The predictions started weeks ago. Coaches stood in line to give their views on Kansas’ midseason march toward history.
“If Kansas goes undefeated in their league or for the year, I would be shocked,” said Wake Forest coach Dave Odom, who sounded almost relieved when his own team’s unbeaten streak was ended by Maryland Jan. 19. “I just think in college basketball there is so much high parity.”
And as recently as Monday morning, Louisville coach Denny Crum had this little observation about No. 1 Kansas: “While they’ve been able to survive it so far, my guess is they’re going to get a loss somewhere down the road, whether they want it or not.”
Crum’s road didn’t take long to drive. Tuesday night in the pit that is Missouri’s Hearnes Center, the last of the unbeatens lost in double overtime.
A moment of silence, please.
The defeat wasn’t a total shocker. The Jayhawks were without senior center Scot Pollard. They were playing their third road game in four outings. They were grinding out victories in recent days, beginning with a tough one at Colorado, a come-from-behind win at Texas Tech, and an overtime win against Nebraska. Worse yet, they had to face Missouri, which is the dining equivalent of a squid burger.
Four times in the 1990s the Jayhawks have been ranked No. 1 when they met Missouri. Three times they’ve lost.
With the upset goes Kansas’ chance to duplicate Indiana’s feat of 1976–that is, win a national championship while holding hands with perfection. The Hoosiers finished 32-0 that year, which didn’t seem like such a big deal, considering UCLA had gone unbeaten twice in the previous five seasons. Who knew that only two more teams in the next 21 years–Indiana State in 1979 and Nevada-Las Vegas in 1991–would come close to repeating the feat before losing deep into the NCAA Tournament?
Now for the silver lining. Rather than mourn the loss to Missouri, Jerry Tarkanian is here to tell the Jayhawks to party hearty. Don’t lose a nanosecond of sleep over the stumble.
Tarkanian is at Fresno State now, but back in 1991 his UNLV team was the T-Rex of college basketball. The Runnin’ Rebels were 34-0 and the heavy favorites when they faced Duke in the semis of the Final Four. Instead, Duke pulled off the man-bites-dog upset. Tark partly blames the unbeaten regular season.
“We’d get our guys up for a game and tell them how tough it’s going to be,” Tarkanian said. “And then we’d go out and win by at least nine points every time. I think if we would have had one loss, I think maybe we would have been up more (for Duke). The setting was just perfect for us to get beat. We had beaten Duke by 30 the year before. We had just been blowing everybody out. I’d been telling them every game, `This is going to be the tough game. It’s going to be a big, big game.’ Then we’d go out and blow them out. Had we lost one, I think maybe we would have been . . . well, maybe it’s an excuse.”
Kansas is no UNLV of 1991, but the point makes sense. The way Tark sees it, Missouri actually might have done the Jayhawks a favor without knowing it.
A loss now, he said, “might help him win the big one.”
Medical marvel: Only 15 days removed from supposed season-ending knee ligament surgery, Kentucky senior guard Derek Anderson is working on his lateral movement, shooting three-pointers and, incredibly enough, hinting that he might return to the lineup in time for March Madness.
Turns out that Anderson’s ACL wasn’t completely torn, nor was there significant damage to any of the knee cartilage. A donor ligament was inserted and seven days after the Jan. 22 surgery, the Wildcats star was off crutches.
Don’t hold your breath on a comeback. Doctors say it takes months of rehabilitation until the new ligament is at full strength. There is also the risk of re-injuring the knee, which probably wouldn’t help Anderson’s NBA chances.
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Anderson has company in the rehab room. Senior forward Jared Prickett, playing better than anybody on the Kentucky roster these days, had to be carried off the court after spraining his right ankle during a Monday morning workout. He’s out for at least another week, which means the Wildcats were down to eight scholarship players during their overtime loss to South Carolina Tuesday night. They had to junk their famed full-court press and no longer had the luxury of being careless with fouls.
“Now we’re really going to be put to the test because we’re as fragile as it gets,” said Kentucky coach Rick Pitino.
Farewell to Finch: Rather than remain at Memphis as a “special assistant” to athletic director R.C. Johnson–the man essentially responsible for forcing him out–Larry Finch took a $413,000 payoff to resign at season’s end.
Finch, who has averaged 20 victories during his 11 years at Memphis, still had three seasons left on his contract. But Johnson reportedly was worried about plummeting attendance at the 20,142-seat Memphis Pyramid, recruiting failures in the talent-rich Memphis area, and what he considered Finch’s inability to make the most of the Tigers’ past talent.
Whatever it was, Finch is gone sometime in March. A 22-year career as a Memphis player and coach is finished.
“I’ve put that put behind me in my mind,” he said. “The whole thing I’m trying to do now is try to salvage and have a decent year before I do step down.”
As for future plans . . . don’t ask.
“I haven’t given much thought to anything,” he said. “I’ve been through one barrage, through another. It’s been kind of hard to concentrate on anything.”
Around the country: Word is that LSU has offered Iowa State’s Tim Floyd its soon-to-be-vacant coaching job, but that Floyd’s family wants to stay put. . . . Conference USA is 0-4 against Temple this season, including losses by Cincinnati, Louisville, Tulane and DePaul. Of the four C-USA teams, struggling DePaul provided the closest game, losing by 13. By the way, Temple coach John Chaney had mixed feelings about Sunday’s 23-point blowout against Louisville. The win means he has to keep wearing a “lucky” brown wool sweater recently given to him by his wife, Linda. “I’ll keep wearing it,” said Chaney, who is 3-0 in the sweater, “but I’m sweating like a pig. I was hoping we would lose so I wouldn’t have to wear that sweater.” . . . UCLA forward J.R. Henderson was benched again, this time against USC. Henderson was thrown out of a recent practice by interim coach Steve Lavin, who has sat the junior three separate times this season for team infractions. . . . South Florida’s Seth Greenberg and Marquette’s Mike Deane have kissed and made up after last week’s public spat. Greenberg, on the wrong end of a 71-36 loss, was steamed over a Marquette timeout with 2:33 to go and the Golden Eagles up by 34 points. “Sometimes you’re the dog,” Greenberg said that day. “Sometimes you’re the tree. Tonight we were the tree. But believe me, we will be the dog someday and we will remember this night.” Canine functions aside, Deane said earlier this week that he called Greenberg and apologized. “I told him he got a ton of publicity for one of the great lines of the year,” Deane said. “I was wrong in calling that timeout.” . . . The unluckiest team in America has to be Arizona State, which has lost one player to epilepsy, one to the baseball draft, two to injuries and two more to school disciplinary action. The Sun Devils are down to six scholarship players. . . . Kentucky, which owns the second-longest home winning streak in the country (23), is now 103-6 at Rupp Arena during Pitino’s stay. Yet, Pitino says the 23,000-seat Rupp isn’t even among the top three home-court advantages in the Southeastern Conference, which helps explain why he’s pushing for an on-campus facility. The reasons: more money for Kentucky, no more battles for practice time at the city-owned Rupp. . . . Tulane doesn’t have a true point guard, but it does have star forward Jerald Honeycutt, an 11-game winning streak, an unbeaten C-USA record and road wins against Marquette and Xavier. “I think it’s pretty simple,” said Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. “Somebody has to beat Tulane. They’re going to run away and hide if somebody doesn’t beat them.” The Bearcats get their chance Thursday night at home–presumably with Danny Fortson and Ruben Patterson back in the lineup after a one-game benching. . . . It took only about a decade too long, but Texas-El Paso coach Don Haskins is finally headed to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Not so fortunate was Tarkanian, who has been nominated several times for induction. “Believe me when I tell you, I give that very little thought,” Tarkanian said. Asked if his checkered history with the NCAA might have cost him entry into the Hall of Fame, Tarkanian said, “I would imagine that’s it. That’s just my thought.”