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Kansas Wins Battle of Blue Bloods in OT!

1/31/2016

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FIELDHOUSE BOOMIN pic.twitter.com/TNJ0ndRomi
— KO3 (@g_smooove) January 31, 2016

History practically seeps from the walls – they literally rolled out Naismith’s original rules of the game at halftime – and the 16,000-plus people who packed inside this terror dome known as “The Phog” roared from tip to buzzer.
Louisville CJ

Kentucky and Kansas played a classic regular season college basketball game, people, a down-to-the-wire battle between the two winningest programs in the sport. The atmosphere inside the packed Allen Fieldhouse was tremendous and ridiculous, and at times comparable to the inside of a jet engine.
Lexington HL

The Kansas fans brought their zealotry A-game. They turned The Phog into a Phurnace, with piped-in sound system and human screams both turned to 11. This was an immersion in oppressive noise.
Yahoo Forde

For all of us, it was 40 minutes — nope, sorry, 45 — of uncommonly entertaining basketball between two of the greatest programs in NCAA history in the finest venue the college game has to offer.
TSN DeCourcy

Blue Blood GAMEDAY - Kentucky vs Kansas!

1/30/2016

Kansas, here we come. #RefuseToLose #KUvsUK ✈️
— Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) January 29, 2016

KUAD: Kansas hosts Kentucky pregame notes

LJW Smithology: Getting to know Kentucky

Kansas, here we come. #RefuseToLose #KUvsUK ✈️
— Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) January 29, 2016

Welcome Udunka, err Udoka!

1/29/2016

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14669061 Use this link for above video

Let goooooo brooooooo @TimUdoka2016 gonna be scary
— Mitch Lightfoot (@Mitchlightfoot) January 28, 2016

They're Coming! Look & Learn #BBN.

1/28/2016

Why KU is #1
By Steve Weiberg, USA TODAY 1996

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

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.''

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.
USA Today 1996

Way Back Wednesday!

1/27/2016

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Whew, thank goodness I can remember way back to when we were a good team. /sarcasm

ROAD KuLL

1/26/2016

KUAD Recap, Box Score, Notes, Quotes

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1/25 POLLS

1/25/2016

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GAMEDAY - Kansas @ Iowa State!

1/25/2016

“It’s Kansas,” Iowa State point guard Monte Morris said. “It’s going to be electrifying.”
Des Moines Register

The door is open for Jameel McKay to have a breakout game tonight against Kansas at Hilton Coliseum. Rim-to-rim runs will be available.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) January 25, 2016

LJW Smithology: Getting to know Monte Morris

KUAD: Kansas at Iowa State Pregame Notes

200-9!

1/24/2016

#kubball improves to 200-9 in Allen Fieldhouse under Bill Self #RockChalk pic.twitter.com/UWxn4Sohvm
— Kansas Basketball (@KUHoops) January 23, 2016

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Gameday - Kansas Jayhawks host Texas Longhorns!

1/23/2016

But the way forward Shaquille Cleare sees it, the fact that they’ll be expected to lose most of them isn’t a bad thing.

“They’re under more pressure than we are,” Cleare said of Kansas. “We can just go hoop.”

Just like VCU did.
SA Express-News

KUAD: Kansas hosts Texas Pregame Notes

LJW Smithology: Get to know surging Longhorns

Watching the important league game will be two of the top high school basketball players in the country — Josh Jackson, a 6-foot-7 senior wing from Prolific Prep in Napa, Calif., who is the No. 1-ranked player in the recruiting Class of 2016 (by Rivals.com), as well as DeAndre Ayton, a 6-11 junior forward from Hillcrest Academy in Phoenix, who is the No. 4-rated player in the Class of 2017.
Ayton’s Hillcrest team will be playing Sunrise Christian Academy at 7 tonight at Lawrence’s Free State High, tickets for sale at the door.

As if all that was not enough ... KU football legend John Hadl will be recognized at halftime of the KU-Texas game — a game that, if KU wins, would mark the 200th victory (against just nine losses) in Allen during the Bill Self era.

That’s a lot of stuff going on — the game, as usual, taking top billing.
LJW

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