Pontiac, Mich. ? One game away from goin’ to Kansas City . . . who would have thunk it?
“There were a lot of times I even wondered if we’d make the NCAA,” conceded Kansas senior Chris Piper. “Now we’re one game from the Final Four. It’s unbelievable.”
Unbelievable. That was the buzzword of the NCAA Midwest Regional here Friday night.
Not only was Knasas State’s 73-70 victory over No. 1 seed Purdue unbelievable, so was Danny Manning.
It was Manning’s 38-point performance – particularaly a 25-point first half – that carrie dKansas to a 77-64 victory over the Commodores in the first semifinal.
Certainly not everyone in the Silverdome crowd of 31,309 had settled in when Manning popped a three-point goal just 35 ticks after tipoff.
Talk about a harbinger.
“Usually when he gets confidence early,” KU coach Larry Brown pointed out, “he had games like this.”
Manning ahs scored more points in a game – his career high is 42; his most this season 39 – but he’s never ever had a more prolific half than that 25-point first half.
With Manning scoring 11, Kansas bolted to a 19-4 bulge after a little more than nine minutes. Vandy never recovered. Only twice, in fact, would the ‘Dores close to within a single digit, and that was just barely (nine points) and the second half when Manning went 10 minutes without a field goal.
Manning missed wight of 12 shots in the second half after making 12 of 17 in the opening 20 minutes. Still, taken as a whole, 16 of 29 isn’t bad.
Typical Manning? someone asked Brown.
“I don’t know if that’s typical of anybody,” Brown smiled. “He made that three-pointer early and didn’t even get yelled at.
“I can’t remember a game I didn’t yell at him . . . and I hardly yelled at him tonight.”
Manning was human Friday night. For instance, he grabbed only five rebounds and he matche dthat number in runovers.
Still, as impressive as Manning was on offence – his one-man show again obscured the other reason Kansas hovers on the brink of the Final Four.
“To me, the biggest factor, ” Brown said, “is we got some easy hoops because of our defense. We won the game in the first five minutes defensively.”
Indeed, with the spotlight on Manning, just about everyone overlooked the fact Vanderbilt missed 10 of its first 12 shots and coughed the ball up five times while scoring just four points in 9 1/2 minutes.
Not a surprise, really. Kansas ranks in the to five nationally in field goal percentage defense, Vandy finished at 43.9 percent, a little better actually than the 41.3 percentage the Jayhawks had been surrendering.
Nevertheless, when one player scores 38 points, who want to talk about defense?
Manning, playing in a record 144th NCAA game (Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing plaed in 143), boosted his career scoring total to 2,875 points and moved past Larry Bird into eighth place on the NCAA list.
Now the Jayhawks, 12-08 on Feb. 3 and 12-3 since, will meet Kansas State at 12:58 p.m., Lawrence time, on Sunday for the right to make another short trip to Kemper Arena.
“I think this team has improved so much since January,” Brown said.
