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Summary The Kansas Jayhawks disposed of their arch-rival Missouri Tigers today at the Hearnes Center in Columbia 95-92 to close out the regular season today. Kansas survived an early flurry as Mizzou stormed out to a quick 10-2 lead. Kansas answered with a quick run of its own to get the game even and the teams traded punches with each holding small leads for much of the first half. The Hawks cruised into halftime on another run to head into the break with a 54-45 lead. Nick Collison led the charge with 17 first half points. Collison would finish with a game-high 28 points to go with 7 rebounds. Kirk Hinrich added 25 points and nine rebounds of his own the Jayhawk victory. Drew Gooden and Keith Langford were the other Jayhawks in double figures, finishing with 15 and 14 points, respectively. The win was the 14th straight for the Jayhawks, surpassing the season’s previous longest of 13, snapped by UCLA back in January. Kansas ran its record to 27-2 and finished its Big 12 regular season slate 16-0. Analysis Perfection. 16-0. Say it out loud. Sixteen and ooooh. It just rolls off the tongue. The Jayhawks fought through a very tough environment today to finish off their unbeaten run in the Big 12. The Jayhawks will be the #1 ranked team in the land heading into this week’s conference tournaments. Kansas is the only Division I basketball team in America that finished its conference without a blemish. Looking back, none of Roy’s teams have ever been able to accomplish this. In fact, 1970-71 was the last time a KU team finished perfect in the conference, and no team had ever done it since the inception of the Big 12. Let the great debate begin. I’ve always thought of the 1996-97 team as Roy’s best. This year’s edition put the final regular season touches on its emphatic case today. 16-0. Collison and Hinrich picked the Jayhawks up on their shoulders and carried them to a victory today. Collison’s career-high point total (28) doesn’t even tell the story. Nick, a 55% foul shooter this season, made 10-12 from the foul line, was active around the basket, finished when he caught it down low, blocked shots and defended well, and hit big baskets down the stretch, including a 17 footer from the top of the key to answer Missouri’s only second half lead, with a 1:30 or so to play. With KU’s All-American Drew Gooden struggling (Drew was just 5-17 from the floor), Collison and Hinrich were the guys that picked up the most slack (combining for 53 points and 16 rebounds), so I give them a co-MVP award. Speaking of struggling, Jeff Boschee was in foul trouble from the start in this game. Boschee left with his third foul with 12 minutes left in the first half, then picked up his fourth on the first Mizzou possession of the second half. To his credit, Jeff played the last eight and a half minutes without fouling out, but didn’t provide much offensively. The minutes that Boschee lost in foul trouble went to Langford and Brett Ballard. Ballard didn’t score, but he did provide eight big minutes with his ball handling and defense. Langford, on the other hand, did score. The freshman, in his first trip to Columbia, scored 14 very efficient points on 6-7 shooting. These two guys providing the lift that they did off the bench was one of the keys to this win. Kareem Rush and Clarence Gilbert got their points. In fact, if you just looked at that column in the box score, you’d think that they played pretty well. Rush finished with 22 while Gilbert tossed in 27. However, neither shot very well from the floor and they finished with a combined 16-43 shooting day. Much of that can be credited to Hinrich, Langford, and freshman point guard Aaron Miles. Miles struggled mightily on offense, turning the ball over 4 times, shooting 0-6 from the floor, and dishing out just 6 assists. But his defensive effort was solid. Miles made Gilbert work for his points, while Hinrich and Langford shared duties on Rush and Mizzou sophomore Ricky Paulding (who finished with 23 points). While the perimeter points piled up for the Tigers, the Hawks forced them to use a lot of shots to do it. When the smoke cleared, KU had defended and rebounded well enough to pull out a big win in a hostile environment. It speaks volumes about this team that they can have 3 starters struggle (or be limited by fouls) as much as they did today and still be in a game like this. Gooden wasn’t his normal self and Miles (ineffective) and Boschee (fouls) were very limited on offense. Yet, somehow Kansas managed to scratch together a measly 95 points and lead for most of the 2nd half. If I would have seen Miles, Boschee, and Gooden’s box score lines before the game, I would have figured KU lost... badly. Instead, the other guys did what they needed to do to pull out a victory. Nice win. Did anyone else just feel different when the game was even with under two minutes to play? This team has proven time and again that it can compete and finish in close games and today was no different. Kansas, who traditionally struggles in Columbia, never panicked or lost composure amidst the rowdy crowd and pulled out a game that put a nice and suitable signature on this team’s regular season. That type of composure could be very, very important over the next couple of weeks. Up next for the Jayhawks is their Big 12 conference tournament opener, Friday at noon (central time) at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Kansas will play the winner of the Thursday match-up between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Colorado Buffaloes. Regardless of what happens in the conference tourney, KU (guaranteed to have no more than three losses heading into the Big Dance) has virtually assured itself of a #1 seed... probably close to home. This team has been very fun to watch this year, and that shouldn’t change in the coming weeks. Maybe this is finally Roy’s year. We get to answer that question very soon. In the meantime, 16-0 feels pretty good, and we get to legitimately say “We’re Number One” until the Hawks can try to prove it on the court.

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Rock Chalk.... Robert