Check out these stories for more insight before KU’s game against Lehigh:
Lehigh forward Zahir Carrington didn’t come to Oklahoma City to roll over for top-ranked and top-seeded Kansas University.
“You have to have the utmost confidence in your ability,” Carrington said. “If we were to come down here and just think that we were going to play hard, or come and think that we were going to lose, I’d rather not come at all.”
Even though Lehigh is a 16 seed — and even though 16 seeds are 0-100 against No. 1 seeds in the men’s NCAA Tournament — the Mountain Hawks weren’t backing down from the Jayhawks in their comments to reporters Wednesday at the Ford Center.
“They’re not like Supermen or anything like that,” freshman guard C.J. McCollum said of the Jayhawks. “We just feel like we can compete with anybody on the national stage. We’ve put in a lot of time and work in on our own, so we’re not intimidated or scared of anyone.”
Just after the brackets were released Sunday, Carrington told the Easton (Pa.) Express-Times: “(Kansas) has great players, as everybody knows, but if we just stay focused, I like our chances. Maybe we can steal one.”
Carrington talked more Wednesday about the faith he had in his teammates.
“We have a talented team,” Carrington said. “Everybody’s asking us how we’re going to stop Kansas, but I’m sure Kansas is probably thinking, too, how are they going to stop us?”
Lehigh has some talent. McCollum, a 6-foot-3, 165-pound guard from Canton, Ohio, leads the nation in freshman scoring average (18.9 points per game) and also was named the Patriot League Player of the Year.
Carrington, meanwhile, was the MVP of the conference tournament. The 6-7, 220-pound forward from Philadelphia posted 18 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks in the Mountain Hawks’ 74-59 championship-game victory over Lafayette.
“Honestly, we step on the court, everybody’s the same,” Carrington said. “There’s no (No.) 1, 16. We’ve been playing basketball our entire lives. We work just as hard as anybody else.”
Carrington said his team had three main goals against KU defensively: to get back in transition, to slow down KU’s high-low offense and to try to stop KU’s ball-screen attack.
“This game is pretty much no different than any other game we’ve had this year,” Carrington said. “We’ve been able to lock teams up and take away what they like to do.”
Lehigh coach Brett Reed admitted it wasn’t likely that many people were picking the Mountain Hawks to win in their office pools.
“It doesn’t really matter what anybody else thinks except for the individuals who are on our team, who are within our coaching staff and who have been through the process of what we’ve done,” Reed said. “This is not a popularity contest that we’re facing on Thursday night. It’s an opportunity for two teams to square off, face-to-face and give their best, whatever that best might look like.”
