TULSA, OKLA. ? Two-for-two in Tulsa isn’t too bad.
Kansas University’s football team, winless on the road, came down here in October and stuck the Golden Hurricane by 10 points. Then on Wednesday night, KU’s men’s basketball team, also winless on the road, came down and stuck the Golden Hurricane by nine points.
T-Town has been very, very good to the Jayhawks.
What was so impressive about Wednesday’s win in front of a rare sellout crowd in the Hurricane’s Reynolds Center was how the Jayhawks did it their way — by wearing the opponent down in the second half with a relentless in-your-face defense and a ruthless down-low offense.
People in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta and on all the ships at sea are going to look at Wednesday’s box score and see that preseason All-American Kirk Hinrich missed nine of 11 shots, all three of his free throw attempts and scored only four points in 38 minutes, and shake their heads.
Do stats lie? In this case, they did. What they would have no way of knowing by looking at Hinrich’s numbers is he may have played his best game of the season. “Hinrich didn’t shoot the ball worth a darn,” KU coach Roy Williams said, “but he was sensational on defense.”
And how about the patience and maturity Hinrich displayed down the stretch as the Jayhawks worked the clock, frustrating Tulsa to the point where it committed foul after foul in a desperate comeback attempt.
Sensational, too, was Nick Collison — Williams called him “exceptional” — with 26 points, 12 rebounds and, like fellow senior Hinrich, he showed the aplomb of a veteran player accustomed to winning down the stretch.
KU’s players, as everyone knows, had their confidence shaken by three early-season losses away from Allen Fieldhouse. Late in the first half, still another deflation appeared in store when the Hurricane wiped out a KU lead and went up by four on a prayer 30-foot three-pointer by guard Antonio Reed at the buzzer.
Would Kansas crumble? Were the Jayhawks destined for more of the same ignominy dealt them by North Carolina and Florida in New York, and by Oregon last Saturday in Portland, Ore.?
Not if Williams could help it. His halftime oration was explicit and, quite likely, animated.
“A lot of times when a team makes a 30-footer, a team will give in,” Williams said, “and I said, ‘We’re not going to give in.’ At the same time, I said we could do it together, and not try to do it yourself.”
If the second half was a final exam, all the Jayhawks would have earned an A to a man.
As good as Hinrich and Collison were ?” and Kansas couldn’t have won without them — the most heart-warming aspect of Wednesday night’s victory had to be the performance of sophomore point guard Aaron Miles.
In Portland, his hometown, Miles lived a nightmare, missing 10 of 11 shots and turning the ball over seven times. In Tulsa, Miles earned the comeback-of-the-week award with 15 points, eight assists, five steals and only four turnovers in 33 minutes.
On Monday, Williams had met with Miles, and whatever he said clearly worked.
“It was a simple five- or six-minute meeting,” Williams said. “I told him all he has to do is be Aaron Miles. The best thing he does is win, and tonight he went back to doing what he does best.”
So did the Jayhawks. They went back to hitting the boards, harassing on defense, going to the free throw line and doing to Tulsa what North Carolina, Florida and Oregon had done to them.
Turnabout is fair play any day.
If Kansas is indeed back to playing Kansas basketball, then we may look back on Wednesday night as a watershed.
6Sports video: Jayhawks overcome the Hurricane
Jayhawks bounce back – Kansas 89, Tulsa 80
