A Kansas University athletic team other than men’s basketball will have to deal with the pressure of a Mike Anderson-coached opponent today.
In this instance, the Jayhawks will be the underdogs when the baseball team opens its Big 12 season against reigning conference champion Nebraska at 2:05 p.m. today at Lincoln, Neb.
“My message to my team when we arrive in Lincoln Thursday is that we’ve prepared to be here,” said KU coach Ritch Price. “And we’ve proven that we compete at this kind of level. Now we need to go do it.”
Price, whose 21-9-1 Jayhawks have seven more wins then the 20th-ranked Cornhuskers (14-4), said he didn’t want to see a repeat of last year’s conference season, his first at KU.
“I thought we got into Big 12 and all of the sudden there was a little bit of, ‘Oh well, we’ve been here before, and we always get our rear kicked each and every year and so what,'” Price said.
Price said his squad needed the kind of attitude KU athletic director Lew Perkins had talked about if the Jayhawks were going to be successful.
“I thought one of the great quotes that Lew Perkins brought when he came here in his opening press conference was he was going to bring a swagger back to Kansas,” Price said.
“That’s kind of what we’ve tried to do in our baseball program. We want our guys to be confident. We want to walk into Lincoln with the feeling in our dugout that there are 25 guys here that think they can beat the 4,000 people in the stands.”
That will be the challenge for KU, because Anderson’s squad is riding a season-best seven-game win streak.
  6Sports video: KU baseball to face Nebraska 6Sports video: Baseball team ready for conference opener |
Kansas defeated NU once last year in Lawrence. But that 5-4 victory offered few bragging rights considering the Cornhuskers’ 16-7 and 13-0 victories at KU, and a 9-4 win in the Jayhawks’ first Big 12 tournament.
The Jayhawks, who are on a three-game win streak of their own, haven’t been able to replicate the success they’ve had at Hoglund Ballpark on the road.
Kansas is 14-1 and hitting a scorching .398 in Lawrence with 29 home runs. But KU is only 3-6 on the road, and the Jayhawks’ batting average drops to .296 with only five round-trippers.
Junior outfielder Andy Scholl, one of a handful of junior-college transfers, said he might not know what to expect of the Big 12 yet, but he thought Kansas would have a shot at not only upending NU this weekend, but returning to the state of Nebraska later this spring.
“I think if we play the way we’re capable of we’ll have a very good shot in Lincoln,” Scholl said. “And if we did that throughout our league play, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could make it back to Omaha for the World Series.”
Allen Fieldhouse, normally almost vacant for Kansas University women’s basketball games, should be rocking tonight when the Jayhawks play host to No. 4-ranked Kansas State.
KU officials expect a crowd in the 6,000 range for the Big 12 Conference opener, which is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. That’s a lot more than the average crowd of 727 the Jayhawks drew for their first six home games.
Quite likely, the bulk of the tonight’s crowd will be wearing purple, although KU coach Marian Washington hopes not.
“We’re certainly hoping that we have more blue in the stands than we had a year ago,” she said. “Whether we do or we don’t, I think the big thing for our team is to stay focused on what it is we want to accomplish out there.”
Last year’s KU-KSU game in Lawrence lured 11,858 fans — by far KU’s largest of the season. But that game was played on a Sunday afternoon and the ticket price was $5. This year KU officials jacked the price to $10, hoping to generate additional revenue from the many KSU fans who follow their nationally ranked team.
Even though there will probably be more K-State backers than KU fans in the stands tonight, the Jayhawks hope to make a stronger showing than last year when they bowed, 65-40.
“We’re ready,” KU sophomore Blair Waltz said. “We’ve been ready since the first of the season.”
Kansas State (13-1) is smoking, having won eight in a row, including a 103-60 victory over Iowa on Sunday. KSU sophomore sharpshooter Laurie Koehn drilled the Hawkeyes for 33 points, all but three coming on 10-of-13 shooting from three-point range.
“Any great shooter like Koehn is going to get hers,” Washington said. “We’re just going to try to cut into that.”
Cut into it, though, while still keeping track of standouts Kendra Wecker and Nicole Ohlde. Wecker, a sophomore, averages 20.9 points per game, while Ohlde, a junior, comes to Lawrence averaging 17.9 per contest.
“We are playing quality basketball,” K-State coach Deb Patterson said. “We are finding a way, game by game, to manage the game. To that extent, I’m pleased.”
The Jayhawks, who like K-State have no seniors on the roster, have also been winning. Kansas (7-4) defeated Georgia State 66-58 on Saturday at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., for the Jayhawks’ third straight victory.
“I think they’re excited,” Washington said of her players and the expected big crowd tonight, “but I don’t know if they’re necessarily prepared. Until you experience it, you can only imagine what it might be like.”
