If you’ve been able to catch the pre-game shoot-arounds for Kansas during the past few weeks, you might have noticed something that more resembles football than basketball at the beginning of them.
Each time the Jayhawks take the floor for the first time on game days, junior guard Frank Mason will fire a ball as high into the air as he can. From there, junior forward Landen Lucas will track it on its path down and try to settle under it like punt returner would in a game of football.
“Frank just started throwing it up at the beginning of the season and I started trying to catch it,” Lucas said. “I was like, ‘Man, I gotta start trying to catch this.’ It’s getting tougher. Sometimes you lose it in the lights a little bit. But that’s the football side of me coming out.”
Lucas, who played football when he was younger and has always enjoyed watching it, said Mason used to just fling the ball above his head and out to the someone in the other line to get their pre-game routine going. But after Lucas posed as a punt returner, even calling for a fair catch from time to time, Mason started challenging the KU big man more and more each game.
“That’s exactly what it is,” he said. “I should start calling for a fair catch so people get away from me.”
It’s getting ridiculous these days, as Mason has started launching the ball so high that it nearly hits the rafters.
Lucas said the higher the better because it increases the challenge and he was happy to report that he has dropped just two of them all season. One came last week in the Big 12 title game against West Virginia, but the pre-game fumble did not hurt the Jayhawks in the win column.
“I don’t like dropping ’em. I think it’s a bad sign,” he said. “But we came out with a win (vs. WVU) so that’s OK. It’s something that we just goof around with and have some fun. So far, I’ve missed two and I don’t plan on missing any more.”
