The Colorado University basketball team arrived in town Friday night with lame-duck coach Ricardo Patton and slumping star Richard Roby, and the former hasn’t been talking so nicely about the latter.
“Certainly, I think you need a guy who, by the time he is a junior, particularly a Big 12 player, can kind of lead the way for the young guys,” Patton said on the Big 12 Conference call. “That hasn’t happened thus far this season. Defenses are really geared to stop Roby. We have struggled because he hasn’t played this season the way he played last season.”
Patton’s decision to announce in October this would be his last season hasn’t helped, so it’s not as if he doesn’t share in the blame. Look at this way: The players can tune out the coach without fearing it will hurt them beyond this season.
Even without that factor, Colorado would have a nearly impossible shot at matching up with Kansas University today. Expect a blowout in the neighborhood of 90-65. To watch something other than the inevitable breakaway dunk-fest, check out the game within the game: Roby and Brandon Rush. Watch them match up and make the call on who’s the better player and prospect.
Rush has developed into a terrific on-ball defender, and he relishes the challenge of stopping Roby.
“He posts. He shoots. He drives,” Rush said. “He does it all.”
Roby doesn’t spend as much time running around a series of screens, as was the case with so many of Rush’s recent assignments.
“They run a few post plays with him, that’s about it,” Rush said. “Other than that, he creates on his own. He makes his own plays happen. That’s when you can tell when a player’s pretty good, when they make their own plays happen without needing screens all the time.”
Roby is listed at 6-foot-6, 205 pounds. Rush is the same height and carries five more pounds. Rush’s long arms – all the more room to display an array of tattoos – make him play taller.
Both players were more accurate shooting threes last season. Rush has fallen from .472 to a respectable .391. Roby has tumbled from .356 to .237, the latter such a dreadful rate he should stop shooting them. He won’t. In his past five games, Roby has gunned 20 three-pointers and made two.
Scoring on Rush won’t be easy.
“He slides better than anybody we have, and he has more length than anybody we have,” KU coach Bill Self said. “When we recruited him, I talked to (Brandon’s brother) Kareem, and Kareem said, ‘I played one-on-one with Brandon in the summertime, and I kept telling him he could be a good defender, he just doesn’t know what he’s doing.'”
Rush arrived at KU after having attended various high schools and a prep school noted for having a collection of stars from across the country essentially majoring in scoring points.
“When I came here, I didn’t have any clue about defense,” Rush said. “I kind of rolled my eyes at first. I knew defense was important. I didn’t know it was that important. It started sinking in when players started getting hot and we needed some stops.”
The first came when Rush was switched onto Terrell Everett late in the Oklahoma game last season. He shut him down and KU came back from a double-digit deficit to win. Rush has been doing it ever since.
