I had a really great day on Tuesday. Andrew Wiggins, the top basketball prospect in the nation, declared he was headed to Kansas. Maybe you heard. People were talking about it.
Kansas fans are used to missing out on top recruits. We hate televised announcements. We never win hat ceremonies. Four of the top 10 Rivals.com recruits (and five of the top 11) have committed to Kentucky. The other schools with top-10 recruits: Arizona, Duke, Indiana, and Florida (with two).
None of these schools happened to have invented college basketball, but they’re all storied programs and perennial contenders. The best recruits — the ones with serious NBA ambitions — pick schools like Kentucky because the national exposure can’t be beat.
Or they pick a dark horse — like, say, the No. 18 prospect Keith Frazier committing to SMU — so they can outshine their significantly less talented teammates. (The fact that Kansas great Larry Brown coaches the Mustangs probably didn’t hurt.)
Photo by the Lawrence Journal-World’s Nick Krug, who always captures Kansas basketball perfectly.
You can still be a Jayhawk, Ben McLemore. Just don’t be a stranger.
Nobody was surprised today when you announced your plans to head off to the NBA. You’ve scored more points than any other freshman at KU. DraftExpress projects you as the No. 2 overall draft pick this year. NBADraft.net has you going first. And every mock draft has you going in the top five. This is your time. It’s your chance to start your career and take care of your family. Nobody can begrudge you that.
The fans will be OK. The team will be OK. Every year we lose talent to graduation or the NBA and resign ourselves to a horrible season, and every year Bill Self finds a way to win.
Big news! I have accepted a job as assistant digital editor at the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and I’ll be moving to Big Ten country in a couple of weeks.
What I’ll be doing: This has been the trickiest detail to explain to my family (even as a copy editor most people thought I wrote stories). Basically, I’ll be managing online content — posting and editing stories, photos, videos, etc. — for Press-Citizen.com and HawkCentral.com, a collaboration with the Des Moines Register that focuses on University of Iowa sports. I’ll be handling breaking news, managing social media accounts, and working on other digital projects.
One of my coworkers found this lying around and gave it to me because, well, I’m me.
He even joked “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” as if the 2002-2003 Kansas basketball media guide wasn’t a legitimate gift. He could have wrapped it up with a birthday card last month and I would have gushed over the thoughtful gift he pulled from a desk somewhere. It’s the greatest work swag I’ve ever received. (So thanks, Richard Croome.)
The 15-year-old Sarah Kelly loved Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison. I have a soft spot for goofy-looking white players from places like Iowa (or Minnesota, in the case of Cole Aldrich). So it caught the 25-year-old self off guard yesterday when I noticed Kirk was in the bracket for Grantland’s most hated college players of the last 30 years. I’ve never met anyone who even disliked Kirk, so how exactly did he end up in this (otherwise totally brilliant) assembly alongside Joakim Noah and Tyler Hansbrough?
Alpha Delta Pi’s 2010 seniors at the beginning of the best year of my life
I loved being a senior at KU so much that I did it twice.
Well, my second senior year was just a semester, but only because I was set to graduate and couldn’t justify the expense of adding a minor and staying one more semester. It’s a shame, though, because I was just starting to get good at school.
For most of my life, I associated school with rejection. More than a few classmates told me I could be popular if only I would lose some weight. More than a lot of teachers told me I could have good grades if only I would try harder. I was always in trouble for talking out of turn or forgetting my permission slip or losing my homework. I couldn’t do anything right for 15 years.
My senior year of college came around and suddenly other girls thought I was funny, boys thought I was pretty, my professors thought I was smart, and employers thought I was competent.
I loved feeling like I knew what I was doing, loved feeling like I’d found my place. Eighteen years after I first set foot on campus, making myself comfortable in the children’s section of the Kansas Union book store while my mom was in class, Mt. Oread began to feel like home.
So it won’t surprise anyone that I love Senior Night at KU. And I know I’m no the only Jayhawk who loves senior night because Kansas is one of few schools where the fans stay after the game to honor the outgoing class. There’s something so perfect about capping off the regular season by honoring all the progress these kids have made over the last few years.
I wanted to write about retiring Mario Chalmers’ jersey (happy birthday to me!), or about Thomas Robinson being traded to Houston (100 miles from my house!), or about Marcus Morris joining Markieff in Phoenix (!!!) but I got busy. So I thought I’d write about Bill Self’s 500th win, but Elijah Johnson blacked out and scored 39 points in a 108-96 overtime win over Iowa State.
The University Daily Kansan staff did a great job with today’s front page. I hear it’s Malcolm’s first “good paper” of the semester. High five!
You’ll have to forgive Kansas fans if they’ve been sore losers lately. We’re not used to losing. We’re not good at it. I know that sounds like a humblebrag, but I mean it.
The last time Kansas lost three games in a row was in 2005. I was a senior in high school. My youngest sibling was not yet born. Remember my sorority sister Katie Morris, the Bill Self for President girl? This what she wrote in her Xanga after that loss:
Like I said, it’s been a few years since Kansas had a week this bad. And the last time Kansas lost three consecutive games to unranked opponents? That was in January 1988. I was born Feb. 17, 1988. These events are literally unprecedented in my lifetime.
Even our football team didn’t lose three games in a week. Bill Self loses gracefully. The rest of us fall into a heap on the floor because we’re, collectively, a mess.
The Oklahoma State loss stung because I had started to feel like it was impossible to lose in Allen Fieldhouse. Stupid, stupid Sarah Kelly and your hubris.
The TCU loss hurt a lot more because I couldn’t understand why a team that just lost on its home court would follow that up with such a lousy performance. At halftime, I changed my clothes and my location, but it wasn’t enough. When the second half went as bad as the first, a stranger at Sully’s Grill asked me if I needed a hug. I did need a hug.
But I saw the Oklahoma loss coming. From the beginning of the game, the ESPN guys couldn’t stop talking about the losing streak. After every commercial break, they’d open by reminding me that the last time Kansas lost three in a row, the third was to Oklahoma. I could see the sky about to fall. The Oklahoma fans chanted “overrated,” then rushed the court, which is kind of embarrassing for them. But not as embarrassing as losing three straight games to unranked teams.
My only break from this horrible week was when Missouri came to Texas A&M and lost. A friend gave me his tickets, but I couldn’t get anyone to go with me. Around here, asking someone if they want to go to a basketball game with you is like asking if they want to go to the gym. Some people are into it, and most people will humor me now and then — especially since my work schedule only allows me to attend a handful of games. When they’re tired or cranky or just not in the mood to deal with things, most people will find a way to skip out on a college basketball game.
But I’m not most people. I’m a sick individual. And when I’m tired or cranky or just not in the mood to deal with things, I need basketball. I need to find comfort in a familiar pregame ritual. I need to be in a room full of people who all want the same thing in the same moment. Sometimes at work I stream radio broadcasts of random basketball games just for the soothing sound of sneakers on a gym floor.
So I went to a basketball game alone for the first time in my whole life. It was scary and awkward and occasionally boring, but it was wonderful. My adopted team, scrappy and unranked as they are, beat the team I most despise and for a few hours I found peace in a sport that had caused me a lot of anguish over the week.
Part of me was proud of the student section for knowing not to storm the court and part of me desperately wished Missouri was ranked a little higher so I could finally participate in a court storming.
Losses only hurt if you care. You can pretend you don’t care, but I think fans of the Chiefs and the Royals will tell you what you already know: You still care.
Bill Self is still the only coach in our hearts, right? And Elijah Johnson might be playing like “Bad Tyshawn” these days, but you remember how that ended, right? If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance Kansas is still your team, so let’s make it work.
Kansas dropped from No. 5 in the Associated Press poll to No. 14 today, while Kansas State jumped from No. 13 to No. 10. That means Kansas is the underdog in tonight’s Sunflower Showdown at Allen Fieldhouse. I haven’t eliminated the possibility that Self blew the last three games to get KU playing in the right state mind tonight. He’s crafty, and he knows his team.
So please, as always, be diligent with your pregame rituals and have faith. I won’t be able to watch the game because I’ll be at work, so your participation is important. Also, it’s Ben McLemore’s birthday.
I had a really great day on Tuesday. Andrew Wiggins, the top basketball prospect in the nation, declared he was headed to Kansas. Maybe you heard. People were talking about it.
