Danny Manning has brought the fieldhouse down before. Never for his singing, though.
On Wednesday night, as part of the festivities at the third annual “Late Night with Larry Brown” in Allen Fieldhouse, Manning wove his magic with chords, not cords.
With his Kansas basketball teammates serving as backups, Manning sang the lead in a rendition of “My Girl,” the old Temptations classic.
When he was finished, the crowd went as berserk as it would have if he’d have executed a 360-degree slam dunk. The roar from the near-capacity gathering was deafening.
Was Manning nervous?
“No, it was fun,” he smiled about his singing debut. “I enjoyed it. I hope everyone else did.”
They sure did, although coach Larry Brown and some of the Jayhawks couldn’t help but take some good-natured pot-shots at his warbling.
“Lit’s put it this way,” Brown grinned, “I’d rather be his agent as a player than as a singer.”
Echoed senior Chris Piper: “From where I was standing, he sounded pretty good, but I think he’d better stick to basketball.”
Junior Scooter Barry, who teamed with Manning for a rap duo after the “My Girl” act, termed the 6-10 All-American’s singing “adequate,” adding, “but I don’t think he’s going into that.”
An impartial observer, sports writer John Feinstein – he wrote that Bob Knight best-seller – was a harsher critic.
“I hope he limits his singing to the shower for everybody’s sake,” Feinstein cracked.
Feinstein, by the way, was here because he’s working on a new book that will chronicle an entire college basketball season from numerous sites and from several perspectives.
“I couldn’t think of a better place to start a book about an entire season,” Feinstein said. “than at 12:01 a.m. today in Lawrence, Kansas.”
Last year’s “Late Night II” drew an estimated 13,000 fans for the start of pre-season practice. That figure was surpassed this time.
Since no tickets were sold for the free event, all KU officials could do was estimate the attendance. They settled on the 15,200 figure.
“It was hard to tell,” said Dout Vance, KU’s sports information director, “because they were standing three or four deep on the (north and south) sides.”
Listed capacity for Allen Fieldhouse is 15,800.
First order of business at “Late Night III” was a celebrity look-alike contest featuring four impersonators who, in order, did Brown, Ollie North, David Letterman and Pee Wee Herman. The Brown and North mimics were roundly booed while the Letterman and Herman look-alikes were clear-cut crowd pleasers. The ersatz Herman won in a close applause vote over the phony Letterman.
Another highlight was an appearance by former Jayhawk Calvin Thompson, now with the Topeka Sizzlers, who resurrected his patented baseline dunk on a feed from a fellow wearing a sack over his head and billing himself as The Unknown Jayhawk. The be-sacked assist specialist looked suspiciously like Mark Turgeon, now a student assistant on the KU staff.
Next came the Manning ensemble and finally, after the lights had been dimmed, the band struck up the tune “Goin’ to Kansas City” after the cheerleaders had plopped a couple of NCAA Final Four logos on the fieldhouse floor. The crowd went bananas for that schtick, too.
Then after midnight, almost as an afterthought, came the intrasquad scrimmage. Manning’s Blue team won, 62-52, but he had to settle for second billing this time to teammate Milt Newton who scored a game-high 21 points. Manning was runnerup, though, with 18 points.
All in all, “Late Night III” was everything it was cracked up to be.
“I thought it was great,” Brown said. “I was happiest for our new kids.”
Particularly, Brown noted, for Otis Livingston, a transfer point guard from El Camino Junior College in California.
“Otis has never played in front of 1,000 people before,” Brown said. “This crowd was probably the total of all the people who saw him at El Camino.”
The Jayhawks’ next appearance in Allen Fieldhouse will be an intrasquad scrimmage on Oct. 31.
KU BASKETBALL NOTES
– Kansas has three sets of uniforms – white for home games, blue for road games and gold for…well, coach Larry Brown says he isn’t sure when he’ll break them out. “Maybe on a neutral court,” Brown said. Those red uniforms Brown used on infrequent occasions over the last two seasons, are history…
– Brown said the Kansas schedule hasn’t been released because he’s asking for relief from palying five Big Eight road games at the end of the regular season. “They changed the Nebraska game, but that gives us four straight on the road. It’s still crazy. They (the Big Eight office) told me they’d take care of it, but I don’t think they’re going to.”…
– Brown on opening the season against Chaminade in the Hawaiian Airlines Classic. “Usually the host team picks a dog team and that worries me. I hope they did it because they thought they’d get on TV.” ESPN was originally supposed to carry the Kansas-Chaminade game live the day after Thanksgiving, but ESPN is now listing the Villanova-Nebraska game in that slot…
– With a 15-man roster, Brown said he hoped to red-shirt some players this season. The only name he mentioned was junior Sean Alvarado, but he added that wasn’t a certainty…
– Sophomore Keith Harris is currently in Brown’s doghouse, ostensibly because of something Harris was supposed to do and didn’t. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with him,” Brown said. “I dont’ think he’ll play first semester, but that’s negotiable.”…
– Mark Pellock, a starter as a sophomore last year, isn’t in school this semester – he’s working in Lawerence – and Brown said the 6-8 forward doesn’t want to play basketball anymore. “I’m just hopeful he gets back in school,” the KU coach said. “Then if he feels good about playing again, we’ll take him back.”…
– Two Kansas freshman signees failed to qualify under the provisions of NCAA Proposition 48. One, guard Antoine Lewis, is at Hutchinson Community College. The other, forward Ricky Butler, enrolled at Cal-Irvine…
– Brown on All-American Danny Manning: “He was up to 245 pounds this summer. Danny’s 230 now and he says he’ll play at 222 which I think he’ll carry well.” Manning, as you may know, will be listed at 6-10 this season instead of 6-11 as he was his first three years…
INTRASQUAD SCRIMMAGE BOX SCORE
BLUE (62)
Danny Manning 8-12 1-2 18, Milt Newton 6-9 7-7 21, Sean Alvarado 2-6 0-2 4, Scooter Barry 0-4 0-0 0, Kevin Pritchard 4-6 0-0 9, Keith Harris 0-2-1-2 1, Jeff Gueldner 3-5 1-2 7, Mike Masucci 1-3 0-0 2, Totals 24-57 10-15 62.
WHITE (52)
Archie Marshall 3-10 0-3 6, Chris Piper 4-10 0-0 8, Marvin Branch 4-7 4-6 12, Lincoln Minor 5-7 0-0 11, Otis Livingston 2-4 0-0 4, Mark Randall 2-4 1-2 5, Mike Maddox 2-5 2-2 6. Totals 22-47 8-11 52.
Blue3329-62
White2824-52
Three-point goals: Blue 4-5 (Manning 1-1, Newton 2-3, Pritchard 1-1); White 0-5 (Marshall 0-3, Piper 0-1, Maddox 0-1).
Rebounds: Blue 18 (Manning 5, Pritchard 4, Harris 3, Newton 2, Gueldner 2, Masucci 2); White 22 (Branch 7, Piper 5, Minor 4, Marshall 4, Randall 2, Livingston 1).
Assists: Blue 12 (Manning 3, Barry 3, Harris 2, Pritchard 2, Newton, Gueldner); White 9 (Livingston 4, Branch 2, Marshall, Piper, Minor).
