Good-bye, gibbon. Adios, ape. Chiao, chimpanzee. Au revoir, orangutan.
OK, so it wasn’t exactly the proverbial 800-pound gorilla nestling on Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams’ back, but a monkey was definitely riding on his shoulders, and Williams could feel it.
“I’ve been picked on pretty good the last three years,” Williams said after the Jayhawks snapped a three-year NCAA Tournament second-round skid with Sunday’s astonishingly-easy 87-58 shellacking of Syracuse.
So, in one of the great moments in NCAA Tournament post-game press conference history, Williams lifted a stuffed money out of a paper sack and told a chuckling gaggle of media-types how he had sent his wife, Wanda, to buy the cute, cuddly chimp on Saturday night so his players could take turns yanking it off his back.
It was a great moment not so much because of the thought but because of the execution. Williams, you see, was a courageous man to dare to show anything other than an official NCAA item during a postgame media session.
Think I’m kidding? On Saturday, when KU players Drew Gooden and Kirk Hinrich walked onto the dais for a pregame media session, they were carrying cans of pop. Before they could sit down, both Gooden and Hinrich had to pour the contents of the cans into the “official” blue and white NCAA plastic cups.
Moreover, last year in Winston-Salem, N.C., Williams had a run-in with NCAA officials when they wouldn’t allow him to bring in a barbecue sandwich that wasn’t a product of an NCAA corporate sponsor.
Thus Williams’ bold placement of a non-NCAA sack on the dais must also rank as one of the bravest moments in NCAA Tournament history.
“I don’t care what the NCAA says,” Williams quipped.
All Williams cared about, he added with a grin, was an admonition to the media not to say the little beggar looks like him. No problem, Roy. Everybody knows you look more like Huckleberry Hound than Magilla Gorilla.
I’m not sure what punishment the NCAA rules book has for violators of the non-corporate sponsor rule. Perhaps Williams will have to perform, say, 20 hours of community service mucking out monkey island at the Indianapolis Zoo. More likely, though, the Kansas coach will be placed on probation because he’s a first-time offender (in deed, if not in thought). One thing is certain. The NCAA police will be watching Williams like a hawk next weekend in San Antonio.
At last the Jayhawks are headed for the Sweet 16 again. It’s been so long that none of the KU seniors have ever advanced that far. Or as Kenny Gregory said: “It seems like every year I’d get a spring break. This year I won’t get one, and I’m happy about that.”
Kansas University’s week-long spring recess, in case you didn’t know, officially begins today, although Mount Oread has been more or less deserted since late last Friday.
Three years of second-round heartbreakers ended Sunday in the battering of the boys from Syracuse. The skein began in 1998 when the top-seeded Jayhawks were stunned 80-75 by Rhode Island in Oklahoma City. Then came that 92-88 overtime loss to Kentucky in New Orleans. Finally, there was the 69-64 loss to No. 1 seed Duke last March in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Everybody expected another close game on Sunday in the Dayton Arena, particularly with Kansas the No. 4 seed and Syracuse the No. 5. Nobody expected what ensued.
For whatever reason, Syracuse’s players shot like they needed glasses and had left them at the hotel. They launched more bricks than a tipsy hod carrier. Shooting was not the Orangemen’s strength this season, but 30.4 percent?
“It just wasn’t falling,” Syracuse guard Allen Griffin said when asked about his team’s frustrating inaccuracy. “What can you say after that?”
Well, you can say Kansas was due after three straight years of so near and yet so far. Or you can say this is a Kansas team peaking at the right time. Whether it is a team of destiny won’t be determined until next weekend. Kansas hasn’t reached the NCAA Final Four since 1993 and that fact has to weigh more heavily on Williams than the simian version of a teddy bear.
In fact, should the Jayhawks advance to next Sunday’s NCAA Midwest Regional final in the Alamodome, Wanda Williams’ pre-game shopping trip will be much more daunting. Where in San Antonio is she going to find a concrete gorilla?
