KSUFans Archives
Sports => Frank Martin's OOD sponsored by the "Angriest Fans in America" => Topic started by: daletgribble on February 19, 2007, 03:08:11 PM
-
K-State ‘expects’ to end Jayhawks’ run
By Gary Bedore (Contact)
Posted Monday, February 19, 2007
Manhattan — Men’s basketball fans in the Sunflower State have come to expect one thing, and one thing only, when Kansas University plays Kansas State in the Little Apple.
That’s a ku victory, of course.
“It’s a tradition for us to lose, it seems like,” K-State junior guard David Hoskins said, quickly adding, “I think this year is a little different. We’ve got fans expecting us to win, and we go into this game expecting to win.”
Yes, at 8 tonight in front of ESPN’s Big Monday cameras, Kansas State (19-8 overall, 8-4 Big 12 Conference) fully expects to put an end to a 23-game home losing streak to rival ku (23-4, 10-2).
That’s because first-year coach Bob Huggins guaranteed a victory on Oct. 15 at the Wildcats’ season-opening “Madness in Manhattan” at Bramlage Coliseum.
“Remember, Feb. 19 is when we beat ‘The Streak.’ Then we will have a rivalry,” Huggins said.
“I think this is the year we can possibly do it,” noted KSU senior Jermaine Maybank, who scored 26 points in KSU’s 97-70 loss to ku 12 days ago at Allen Fieldhouse.
“You try to stay away from it and take it one game at a time, but when you hear about a streak like that, you want to be a part of the team that ended the streak. That’s a great team they have down the road, but we’re pretty good when we’re playing confident. We have to defend our court.”
ku has won 18 straight games at Bramlage after closing old Ahearn Fieldhouse with five straight wins.
“I think it will be crazy, especially with coach Huggins promising a win at their Late Night and all that,” ku sophomore Mario Chalmers said. “We’ve just got to stay focused on the game.”
Chalmers was asked if Huggins’ guarantee might motivate ku, as well as a promotion that will have all fans wearing black shirts in a Bramlage “blackout” for the rivalry game.
“Yes, because we are trying to keep the season sweep. Last year they got us (at Allen Fieldhouse). This year we’re trying to get them twice,” Chalmers said.
ku coach Bill Self said it’s important for his team to focus on only one thing — tonight’s game. The Streak, he says, is as “irrelevant” as Huggins predicting victory.
“Danny (Manning), Paul (Pierce), Raef (LaFrentz), Richard Scott, those guys … it was a totally different era,” Self said of past players who had much to do with the streak. “As far as I’m concerned Sherron (Collins) and Shady (Darrell Arthur) are 0-0, and Mario, Brandon (Rush) and ku player (Wright) are 1-0, down the line. That’s the extent of it.
Dick Whipple/AP Photo
Kansas State coach Bob Huggins provides some encouragement during the first half of the Wildcats’ 65-47 victory Saturday over Iowa State. Tonight, Huggins will try to end K-State’s 23-game losing streak in Manhattan to Kansas University.
“It (streak) has been going on a long time. It’s a remarkable deal. It will end. It will end someday. Hopefully, we can prolong it another year.”
Of putting an end to the streak, Huggins said: “I want to win them all. I've never looked at a schedule and said, ‘Man, if we can win this many.’ We've got to line up and play and win.”
He said the ’Cats must play much better than the initial meeting to stand a chance.
“We didn’t do anything we were supposed to do,” he said. “I’ll look to see if we can figure something out. Dalonte (Hill, assistant coach) has a pretty good handle on it (scouting report). We were going to guard ball screens a certain way, and I don't think we guarded them that way once.”
Self believes the Wildcats will stick to the Jayhawks tonight.
“We will find out how tough we are (in Manhattan),” Self said. “Certainly the first game was not a true indication of how competitive this rivalry is going to become. I know they’ll play great. We’ll have to play very well to win. There will be no in-between. If we don’t play well, we won’t win. I’m sure their crowd will be into it.”
Self thinks the crowd will provide “a fabulous atmosphere. So much interest has been generated by Bob’s hiring. Oklahoma State my first year at their place, Missouri every year … this will be as good an atmosphere we’ve played in since I’ve been here.”
The KSU fans may remember ku’s student section chanting “DUI, DUI” at Huggins and displaying newspapers of Huggins behind bars with the wording “Hugs and Thugs.”
“It’ll be crazy. We expect the fans to be as mean as possible,” junior Russell Robinson said. “We’ve got to handle the pressure of the road.”
“It will be up there with the level of Missouri, the same level as Missouri,” Rush said. “We have to stay focused, keep our blinders on, not look to the left or right.”
• On Maybank: Former St. John’s player Maybank hit seven of 10 shots and 12 of 15 free throws in the first meeting in Lawrence.
“We’ll respect him. I doubt he’ll get another (game) like that, but he is capable,” Robinson said, adding, “we need to limit his touches.”
• KSU’s Wright expects better: Akeem Wright didn’t score in 10 minutes in the first meeting.
“Things went poorly, but we just didn’t execute our offense as well as we should and we didn’t play defense at all,” he said. “We’ve just got to study film this time around and when the game comes, bring it to them in the opening minutes. That’s a good team coming off a huge 53-point win over Nebraska. But when they come in here they’re definitely going to see a different ballgame.”
• ku’s Rush on the streak: “I didn’t have a part of it. Well I had one part of it, last year. We’ll try to keep it going.”
• Self on having just one day to prepare: “We play four Big Monday games. Our guys are used to one-day preparation. The NCAA Tournament is one-day ‘prep.’ This is what you will have to go through if you are successful in the postseason.
“What we’ll do is study our first game. Since then it’s hard to change a lot when you only have one hour to work on it (Sunday). They won’t practice long and we won’t. Our package is in. I don’t know if there is time. I would think we’ll have a decent book on them and they on us.”
• Freshman Darrell Arthur on tonight’s atmosphere: “I heart it will be loud. The fans get into it like at Missouri. It’ll be tough trying to get a win.”
• Regular road schedule: The Jayhawks, who practiced Sunday and caught part of ku’s women’s victory over K-State, traveled to Manhattan on Sunday night and will hold a shootaround in Bramlage today.
http://www2.kusports.com/news/2007/feb/19/kstate_expects_end_jayhawks_run/?mens_basketball
-
Banana incident’ recalled
Von Moore remembers a bunch about ’78 game
By Gary Bedore (Contact)
Posted Monday, February 19, 2007
Manhattan — Donnie Von Moore had to laugh when informed Kansas University basketball fans chanted “DUI, DUI,” at Kansas State coach Bob Huggins during the Sunflower Showdown 12 days ago at Allen Fieldhouse.
“It takes the good-hearted fans to get the rivalry going again?” former Jayhawk power forward Von Moore cracked.
While proud of ku’s current 23-game winning streak in Manhattan, Von Moore welcomes Huggins’ arrival and a renewal of what once was a heated ku-KSU rivalry.
It was heated partly because of the fans.
“When I think of playing at K-State, I think of the banana incident,” said Von Moore, boys basketball coach at Chicago’s Tilden High.
The 6-foot-9, 230-pounder had a bunch of bananas tossed in his direction during pregame introductions prior to the Jayhawks’ 75-63 victory over the Wildcats on Feb. 11, 1978, at old Ahearn Fieldhouse.
“It was like the whole damn town bought bananas and brought them to the game,” Von Moore said.
“They covered the floor in a nationally televised game. It took an hour to clean that floor, there were so many. It was like everybody in the stands had bananas.”
It was in response to ku fans flipping a handful of hot dogs onto the court at a K-State player before the Jayhawks’ 56-52 victory over the Wildcats a few weeks earlier at Allen Fieldhouse.
“It all started when our fans threw hot dogs out there when they introduced Redding. I think that was his name,” Von Moore said, correctly identifying flashy KSU guard Curtis Redding.
“It was a big deal. When we went down there (for the rematch), we heard what they were going to do. We heard they were going to throw stuff at us. Instead of going onto the court, we all went down and shook coach Hartman’s hand when we were introduced. We figured out it’d be safer to go stand by him,” Von Moore added of legendary coach Jack Hartman.
Of course, the bananas aimed at Von Moore were no laughing matter.
“It ticked us off,” Von Moore said, “because at first we thought it had some racial connotations. They were basically calling us gorillas. Later they said we threw hot dogs so they threw bananas. It’s just food. We beat them, so that’s what mattered.”
Von Moore, who played at ku from 1974-78, pointed out the ku-KSU games were much bigger than the ku-Missouri games at that time.
Journal-World File Photo
Donnie Von Moore played at Kansas University from 1974-78. Now a high school coach in Chicago, Von Moore says he’s glad there appears to be some life in the ku-Kansas State rivarly.
“It’s because the fans hated each other so much,” Von Moore said of games between “Snob Hill” and “Silo Tech.”
“It was a rivalry where I guess they were depicted as these farm, country, backwoods types, and we were considered the snobs, I guess, because we were close to Kansas City. ku was the snobby part of the state. K-State was the agricultural school. They actually had a farm on their campus. It was the big thing with the two groups. With Missouri, it went all the way back to the damn war.
“But people didn’t sleep out for Missouri. They camped for K-State for days.”
Von Moore said as a proud alumnus who still follows the Jayhawks, he welcomes the return of a strong hoops rivalry with K-State.
“I don’t care about ‘The Streak,’’’ he said. “I just want them (Jayhawks) to play well and mature. These kind of games do it because there is a rivalry, a lot of pressure in these games.
“Twenty three in a row is a serious accomplishment considering the rivalry. But K-State hasn’t been that good lately. They’ve been a better football team than basketball for a while now.”
Von Moore said he catches as many ku games as he can on TV and closely follows freshman Sherron Collins, who played basketball at Crane High, which is in the Chicago Public League with Tilden.
“One of my freshman coaches is a good friend of Sherron,” Von Moore said. “He is big news here. He is coming on strong. He plays baseball real well, too. He threw a no-hitter against Tilden his senior year.”
Of another fellow Chicagoan, Von Moore said he noticed a similarity in his and Gay ku player’s physique — long arms.
“Yes, but we didn’t play that type of game,” Von Moore said of a fast-paced attack, indicating Wright was great on the break.
“ku is really good, man, but they are still young,” he added, noting Collins is a freshman, Wright a sophomore. “Hopefully, when they get to the NCAA Tournament, they’ll have some luck. It seems they make rookie mistakes when they are in close games. You get older, those mistakes are limited. Hopefully the luck is with them because that’s what it takes a lot of times.”
http://www2.kusports.com/news/2007/feb/19/banana_incident_recalled/?mens_basketball