Ohio State-Kansas: In an effort to find out, we added up all of our unit rankings to see which teams looks the strongest overall. A first-place finish in one of the rankings was worth one point, a second-place showing was two points and so on. Like golf, lower scores are better here.
Continue reading at ESPN.com – Big Ten Blog
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A person familiar with the situation says Kansas assistant coach Danny Manning has agreed to become the head coach at Tulsa.
CBSSports.com first reported Manning’s decision.
Manning will help coach the Jayhawks through the Final Four, according to a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday because an official announcement had not been made.
Kansas plays Ohio State in the national semifinals Saturday night.
Manning has spent nine years on the Kansas staff and has been a full-time assistant since 2007, working primarily with the big men.
The school’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder takes over for Doug Wojcik, who was fired by Tulsa after failing to make the NCAA tournament in six seasons.
© 2012 The Associated Press
ESPN – Four years ago, before he faced his former team in the 2008 Final Four, North Carolina coach Roy Williams received word that a barbershop in Kansas had removed his picture from its display wall and hung it in the bathroom.
As Missouri fans exited the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Neb., dejected and stunned following their team’s 86-84 Friday loss to 15-seed Norfolk State, they likely caught plenty of verbal barbs from Kansas fans entering the building for the site’s night session of games.
But it’s likely that nothing was as rewarding for the Jayhawk faithful than getting a chance to actually thank the Norfolk State players, who sent Kansas’s SEC-bound rivals packing from the NCAA tournament prematurely, slamming the door shut on the program’s dreams of its first Final Four berth.
Full story on The Dagger
LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Syracuse, winners in its only two appearances in the EA Sports Maui Invitational, will head the field for the 30th edition of the early season tournament.
The Orange, champions in 1990 and 1998, will be joined in the 2013 tournament by former winners Gonzaga (2009) and Dayton (2003), it was announced Tuesday.
They will be joined in the games played at the Lahaina Civic Center by Arkansas, Baylor, California, Minnesota and Division II Chaminade, the host school.
The four Division I teams that will participate in the early portion of the tournament will be announced later.
The 2012 Maui Invitational field will feature three-time champion North Carolina, Butler, Illinois, Marquette, Mississippi State, Southern California, Texas and Chaminade.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — TCU opens its 2012 season at home Sept. 8 against Grambling State, a week before the Horned Frogs make their Big 12 debut at Kansas.
After the Sept. 15 game at Kansas, the Horned Frogs play non-conference games against Virginia and at SMU before their first Big 12 home game Oct. 6 against Iowa State.
The Big 12 finally released its 10-team, round-robin schedule Tuesday after West Virginia, the Big 12′s other newcomer, settled a lawsuit with the Big East to clear the way to begin play in the Big 12 next season.
TCU plays at West Virginia on Nov. 3.
Texas Tech, Kansas State and Oklahoma are the other Big 12 home games for TCU. The Frogs also play at Baylor, Oklahoma State and Texas.
If you want to ask your friends a great trivia question, or perhaps settle a debate, check out the Wall Street Journal’s list of college basketball programs whose players have earned the most money in the NBA since 1985. The WSJ calls it the ‘Basketball Alumni Loot Index.’ This is the kind of intense research that pays off, as this article is now a great bookmark for fans’ reference.
A look at the data shows plenty of interesting results. North Carolina and Duke are the first and second schools on the list, to nobody’s surprise. Our beliefs are confirmed that these two programs produce the most successful NBA players. Powerhouses like Arizona, UCLA, Georgetown, Connecticut, Kansas, and Kentucky all round out the top 10, again legitimizing the findings. Incredibly, Division II school Virginia Union cracks the top 50 of the list thanks to the $100 million-plus earnings of Ben Wallace and some of Charles Oakley’s deals from the 90s. DePaul has made the NCAA Tournament just once in the past 12 years, but they rank #31 on this list, thanks to recent pros like Wilson Chandler, Quentin Richardson, Bobby Simmons, and Steven Hunter. They also had Rod Strickland in the late 80s, who signed multiple lucrative contracts in a great 17-year career.
Full story on Rush The Court
Following Missouri’s come from behind victory against Kansas Saturday night, one of the most indelible images was of a pair of Tiger players giving students the universal sign for “Do Not Pass Go”.
They weren’t telling them to stop celebrating, but rather encourage them not to storm the court.
Because as exhilarating as that may be, it would behoove Mizzou players and fans from getting too excited about defeating Kansas, their hated rival. Losing to a team that appears to believe they were going to win stings a bit more than losing to a team that can’t control themselves after securing a big “W”.
Full story on Beyond The Arc
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Bill Self tried to temper expectations surrounding fifth-ranked Kansas as the season began, pointing out all the big-name players lost to graduation and the NBA.
He didn’t fool his fellow Big 12 coaches. They picked the Jayhawks as co-favorites again.
Now, after rolling through their first seven conference games without a miscue, Kansas is in a familiar position. Missouri’s upset loss to Oklahoma State earlier this week created a two-game cushion in the standings heading into the Jayhawks’ game Saturday at Iowa State.
It’s the start of a brutal stretch that includes a home game against Oklahoma and back-to-back road games against the second-ranked Tigers and No. 6 Baylor.
“Statistically, those are the four teams that are the best in the league,” Self said. “As a matter of fact, I think they are the only four teams in the league with winning records, if I’m not mistaken. Besides us. So yes, without question, this is the toughest part of the season.”
The two-game lead may sound luxurious, but senior guard Tyshawn Taylor remembers what happened to Texas last season.
The Longhorns beat the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse in late January, and then took a two-game lead when Kansas lost to rival Kansas State on Feb. 16. But the Longhorns eventually lost three of four to lose the lead, and the Jayhawks ultimately won their seventh straight league title.
“It’s always good to have a cushion, especially now,” Taylor said. “It’s good to have, but it really doesn’t mean much. Those are good teams and them being two games behind us, I’m sure they’re going to bounce back. We’re not going to be too giddy.”
The fact that Kansas plays four of its next six games on the road doesn’t help. The home team is 23-12 in conference play, with the Jayhawks and Tigers perfect. Five teams have yet to win on the road, including Texas Tech, which is winless in the Big 12.
“A two-game lead can be squandered quickly,” senior guard Connor Teahan said. “We still have to go out there and take every game seriously and I think that’s what we’ll do Saturday.”
The Cyclones gave Kansas all it could handle when the teams met in Lawrence. Behind the superb play of Royce White, Iowa State controlled the tempo of the game well into the second half, when the Jayhawks finally pulled ahead and won 82-73.
“I thought we played a little — ‘soft’ is not the right word, I’m not saying that, but I didn’t think we were as active or as energetic,” Self said this week.
While the Jayhawks (17-3, 7-0 Big 12) have won 10 straight since a surprising loss to Davidson in Kansas City, the Cyclones (14-6, 4-3) have positioned themselves for an NCAA tournament run. They beat Oklahoma State and Texas Tech after losing to Kansas.
“Trust me, Iowa State should have our full attention after the way they handled us for 25 minutes, or whatever it was, at our place,” Self said. “When you go on the road, it’s going to go down to the last few possessions, usually, if you play well. Certainly, I hope we’re in that position again Saturday.”
If not, that two-game lead in the Big 12 could be trimmed in half.
“We’ve done some good things on the road,” Self said, “but I don’t think we’ve had a performance on the road that would guarantee us winning. I think we’ve got to get better.”
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Former Notre Dame quarterback Dayne Crist sat behind a table flanked by former BYU quarterback Jake Heaps and ex-Oklahoma wide receiver Justin McCay. Over to the side sat Charlie Weis, the smile on his face stretching nearly ear to ear.
All of them are getting a second chance at Kansas.
Weis introduced the three high-profile transfers on Monday, ushering in a new era of Jayhawk football with gusto. Crist and Heaps were both among the best QBs in the country coming out of high school, and McCay was one of the nation’s most dynamic wide receivers.
Weis also announced that running back Darrian Miller and wide receiver Keeston Terry are among six players who have been dismissed from the program. Quarterback Jordan Webb is among three who remain in school but are no longer with the team.
First-year Kansas coach Charlie Weis has wasted no time in overhauling his staff. And he has added some star power, too.
Veteran NFL and college coach Dave Campo was hired as the Jayhawks’ new defensive coordinator on Friday, less than a week after he left the Dallas Cowboys. Campo will also coach the Kansas defensive backs.
Campo is a former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys (2000-02), and he spent the past four seasons coaching the secondary in Dallas. He was also a defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns, along with a stop in Jacksonville.
Full Story on ESPN
Dayne Crist’s final collegiate season will come in a Kansas uniform.
Crist, the former Notre Dame quarterback, announced Thursday via Twitter that he will go to Kansas after a nearly three-week selection process following the release from his Notre Dame scholarship.
“After a long & difficult decision making process, I’m incredibly excited to join the Kansas football team. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!” Crist posted on his Twitter account, @dcrist10, at 11:59 a.m. ET.
In Lawrence, Kan., Crist will be reunited with new Jayhawks coach Charlie Weis, who recruited Crist out of Notre Dame (Calif.) High School, where Crist was ESPNU’s No. 2 quarterback prospect. Weis also coached Crist as a reserve in the signalcaller’s first two seasons in South Bend before the coach was fired and replaced by Brian Kelly.
Dayne Crist is nearing a decision on where he will play his senior season.
Crist, who spent four years at Notre Dame, is eligible for next season because he graduated this fall.
He has visited both Kansas and Wisconsin in recent days.
Playing for the Jayhawks would reunite him with former coach Charlie Weis, who recruited Crist to Notre Dame.
Weis was hired earlier this month after one year as the offensive coordinator at Florida.
“He’s been supportive of me the last four years whether he was here or not,” Crist told WNDU in South Bend. “Always staying involved in my life. Always helped me along and gave me advice even before he was at Kansas.
“I have a high comfort level with the offense he runs—know it very well. It would be a pretty good advantage walking in the door.”
College football is filled with long-standing traditions, from rubbing Howard’s Rock for luck at Clemson to dotting the `i’ at Ohio.
College basketball has a few of its own and some of them are, shall we say, a bit unique, including one that involves pajamas and another rolls of toilet paper.
Here are a few of the best ones we know of:
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Silent Night, Taylor University: The tiny NAIA school in central Indiana has held its ”Silent Night” every Friday before finals for the past two decades. In one of the most unique traditions anywhere, the students remain silent until Taylor scores its 10th point, then erupt into a cheer as if the team had just won the national championship. Many of the students come dressed in costumes or pajamas and cram into every nook of little Odle Arena. When the game is over, they join arm-in-arm to sing the Christmas song ”Silent Night,” and many head off to Habecker’s Holipalooza, a university-sponsored Christmas party that includes a reading of ”A Christmas Story” by the university president. All that’s missing is a Red Rider BB gun to make this perfect.
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The TP Game, John Brown University: It sounds like a line from Beavis & Butthead: I need TP for my basketball game. No one’s exactly sure how it started, but about 30 years ago, students began bringing toilet paper rolls to the home opener and chucking them onto the floor following the home team’s first basket. Thousands of rolls come down in a blizzard of two-ply, covering every inch of the floor at rustic Murray Sells Athletic Center at the NAIA school in Siloam Springs, Ark. The school’s Golden Eagle mascot has even been known to do fluffy snow angels in what has been called the best technical foul in all of sports.
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Rock Chalk Chant, Kansas: Allen Fieldhouse is already one of the toughest places in basketball to play, with all that history oozing from the banners, retired numbers and atmosphere. It gets downright spooky at the end of games when, with the Jayhawks firmly in command, the fans sing a ghostly chorus of ”Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk, KU.” The chant evolved from a cheer that a chemistry professor created for the science club in 1886, with the original ”Rah, Rah” later replaced by a transposition of chalk rock, the name for the limestone outcropping found on Mount Oread, site of the Lawrence campus. The fans do a spirited version of the chant before the games to get the home team juiced, then let the visiting team know they’ve been conquered with the eerie rendition.
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St. Joseph’s Hawk, St Joseph’s. A mascot flapping its wings isn’t particularly exciting or original. What makes the St. Joe’s Hawk interesting is that he never stops. The Hawk, or at least the various students who have inhabited his bird suit, has been flapping his wings for 56 years. Representing the St. Joseph’s motto of ”The Hawk Will Never Die,” the Hawk was once estimated to flap his wings 3,500 times during a regulation game. The Hawk is one of the few mascots that travels with the team on the road and the student inside the costume – two have been women – receives a full scholarship to the school. So kids, if you’re looking for a way to get a full ride, you might think about switching from shooting hoops to flapping your arms.
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Cameron Crazies, Duke. Cameron Indoor Stadium is not exactly modern and holds just 9,300 fans but is one of the most intimidating places in the country to play. The Cameron Crazies, one of the most boisterous and creative student sections anywhere, make sure of that. The Crazies brave the elements to get their seats in a tent city known as Krzyzewskiville and face painting is almost part of the required attire. The Blues Devils student section has been credited with coming up with the chant of ”Air Ball!” when an opponent misses everything on a shot. They also once taunted one super-sized opposing player by tying a McDonald’s Happy Meal to the end of a fishing pole and dragging it across the front of the bench before a security guard put an end to it.
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Philadelphia Big 5, La Salle, Penn, St. Joe’s, Temple and Villanova. There are plenty of great rivalries in college hoops, from North Carolina-Duke to Kentucky-Louisville. This one is a fivesome that’s become as Philly as the cheese steak. The Big 5 have played each other since 1954 in the musty, high-ceilinged Palestra on Penn’s campus. And, this being a rivalry and the City of Brotherly Taunting, there isn’t much love lost between the teams and their fans. Among the most entertaining parts of the rivalries are the ”rollouts,” banners brought in by fans that often include unprintable insults. They’re almost always witty, including this one by Temple’s student section in a game against La Salle last year: ”La Salle has 3 Ls. Your team has nine.” Good times.
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Honorable mention: Moses Parts the Red Sea, Central Catholic High School, Lawrence, Mass. This is a high school but worthy of noting because of the sheer imagination of it. With the fans in the student section waving their arms – they’re the sea – a student shows up dressed as Moses with a broom in hand. With a thunderous slam of the broom to the hardwood, the students part and Moses marches up the bleachers, setting off a wild cheer that turns into a chant of ”Let’s go Central!” You have to see it to believe it.
LAWRENCE, Kan. — Charlie Weis has begun assembling his coaching staff at Kansas, hiring Ron Powlus to tutor quarterbacks and Tim Grunhard to work with the offensive line.
The announcements came Tuesday, four days after Weis was introduced as the Jayhawks’ head coach.
Powlus and Grunhard both have ties to Notre Dame, where Weis spent five seasons as coach.
Powlus played quarterback for the Fighting Irish from 1994-97, and he served as director of player development and quarterbacks coach for Weis in South Bend. Powlus has been at Akron the past two seasons.
Grunhard played for Notre Dame before an 11-year career with the Kansas City Chiefs. He’s been head coach at Bishop Miege High School in suburban Kansas City.
Running backs coach Reggie Mitchell is returning from Turner Gill’s staff.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press
2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Week 6 Rankings – USA Today Coaches Poll
1 Syracuse (28) 10-0 746
2 Ohio State (2) 8-1 671
3 Kentucky 8-1 665
4 Louisville 9-0 658
5 Duke 9-1 618
6 North Carolina 8-2 608
7 Baylor 7-0 539
8 Missouri 9-0 512
9 Xavier 8-0 503
10 Connecticut 8-1 485
11 Marquette 9-0 466
12 Kansas 7-2 441
13 Florida 7-2 418
14 Pittsburgh 9-1 356
15 Wisconsin 8-2 317
16 Mississippi State 9-1 251
17 Georgetown 8-1 246
18 Michigan 7-2 185
19 Illinois 10-0 182
20 Indiana 9-0 171
21 Alabama 8-2 143
22 Texas A&M 8-1 108
23 Michigan State 8-2 107
24 Creighton 7-1 54
25 Vanderbilt 6-3 51
Others receiving votes: Harvard 43, Murray State 42, California 29, Memphis 27, San Diego State 26, Purdue 14, Gonzaga 13, Virginia 12, UNLV 9, Saint Louis 9, Saint Mary’s 5, Stanford 5, Saint Joseph’s 5, Oklahoma 4, Northern Iowa 3, Northwestern 3
Dropped from rankings: Memphis 20, Gonzaga 22, Harvard 24
2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Week 6 Rankings – AP Top 25
1 Syracuse (51) 10-0 1,607
2 Ohio State (7) 8-1 1,478
3 Kentucky (4) 8-1 1,468
4 Louisville (2) 9-0 1,374
5 North Carolina (1) 8-2 1,373
6 Baylor 7-0 1,284
7 Duke 9-1 1,273
8 Xavier 8-0 1,122
9 Connecticut 8-1 1,087
10 Missouri 9-0 1,030
11 Marquette 9-0 988
12 Kansas 7-2 945
13 Florida 7-2 891
14 Wisconsin 8-2 728
15 Pittsburgh 9-1 696
16 Georgetown 8-1 602
17 Mississippi State 9-1 574
18 Indiana 9-0 462
19 Illinois 10-0 375
20 Michigan 7-2 354
21 Michigan State 8-2 310
22 Texas A&M 8-1 270
23 Alabama 8-2 204
24 Murray State 10-0 93
25 Creighton 7-1 88
25 Vanderbilt 6-3 88
Others receiving votes: Harvard 73, San Diego State 59, Virginia 57, UNLV 41, Stanford 39, Saint Louis 26, Gonzaga 25, Memphis 13, Northern Iowa 7, Cleveland State 7, Arizona 5, California 3, Long Beach State 3, Northwestern 2, Wichita State 1
Dropped from rankings: Memphis 21, Gonzaga 23, Harvard 25
Kansas guard Tyshawn Taylor had surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee Sunday and could be out up to three weeks.
Taylor hurt the knee early last week but played through the injury in the 13th-ranked Jayhawks’ 78-67 victory over No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday. After the game, coach Bill Self disclosed the torn meniscus and said Taylor also had a sprained MCL in the same knee.
“I spoke with the doctors and it went as well as expected,” Self said Sunday. “He will be up and around tomorrow morning and will be back in the shortest time possible. The time for recovery depends on swelling and how he reacts to rehab.”
Taylor is the Jayhawks’ leading returning scorer and is averaging 15.9 points and 4.7 assists. He had nine points and a career-high 13 assists against the Buckeyes.
It’s been an interesting few years for former New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis.
Moving from being the head man at Notre Dame, to most recently Will Muschamp’s offensive coordinator at Florida, it appears Weis has another Division I head coaching job locked down.
According to several reports– including a tweet from KU Athletics– Weis will be announced as Turner Gill’s replacement at a news conference slated for Friday.