Keegan: Kansas clearly quicker

By Tom Keegan     Mar 17, 2007

? The first thing the Niagara University basketball program needs to do to ensure this won’t happen again is to buy new video equipment. Apparently, the only working switch on the machine they use to evaluate opponents is the slow-motion one.

“I definitely think we’re the quicker team,” Niagara forward Clif Brown said the day before Friday night’s first-round game against Kansas University.

Quicker to exit the NCAA Tournament: yes. Quicker playing the game 94 feet at a time: not even close.

It wasn’t a basketball game as much as it was a 40-minute, two-on-one fast-break drill won by Kansas, 107-67.

Niagara tried to run with the Jayhawks, an approach about as wise as trying to out-punch George Foreman in his prime. Running is the only way Niagara knows how to play. It was the way the team got to the tournament. A more methodical high seed, such as Wisconsin, which played unimpressively on the same floor in the day’s first session, would have been a better matchup.

Nobody does it better than KU (31-4), winner of 12 in a row.

“I can’t say we’re the fastest team in the country,” KU sixth man Sherron Collins said when the question was put to him. “But one of the fastest.”

So fast that in the final 8:40 of the first half, Kansas outscored the Purple Eagles, 30-9. In the second half, Niagara might as well have been wearing the uniforms of the Washington Generals. The Purple Eagles helplessly watched a slam-fest from behind.

Few fans showed up for the KU open practice Thursday, and Kansas did not put on a dunking show in that one. The Jayhawks saved it for game time.

Even Russell Robinson and the springier Brady Morningstar, who seldom throw them down, dunked on the break. Morningstar’s one-hander pushed KU over the century mark for the first time since its last NCAA Tournament victory, a rout of Alabama-Birmingham that sent it into the Elite Eight in 2004.

Those weren’t the only plays not normally seen in games. Sasha Kaun, the 6-foot-11 junior center, blocked a three-point shot attempt, showing he was listening when drilled repeatedly on the Niagara big men’s tendencies to shoot from long distance.

Another rarity: Matt Kleinmann, the seldom-used sophomore walk-on granted a scholarship for this season, banked in a free throw. One more: Darrell Arthur picked up an assist.

The Purple Eagles were so gassed trying to keep pace, the Kansas shooters fired away at will when they weren’t dunking, making 13 of 22 three-pointers, compared to two of 19 for Niagara.

The harder the Jayhawks ran, the more the Purple Eagles hid.

“When we play together, play on the same page, we can do some unbelievable things,” Collins said. “But we can’t get too up on ourselves. Sunday’s game is not going to be like this.”

The jitters that contributed to first-round flops against longshots Bucknell and Bradley the past two seasons weren’t evident.

“We went hard in the layup line,” Collins said of when the nerves calmed down.

None of the other teams to play Friday in the United Center looked to be in the same class as Kansas.

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