The Jayhawks brought a little slice of home with them to Oklahoma City, helping transform the NBA Hornets’ locker room into a place reminiscent of the home room at Allen Fieldhouse.
The reminder: A small Jayhawk mat resting in the middle of the floor, symbolic of the giant Jayhawk on the carpet of their home locker room on campus.
The same rules apply: Don’t walk on it, or else face swift justice at the hands of a team that hasn’t exactly backed down from some of the biggest athletes around.
“You can’t step on it,” guard Brady Morningstar said. “No way.”
Briefly joining the mat on the locker room’s floor Sunday evening was something new headed back to Lawrence: the tournament championship trophy, with a cut-down net draped over the top.
The mat soon was packed away for safe keeping and a trip this week to Chicago for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
¢Good times: Patti Hadl can’t lose.
Hadl – “My dad is second cousin to John” – and a friend came to Oklahoma City with no idea where to park, no tickets and few prospects for entertainment.
Then they scored a parking space just a block from the Ford Center (“Wide open, 75 cents for five hours!); the boss came through with free tickets (“Lower level!”); and a young Oklahoma State fan recognized them from their two appearances on local TV and asked them to sign autographs on a tight space of his anatomy normally reserved for sitting down.
Fun stuff.
“Pretty good streak,” Hadl said.
The Prairie Village resident (she moved from Lawrence six months ago) won’t promise similar results during the upcoming NCAAs. Too superstitious.
But she likes KU’s chances.
“We’ll beat ’em all!” Hadl said.
¢Tees time: Those championship T-shirts players were wearing after Sunday’s game?
Pulled right out of a box from none other than Prairie Graphics, of Lawrence.
¢No bet yet: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius already has spoken with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue about the Jayhawks making the trip to the Final Four, but she’s not ready to place any bets – no Kansas City strip steaks, buffalo burgers or sunflower kernels against a basket of peaches or anything.
“It’s a little premature for that,” she said Sunday at the Ford Center.
But like seemingly all KU fans this time of year, she’s counting on KU playing for the title April 2 in Atlanta.
“We went to the Final Four the first year I was governor,” Sebelius said. “Now it’s the first year of my re-elect, so it’s time to go back – and win it this time.”
¢Nice call: Pam Johnston took a chance and it paid off.
Three weeks ago she bought three tickets to Sunday’s championship game of the Big 12 Tournament, figuring that Kansas would be playing for the title.
She’d bring the kids – KU students Chelsea, a sophomore, and Dez, a freshman – down from Lawrence for an up-close-and-personal look at some championship Jayhawks.
The confidence paid off.
“It’s a good luck charm,” mom said after the victory, hugging the kids.
So, with the Final Four now three weeks out, will she spring for three more seats at the next title game – this one April 2, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta?
“I don’t think so,” she said with a simple shake of the head, perhaps calculating the rising ticket prices and travel costs. “I have to finance two college educations.”