The e-mail was from John Rohde, a veteran sports writer for The Daily Oklahoman who, like me, is a voter in this year’s Associated Press football poll.
Rohde asked if I had a spare minute or two to send him a quick comment about which of the nation’s college football teams I thought clearly were ahead of the field, and why.
So I replied that I really didn’t know because I was confused. I wasn’t sure if this was football season or basketball season. I was joking, of course, but it really is strange when a school’s men’s basketball team starts preseason practice in the middle of August.
As you know, the Jayhawks will begin Bill Self’s second season as head coach by making a Labor Day-weekend junket to that traditional hotbed of basketball — Vancouver, British Columbia.
Yes, that’s the Canadian metropolis that lost an NBA franchise to Memphis, a mid-major U.S. city that boasts an arena that looks like the pyramid of Cheops and the world’s schlockiest tourist attraction — Graceland, home of Elvis Presley, a legendary singer whose sense of music far outstripped his taste in interior design.
We have been informed the names of the teams the Jayhawks will play in Vancouver, but since none of those names are familiar — except for Simon Fraser University, which has won the NAIA swim championship the last two years at, of all places, the Lawrence Indoor Aquatic Center — all we can do is hope our neighbors to the north won’t be trotting out their cricket or field hockey teams to face our boys.
Hopefully, too, the games will be played indoors.
On Sunday, Sept. 5, the Jayhawks will borrow an idea pioneered by major league baseball. For decades, baseball teams played Sunday doubleheaders. Then sometime in the 1970s, I think it was, baseball’s pooh-bahs realized that instead of selling fans back-to-back games, they could sell afternoon and evening games on the same day and charge separate admissions.
Thus the Jayhawks will play a day-night twinbill on that Sunday. At different sites, though. The first game will begin at 11 a.m. — Vancouver is in the Pacific time zone — and the second game at 7 p.m. The venues supposedly are about an hour apart, so travel shouldn’t be a problem unless the Jayhawks board the Victoria ferry and visit the home of NBA standout Steve Nash instead of driving, as scheduled, to the town of Abbotsford.
Has a Kansas University basketball team ever played two games in one day? Probably not, but 100-plus years of basketball is a long time and, heck, maybe around the turn of the century James Naismith figured two games a day were better than two practices a day.
Two games in the same day is a good idea because the double-dip should provide an answer to the only real question surrounding the 2004-2005 KU edition: Do these Jayhawks possess a deep enough bench to reach the NCAA Final Four?
Self had too many 35-minute men last season. If the KU coach had had another dependable point guard and a big man who could have stayed out of foul trouble and complement Wayne Simien, the Jayhawks might well have reached the Final Four.
As it was, Georgia Tech exploited the Jayhawks’ weaknesses — as every talented deeper team did — and, in effect, Kansas went about as far as it could go with what it had.
If Self can’t give Simien, point guard Aaron Miles and swing man Keith Langford — the heart of this team just as seniors Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich were two years ago — more rest, then the Jayhawks will continue to be a gassed team on just one day of rest.
You know all about the Jayhawks’ new faces. They’ve been publicized like they’re all NBA first-round draft choices. Everybody expects them to step in and become instant successes, euphorically forgetting that a freshman who contributes is historically rare, that the transition from high school to college is like taking that first step on the moon. It can be a giant leap.
Regardless, during the next couple of weeks, you’re going to experience a phenomenon — countdowns to a kickoff and a tipoff.
