Kansas University freshmen Mario Kinsey and Bryant Nash haven’t been getting a lot of minutes in Big 12 play.
There’s a good reason for that, KU coach Roy Williams said.
“Once you get in conference play, it’s a different animal,” Williams said. “You can play all those non conference big names you want to, but it isn’t like playing in the conference.
“The intensity level, the knowledge of each team’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s the difference in night and day.”
Kinsey, a 6-foot-2 backup basketball point guard and football quarterback from Waco, Texas, played a big role in KU’s wins over UCLA and St. John’s at the season-opening Coaches Vs. Cancer Classic. He’s played just 18 minutes total in Big 12 games.
“What he was able to do (there) just stunned me,” Williams said of the New York tournament.
“But we didn’t ask him to do nearly as much at that time as we ask him to do or need him to do now when he’s in there.
“We put him in against Texas Tech. He plays the shortest time period (two minutes) in the history of Kansas basketball and he makes three fouls and a turnover. That kind of thing you can’t stand that right now. Just get the ball from one end of the court to another and throw it to a guy in the same kind of shirt and you are helping us.”
Williams inserted Kinsey at the end of the first half of Monday’s loss to Iowa State. He was to guard Kantrail Horton, who hit a three while defended by Kinsey before the end of the half.
“I’d spoken to him (at practice) specifically about, ‘Can you get in front of one of their really good players and not reach and not try to steal the ball and be fundamentally sound because I might put you in a possession just to guard a guy?’ He said, ‘Yes,”‘ Williams said. “He went flying right by Horton and Horton makes a three. It’s just hard for a freshman to get in and do that and be able to be that disciplined.”
Nash, a 6-6 forward from Carrollton, Texas, scored three points with two steals in seven minutes against Kansas State. That’s his most minutes in a Big 12 game. Earlier he’d logged 14 against North Dakota, 11 versus Boise State and nine versus Washburn.
“Bryant each and every day gets more comfortable playing out on the court. He’d never played out there until he got here,” Williams said. “We knew it’d be a huge stumbling block. He makes me feel better each and every day he’s out there.
“There’s a huge appreciation of basketball he’s got to understand. In practice he can turn it over in a heartbeat. In order to play at this level, in the Big 12, you can’t do those things.”
Williams was “shocked” to learn Missouri’s Kareem Rush is out for the season with torn ligaments in his thumb.
“They showed the play where he got hurt (on TV news). It was a significant fall,” Williams said. “The youngster got up and made one or two free throws and was in the game at the end. They were trying to go to him on the last possession. You hate that to happen to a kid. He’s having as good a year as anybody in our league.”
Williams says he’s cut back on practice time the past couple of weeks to combat the possibility of fatigue. He’s basically used a seven-man rotation in games.
“It’s like my freshman year. We were in the top five in the country the whole year and coach cut practice back,” center Eric Chenowith said. “He knew we were playing well and taking care of business. Coach has not been drilling us at practice. We’ll go an hour and a half of actual court time instead of two solid hours.”
