Me, in Monday’s post:
I’m not sure if I have a worse feeling about tonight’s KU game or Tuesday’s CHS one.
Shows what I know about ball.
Jayhawk Talk
Well, that was much, much better. Arguably KU’s best, wire-to-wire, performance of the year, jumping on Iowa State early and never letting up. The offense was humming, moving the ball quickly and finding the open man. Aside from a few ill-advised drives by guys who couldn’t shoot and Rylan Griffen missing four wide-ass-open 3’s, you couldn’t ask for much more on that end of the court.
And the defense was locked in all night. Iowa State is in a bit of a funk, but KU’s switching defense thoroughly baffled the Cyclone guards. You could see them setting something up and then, suddenly, they were faced with KJ Adams in front of them and they had zero interest in either driving or pulling up.
The question is was this a one-off performance, or have they genuinely found something and can start playing to their talent level? They are about to start the most important stretch of the year, as their next six games are all about as favorable as you can have. Now that run begins with a suddenly frisky K-State team in Manhattan and includes back-to-back visits to the Utah schools over four days. I’m not saying they should go 6–0. But 5–1 would be a terrific boost before a brutal closing stretch that includes Texas Tech, Houston, and Arizona.
Wild stats that came up during/after the game:
Bill Self is now 38–0 in Big Monday home games. Video game numbers.
Baring a total collapse by Houston, this will be the first time in 24 years that KU has gone more than one year between conference championships. Again, that just doesn’t seem right, even having lived through Self’s domination of the Big 12.
HS Sectionals
Man, I was convinced the Bishop Chatard would blow the doors off our girls Tuesday night. We beat them by three for the City championship three weeks ago, and that win seemed a little flukey. The Trojans were four-time defending sectional champs. They have a tough-ass senior who I figured would not let her team lose. Throw in some illness/general bad vibes on our team over the past week, and I was prepared to have to shake the hands of our BC friends after the game and wish them luck moving forward while getting out of the gym as quick as possible.
Again, I don’t know shit.
Our girls played their best 15 minutes of the season to start the game. We forced at least 10 BC turnovers in the first quarter and led by eight after 12 minutes. Midway through the second quarter the lead was up to 28–13 and our top scorer had barely played. We were ridiculous on D and knocked down some shots. It didn’t feel sustainable, but 15 point leads give you a lot of rope to work with.
By halftime the lead was down to just to seven when we gave up an offensive rebound and put-back at the buzzer. It felt like BC had all the momentum so the break was well timed.
Except we didn’t do anything to start the second half, turning it over on our first two possessions. By the end of the third period we were down five, the BC run 28–8 since our largest lead. Moments later, the deficit was up to eight and our student section resorted to yelling “Let’s play football!” at the BC students across the way.[1] Fun chant, but seems like they had lost hope. I understood it; the game felt over.
But one of our freshmen hit her first 3 of the season – it might have been her first made jump shot of the season – and we followed with a long two. Next thing you knew one of our senior leaders was driving and flipped up a tough attempt from five feet that would have made it a one-point game, but it rimmed out. BC went down and scored off the miss and hit a free throw to push it back to six with 3:00 left.
The next three minutes were literally insane. Drunk as a game can get. Off the rails. Bananas. Etc.
The dad who normally sits next to me was home sick and couldn’t get the streaming broadcast to work so I was texting him updates. Thus I can kind of recreate the final minutes.
BC is up 48–42, they are in a box-and-one defense to keep our best player from getting the ball, and we seem to have no idea how to attack them.
Somehow we strung together a couple stops and baskets, got another steal from our press and one of our seniors, A, went to the line with 1:57 and a chance to tie the game. She hit one-of-two, down one.
BC ball, they turn it over.
We give the ball right back to them.
They turn it over again.
We call a timeout with 54 seconds left.
After the timeout A is fouled again, this time she hits both, we are up 49–48.
BC has the ball and we knock a rebound out of play. They are inbounding under their own basket. Our defender tips the pass, but the BC inbounder grabs the loose ball and immediately passes to their center who lays it in. 50–49 BC, less than 30 seconds left.
We turn it over with 17 seconds left. Shit, game over again, right?
Our other freshman steals the ball in the backcourt and gets fouled going to the rim. She hits both, 51–50 us, about 10 seconds left.
BC inbounds, makes a cross court pass that the same freshman steals. She sprints down the sideline and whips a pass as she tries to avoid getting fouled to keep the clock running. She gets absolutely jacked and flies out of bounds, where she lands and grabs her head. She has a history of concussions so this did not look good. She stays on the ground for several minutes before she goes to the bench. The refs did call a foul when she got trucked, so we will go to the line up one with 3.9 left. We sub in a girl who doesn’t play much, but had hit 4–4 free throws on the night.
Naturally she misses both.
A BC guard got the rebound in the corner, took three dribbles (they had no timeouts left), and let it fly from halfcourt. It looked good on the way and I had visions of their 3-pointer that beat us at the buzzer in overtime a year ago.[2] But this shot crashed off the backboard and had no chance to go in.
Pandemonium on our bench, the BC girls were on the ground in tears. Both locker rooms are in the same corner of the gym, so there was a lot of awkward standing around by the families while waiting for both teams to exit as the girls for the next quarterfinal warmed up. Luckily our best BC friends are great people and I was able to chat normally with them. When their daughter, one of L’s best friends since forever, came out she mocked shoved L a few times before they gave each other big hugs. She plays a lot so the loss was tougher on her than it would have been on L had we lost. I love that all those years together at St. P’s don’t get pushed aside because they are on different teams now.
What a win for our girls! They played out of their minds to start the game, then made an incredibly tough comeback after blowing their lead. It isn’t always pretty, but our girls might be tougher than I give them credit for.
When I picked L up from practice Monday I mentioned how that might have been her last practice of the season. She flatly said, “It wasn’t.” She had faith where I lacked it. While she is on the sectional roster, she did not get to dress, but was allowed to sit on the bench. There’s a good picture on Instagram of our coach screaming after the final buzzer. You can see L’s curls flying in the air as she jumps in the background.
Now is where things get tricky. Pretty much everyone said, before the game, that whoever won Tuesday’s opening game would be the heavy favorite to win two more games and advance to regionals. So now there’s all that pressure of not screwing it up after winning the toughest game. And we might be playing without a starter because of that injury in the closing minutes.
In Friday’s semis we play the third-best team (of course) in our sectional. This is the squad I mentioned last month that won a game 115–5. They have one of the best juniors in the state and play a frenetic style. But they are only 8–13 for the season, most of those wins against bad teams. Against common opponents they are 1–5, we are 4–2. Again, though, anything can happen in a single elimination tournament.
Last week when we played that 1–18 team, CE, a few of us laughed that their opponent in their sectional opener sent coaches to scout them. Why scout a team that bad? Well, those coaches should be fired, because CE beat them by six! Good for those girls!