Thad Allender/Journal-World PhotoSt. Louis ? Lewis and Clark arrived here two centuries ago, preparing to embark on the greatest adventure in American history — the exploration of the Louisiana Purchase and Oregon Territory.
What few people realize, though, is that President Thomas Jefferson offered the intrepid men two bits of advice before they began their dangerous journey.
According to recently discovered lost pages from Clark’s journal, Jefferson suggested the men paddle up the Missouri River to Kansas City to avoid all the trucks on Interstate 70 and, by all means, to linger awhile and experience “the fastest 40 minutes of basketball.”
OK, so you don’t buy that revisionist history. I am kidding, of course. Jefferson knew only dirt roads, and it would be nearly another century before a gym teacher named James Naismith found another use for peach baskets.
We’ve read and heard a ton this week about “40 minutes of hell” and “the fastest 40 minutes of basketball” — dubbed the former when coach Nolan Richardson used that agitated beehive style at Arkansas, and the latter now that Richardson disciple Mike Anderson employs it at UAB.
I suppose they could have called it “40 minutes of hell II” or “Son of 40 minutes of hell” or even something like “40 minutes of hell: Jason’s Revenge.” Then again, perhaps the H word is considered too vulgar to use in the genteel South.
UAB is in Birmingham, Ala. I point that out because the school prefers not to be referred to as Alabama-Birmingham, which is fine because UAB fits more easily into a headline. School officials will accept University of Alabama at Birmingham, but that’s like writing a paragraph.
But I digress. Let’s get back to the 40 minutes of you-know-what.
So much has been written and blabbed this week about how difficult that style will be for Kansas University to handle in view of the Jayhawks’ short bench and their occasional lapses into 20-plus turnover games, I’m beginning to wonder if all the blather isn’t a red herring.
Is the Jayhawks’ ability to dispose of the pesky No. 9-seeded Blazers predicated on KU handling UAB’s defensive pressure? Or is there another more important factor that everyone is overlooking in the face of the media blitz about UAB’s blitzkrieg?
For instance, do the Jayhawks have any kind of advantage playing in a massive domed arena? UAB never has experienced the wide-open spaces of an indoor football stadium turned into a basketball arena. Kansas has.
In fact, Wayne Simien and Keith Langford, the Jayhawks’ top two scorers, and point guard Aaron Miles played in the Edward Jones Dome two years ago as freshmen on the only Big 12 Conference team ever to go through the league race without a defeat. They also played in the NCAA Final Four at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome two weeks later.
And last year, as you know, the Jayhawks added the Louisiana Superdome to their dome dance card when they battled Marquette and Syracuse in the Final Four.
Experience with dome-ball is no guarantee, particularly when you consider how mightily the Jayhawks struggled at the free-throw line last March in New Orleans. Most KU fans know Kansas lost the national-championship game to Syracuse primarily because the Jayhawks made only 12 of 30 free-throw attempts.
Not much was made, however, about why KU was so inaccurate at the foul stripe in the Superdome. We’ll never know, but certainly the dome factor had something to do with it. In the semifinal against Marquette, the Jayhawks cashed a not-so-good 10 of 17 charities, but that stat was ignored after KU’s stunning 94-61 romp over the Golden Eagles.
Overall, KU made 22 of 47 free throws the last time the Jayhawks played in a domed arena. That’s a dreadful 46.8 percent. So perhaps free-throw shooting will be more important tonight than UAB’s two-thirds of an hour of hardwood guerrilla warfare.
Or as Native American guide Sacajawea reportedly stressed to Lewis and Clark: “Dollar coins don’t mean squat unless properly inserted in the vending machine slot.”
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