Twenty teams in the NCAA tournament this year shot worse than 25 percent from the perimeter. Fourteen of those teams lost in the first round. Five others lost in the second round. The one remaining team, which has made 24.1 percent of its 3-pointers, is somehow playing in the...
Last summer, Tyshawn Taylor watched Cole Aldrich come back to Lawrence and bully Jeff Withey. He watched the Morris twins push Withey around for a few years, and Thomas Robinson too. “Dang Jeff, c’mon,” Taylor would say. On Saturday night in New Orleans when Jared Sullinger tried to bully...
Thursday should have been Tyshawn Taylor’s show. It was the first day the players were available to the media at the Final Four, and Taylor loves this stuff. “I can do this all day with you guys,” Taylor told a group of reporters last week in St. Louis. “This...
Kansas and North Carolina played a beautiful half of basketball on Sunday night in St. Louis. They ran up and down and traded shot for shot. Thomas Robinson showed his strength, Harrison Barnes showed his feathery touch, Tyler Zeller would have made George Mikan proud and Tyshawn Taylor found...
Kansas watched the 2008 Final Four win over North Carolina on Saturday morning over breakfast. Bill Self wasn’t breaking down the tape, simply letting his players witness what happened when the championship Jayhawks played great defense and played loose in a big game against Roy Williams’ boys. Maybe it...
For such an ugly win, we witnessed a masterpiece Friday night in St. Louis. The Jayhawks survived a lot of bricks and Tyshawn Taylor brain farts down the stretch. They only made two shots (two shots!) outside of five feet — both Elijah Johnson jumpers. And they missed enough...
The happiest man in the locker room once Kansas got past Purdue was Jeff Withey. Withey played only 15 minutes against Purdue on Sunday and in those 15 minutes the Jayhawks were outscored by seven points — only the third time all season Withey has had a negative plus/minus....
Bill Self doesn’t like to talk about things that might make his players think too much or second-guess themselves. Free throws, for example, are never discussed. “Why talk about what you can’t control?” Self says. But on Sunday night in Omaha, KU’s coach could not ignore what has bit...
Tyshawn Taylor hates playing little quick guys like Purdue’s 5-foot-9 point guard Lewis Jackson. “It’s my pet peeve,” Taylor says. Jeff Withey doesn’t like being guarded by smaller players and doesn’t like guarding the perimeter. Thomas Robinson doesn’t like guarding the perimeter either. Playing Purdue on Sunday in Omaha...
Detroit’s Doug Anderson approached his team’s bench at some point during KU’s 34-7 run and asked, “What the f#*% is he scared of?” Who Anderson was not talking about is unclear — pretty sure it was beanpole LaMarcus Lowe — but the who, what and when aren’t really that...