Kansas basketball fans who saw the Jayhawks crush Kentucky, 150-95, last Dec. 10, are convinced the Jayhawks didn’t try to embarrass the Wildcats.
The consensus was that probation-riddled Kentucky was foolish to press and run the whole game, especially since coach Rick Pitino suited just eight scholarship players. Kansas simply mashed a shorthanded team that employed a dumb game plan.
Proud Wildcat fans, of course, view the worst loss in Kentucky history differently.
“Basketball genocide is what it was,” Lexington Herald-Leader columnist John McGill wrote of last year’s rout, witnessed by 15,800 delirious fans at Allen Fieldhouse.
The two teams meet in a long-awaited rematch at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at UK’s Rupp Arena.
“Ugly? Let us count the ways,” McGill wrote. “Leading by 40, Kansas continued to fast break. Leading by 49, Kansas waited until 3:31 to send in its scrubs. Bombing, jamming and breaking, Kansas beat UK in as merciless a display as you’d care to see this side of Billy Tubbs.
“But say this for Tubbs. At least Oklahoma’s coach, who’s been known to keep pressing when he’s up by 50, doesn’t make any apologies for his gluttony.
“Not so Kansas coach Roy Williams, who when last seen was draping a comforting arm around UK coach Rick Pitino, which is sort of like the guy in charge of the guillotine offering a handshake to the torso of the fellow he’s just beheaded.”
McGill was upset Kansas, up 80-61 at halftime, outscored UK, 41-16, the final 10 minutes and 19-5 the final four.
“Even as the devastation took on a horrific, mushroom-cloud proportion,” McGill wrote, “Williams was rotating his top eight players, resting them for yet another run.”
Enough already.
Those who’ve watched third-year coach Williams operate realize he rotates players constantly. Some have said he plays too many people.
In fact, last year versus UK, no Jayhawk topped 30 minutes. Mark Randall went 28, followed by Jeff Gueldner 26, Pekka Markkanen 24, Kevin Pritchard and Rick Calloway 23. Terry Brown, who had a career-high 31 points, played 19 minutes, Adonis Jordan 18 and Freeman West 15.
Macolm Nash however, played just four minutes, Kirk Wagner and Todd Alexander three. Apparently UK backers wanted seldom-used reserves to play 10 or more minutes.
“When three seldom-used Kansas subs finally came off the bench at 3:31 with the Jayhawks clinging to a 141-90 lead,” said McGill, “Kansas only outscored UK, 9-5. Gee, there goes the neighborhood.”
Apparently McGill’s audience agrees with his contempt. Reportedly Saturday’s game is a hot ticket with fans wanting revenge for KU allegedly “running it up.”
Asked about that, Pitino issued a “no comment.”
Williams said it was Pitino’s ‘Cats that forced the tempo. “Am I supposed to get the ball in and hand it to them?” Williams said. “That would be a travesty.”
Pitino has downplayed the revenge motive for this year’s game, saying “revenge indicates bitterness and jealousy and we do not have that for Kansas.”
Kansas fans I’ve talked to did delight in last year’s massacre. After all, UK entered with 16 wins in 18 tries versus KU.
This week’s challenge with the word “revenge” all over the Bluegrass State is to keep Saturday’s ESPN game clean, with no taunts, no fights. And keep security guards stationed close to KU’s Williams, who received a lot of mail from angry Wildcat supporters after last year’s game. They might throw ice or other objects at him.
