If it’s any consolation, Kansas University’s 3-3 men’s basketball team has lost to some pretty good teams.
North Carolina, Florida and Oregon all have been ranked at some point, with the Gators and Ducks ranked in the Top 10 at the time of their games against KU.
“It’s great to say you are playing a big-time schedule,” KU coach Roy Williams said after the Jayhawks’ 84-78 loss to No. 7-ranked Oregon on Saturday in Portland, Ore., “but you need to beat some of those teams, too.
“Our schedule is not getting any easier, going to Tulsa on Wednesday night.”
Indeed, No. 19 Tulsa (4-0) – which has been pointing to a rematch with KU ever since the Jayhawks downed the Hurricane, 93-85, last year – is next.
Tipoff will be 7 p.m. Wednesday at UT’s 8,355-seat Reynolds Center.
Also down the line are nonconference games against UCLA, Wyoming and Arizona.
“You go around the country and pick some schedules, give us some of those schedules, we’d be 4-0 and everybody would be fat and happy,” Williams said. “But we don’t choose to do that.”
Partly because of the fact KU annually plays a difficult schedule, Williams does not make projections about possible records after a certain number of games.
“I’ve said for 15 years I’ve never looked down the schedule and said, ‘We need to be 4-0 or 7-1,'” Williams said. “If I didn’t do it for 14 years and it worked all right, I’m not doing it now. Am I surprised? No, because I don’t think in those terms.”
Williams did see some signs of life Saturday.
While there were many negatives – Aaron Miles missed 10 of 11 shots and had seven of the Jayhawks’ unsightly 22 turnovers, while Wayne Simien and Nick Collison were shackled by foul problems as the Jayhawks fell apart in the final minutes – some positives also could be gleaned from KU’s third setback.
The Jayhawks’ beleaguered bench received a boost from seldom-used Michael Lee and Jeff Graves. Lee had 11 points and eight rebounds in 20 minutes, while Graves had six boards in 13 minutes.
“It was satisfying,” Lee said of the bench play, “but I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to because we lost. The players on our bench are capable. We just have to take it upon ourselves to be ready when we go in there. Early in the season we didn’t understand the importance of coming in off the bench, but I just decided to come out and be ready tonight and play as hard as I could.”
Ditto for Graves, KU’s beefy 6-foot-9, 275-pound transfer from Iowa Western Community College who hadn’t shown much before Saturday.
“The last couple of games the bench players didn’t step up that much,” Graves said. “On the way here we had a good talk and said everyone had to get involved, not only the starters but the bench, too.”
Graves thinks he can be a factor down the line.
“It’s all about preparation,” he said. “I’ve been working hard in practice to get back in the shape I was in.”
Another positive was that the Jayhawks showed some spunk in erasing a 14-point deficit against the Ducks, similar to a rally in KU’s 83-73 loss to Florida.
The problem, though, was once KU caught the Ducks at 74-74, the Jayhawks flopped in the final 3:46.
“I don’t really care about showing other people,” sophomore Keith Langford said after scoring 14 points the second half and 21 total. “I think we showed ourselves tonight. We showed a lot of heart. We just didn’t do a very good job of responding after we tied the game.”
Williams was asked the major difference between last year’s 104-86 rout of Oregon in the NCAA Tournament and Saturday’s loss in Portland.
“We didn’t play as well ourselves as we played against them in the tournament last year,” Williams said. “They may have had more to do with that today. We didn’t shoot the ball as well. We’re not as deep. We couldn’t run the ball as much as we’d like. We had to play more zone to see if we could keep Simien and Collison in the game a little longer.
“I think with each and every game and every year your veteran players get more confidence and Luke Ridnour (25 points) and Luke Jackson (26) have a great deal of confidence. I’m sure Ernie (Kent, Ducks’ coach) would like to have Fred Jones back just like I’d like to have Drew and Jeff Boschee back.”
