Now that the 2003-04 Kansas University men’s basketball schedule is finally complete, Larry Keating can take a deep breath … and start working on next year’s slate.
“I guarantee you it’ll be done before August next year. I’m not doing that again,” Keating, KU’s new senior associate athletic director, joked of sweating out a slate that took until Sept. 8 to release.
Some pieces of the 2004-05 schedule, which Keating will sculpt, already are in place.
Kansas will return games to Michigan State (in East Lansing, Mich.), Villanova (at FirstUnion Arena, Philadelphia) and UT Chattanooga in 2004-05.
The Jayhawks will entertain the University of Nevada and Texas Christian in Allen Fieldhouse and meet Cal-Berkeley in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena. Cal is KU’s opponent in the Feist Shootout two years after the Jayhawks met the Golden Bears in the Pete Newell Challenge at another off-campus site, the Oakland Arena.
“We need to get probably one or two of what I call major games — home games next year. Bill (Self, coach) and I will be talking about upper-echelon teams,” Keating said.
There have been rumors one marquee game could match KU against a team from the Southeast Conference as part of a Big 12-SEC challenge between schools in the two leagues.
“I don’t hear that is going to happen next year. We talked briefly about that last week when we met with the Big 12 staff,” Keating said.
The Jayhawks will play in an exempt tournament next year only if the NCAA’s appeal of a recent court ruling overturning the 2-and-4 exempt-games rule fails in federal court in January.
The exempt tourney of choice for KU would likely be the Coaches Vs. Cancer Tournament in New York.
“If we scheduled it properly, we could get into the Garden every other year with Coach’s Vs. Cancer and the (Preseason) NIT,” Keating said of Madison Square Garden, where the Jayhawks want to play regularly for media exposure and also the fact KU has expanded its recruiting efforts to New York and other East Coast venues under Self.
“We’ll still go to the West Coast, as well.”
As far as this year’s schedule, Keating is pleased the Jayhawks were able to complete the home schedule with games against Richmond of the Atlantic Ten and Villanova of the Big East.
“The bonus is we got both games on ESPN,” Keating said. “They (ESPN officials) basically created a slot for the Villanova game on Jan. 2, and it will go up against the Fiesta Bowl that night (on ABC). They come out of the Peach Bowl I guess with a pretty good rating, and they feel that’s a good combination.”
As far as the return game to Villanova, it seems the Wildcats wanted the contest to be played off campus, at the home of the Philadelphia 76ers.
“They play three, four, five games a year there,” Keating said, noting the building seats about 13,000 more than Villanova’s campus arena. “They try to play at least one major intersectional game there. We didn’t even have a discussion. It’s where they wanted to play.”
KU coach Self said Monday he wasn’t crazy about a 10 p.m. start time for the Texas Christian game Dec. 1 in Fort Worth, Texas.
“It’s in the Conference USA package,” Keating said. “ESPN does a 6, 8, 10 p.m. game, and we were put in the 10 slot. We certainly wouldn’t do it here. I think on the road sometimes it’s a question if it’s something the other school has to do. We are chartering (a flight) to the game anyway. It just means we’ll get back a little later. It’s not as bad as it could be if you were not chartering.”
Keating said he did not foresee any problems in the future trying to get big-name teams to agree to home-and-home series with the Jayhawks.
“I don’t think Allen Fieldhouse has been an issue,” Keating said of teams not wanting to travel to Lawrence because of KU’s great success on its home court. “The program is so good, power-game people don’t look at it as a negative at all. Talk about UCLAs, Arizonas, Duke, Kentucky, Carolina … clearly Kansas is in that category. Those type people don’t have a problem with it at all.”
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Visits: KU coach Self and assistant Norm Roberts were in New York Tuesday for in-home recruiting visits with A.J. Price, 6-1 from Amityville, N.Y., and Russell Robinson, 6-1 from New York City.
Price visited KU last weekend and is off to Syracuse this weekend with trips to UConn and St. John’s also on tap. Robinson, who will visit Georgia Tech Sept. 19-20, will visit KU Sept 26-27. UConn, Florida State, St. John’s, Kentucky and Pitt also are high on his list.
“I feel a lot better about Kansas now than I did one or two months ago,” Robinson told Shay Wildeboor of rivals.com. “It’s a real possibility that I could end up playing for the Kansas Jayhawks.”
Self and Roberts will visit the home of Alexander “Sasha” Kaun’s legal guardian tonight in Melbourne, Fla. Kaun visited KU last weekend and will trek to Michigan State this weekend and Duke at the end of the month. On Thursday, Self heads to the home of Quentin Thomas, 6-4 from Oakland, Calif. Thomas is considering KU, Arizona State, North Carolina, Utah and Oregon. ASU made its in-home visit with Thomas Tuesday.
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SI rankings: Sports Illustrated’s On Campus edition ranked the best college towns in the country. Lawrence cracked the top 20 at 16th. Three other Big 12 Conference towns made the list. Austin, Texas, was third, behind Madison, Wis., and Athens, Ga. Boulder, Colo., was fifth, and College Station, Texas, was ninth. Chapel Hill, N.C., ranked 14th — two spots ahead of Lawrence. SI ranked Carbondale, Ill. — home of Southern Illinois — as the nation’s worst college town.
