The timing couldn’t be better for the Kansas University women’s basketball team to take a trip and play in the Denver Wells Fargo tournament today.
Kansas has won four in a row.
After opening with an embarrassing road loss to the University of Missouri-Kansas City, KU hit the road again and split a pair of games in the Oregon Classic.
“The attitude when we went to Oregon was that we were coming off this really bad game and we had a gritty quality about us,” said Aquanita Burras, KU’s second-leading scorer with an average of 10.5 points a game. “Now we have a lot more confidence.”
The Jayhawks have won their last four games by a combined score of 301-215.
KU’s possible opponents on its trip to Denver aren’t exactly blowing teams away either.
The University of Texas-Arlington, which the Jayhawks will play first at 2 p.m. today at Magness Arena, sports a 3-5 record. The Mavs, however, ended a five-game losing skid with a 59-51 win over Hawaii earlier this week. Host Denver has the best record of any of the three teams, with a 3-3 mark, but is coming off a 82-51 loss to No. 23-ranked Washington. Lafayette is winless.
If Kansas wins today, the Jayhawks would play in the tourney championship game at 4 p.m. Sunday. A loss, and the Jayhawks would face the loser of today’s second game in the consolation contest at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Despite the shaky success of the teams in the tourney, KU coach Marian Washington says the trip will offer even more time for her young squad to get more comfortable.
“Even though we had that preseason tournament to start the year, we have so many newcomers, that we are still adjusting to each other everyday,” said Washington, whose team is 3-1 this season in tournament games.
“This will be a little different than our first trip in the fact that now we have found the attitude of coming out and showing up for each and every game, and rising to that challenge.”
After this weekend, the Jayhawks will have a week off before traveling Dec. 29 to Dartmouth.
