Kansas City, Mo. ? Wanted: The meanest, nastiest, most sadistic student at Kansas University, a male version of Tonya Harding. Please report to the basketball office and get fitted for a uniform. Immediately.
These nice personalities wearing Kansas across their chests sure do know how to produce some ugly basketball. Here’s how to correct it: Get ugly with each other. Yell at your teammates, at yourself, even at your coach if the urge strikes you. Show a pulse.
In a performance far rattier even than the building in which it was played, charmless Kemper Arena, KU survived Toledo, 68-58. If Dr. James Naismith knew it one day was going to come to this, he would have left the peaches in the basket and lobbied the right people to legislate that football become a year-round sport.
The Jayhawks played such an ugly game they removed any doubt as to whether they deserve to be ranked 12th in the country. They don’t. Not only that, they don’t deserve to have such pretty young ladies dancing for them during breaks in the action. Until they play back-to-back-to-back pretty games, the Jayhawks should be sentenced to having the dancers replaced by Camilla Parker-Bowles, Sally Jesse Raphael, Dr. Ruth, Rhea Perlman, Rosie O’Donnell and Barbra Streisand.
This is a team that needs to get more aggressive with a 10-point lead, instead of less aggressive. Go for it. Take a wild shot. If you get benched for it, yell at the coach, and when you go back in, take another wild shot. Anything but this plodding, ugly ball. You don’t block 15 shots, as KU did, without getting a single shot blocked, and only win the game by 10 points. That doesn’t happen at any level.
A frustrated coach, Bill Self, bemoaned that his team at the moment is “just a bunch of nice guys out there playing ball.”
Darrell Arthur is the most talented of the bunch. How nice is he? He asked out of the starting lineup. Who does that?
“I was in foul trouble a lot when I was starting,” Arthur said. “I was picking up two quick fouls and sitting on the bench the rest of the half. At the start of the season, I was not starting the game and was playing more minutes, so I thought it was better for the team, scoring-wise. I think I produce more when I come off the bench. I don’t really like starting. I like to see how the players are going to be playing the first couple of minutes.”
Here’s a better idea: Start Arthur, and eventually he’ll get comfortable with it and learn how to avoid quick fouls. Now’s the time for learning how to correct flaws. If he wants to come off the bench, that’s all the more reason to make him start.
As it was, Arthur sat the first six minutes, entered with Kansas leading by a point and still only played six first-half minutes because he picked up two personal fouls.
Other than the foul problems, Arthur has been among the most consistent performers for a team that has been anything but consistent. Julian Wright, for example, was such a non-factor he played six second-half minutes.
“You don’t go from being a really good player to a really bad player overnight,” Self said. “And for the guys that are competitive and confident, that shouldn’t happen.”
So far, it’s the ugly truth about this team.
