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Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski calls a play from the bench during the second half against Michigan on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011 at the Lahaina Civic Center.
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KU vs. UCLA
Podcast episode
Press Conferences & Post-Game Interviews
KU coach Bill Self and players
KU coach Bill Self, Tyshawn Taylor, Elijah Johnson and Thomas Robinson talk to reporters following the Jayhawks' 72-56 victory over UCLA on Nov. 22, 2011.
KU vs. UCLA
• Elijah Johnson helps KU dispatch UCLA
• Keegan: Victory over UCLA sets up meeting with Blue Devils
Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self is definitely energized about Wednesday’s 9 p.m. Maui Invitational final against Duke.
“It’s pretty common knowledge they’ve never lost a game in Maui,” Self said of the Blue Devils, who will take a 14-0 record into Wednesday’s game against KU.
“We felt if we could get to the finals, that’s who we would be playing. So I don’t think that’s a bad or cocky statement at all,” he added of wanting to play Duke. “If you are going to win the tournament, you are probably going to have to play Duke. History shows that. We’re excited to have the opportunity to play them. Obviously they’re a terrific team, and they have a lot of things going for them and are a class program, which I think we are, too, and we don’t get a chance to play them very often.
“This would be big for us. I’m sure it’s big for their guys, too, to get a chance to play Kansas. I think it will be a fun, fun game. Hopefully we play really well, because we’ll have to have a chance to win.”
The series
Duke leads the all-time series versus KU, 6-2. KU won the last meeting, 69-65, on March 27, 2003. That was a 2003 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 game in Anaheim, Calif.
KU forward Nick Collison had an incredible game. He scored a career-high 33 points and grabbed 19 rebounds while playing all 40 minutes. He scored seven straight points to give the Jayhawks a six-point lead with 5:41 left.
“With it all on the line, if you lose, you’re done. I’ll be proud of this one for a long time,” Collison said at the time.
The Jayhawks advanced to the NCAA title game in ’03, falling to Syracuse, 81-78, in New Orleans.
KU coach Roy Williams left for North Carolina after that season.
Duke bested KU, 69-64, in a second-round NCAA Tourney game in 2000 in Winston-Salem, N.C., and, 72-65, in the 1991 NCAA title game in Indianapolis.
In 1988, KU tripped Duke, 66-59, in the Final Four semifinals at Kemper Arena. And in 1986, Duke stopped KU, 71-67, in the national semifinals in Dallas.
Elijah says
Elijah Johnson on how UCLA looked with Jerime Anderson (14 points, four assists) running the point:
“I felt he had a chip on his shoulder. He felt like he had to do something for the team. He stepped up. For some reason, Jones (Lazeric, eight points, no assists) came out of the game for a while, and he (Anderson) tried to put the team on his back. He felt he had to do something, so he struck. And when he struck, he had a couple plays where he did big things, a momentum boost for the program. He tried to get them rolling. That was something we had to put an end to real quick. The game would have got real intense.”
Anderson had 10 points the second half as UCLA cut a 20-point deficit to five, but could get no closer than that.
Movin’ up
Tyshawn Taylor now has 996 career points and 404 assists.
He is 14th player in KU history with 400 or more assists.
Comments
TheGiftedOne 10 years, 7 months ago
What an interesting quote from Elijah right there. Never heard a player praise another player quite that way. I feel like Elijah may not be the highest IQ player or the best shooter, but he seems to have a feel for the game. You can point to his athletic ability, he is always beating someone to a spot on offense and defense. He has been reminding me of Mario a lot with his quick release and defensive reads. Now all I'm waiting for is a clutch moment.
tis4tim 10 years, 7 months ago
The play last night where E.J. waved his team off, took his man one-on-one and drilled a shot in his face from the top of the key was pretty clutch considering the run UCLA was on at the time. I'm sure E.J. will have bigger moments this season, but that was pretty good.
Michael Pannacciulli 10 years, 7 months ago
What is with those God-awful warm-ups!?!?! Hideous. Not even our colors.
Looking forward to this Duke game. Unreal non conference schedule so far. Will only benefit them seeing real competition like this early on as the season progresses.
kupride4u 10 years, 7 months ago
When in Maui.....
PJ Karasek 10 years, 7 months ago
It's because Adidas is promoting their "crazy light" shoes, which only come in certain colors, that blue being one of them. That's why all the Adidas schools in attendance are wearing the same blue colored shoes. Not royal, not navy, but kind of a dark sky blue.
Michael Pannacciulli 10 years, 7 months ago
Hahaha....thanks. Man...they are bad. lebowski sums it up best...
captku 10 years, 7 months ago
And the matching socks? All I know is all that had better be comfy.
jhox 10 years, 7 months ago
I think we match up well with Duke, but I'm a little concerned about our lack of depth and having to play 3 days in a row. I thought our guys lacked some of their bounce by the second half of last night's game. I hope that wasn't early signs of fatigue setting in.
At least Withey should be fresh. Too bad the refs won't let stay in a game. He's gotten some very tough luck calls the last two games.
ohmixmaster 10 years, 7 months ago
Agreed, Withey seems to be getting the short end of the stick with the officials the past couple of days. Lets hope the game is called fair and we are not "Duked." I'm thinking this will be a fast paced very competitive game. Lets hope not only for that but a KU win!! RCJH!
tis4tim 10 years, 7 months ago
I think you've isolated one of the reasons I despise Duke so much. They're good enough to win on their own merit, yet they seemingly get plenty of extra help from the refs. Calls, especially those of the 50-50 variety, seem to come out 80-20 in their favor. I can't back that up with concrete evidence. It's just how it feels.
For me, this goes back to '86 when I thought we got jobbed out of a championship appearance because of Duke favoritism and those awful feelings have stuck all these years later. But if you want a more recent example, I thought the flagrant call on Michigan''s Novak in yesterday's game was excessive and it effectively extinguished a furious Michigan rally by giving Duke the foul shots and the ball with about a minute to play after Michigan had crept to within 5.
If by luck, by skill, or by ref, I don't care how we do it. Just beat Duke!
nuleafjhawk 10 years, 7 months ago
Every Duke game I've ever watched has been officiated grossly in their favor. I don't know if they're scared of the "Devil", or Coach K's nose impaling them or what, but it is blatantly obvious that they're not going to lose many games because of officiating. Duke has to go out of their way to play poorly and beat themselves. Always.
I'm not just talking about against KU - it's against everyone, so I don't want anybody to say it's just "sour grapes". It's sour alright, it makes your face pucker to watch one of their games.
David Lara 10 years, 7 months ago
Exactly, Tim. I also seem to remember them getting some ridiculous calls when Baylor had them in good position in the 2010 tourney regional final. Several at the end, if I remember correctly. More than just a little odd.
PJ Karasek 10 years, 7 months ago
I've gotten the impression that the refs are calling all hand contact. They're letting a lot of the body stuff go but the instant we use our hands it's getting whistled. Just my observation at least.
Ann Oneill 10 years, 7 months ago
I don't think we match up well with Duke at all. The Plumlees will absolutely destroy our bigs in the paint (with the exception of Thomas).
Lash 10 years, 7 months ago
EJ will be big for us all year. He is a very good shooter and probably a higher IQ than some of our posters.
Marcia Parsons 10 years, 7 months ago
I think the previous poster was referring to his "basketball IQ" and not his overall intelligence.
Clarence Haynes 10 years, 7 months ago
+1 EJ's a gamer! Now that he is playing on a regular basis, he will have that rythm to be highly a productive player alongside Tyshawn and TRob.
Phoghorn 10 years, 7 months ago
First three words of the headline that I saw were "Bill Self fired" Wow...that scared me for a second!
Mike Kendall 10 years, 7 months ago
Phoghorn---
Ha, ha. Nice one.
jaybate 10 years, 7 months ago
Uplifting points by both uh yuz. Thx.
Self likes a good scrap; that's for sure.
David Robinett 10 years, 7 months ago
I was at the 1986 FF game against Puke.
What a shame, both Manning (freshman) and Dreiling (senior?) both had less than 10 points, and Archie Marshall got injured. I think Johnny Dawkins and Danny Ferry had a good game. I remember Turgeon came in, and was a spark (but not enough).
Mike Kendall 10 years, 7 months ago
I was at the game, too. Jay Bilas played for Duke in that game.
ku_foaf 10 years, 7 months ago
I can never remember the other guy who looked a lot like Bilas and also started. I don't recall if it was Bilas or the other that said Louisville's record "Didn't show they are as good as us." Karma!
Duke beat us twice, and we had beat Louisville twice that year..everyone believed we would have beaten them again! Even LB voiced that.
Dirk Medema 10 years, 7 months ago
"Movin’ up - Tyshawn Taylor now has 996 career points"
They announced during the game that he was over 1k?
coolhand357 10 years, 7 months ago
Look for Duke to get a lot of officiating calls going thier way. The refs will bow down before the almighty Rat-Face.
jaybate 10 years, 7 months ago
copy and paste.
You have to beat Duke, which is not hard.
You have to beat the refs, which is.
And you have to beat the cheap shotting, which is nothing more than playing the Chicago way, Mr. Ness. When the Polish Capone takes one of your players down, you take two of his to the morgue.
Whenever teams have cheap shotted back, Coach Kdipshizz has backed down.
It is only against the teams that play it straight that he is emboldened.
As Wooden did later on, he takes everything to the limit including needling the refs, because he knows they are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Its only human. One day, if Self keeps coaching long enough, he will get the same treatment.
REHawk 10 years, 7 months ago
I agree about the calls on hand checking. Bodies banging everywhere with no whistles, but refs tweeting away at any hand checks. jaybate has been right on regarding the game's moving toward extreme muscleball. Coach K a master at that medium.
jaybate 10 years, 7 months ago
Everything anyone needs to know about Coach Consonants is that he took Capel back, after Capel corrupted OU.
Fruit never falls far from the tree.
jaybate 10 years, 7 months ago
Erratum 1: Change "...after Capel corrupted OU" to "...after Capel appeared to corrupt OU." Who knows if he did, or not? In college basketball, the tendency is that Head Coaches never commit violations. There assistant coaches do.
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad assistant coaches.
Good, good, good, good, good, head coaches.
Assistant coaches bad.
Head coaches good.
Got it?
Some might call it the Calipari Heuristic. :-)
Erratum 2: Change "Fruit never falls far from the tree" to "Fruit never falls far from the tree, but it can later change and be made into a marvelous filling for a good pie if it finds the right master chef that teaches it right from wrong." Far be it from me to deny that people can get better, because they can. :-)
ku_foaf 10 years, 7 months ago
We actually lost to Duke twice in 85-86. Once very early and once very late. Both were close games, but I believe we were 35-4, with two of the losses to Duke.
We didn't realize we were seeing the beginning of something pretty incredible at Duke. The number of times they have reached the Final Four since then, plus 4 titles, is pretty amazing.
Not that we have done so bad with six Final Fours and 2 titles since then! :>)
Steve Brown 10 years, 7 months ago
As I recall we beat Pervis Ellison and Louisville twice that year, once in preseason NIT in NY. I also saw the Dook game in Reunion Arena in Dallas, Danny was a frosh and hardly touched the ball, Archie got hurt and we were up in the game at the time, always felt we would have beaten Denny Crum Cardinals a 3rd time for Larry's 1st NCAA title. Dallas downtown was special place, HCDSmith was at our team hotel rooting for KU over ACC Duke. A Kentucky pal gave me his tickets as he was upset by LSU the weekend before and couldn't stomach going to watch Louisville play when K. Wildcats were supposed to be there.
We walked to the arena with our red Beak 'Em hawk shirts, new at the time, and Louiville fans in cars honked and waved thinking wrongly we had some new unreleased Cardinal shirt.
Payback in KC Kemper Final Four a few years later when Danny was a senior was the best KU start of any game, it was something like 26-6 not sure exactly. Similar to UNC in San Antonio....good memories.
RCJHGKU
nothingbutbasketball18 10 years, 7 months ago
If Withey can learn to catch the ball high and keep it high, he'll double his point production. He has a tendency to bring the ball back down when he gets the pass high. 9 times out of 10 he gets stripped when he tries to bring it back up. Use that wingspan and be strong with the ball, and he could be a dominant force out there on the offensive AND defensive side of the ball.
Also, we had 18 turnovers to UCLA's 14. Granted some of those turnovers were on terrible calls, but we can't be allowing that many turnovers either way.
Overall, I'm excited for this game tonight. It'd be cool if EJ went off for 30 just for fun. I want even more alleyoops. Last night was definitely a fun game. Tonight better be even more fun to watch.
Mike Kendall 10 years, 7 months ago
18---
Jay Bilas pointed that out about Withey bringing the ball down when he receives the pass inside. Bilas is right and so are you. You're right about the TOs, too.
It has been a fun tournament to watch and tonight's should be fun as well. I can't wait to see the Jayhawk fans that made the trip rock the house!
captku 10 years, 7 months ago
18 and mike, I had just said to my brother and dad that Withey needs to learn to pivot with his hands in the air, right after he brought it down and got ripped, when Bilas also mentioned this. I am going to guess that D-Man is working OT on Withey on this point and will have it well under control as the season progresses. Ball high, pivot, and dunk! Okay, now do it again ... ball high, pivot, and DUNK! Hopefully that won't be an issue tonite. Hopefully, that is.
Woody Cragg 10 years, 7 months ago
If HCBS & co pull off the upset, espn will still perform "orel sax" to consanants. Heaven forbid they give any credit where it's due, after all they're the worldwide leader in spin. Used to have a difficult time listening to Dickie, but now they all sound like a broken record. As soon as Packer gave the love to the Jaybirds, he was out at cbs. Hey, everyone loves a winner, but some of these guys slobbering on coach Kadiddlehopper make me want to just puke.
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