Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Last KU Loss at the Fieldhouse...

Now that we've broken the all-time KU home win streak record, let me take a moment to reflect on the last time Kansas lost at home:

It was February 2007. Just like today, the president was reeling from a midterm-election shellacking. The upcoming White House campaign was expected to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Rex Grossman was about to start in the Super Bowl the next day.

The Jayhawks were a raw, young team. Sherron Collins was a freshman, but a lot of people expected him to bolt for the NBA early and Julian Wright to stick around.

Our opponent was not Texas A&M CC, but just Texas A&M. The coach was Billy Gillispie. (Kentucky's coach was still Tubby Smith.) Kansas played a strong game overall, and seemed in control, but A&M got hot in the last few minutes and our guys missed some crucial shots down the stretch. At Jayhawk Nation, this led to an argument among the bloggers about whether Sasha Kaun should have been in the game -- the same Sasha Kaun who would later become a tournament hero. (I was on the right side of history in that one, thank you very much.)

It was the first and only time that a Big 12 South team won at the Fieldhouse.

By the way, Travis Releford supposedly had a spectacular reverse dunk in last night's game, but I can't find any video evidence of it. LJW's highlight reel is worth checking out, and very dunk-heavy in its own right, but if anyone can guide me to the Releford play I'd appreciate it.

6 comments:

  1. Also in that '07 blog post, one commenter who shall not be named actually began a sentence with "I'm not on any fire Self bandwagon at this time, but..."

    That of course was the last iteration of "fire Self" in recorded history. Check your OED.

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  2. That's hilarious about the reverse dunk--our web feed stalled just as he went up, so we never really saw it either, even though we watched the whole dunk-fest of a game.

    Was remarkable from start--well, four minutes in, I guess--to finish. Easy scoring, good communication, plenty of athleticism.

    Interior defense still has room to improve, but I was pretty impressed last night.


    Thanks for the reminiscing, dgl, though I'm not sure how you read history (and, I'm not sure I want to actually revisit any of this; and, full disclosure, I have a terrible memory), but are you saying that Kaun was a hero for his late-game free throw shooting?

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  3. I'm saying Kaun was a hero, period. We lose the Davidson game without him. And as the game track shows, he was in there down the stretch, making one key bucket and going 1 for 2 from the line in crunch time.

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  4. Well, if that's what you're saying, then I concede the point.

    This is fun--we should make revisiting past arguments a regular feature.

    Though I'm sure once the season really gets going we'll be too busy focusing on the awesomeness of the '10-11 'Hawks...

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  5. In fairness, you could indict me via the archives as well. Earlier that same season, I wrote:

    "One thing is sadly clear -- we have lost our Fieldhouse advantage under Self... Did Naismith floor lose its mystique when they painted that obscenely huge Jayhawk on it? Or did Roy know something about home cooking that Self hasn't figured out?"

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  6. That was the game where Acie Law sealed it at the end, right?

    I think I was there for that.

    That guy was a hell of a college player. Gutty. Too bad his game didn't translate to the NBA.

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