ability, but it will be much tougher for him to contribute late in the season when he hasn’t been given much opportunity thus far. Players need playing time to gain confidence……….Jeff isn’t getting either riding the pine. Overall, a solid win for the Jayhawks, but they have very little time to enjoy it with the Iowa State Cyclones coming to town Monday night (ESPN, 8pm central). I am really looking forward to this game and I fully expect the Jayhawks to come out "up" for the Cyclones. It’s easier to get up for Iowa State, you see…………..they’re not from Texas.

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