Not only do KU’s players respect the Aggies because of their 103-28 record since 2000, but also because of what happened to the Jayhawks last March in St. Louis.

A gritty, unheralded No. 16-seeded Holy Cross team scared the daylights out of top-seeded KU, leading at halftime before finally faltering down the stretch in a 70-59 first-round loss.

That 2002 opener remains fresh in the minds of the Jayhawks, who hope to avoid a first-round scare this time.

Tipoff will be approximately 8:40 p.m. at the Ford Center.

“I wouldn’t say there was all-out panic, but there was probably a lot of worry,” KU senior Nick Collison said of last year’s opener. “If you ask anybody on our team, without them lying, they’d say they had to be thinking a little bit about, ‘What if we lose this game?'”

Holy Cross came to play.

“We played a good team that had a good game plan,” Collison said. “They made it tough on us. Hopefully, if we get in that situation again something will happen and we’ll tough out a win.”

The Jayhawks, who lost Kirk Hinrich to a severe ankle sprain just before halftime, barely avoided becoming the first No. 1 seed in NCAA history to lose to a 16.

Thursday, KU will try to avoid becoming the fifth No. 2 seed to fall to a No. 15 in tourney history.

“It was not a comfortable feeling during the game, even though I wasn’t thinking at the time of No. 1 losing to 16,” coach Roy Williams said. “But when I went home that night to watch the tape, it did hit me and the significance of it would have been a little scary if I didn’t realize it.”

Thanks in large part to Drew Gooden, who had 19 points, the Jayhawks prevailed down the stretch.

“Holy Cross just played great,” Williams said. “It is a little scary. One team has absolutely no pressure on it whatsoever. The other team has had a fantastic year, but has all the pressure on them.”

Last year KU freshmen Aaron Miles, Keith Langford and Wayne Simien were making their NCAA debuts. Langford and Miles now have a year experience, but Simien will miss his second tourney because of a shoulder injury. Adding to that experience is sophomore Michael Lee, who played mop-up minutes a year ago, but now is a major factor off the pine.

“I wasn’t scared,” Lee said of his feelings at halftime when Holy Cross led by a point, “but it’s like Nick was saying, nobody knew what would happen if we lost. Our confidence definitely picked up after we won that game.”

The next time out, Kansas walloped Stanford, 86-63.

“I think to start with I was probably intimidated by the whole situation,” Langford said of the NCAA tourney. “Once we played Stanford and knew we had Kirk and knew we had a good enough team to make the Final Four, I felt a lot better after that first game.”

Hinrich didn’t start the Stanford game, but entered early in the first half and was back for the remainder of the tourney.

“I don’t think we’ll panic out there no matter what happens,” Collison said of this year’s game against Utah State.