Jayhawks

By the time the Jayhawks finally got off the road last year, after touring behind the band's critically lauded but commercially ignored fourth album, "Tomorrow the Green Grass," Mark Olson had decided that enough was enough. He quit the band, and though the other members announced their intention to carry on making music, it looked very much like the end of the line for the Jayhawks.Fortunately, rumors of the band's demise were greatly exaggerated. "I don't think there was ever a time the whole band thought about [quitting]

Michigan, Louisville Coley Harvey Orlando Sentinel Many of us with our or trashed brackets want to see the lovable "Dunk City" contingent from Fort Myers, Fla., make the 10-hour trek up Interstate 75 for next week's Final Four. Conventional basketball wisdom, however, tells us that won't happen. No. 15 Florida Gulf Coast's Sweet 16 opponent, No. 3 Florida, is too strong for the Eagles; but not strong enough for the Michigan Wolverines, who will make this a three-Big Ten team Final Four.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Dean Smith went out of his way to offer condolences for Kansas after the No. 1 Jayhawks' 85-82 upset loss to Arizona in a Southeast Regional semifinal."

The CBS Sports Network does some drum beating for March Madness Monday night with " The Miracles : The 1988 Kansas Jayhawks," a documentary about how an underdog team won the national championship that year. Known as Danny and the Miracles, because of star Danny Manning, Kansas upset the Oklahoma Sooners for the championship. There are a couple of local angles worth noting in the film that marks the 25th anniversary of that championship. One of the producers is Tamiko Bullock, a graduate of Morgan State University.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The coaches wanted intelligent shots, intense man-to-man defense and good basketball. They got one of three.Third-ranked Kansas (2-0) defeated No. 2 Indiana (4-1) yesterday, 74-69, before 31,197 at the Hoosier Dome. The Jayhawks' tough defense coupled with Indiana's inaccuracy from the foul line led to the Kansas victory."I really thought it was a defensive struggle on both ends," said Jayhawks coach Roy Williams. "I was not as pleased with our offensive play as I was our defense.

They have spent the first eight games of the season looking for ways to lose, falling behind early or falling apart late in many of them. As hard as they try, and they might be trying too hard, the Kansas Jayhawks want to distance themselves from that night last March when they went from No. 1 to just plain numb.The Kansas team that will come into the new MCI Center in Washington this afternoon to play Maryland in the opening round of the Franklin National Bank Classic is much different from the 34-1 team that lost to Arizona in the Sweet 16 of last season's NCAA tournament.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Kansas forward Richard Scott has had so many problems with shin splints and other assorted leg injuries that his coach, Roy Williams, has taken to calling him "Fred Sanford," after the cantankerous junk dealer character played by Redd Foxx in the sitcom "Sanford and Son."But Scott was anything but cantankerous in helping the Jayhawks fight off North Carolina, 79-73, to advance to tomorrow night's national championship game.In the biggest game of his career to date, Scott, a 6-7, 215-pound freshman from Little Rock, Ark., had 14 points and six rebounds, just missing career- highs in both categories.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The coaches wanted intelligent shots, intense man-to-man defense and good basketball. They got one of three.Third-ranked Kansas (2-0) defeated No. 2 Indiana (4-1) yesterday, 74-69, before 31,197 at the Hoosier Dome. The Jayhawks' tough defense coupled with Indiana's inaccuracy from the foul line led to the Kansas victory."I really thought it was a defensive struggle on both ends," said Jayhawks coach Roy Williams. "I was not as pleased with our offensive play as I was our defense.

DAYTON, Ohio -- When Kansas lost to Duke last year in the NCAA tournament championship game, the Jayhawks left Indianapolis and the Hoosier Dome with few regrets and only a trace of disappointment.But when the Jayhawks left the University of Dayton Arena last night after their shocking 66-60 loss to ninth-seeded Texas-El Paso, there were tears. Lots of tears. Not only from the players, but also from the head coach."I can't say how much I feel the hurt for these guys," said Roy Williams, his eyes red, his voice cracking.

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- In the Midwest Regional second round last year, Kansas made the mistake of thinking about playing in the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16 the following week. Instead, the Jayhawks lost to Texas-El Paso and went back to Lawrence."It was a difficult time," coach Roy Williams said yesterday. "Tonight, I might live through the night. Last year I wasn't too sure."The No. 2 seed Jayhawks are heading to St. Louis for Thursday's regional semifinal, the result of a 90-76 win yesterday over seventh-seed Brigham Young.

Maryland basketball fans might have received some good news Friday night - and it had nothing to do with the Harrison twins. Bill Self signed a longtime extension at Kansas on Friday, meaning that second-year coach Mark Turgeon is not going anywhere anytime soon. I've always contended since the day Turgeon was hired to succeed Gary Williams in May 2011 that the only place I could see the former Kansas point guard and assistant coach going was back to Lawrence. Not that Self was rumored to be going anywhere, but just as Roy Williams surprised Jayhawks fans by returning to his North Carolina roots, I could see Self going home to Oklahoma State, his alma mater.

Richmond assistant coach Jamal Brunt called Morehead State's second-round upset of fourth-seeded Louisville this year's "One Shining Moment" in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. With a win Friday night against top-seeded Kansas, Richmond, who knocked out Morehead State last weekend, could provide an even brighter one. The 12th-seeded Spiders, the lowest-seeded team remaining in the tournament, pulled off an upset of their own over fifth-seeded Vanderbilt in the second round before cruising to a 17-point win over Morehead State.

Bill Self is being modest. He's in his office, surrounded by pictures and mementos from a national championship and a mess of other happy moments at Kansas when you point out that there just isn't anything else like this going on in college basketball. "We're not doing anything different," he says. "We've just been real fortunate. " Except he's wrong. Kansas is doing something different than every other major conference basketball program in the country, something that has never been more obvious.

A season ago, Kansas took its undefeated record to Tennessee and wound up with a loss in its last nonconference game. The No. 3 Jayhawks avoided a repeat letdown Sunday with an overtime victory at Michigan, the final out-of-conference game before Big 12 play begins. Coach Bill Self would like the team to learn from it just the same. "The key to having a good season is winning average games," he said in Ann Arbor after escaping 67-60. "The key to having a great season is winning games when you don't play very well.

SAN ANTONIO -- Sometimes a tie isn't a tie, but a loss. Thus it was at the Alamodome last night, when the first overtime in the national championship game in 11 years tipped off. The score was 63-63. But Memphis had lost. Kansas had already won, and the only question remaining in the final five minutes was how much the final margin would be. And whether this was as much of a miracle, as much an astoundingly unexpected event for the program than its last national title 20 years earlier.

Memphis 78, UCLA 63 Star freshman Derrick Rose put on an aerial show, and Memphis flew past UCLA to reach the championship game. Rose finished with 25 points and nine rebounds, and the Tigers won their 38th game of the season, a major college basketball record. Kansas 84, UNC 66 Brandon Rush scored 25 points to lead Kansas as the Jayhawks thwarted North Carolina's furious comeback attempt. The Tar Heels rallied to within five points in the second half after falling behind 40-12 in the first, but it wasn't enough for coach Roy Williams to avoid losing to his former team.

CHICAGO -- They have played six games and flown thousands of miles, and still have another long leg left in their early-season adventure.Just when it seemed as if the top-ranked Kansas Jayhawks had run out of gas last night here at the United Center, they found a second wind against fourth-ranked Cincinnati in the Great Eight Festival.More importantly, they found a way of stopping Danny Fortson. Or, perhaps, the senior All-American found a way of stopping himself. When the 6-foot-7 forward got into foul trouble early in the second half, the Jayhawks got into the game.

CHICAGO -- The way the Kansas players have it figured, this is what the Jayhawks would have looked like had point guard Jacque Vaughn decided to make himself eligible for the NBA draft after his junior year. The way Kansas coach Roy Williams has it figured, he still had some pretty good players left in the program.The hard part for the top-ranked Jayhawks hasn't been playing without Vaughn, who returned to Lawrence for his senior year but has been out since September with torn ligaments in his right wrist.

College basketball Kansas @ Georgia Tech 7 p.m. [ESPN] The Jayhawks are 10-0, and some of that was done without their starting lineup intact. No. 3 Kansas takes its show on the road against the 4-4 Yellow Jackets. The Jayhawks have been tested just twice, by Arizona and Southern California, and have rolled over everyone else. NHL Ottawa @ Boston 7 p.m. [Versus] A Northeast Division battle between the first-place Senators and the second-place Bruins. The toast of the Great White North, the Senators are on a five-game winning streak.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri Tigers stated their case for No. 1 on Saturday night, and only the clueless left Arrowhead Stadium unimpressed. Oh, fans of the Ohio State Buckeyes and West Virginia Mountaineers might contend that the mother of all border wars exposed previously undefeated Kansas as a fraud, and there might be a teeny kernel of truth in that sentiment. But that reality doesn't eliminate what Saturday's showdown told us about the Tigers: They're worthy of college football's No. 1 ranking.