OKLAHOMA CITY ? Rob Evans doesn’t need a scouting report on Nick Collison.
Collison, Kansas University’s senior forward, had just graduated from high school in Iowa Falls, Iowa, when he played for Evans, Arizona State’s basketball coach, on USA Basketball’s silver-medal team in the 1999 Junior World Championships.
Collison and Evans will be on opposite benches at 7 tonight, when second-seeded Kansas (26-7) meets 10th-seeded ASU (20-11) in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at Ford Center.
Evans knows he doesn’t have one player who can stop Collison, KU’s 6-foot-9 All-American, alone.
“We’ll go with a lot of different people,” Evans said Friday. “You have to put a lot of different people on him. You can’t put one guy on him and expect to guard him. I know how good he is. He’s a tremendous talent.”
Collison, the Big 12 Conference’s career scoring leader, averages 18.4 points and 9.3 rebounds.
He’d be pulling for the Sun Devils if they weren’t playing his Jayhawks.
“(Evans) really wants his kids to play hard,” Collison said. “He’s a very good basketball coach. He knows what he’s doing. He really tries to get you to play hard. Of all the coaches I’ve played for in the summers, he’s probably my favorite just because he’s such a great guy.”
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Drew who: Kansas has missed the scoring and rebounding ability of former All-American Drew Gooden, who left school early for the NBA after last season. But has anyone replaced Gooden’s light-hearted attitude?
Red-shirt freshman Jeff Hawkins has.
KU sophomore Keith Langford said that, as he returned to the floor after a timeout late in Thursday’s 64-61 first-round victory against Utah State, Hawkins stopped Langford to compliment his hair.
“We were in a situation where we could lose the game, and he’s actually telling me about my hair,” Langford said. “It makes you lighten up.”
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No respect: KU coach Roy Williams tried to put some perspective on his team’s nail-biter against the Aggies.
“If we had played that kind of game last night against Utah, nobody would have thought anything about it because Utah’s reputation is so much better,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, Utah State beat Utah this year, and Utah State beat Utah last year.”
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Senior class: In an era when elite high school players skip college to go to the NBA and many college players leave school early, KU fans might think they have an advantage with the experience of senior All-America candidates Collison and Kirk Hinrich. Arizona State, however, has seven seniors, including four who start.
“Somebody asked me if that was key,” Williams said. “I said, ‘It would be if nobody else had any.'”
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Oh, brother: Arizona State senior forward Shawn Redhage is the younger brother of Jeff Redhage, who played defensive end for KU’s football team in 1997 and 1999.
“He goes to all the KU football games,” Shawn Redhage said of his brother, a manager for Turner Construction in Kansas City. “He has season tickets to all those games, but he’ll definitely be rooting for me tomorrow.”
Shawn Redhage averages 8.1 points a game, but he has scored in double figures every game since moving into the starting lineup six games ago. He had 18 points and five rebounds in Thursday’s 84-71 victory over seventh-seeded Memphis.
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Superstition: During last season’s march to the Final Four, Williams had his team rub the belly of a Billiken statue for good luck in St. Louis, and the Jayhawks also have been known to spit in rivers to help their chances.
So far, the Jayhawks haven’t had any outrageous outings in Oklahoma City.
“We haven’t spit in any rivers or rubbed any bellies or anything like that,” Langford said. “I think coach is letting us go on pure talent and ability.”
Williams, a die-hard New York Yankee fan, was asked if he would rub the statue of Oklahoma native and Yankee legend Mickey Mantle that stands outside Bricktown Ballpark, home of the minor-league Oklahoma Redhawks.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Williams said with a laugh. “But that might not be a bad idea. We don’t play until 7 o’clock. I’ve got the whole day. I can’t watch the games (on TV) because the timeouts are too long.”
