Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 16, 1990 TAG: 9003162754
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Danny Manning was playing, Larry Brown was coaching, and, as magical stories on the plains go, this one ranked right up there with the one about Dorothy and Toto.
The Jayhawks were the Wizards of Ahs! They won the NCAA championship in their backyard - Kansas City, Mo., after being a sixth seed. How times have changed!
Brown is coaching in San Antonio; Manning is a pro struggling back from reconstructive knee surgery, and the guy in charge used to be Dean Smith's junior varsity coach.
Roy Williams inherited the defending NCAA champions last season, a program on probation, and the doubts of Kansans, who have been spoiled by not only basketball success, but a legacy of legends.
Tonight at 9:30 at the Omni, Williams coaches his first NCAA Tournament game against Robert Morris in the first-round of the East Regional. He sat on Smith's North Carolina bench for 10 of these. Jayhawk fans expect the pupil to be as successful as the teacher.
"I thought we'd be very good this season," said Williams, who is the U.S. Basketball Writers' coach of the year. "I'm not the kind of coach who sits down and goes through the schedule and says we should win these, or 25-4 or 15-14 would be good.
"But we had a very good first three or four weeks of practice. But there's no way I thought we'd be 19-0 or 29-4. I'm not going to sit here like an idiot and say `Yeah, I knew we'd do that.' "
In preseason, Kansas was picked to finish fifth in the Big Eight. The Jayhawks stunned college hoops by beating LSU, Nevada-Las Vegas and St. John's to win the Big Apple NIT. They didn't lose until Jan. 20, at Missouri.
The Jayhawks started 13-1 a year ago in Williams' debut, then faded to a 19-12 finish. They played only on pride, with no NCAA return permitted. And they are back with three starters with NCAA championship rings - Jeff Gueldner and Kevin Pritchard from the '88 Jayhawks, and Indiana transfer Rick Calloway from the '87 Hoosiers' title team.
These Jayhawks are out to prove they had more than Manning in '88.
"When we're in any situation now, I always tell myself, `I've been in the biggest game possible.' It's good to fall back on that," said Pritchard, the senior point guard. "We've been there. We know what it's like, and that helps so much."
Williams is letting his ring-bearing seniors lead, but there's little question the Jayhawks are doing things Dean's way.
"Coach Smith has been pretty successful at these things," said Williams, who has kept Smith's alma mater on the basketball map despite probation. "A lot of people talk about how he's only won one national championship (1982), but he's made the Final 16 nine years in a row.
"He's only the best coach there is, and I learned from him. We're going to emulate the things that North Carolina has done when it came to the NCAA."
After the season of sanctions a year ago, Williams said he didn't mention the NCAA tournament to his team from Oct. 15 until Sunday night, when the Jayhawks met after the bids were announced.
"If you start looking down the road, the one you're going to end up looking at is the one that takes you home," he said. "If we'd have kept talking about the NCAA, it would have been like the guy who says he can't wait to get rich.
"He says, `I want to be rich, I'm going to be rich.' Then he forgets to do the work that will get him that way."
At a school that has produced enough basketball legends to fill a Hall of Fame wing, Williams has a blue-collar team with no stars. Jayhawk fans didn't expect much of Williams. All they knew was that he wasn't Gary Williams (then at Ohio State before moving to Maryland) or even Charlie Spoonhour of Southwest Missouri State. They were among the Jayhawk candidates.
Smith guided Brown to Kansas, then guided the Jayhawks to Williams. He has recruited two classes who haven't been permitted to visit the Lawrence campus because of NCAA probation.
But for now, the Jayhawks are enjoying their success. Williams isn't one to gloat, however. Someone asked Williams whether two late-season losses to Oklahoma - by 22 and 18 - slowed down the Jayhawks.
"I wouldn't say they slowed us down a bit," said Williams. "What they did was hit us between the eyes with a 2-by-4 twice."
by CNB