Tell me you wouldn’t love to be a newcomer on the Kansas basketball team this year.
On top of the usual perks that come with being a Jayhawk basketball player — adulation from a basketball-mad fanbase, free nonalcoholic drinks from law-abiding bar owners, a built-in shot at the most attractive coeds the university has to offer — KU’s class of seven newcomers has a couple of other things going in their favor as Late Night in the Phog kicks off tonight.
First of all, with the entire starting five, plus Sasha Kaun, all departed off KU’s national championship team, all seven newcomers have a real chance to carve out playing time.
Second, they face almost no outside pressure to win this year.
“Wait,” you might be thinking, “what are you talking about? They’re playing basketball at Kansas, and they have the toughest possible act to follow, don’t they?”
Except they really don’t have to follow it at all. See, in ending a 20-year drought without a national championship — an eternity at a school where basketball is damn near everything — KU fans, by and large, are good for awhile. Their thirst is quenched. The Jayhawks not only finally got that national title, they did it in dramatic fashion against Memphis and stomped mean ol’ promise-breaker Roy Williams along the way.
That means that KU’s newcomers — freshmen Travis Releford, Tyshawn Taylor, Marcus and Markieff Morris and Quintrell Thomas, and juco transfers Tyrone Appleton and Mario Little — will face pressure to win this year from Bill Self and his staff, from themselves, and virtually none from anyone else.
Go on KU message boards these days, or talk to a few KU fans you know, and chances are, you’ll see the general attitude shift that’s come with winning it all in 2008. Sure, fans will expect the Jayhawks to be among the Big 12’s best squads again. If they manage to win another Big 12 title, or somehow make another Final Four, that’s great. But unless they miss the NCAA Tournament, or go 14-18 or something, fans will just be satisfied with whatever success this year brings.
Boston Red Sox fans wanted last year’s world championship, sure — but after 2004, they didn’t need it. It’s much the same for a KU fanbase that had suffered through so many near-misses — four other Final Fours and two championship games since that last title, not to mention a 34-2 team in 1997 that everyone thought should’ve won it all.
With a 20-year gap between titles, a generation of Kansas fans reached adulthood with no memory of or physical presence for the 1988 title, and some older fans grew too senile to remember Danny and the Miracles. Now, it’ll be at least a year before fans see a push for a national title as necessary.
Which is a good thing for this group, because chances are, they’re going to lose some games in 2008-09. All five KU freshmen ranked in the top 100 of the final Recruiting Services Consensus Index for 2008, but the highest was Releford at No. 49. Little, voted by the Big 12 coaches as the preseason newcomer of the year, could make the biggest immediate impact. This essentially is a “foundation” class; the still-forming class of 2009 is the one that will likely contain KU’s next superstar.
Kansas’ brand new starting five will feature Sherron Collins at point guard, Cole Aldrich at center, probably Little at the third perimeter spot, one other guard and one of the Morris twins as the second “big.” It’s a lineup that, like the 2005-06 team that featured Mario Chalmers, Brandon Rush and Julian Wright as freshmen, will take time to gel. The schedule features some challenges, with games at Arizona and Michigan State, a matchup against either Florida or Syracuse at the CBE Classic in Kansas City, Mo., and a home game against Tennessee. In the Big 12, Texas is clearly better, Oklahoma looks better on paper, and Baylor should continue to ascend.
A learning curve like that of the ’05-06 team — which lost four of its first seven games before finding its groove in conference, winning a share of the reglar-season Big 12 title and the conference tournament — is probably the absolute best-case scenario. Kansas fans will need to be patient.
Thanks to the likes of Chalmers, Rush and Darrell Arthur, they will be. They’ll let the new Jayhawks make their rookie mistakes, and they’ll take some inevitable losses with as little frustration as possible. That’s a good thing for a group of seven kids who will need time to get acclimated to the rigors of major-college basketball.