As a result, the Jayhawks fell to 16-4 and 5-2 in the conference and missed out on an opportunity to get a leg up in the conference race. The first half was full of momentum swings. ISU started slowly, missing 10 of their first 11 shots, and the Jayhawks opened an early 10-4 lead, which they had stretched to 18-9 at the 12:30 mark. Nick Collison started strongly in his homecoming, scoring 6 early points on the way to a team-leading 9 points at the half.

But the Jayhawks couldn't keep their early 9-point lead. Over the next 11 minutes, ISU out-scored the Jayhawks 23-10 to take a 32-28 lead with a minute to play in the half. The difference for ISU was outside shooting. The Clones hit four treys in that stretch, and two of those came from well behind the arc. Those shots energized the crowd and seemed to cause the Jayhawks to start pressing. The good guys played with poise for most of the first half, but played four of the last five minutes as if they were late for an important date. Then with :40 left in the half and the ISU crowd at its loudest, Boschee nailed a three-pointer to bring the lead down to one point with 40 seconds to play. ISU tried to hold the ball for one last shot, but KU managed a steal which Gregory converted for two points with two ticks on the clock, and the Jayhawks went into the locker room having stolen back the momentum and seemingly in pretty good shape.

The Jayhawks kept things rolling to start the second half, pushing out to a 46-41 lead after the first 4:30, but then the Cyclones hit the Jayhawks with a 9-0 run and the Jayhawks trailed for good the rest of the way. The Jayhawks stayed with a basket of the Clones for the next several minutes, but with eight minutes to play the Jayhawks' offense came undone. They managed just two fieldgoals over the next six minutes. Desperation three-pointers by Collison and Boschee in the final minute came too late, and the Jayhawks lost a game they could easily have won.

The watch-word for the Jayhawks right now is poise. They lost it from the outset against the Tigers last week and they lost it for a long stretch in the second half today. When the crowd started to roar, the Jayhawks seemed compelled to rush everything, as if by doing everything faster they could run away from the noise. After playing relatively well on offense for most of the first half and the first 11 minutes of the second half, when they trailed by only one point, the wheels came off for the last nine minutes. When Fizer got hot and hit a couple of big baskets for the Cyclones, the team seemed to come unglued. That started an eight minute stretch when the Jayhawks managed only one fieldgoal. That they were only trailing by eight points at that point shows that the game was there to be won. But the team lost all flow on offense. The team stopped pounding the ball inside, made silly turnovers, and just seemed to be playing as if the entire game hinged on making a spectacular play on every possession.

The Jayhawks' biggest problem this afternoon was on the perimeter. You can't blame the guys in the paint. Collison acquitted himself well in his first trip back to Iowa as a Jayhawk, scoring 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting and grabbing 6 boards. Chenowith scored 16 points and had 6 blocks, and Gooden scored 12 points on 50% shooting. A combined 43 points from the inside guys should be more than enough to win.

But KU got next to nothing from the off-guard and small-forward spot today. Bradford, Gregory, London and Axtell were each AWOL on offense. Combined, those four players scored 6 points, all from Gregory, who was only 3-of-9 from the field and committed a team-high 4 turnovers.

Bradford was uncharacteristically out of synch, all day. He played well on defense overall, but didn't score a point and fouled out with five minutes to play. His fifth foul was emblematic of the play from the wing players. He picked up his fourth foul mid-way through the second half and went to the bench. After being back for only a minute, Boschee missed a three-pointer with KU down by six with four minutes to play. Nick was well blocked-out and had no chance for the rebound. Nevertheless, he tried to go right through a Cyclone to get the ball, an obvious foul, as if getting that rebound was the key to the game. It wasn't, but Nick was gone, as was his defense and his team-leading assists. It was a lack of poise which was shared by much of the team.

Axtell was 0-for-4 and seemed out of control more often than not on offense. Axtell will only be an asset on offense when he learns when to shoot (with his feet set and when open), when not to try to create his own shot (when he's guarded by two guys or has to shoot falling down in the lane) and when to pass (almost immediately if he isn't open). Too often KU possessions end with Luke taking the pass and trying to make something happen one-on-one resulting in a bad shot or a turnover. It's the same problem Gregory fought with last year.

Kenny himself was fighting with it again today after having the problem largely conquered most of the season. He got very few touches on offense today and too many times when he did get the ball he tried to force things that weren't there.

Neither Bradford, London nor Gregory even attempted an outside shot, which was probably just as well because none of them is much of a threat from long range. But with Boschee not hitting at a 50% clip and nobody else much of a threat, KU was forced to look for all of its offense inside.

Jeff Boschee has been masking the Jayhawks' lack of consistent outside shooting from anyone else by hitting nearly 50% of his three-point shots. Today he hit only 3 of 9 attempts. Collison hit one late in the game and Hinrich hit one, but the rest of KU's wing players either didn't attempt an outside shot or couldn't hit one. I've mentioned before that KU needs to find someone besides Boschee who can hit from outside. It appears evident that it won't be Bradford, London or Gregory this season. Axtell needs to control his game so he can be on the court enough to make a difference with his outside shot and Hinrich needs to find his outside shot. Otherwise, KU will be vulnerable and too easy to defend.

Hinrich and Boschee were the only wing players who contributed on offense. Unfortunately they play the same position. Hinrich scored 8 points and Boschee scored 9. Neither though, is skilled at penetrating the lane off the dribble, as MU's guards were last week and ISU's were today. And that contributes to the problem caused by KU's one-dimensional outside shooting. There are two ways to break down an opponents inside defense. The first is to stretch the defense with outside shooting. That wasn't working today. The other is for the wing players to penetrate the lane off the dribble, force the defense to collapse and dish to one of the big guys open a foot from the basket. At the moment, KU's guards just don't have the quickness to penetrate. Hinrich has the potential. He has the quickness, but needs to develop the maturity to pick his spots. Jeff, unfortunately, is short enough that his shots are often blocked when he goes inside.

KU suffered from other problems, as well. The box score is very illuminating in revealing them. KU shot better from the field than did the Clones by a significant margin, 46% vs. 32%, but KU was killed by offensive rebounds. ISU grabbed 15 while KU managed only 7. ISU also made up for poor overall shooting with superior three-point shooting and vastly more free throws. ISU hit 7 three pointers, while the Jayhawks managed only 5. But the real killer for KU was the fouls, as it has been so often this season. The Jayhawks committed 26 fouls, and ISU converted 25 of 31 free throw shots. The Jayhawks got to the line only 14 times and converted only 9. That alone was a big reason that with four minutes to go KU found itself down by 8 points rather than up by several.

Road wars: It has to be harder for KU than any other team to go on the road in the conference. Case in point. When ISU played Texas A&M in Ames the other night the Cyclones could only manage to raise 9,500 or so fans to come and watch a team that was tied for first place in the Big XII, that had won 16 straight home games and on Saturday in Norman narrowly missed winning it's 16th game in a row. Iowa State had managed only one sell-out all year coming into the game today against KU and that was against Iowa in December. Since then they've only cracked 10,00 fans twice (Mizzou and Colorado). On Saturday, however, Hilton was full to the brim of ranting, roaring fans. Heck, the game was a sell-out since last summer. And that is the story for the Jayhawks about everywhere they go. The price of KU's recent dominance in the league and their national prominence is that they rarely get a break on the road and have to be mentally tough every night. Ultimately that should be good for the Jayhawks, but when they don't bring their "A" game, as at Missouri and this afternoon, it means that things can start going down hill fast. Until KU finds some poise on the road, visiting other teams with decent talent is going to be dicey for the Jayhawks.

A strange week: Today's game against Iowa St. concludes one of the weirder weeks in recent Kansas basketball history. First the Jayhawks, who had been rolling along with seven straight wins, got completely drubbed in Columbia by Missouri. KU fans were a bit stunned. It wasn't that KU fans weren't prepared for a loss in Columbia. The Tigers have a history of beating highly ranked KU teams in Columbia and had beaten the Jayhawks the last three times they had crossed the border ranked in the Top 10. KU fans weren't prepared, though, to see the team thoroughly outplayed in every facet of the game. The Jayhawks absorbed the type of shellacking that they have given out to others repeatedly in the last six years but have almost never received. More than a few fans, I believe, suddenly started to wonder whether this team was as good as its record and ranking suggested or instead was really at heart the team that had been convincingly beaten by Michigan St., Illinois and Missouri.

Then, close on the heels of KU's worst defeat in 10 years, Lester Earl was arrested for driving under the influence, and Williams suspended him indefinitely. While Earl had been more of a cheerleader than player this season, this newest public relations stain didn't sit well with many fans who rightly take pride in the quality of the people Williams recruits into the program. Both Chuck Woodling and Bill Mayer suggested that Earl shouldn't merely be suspended and allowed to sit on the bench, but should be booted from the team completely. When, if ever, has the media called for the ousting of a KU player?

Anybody know a good PR person?: Against that backdrop, the Jayhawks played Colorado in Lawrence Monday night. It took a while for the Jayhawks to take control in the first half, and in the second half they let the Buffs pull within four after trailing by as many as 18 points. The crowd was OK, but seemed to be unsure what to expect of the team and only got loudly into the contest in spots. After the game Williams pointedly criticized the fans. His comments were not taken well by most fans or the media. Long-time Journal World columnist Bill Mayer suggested that Williams was acting like a spoiled brat. To his credit, Williams issued an apology the next day, but the stain was already in the carpet at that point. All of this made the national sports pages.

In other words, it was not a typical week for Kansas basketball, which is known for few losses, even fewer blow-out losses, the best fans in the country, and a peaceful relationship between the fans and the coach.

The unfortunate thing is that Williams recent comments come on top of other pointed comments in the paper or during his call-in-show zinging fans who question why he makes the decisions that he does. Comments such as, "I have more desire in my little pinky...", "I have forgotten more about basketball than...", "I don't care what some plumber from Topeka says...", have become more and more common. Now, he's probably right that he has more desire to win than the fans do, knows more basketball and won't base his decisions on what the fans think. But these biting comments seem to have alienated a growing number of fans. From my mail and from reading the board many fans seem a lot more willing to blame Williams for losses like the one at MU and the one today than has ever been the case in the past.

Williams isn't to blame for KU's poor play on the wings today, but because Williams has seemed to take out the understandable pressures and frustrations of his job on some fans with caustic comments, the fans seem more than willing to follow his lead and turn it back on him when they get frustrated with a loss. That isn't a healthy thing for the program. Williams can turn things back in the right direction with a bit of diplomacy and some well sprinkled humility. I'm afraid that if he doesn't, the hints of disenchantment beginning to emerge will grow into a wider rift. It's time for Williams to show that he has more patience, tact and diplomacy in his little finger than some plumber from Topeka has in his whole body. The fans need leadership, too.