Thursday, January 11, 2007
Monday night’s pre-game hype centered on stopping Oklahoma State’s Mario Boggan. An hour before tip-off, ESPN analysts questioned which Jayhawk would be able to stop the senior.
Sasha Kaun quickly provided the answer.
The junior center dominated inside against the Cowboys, scoring 14 of his 16 points in the first half and helped hold Boggan to eight points in the Jayhawks’ 87-57 victory.
“He stepped up for us real big,” sophomore forward Brandon Rush said. “He made some big shots and got Mario Boggan into foul trouble.”
From the beginning of the game, Kaun showed explosiveness he hadn’t displayed all year, soaring for Kansas’ first two points on a dunk. He had two more dunks before five minutes had elapsed. Kaun said it was his best game of the season so far.
It may well have been his best game in more than a year. He turned in an effort that had not been replicated since he scored a career-high 25 points against Idaho State in November 2005. Kaun continually made room for himself against Oklahoma State’s low post defenders and finished in multiple ways: dunks, turnarounds and hook shots.
“He’s playing good ball right now,” freshman guard Sherron Collins said. “Every time he got open, I tried to get him the ball, because he’s tough to guard down there.”
The inside brilliance shown by Kaun was not limited to only the offensive end. He blocked three shots and grabbed five rebounds. Most importantly, his defense prevented Boggan from ever getting into a flow. Boggan collected two early fouls and sputtered to 4 of 16 shooting for the game.
“Boggan is a beast inside,” Kaun said. “I just tried to be active, discourage the guard from passing to him and keep an arm around him.”
Kaun’s coming out party couldn’t have come soon enough for Kansas. He had been maddeningly inconsistent for most of the season, scoring one point one game and 10 the next.
His improvement can be traced to two reasons. For one, Rush said Kaun had been doing especially well in practice, that he had been “killing his man.” Also, Kaun said his knee, which he injured in October, is 100 percent.
“You can’t blame inconsistency problems on a knee that happened eight weeks ago,” Kansas coach Bill Self said, “but he’ playing now like he was before he was injured.”
Even with freshman Darrel Arthur having a better than expected freshman campaign, Kaun will be counted on to give his team a spark throughout conference play when Kansas will face more top big men. Boggan is out of the way, but Texas A&M;’s Joseph Jones, Texas’ Kevin Durant and others lie on the horizon.
“It’s conference time and getting to the point where every game counts,” Kaun said. “We got to keep pushing.”
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