Nick Collison’s presence on defense must seem as high as an elephant’s eye to the Cornhuskers.
Collison, Kansas University’s 6-foot-9 sophomore forward, matched a career high with six blocks in the Jayhawks’ 84-62 victory over Nebraska on Wednesday night at Allen Fieldhouse.
His first six-block party also came against the Huskers, last season in Lincoln, Neb.
“I guess it’s more just being in position, getting good timing on it,” Collison explained. “But I think I’m a pretty good shot blocker. I blocked all kinds of shots in high school, but it’s a lot different level here.”
Although Collison called his encore presentation against Nebraska “just coincidence,” it’s no coincidence that he’s among the Jayhawks’ defensive leaders.
In fact, Wednesday night might mark the fifth straight game in which Collison wins the team’s award for defense.
“I’ve always been up there in the top three,” Collison said. “I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do. That’s something that feels good, but it’s something that I feel like I should always be up there because it’s something that’s easy to do, being in the right place.”
KU freshman Mario Kinsey was in the right place for his brief playing time. The 6-2 guard made two steals in seven minutes, coming on back-to-back possessions and leading to easy Kansas buckets.
“I talked about it in coach’s press conference that I wanted to step up my ‘D,'” Kinsey said. “I felt tonight I stepped it up a little bit. I got my first steal and I got the layup. Then I got my next steal and Kenny (Gregory) got the dunk. That helped me and gave me a lot of confidence, too.”
As a team, Kansas held Nebraska which owned the fourth-highest shooting percentage in the country coming in to just 30 percent (seven of 23) from the floor in the first half as the Jayhawks built a 38-20 halftime cushion.
The Kansas defense was so dominating, Nebraska finally had more points (13) than turnovers (11) on center Kimani Ffriend’s dunk with 6:14 remaining in the half.
The Huskers finished with 23 turnovers and shot just 41.8 percent (23 of 55). They came in hitting 51 percent.
“We’ve been trying to step it up,” Kinsey said. “Every game we try to step our defense up more and more. Tonight we really stepped it up and took them out of a lot of their offense. It shows we’ve been working hard in practice.”
Although Nebraska couldn’t buy a bucket at times, Collison was money in the bank. He finished with 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the floor and was 4-of-4 from the free-throw line.
“Most of my shots were easy tonight,” Collison said. “Two were tip-ins, I had a couple of layups and I think I was 1-for-2 on hooks. When I’m getting those shots, I’m going to make a lot of them.”
On the other end of the floor, the combination of Collison and sophomore forward Drew Gooden held Ffriend to a quiet 14 points and forward Steffon Bradford to 13.
Ffriend was anything but quiet on defense, though, exchanging a variety of pushes and shoves with various Jayhawks.
“We’re a top-five team, so a lot of people are going to be coming at us,” said Gooden, who scored 17 points. “We can’t just bow down and let people beat on us. We’ve got to fight back just to keep our ranking, make sure we don’t hear the crowd chanting, ‘Overrated,’ like they did last year.”
The Jayhawks improved to 14-1 overall and remained the only undefeated team in the Big 12 at 3-0.
“It’s great,” Collison said. “We’re on top right now, but there’s a long way to go. We just need some teams to stub their toe a little bit like last night and previous nights.
“We’ve got to look at that and learn from that and be ready to play every single night because there’s no easy games in this league.”
Texas A&M comes to town Saturday for a 3 p.m. game at Allen Fieldhouse.
Three-point goals: 6-18 (Cochran 5-8, Wortmann 1-1, Fields 0-1, Conklin 0-1, Robinson 0-2, Belcher 0-5). Assists: 14 (Belcher 5, Cochran 3, Augustine 2, Wortmann 2, Ffriend, Fields). Turnovers: 23 (Ffriend 4, Belcher 4, Augustine 3, Thomas 3, Bradford 2, Fields 2, Cochran, Thomas, Conklin, Wortmann, team). Blocked shots: 2 (Belcher 2). Steals: 9 (Wortmann 3, Bradford, Cochran, Augustine, Belcher, Thomas, Robinson). |
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Three-point goals: 3-10 (Boschee 2-4, Kinsey 1-1, Gregory 0-1, Hinrich 0-1, Nash 0-1, Axtell 0-2). Assists: 23 (Hinrich 9, Boschee 3, Gregory 2, Carey 2, Axtell 2, Gooden, Collison, Kinsey, Nash, Chenowith). Turnovers: 17 (Boschee 4, Gregory 4, Gooden 3, Chenowith 3, Collison, Hinrich, Carey). Blocked shots: 9 (Collison 6, Boschee, Carey, Chenowith). Steals: 8 (Collison 2, Kinsey 2, Chenowith 2, Axtell, Hinrich). |
