Basketballs will be bouncing at “Late Night With Bill Self” Oct. 17 at Allen Fieldhouse.
Volleyballs, too.
Kansas University volleyball coach Ray Bechard confirmed Tuesday that his players were leaning toward accepting an offer to play their Oct. 17 match against Iowa State at Allen Fieldhouse instead of Horejsi Center as part of Late Night hoop festivities.
Starting time for the Oct. 17 KU-ISU volleyball match is 8 p.m.
“We are going to play on Late Night. I’m not sure we’ve totally decided on the venue,” said Bechard, KU’s sixth-year coach.
His Jayhawks defeated Iowa State, 3-0, and fell to Texas A&M, 3-0, as part of Late Night festivities in 1998 and 2000, respectively.
“I’ve talked to our team a little bit, and they’d like to play in the fieldhouse. We’ll see if we can work that out,” Bechard said.
Bechard has fond memories of the ’98 Late Night at the fieldhouse, but not-so-fond memories of KU’s 10-15, 13-15, 12-15 setback to powerhouse A&M in 2000.
“I vowed we’d never do it again (after 2000),” said Bechard, who felt the fans were a bit distracted during the volleyball match. “There was a little bit of a sense of people waiting for the next big thing to happen. We’d hope if we tried it this year we can give them a good enough show where they’ll involve themselves to the end of the volleyball part of the evening.
As far as the final decision …
“We’ll see,” said Bechard, whose Jayhawks return four starters off last year’s 19-10 team, including first-team all-Big 12 Conference selection Josi Lima. “You have a lot of things to consider. It’s an opportunity to expose a lot of people to your program, but at the same time you are leaving a venue where you practice, train and are comfortable in to having one or two practices in the fieldhouse (before the ISU match). It’s a mixed bag as far as that goes.”
Allen Fieldhouse seats 16,300; Horejsi Center holds 1,300.
The Jayhawks will play the University of Richmond in a made-for-ESPN TV game Jan. 10 at Allen Fieldhouse. That game will follow KU’s Big 12 opener against Colorado Jan. 5 in Boulder, Colo., and precede a Jan. 14 home meeting against Kansas State.
The game gives Atlantic 10 team Richmond a big-time game on national TV.
“The opportunity to compete in that venue, on a national stage, only helps what we’re trying to do here,” second-year Spiders coach Jerry Wainwright told the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch.
Richmond will play at KU, UAB, Wake Forest and South Florida in its nonconference season.
Home dates on KU’s unofficial schedule include home nonconference games against Pittsburg State (Nov. 11), UT-Chattanooga (Nov. 21), Michigan State (Nov. 25, if KU doesn’t play in Guardians Classic), Fort Hays State (Dec. 10) and SUNY-Binghamton (Dec. 29) with one game yet to be announced.
KU will meet Oregon Dec. 13 in Kemper Arena and play Cal Santa Barbara and Nevada at the Reno Classic Dec. 20-21 in Nevada. KU also tentatively will travel to TCU Dec. 1 and play Stanford in the Wooden Classic Dec. 6 in Anaheim, Calif.
The Big 12 schedule includes four Big Monday games — at home against Missouri Feb. 2 and at Colorado (Jan. 5), Oklahoma State (Feb. 9) and Texas (Feb. 23).
Asked about sophomore setter Andi Rozum, who according to the 2003 KU volleyball outlook is out several weeks because of a hip injury, the KU coach said: “We’re a little restricted in what we can say. I’m not sure our kids have signed a release form or not. I can tell you we’ll be without Andi Rozum the first couple of weeks. I think everybody else will be ready this weekend.”
All KU coaches were briefed Tuesday on the school’s injury policy, put into effect because of increased focus on privacy issues resulting from changes in federal privacy laws.
According to the policy, an injured player must sign an authorization form before coaches or trainers can comment about the player’s injury to the media.
Players can comment about their own injuries, but coaches and trainers will be limited to indicating labels of status (out, questionable, probable, doubtful) when asked about a player’s injury until they have signed authorization.
