MADISON, WIS. ? Roy Williams is tired of hearing questions about his team’s ability to win a physical game.
Actually, he’s amused by the suggestion that because the Jayhawks like to run, they can’t bang around inside if necessary.
“I giggle at it, to be honest with you,” the Kansas coach said Saturday, as the top-seeded Jayhawks prepared for Sunday’s Midwest Regional final against No. 2 Oregon. “Toughness to me is as much mental as anything.”
Williams makes no apologies for Kansas’ fast-paced style.
“We love to go up and down,” he said. “We love a finesse game. We love running. We’re never going to be known as a tough team, where it’s half-court basketball. That’s not the way that we play, but that doesn’t mean that the kids aren’t tough.
“When people think in terms and talk in terms of ‘toughness,’ they think it’s got to be a manhood thing,” Williams said. “I’ve never seen a player yet in the game of basketball that I wouldn’t fight during a game, even (Oregon center Chris) Christofferson, because they’re going to break it up in 2 seconds. You don’t have to be tough to fight during a basketball game.”
Williams later caught himself and made it clear that he wasn’t actually challenging the Ducks’ 7-foot-2, 300-pound center.
“Don’t tell Christofferson I’m looking for a fight,” Williams said.
Oregon coach Ernie Kent has heard a different take on the same theme.
“There’s an approach that basketball is softer on the West Coast and it’s such a false conception because if you look at the history of the NCAA tournament the last four or five years, the Pac-10 has done extremely well,” Kent said.
___
DOUBLE DOMINANCE:@ For the first time in school history, Oregon has a Pac-10 championship in men’s basketball and football in the same academic year.
Only eight times has one conference school won the outright title in both football and men’s basketball: UCLA in 1955-56, 1961-62 and 1982-83; California in 1923-24 and 1958-59, Southern Cal in 1929-30 and 1939-40, and Oregon in 2001-02.
“Being that I graduated from the University of Oregon and seeing how far football has come, it’s just been great times to see the football program and all of their success,” basketball coach Ernie Kent said.
“And we certainly have talked about that as a basketball program, to be able to take our program to that level as well. And having the opportunity to do that this year I just think it sends a very bold statement about the University of Oregon and the athletic department’s commitment to excellence, and about the community.”
___
DEJA LUKE: Oregon forward Luke Jackson isn’t quite a ringer for former Kansas swingman Luke Axtell, but the two Lukes shared enough similarities to turn heads in the Jayhawks’ camp.
Jackson, who scored 25 points Friday night in Oregon’s 72-70 win over Texas, is 6-foot-7 – 3 inches shorter than Axtell, who played two years at Kansas after transferring from Texas.
But Jackson has the same mop haircut, the same outside shooting touch and even the same uniform number – 33 – as Axtell, whose two seasons at Kansas were cut short by injury.
A nagging back condition ended Axtell’s career in 2001, before the Big 12 tournament.
___
GOLFING BUDDIES: Jerry Green, Oregon’s coach from 1992-97, was an assistant to Jayhawks coach Roy Williams and is still a close friend of his former boss.
“He’s a Roy Williams fan,” Williams said, “If I had a brother, I couldn’t have a brother that would mean more to me than Jerry Green. But at the same time … he’s an Oregon fan as well.”
So where did Williams expect his friend’s loyalties to be Sunday?
“My guess is that he will be pulling for Kansas just a little more than Oregon,” Williams said, “because he’s my golf partner in the spring and summer.”
