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Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Stewart scores 23 to lead USC

By Ryan Wood

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KU vs USC

Southern California senior Lodrick Stewart can't consider himself the winner of Monday's sibling rivalry - even though his stats were much more appealing than twin brother Rodrick.

"It didn't go how I wanted it to go," Lodrick said. "We lost."

Lodrick's Trojans fell, 72-62, to Rodrick's Kansas University basketball team Monday. But the setback hardly was Lodrick's fault.

The USC senior dropped 23 points, drilling five three-pointers at clutch times throughout the night. When Kansas was poised to pull away in the first half with seven-point leads on two separate occasions, Lodrick rallied the Trojans by nailing a three-pointer and cutting the deficit to four.

It has been some stretch for Lodrick, who has nailed 11 three-pointers in his last two games.

"I thought he played well," USC coach Tim Floyd said. "He made some shots. He's a veteran who can shoot, so we expect him to come out and do that on the road."

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2006-07 Dec. 4 KU-USC Hoops

Lodrick put another scare into the KU faithful with just 2:17 remaining, when he hit his final trey to cut the KU lead to 67-62. But that proved to be USC's final bucket, as Kansas scored the last five to close the casket for good.

Still, Lodrick's effort was worthy of praise, especially considering the pain he was in after being poked in the eye with 16:56 to play. After being tended to by trainers briefly, Lodrick re-entered and hit two more threes, despite admitting he was hardly back to normal after the injury.

"My vision was very blurry," Lodrick said. "I didn't want to take bad shots, so I tried to get everyone else involved."

No one, though, had quite the same touch. USC's leading scorer, Nick Young, had just eight points on 3-of-13 shooting, though one was a thunderous dunk over KU's Julian Wright.

Taj Gibson, the only regular big man who didn't foul out for the Trojans, had 15 points and nine rebounds. But he also had 11 turnovers.

Gibson's ball-security problem wasn't isolated.

USC had 25 giveaways on the night, and KU's 20 offensive rebounds kept the ball away from the Trojans, who trailed throughout the second half.

"We turned the ball over too much in order to beat a good team on the road," Floyd said.

And with that, the Trojans dropped to 5-2 and had a five-game winning streak snapped. But it was a little more than that for Lodrick, who now will have to weather a life full of bragging rights from his brother.

"We fought to the end. Everybody on the team, from the first player to the 14th player, gave it all we had," Lodrick said. "This was a win we wanted. But unfortunately we didn't get it."

Check out more on KU's win over USC

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Comments

JayCeph (anonymous) says...

I heard that the Stewart brothers have another set of twin brothers (younger) coming up through the ranks and the word is that they are more athletic than their older counterparts. Anyone know what their stock is? How old they are? Etc.?

December 5, 2006 at 9:35 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jross1972 (Joe Ross) says...

Its the coaching! Bill Self constantly--and I do mean constantly--blames the players for everything that goes wrong. How many of you have heard him take responsibility even once for underachieving teams or performances? Not me. You can say what you want to, but when I see Darrell Arthur subbing in and out of games in the final minutes on dead balls, I seriously have to question Self's judgement in certain situations. News flash: arthur is our leading scorer!!!

Coach Self is a great recruiter and I don't want to take that away from him. He is a good basketball coach, and I don't mean to imply that he's not a good fit at Kansas. But people! Is it too much to say that a Coach should create the atmosphere that fosters development? isnt that a coach's responsibility? i mean honestly! The lack of mental toughness is apalling! You don't see that with Coach K's players, or at least not often. You didn't often see it with Roy Williams' teams here at Kansas (Roy toppled mighty giants with names such as Jeff Gueldner and Pekka Markkanen). You NEVER saw it in Dean Smith's teams. The players all got the right mindset from their coach.

Repeat it: the players get the right mindset from their coach!

Again...the players get the right mindset from their coach!

Bill Self, if youre reading this: We want you at Kansas. You represent the program well. But please...PLEASE...accept responsibility for instilling the mental aspect of the game to your players.

A teacher teaches kids HOW to think. A teacher that just teaches facts does a great disservice to his students. A coach is a teacher on the court. I am not a Self hater. I respect what he has done at colleges in the NCAA. But someone HAS to say that while at Kansas, Coach has had his problems with underachieving teams. This has been an issue no matter WHO the players have been.

I love Kansas basketball, and I speak the truth only because I want to see more Ws in the win column for the Crimson and Blue. Coach Self: please coach this team! To many Jayhawk fans Basketball is life itself!

Rock Chalk from a true, die-hard fan!!!!!!
beak em hawks

December 5, 2006 at 10:49 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

KUGreenMachine (anonymous) says...

-Arthur was in fould trouble allllll game.....pay attention

December 5, 2006 at 11:11 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

cobweb (anonymous) says...

USC is pretty tough. With the recruits they have coming, they will be a force to be reckoned with.

December 5, 2006 at 11:12 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

jross1972 (Joe Ross) says...

Im not just talking about the USC game GreenMachine. It happened at Florida and DePaul as well. Pay attention!

December 5, 2006 at 2:26 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

lalawguy (anonymous) says...

I have heard Self take the blame many times.

His job as a coach is to help his players improve, which means he has to talk about the things they did wrong and the things they can do better.

December 5, 2006 at 3:33 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

KUGreenMachine (anonymous) says...

oh yeah, florida it was due to our possesions offensive possesions-arthur and defensive possesions-shakakaun...i believe he was doing a little coaching, thats why he was subbing....but who knows, i'm not a coach...
-but, as far as depaul goes...thats the first time i've ever seen a ku team be completely dominating a game, then just give it away without any sort of fight...that was more sad and shocking than most losses...but the season's early, these jayhawks love learning the hard way....just like last year, they'll learn their lessons and fix it by the end

December 6, 2006 at 12:39 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

r1ck_jayhawk (anonymous) says...

jross, you talk about Roy toppling giants, "with names such as Jeff Gueldner and Pekka Markkanen." If I am not mistaken (and I know that I am not), those teams back in 88, 89 and 90 contained a few other people on them. I think that maybe the rest of the guys on those teams...you know, guys like Gueldner with a championship under their belt: Scooter Barry, Mike Maddox, Kevin Pritchard, Milt Newton, Mark Randall (red-shirt in 88) had something to do with the toppling of giants. Then let's not discount the addition of guys like Sean Alvarado, Adonis Jordan and Zo, I think they really helped. I don't want to take anything away from Jeff or Pekka, but they weren't the big names on those teams.

I also have to say that if you compare the talent level on those teams to the talent level of the teams that we have had in the last few years, I think the more recent teams have much more pure, raw talent, but so does everyone else in the ncaa!!! Its a different world now. Kids play basketball today the way we played baseball, every kid does it. The game has evolved, the talent pool is just getting bigger because kids play the game non-stop every season of the year. Coaches recruit in places they wouldn't have back in the late eighties.

And as far as Coach Self not taking blame for some of the problems, I think you are way off. If you listen to his weekly radio show or the TV shows on Metro Sports, he is always saying that maybe he could have done something differently. I also don't believe that he should be taking the blame for the basketball team all of the time. C'mon! Yes these are kids and they are gonna screw up, but to take all of the pressure off of them is ridiculous! Roy did it all of the time...when we won, it was all because of "the kids", when we lost, it was his fault. Under your rational of him being to blame, then we should have canned Roy a long time ago. If he screwed up the coaching as much as he always said he did, then he wasn't a very good coach and he needed to be replaced.

Quite honestly, I know that I haven't been perfect at my job every day, but I try to get it right as much as I can, and if something is screwed up that is my responsibility, then yeah, its my fault. But I can only lead the horse to water, I can't shove the water down its throat. Coach Self can tell these guys until he's blue in the face that DePaul is a 2nd half team, but unless they believe it and take it to heart, there isn't anything he can do during the game. He can't go out and play the game for them (even though that seemed to be what Tim Floyd was trying to do all night at the USC game...he was all over the court).

December 6, 2006 at 10:36 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

r1ck_jayhawk (anonymous) says...

Anyway, I think that for people to be second guessing Coach Self about the way he does his job and the results that he gets from his players is just ridiculous. Sure I would love to see us NOT play to the level of our opponents and just go out and slaughter everyone, but for people who are not in the locker room or in the practices to second guess him is asinine.

December 6, 2006 at 10:36 a.m. ( | suggest removal )