Kaun a ‘monster’

By Ryan Wood Jan 16, 2005

Boulder, Colo. ? There was no drawn-up play designed to make Sasha Kaun look like a beast Saturday.

As often is the case, it simply was a matter of point guard Aaron Miles making all his teammates look like All-Americans, if only for a moment.

Early on in Kansas University’s 76-61 victory over Colorado on Saturday, Miles lobbed an alley-oop pass that Kaun grabbed and threw down with ferocious force, despite CU junior Chris Copeland fouling Kaun by smashing his face with a forearm in an attempt to negate the otherwise easy slam.

It didn’t work. Kaun finished strong, the KU half of the 11,057 in attendance at the Coors Events Center went bonkers, and Kaun finished off the three-point play by swishing his free throw to put KU up 12-4.

“I give all the credit to Aaron. He did a nice job,” Kaun said. “It worked out well.”

Kaun had another jam before the half was over and finished with eight points on 3-of-3 shooting, all before halftime. With C.J. Giles battling sickness, Alex Galindo battling foul trouble and Christian Moody still battling a nagging ankle injury, Kaun’s contribution — no matter how small — turned out to be pretty big for No. 2 Kansas, now 13-0 overall and 3-0 in the Big 12 Conference.

“Sasha was a monster early on,” fellow forward Wayne Simien said. “Coach has been pressing him to play to his size, and those two monster dunks early on in the game really got us fired up.”

Kaun’s game still could use some polish, and he admits as much. But after scoring nine points in KU’s first 10 games, Kaun has 15 in the Jayhawks’ last three, on 6-of-7 shooting. He scored seven points in KU’s 65-59 victory over Kentucky, with two of his field goals turning into three-point-play opportunities.

“I’m a lot more confident,” Kaun said. “It’s coming a lot better to me than it was at the beginning.”