Both have played point guard for the Kansas basketball team and each is facing a highly formative season sophomore Kirk Hinrich at Kansas and fourth-year man Jacque Vaughn with the professional Utah Jazz.
I’ll be rooting as hard as anyone for both of them to have sensational campaigns because they’re such outstanding young men as well as talented basketeers. Their personal relationship is also a solid one; Jacque has frequently been the surrogate coach for Kirk.
In all the talk about who will and who won’t star for the Jayhawks in 2000-01, the 6-3 Hinrich sometimes gets overlooked in the banter about the bigger guys. The improved Kirk could make big things happen in his first full season as the point man.
Granted, Drew Gooden and Nick Collison at 6-9, Eric Chenowith at 7-0 and Luke Axtell at 6-10 will figure prominently in how well KU does. They have to. But Hinrich emerged last March as the quarterback and I’m guessing he’ll add more guidance, distribution, defense and firepower than we’ve seen since Vaughn and Ryan Robertson departed.
Vaughn is stuck in a backup role as long as the incomparable John Stockton is masterminding the Jazz attack. But off-season personnel shifts and negotiations indicate Utah considers heady Vaughn the eventual orchestra leader.
Recently when Stockton sat out an exhibition game, Jacque had a 12-point, 11-assist night. He’s good enough and experienced enough to do that a lot in the next few years.
Back to Lawrence, Vaughn worked frequently with the Jayhawks in their pickup games this summer. Almost invariably he and Hinrich went head to head. When they weren’t trying to outdo each other athletically, Jacque spent a lot of time advising and pointing out things to Kirk. Coaches like Roy Williams and his staff aren’t allowed off-season tutoring. But you might guess that if Jacque asked Roy if he cared if he gave Hinrich some tutelage, he wasn’t dissuaded.
What a great testimonial Vaughn is to KU and its basketball program. How fortunate KU is that he likes it here so much and welcomes any chance to benefit the Jayhawks. Hinrich is from the same bolt of cloth able, intelligent, super-competitive and team-conscious. Little wonder they get along so well, and that Jacque enjoys doing whatever he can to make Hinrich as instrumental to KU success as he was.
OK, Hinrich at point guard and Collison at a forward spot seem to be a lock for a starting lineup. Where from there? Has Chenowith broken out of his 1999-2000 trance enough to mandate a starting job? At the end of last season, Hinrich, Boschee, Gregory, Collison and Gooden were the starters. Eric has to earn his way to break up that combo.
Suppose the freshman-sophomore-type Chenowith has matured and come back. Does that send Boschee to the bench, with Gregory moving to the 2-guard spot? Boschee’s weakness on defense needs to be addressed, and maybe he needs rest to also back up Hinrich. Gregory has to prove he can score from the perimeter, or even semi-perimeter, a la Luke.
There’s the heralded offensive potential of Axtell, who seems to be back in good shape and scoring in tantalizing fashion. What’s his part in the script? How’s his defense? If Boschee has to play a lot at both backcourt spots, who’ll be the third guard now that Marlon London has transferred?
Can junior Jeff Carey at 6-11 give the Jayhawks the kind of all-around aid that industrious T.J. Pugh once did, and can 6-6 newcomer Bryant Nash blend into an eight- or nine-man rotation? It’s unlikely freshman Marion Kinsey, the Waco football-basketball swingman, will help until after December due to leg surgery.
Your guess is as good as anyone’s about who’ll start those early games for the Williams Gang. One probability, however, is that the Vaughn-tutored Hinrich will be the mainspring and open the eyes of those who underrate his capabilities.
We hear a lot of crowing by Big 12 people about the emergence of the Nebraska and Oklahoma football teams in the 1-2 spots of the Bowl Championship Series (at least until after this weekend). But the old Big Eight (which saved four Texas schools from athletic limbo) has been there, done that, only better.
In 1971, the year of that fabulous Nebraska-Oklahoma classic at Norman (35-31, NU), Big Eight teams finished 1-2-3 in the final press polls (there was no bowl process). From that platform, they soared into a 3-0 orbit for bowl games.
Nebraska, the clearcut national champion, pounded Alabama 38-6 in the Jan. 1, 1972, Orange Bowl game. No. 2-rated Oklahoma whipped Auburn 40-22 in the Jan. 1, 1972, Sugar Bowl match. No. 3 Colorado closed its 10-2 season with a 29-17 victory over Houston in the Dec. 31, 1971, Bluebonnet Bowl clash. CU’s only losses were at Nebraska and Oklahoma. That marked the first and, up to now, only time any conference occupied all three top positions in the ratings at the end of a season.
The Big 12 and other leagues are strong, but none of them is likely to duplicate that feat for eons, if ever.
