Wednesday, January 30, 2008
All you have to do is mention two words: the streak. Kansas and Kansas State basketball fans know exactly what they mean. Kansas has won 24 consecutive basketball games in Manhattan, including 19 straight at Bramlage Coliseum. For Kansas fans, the streak is a source of pride — an opportunity to stick out their chests and boast to their K-State friends. For K-State fans, the streak is a source of humiliation — a dreary reminder of the general futility of K-State’s basketball program during the last 25 years. But if you mention the streak to Kansas coach Bill Self, you get a starkly different reaction. Self and his players, well, they just don’t care.
“I don’t need to address that because they don’t have anything to do with it,” Self said. “They could care less about it. It’s something that the media and fans make a big deal about it.”
In 1983, the last time Kansas lost in Manhattan, “Return of the Jedi” was the number one movie at the box office. Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” was number one on the Billboard music charts. More importantly, not a single member of the Kansas basketball team was even alive.
Max Rinkel
Kansas hopes to stomp Kansas State at Manhattan tonight, continuing the 25-year-long winning streak against the Wildcats. The last time the Jayhawks lost in Manhattan was in 1983, before any of the current Kansas players were born.
Maybe that’s why senior forward Darnell Jackson — who was born more than two years after the streak began — said Kansas’ players didn’t feel any added pressure to continue the streak.
“We are not worried about anything like that. We’re just worrying about the next day, the next game.” Jackson said. “I don’t think there is pressure on anybody.”
Freshman forward Cole Aldrich has never even played in a game against K-State. His teammates have prepped him about playing the Wildcats, but not about the streak.
“Not really many people have talked about it,” Aldrich said. “We just really take it game by game.”
Kansas’ players may not be stressing about upholding the streak, but senior guard Russell Robinson thinks that K-State players will be thinking about it.
“I think it would mean more to them than us right now,” Robinson said.
K-State’s two leading scorers — freshmen Michael Beasley and Bill Walker — have both guaranteed that the streak would end this season. Walker made his declaration at Big 12 Media Day in October. Beasley’s words came last summer. “We’re gonna beat KU at home. We’re gonna beat ‘em at their house. We’re gonna beat ‘em in Africa,” Beasley said. “Wherever we play, we’re gonna beat ‘em.”
First-year Kansas State coach Frank Martin stood by Beasley’s comments during his Big 12 conference call on Monday. “Mike said what he felt in his heart,” Martin said. “It’s what he believes. He didn’t come here to lose to Kansas.
If Beasley can keep good on his word, he’ll have done something that no K-State player has done in 25 years.
Some of the games have been close, like Kansas’ 64-63 victory in 1998. And some have been blowouts, like Kansas’ 85-57 victory in Manhattan in 1990.
But every time, Kansas has found a way to survive. So while Kansas players have downplayed the streak’s importance, Robinson admitted that he doesn’t want to go down in history as the team that finally lost in Manhattan.
“We just try to maintain it and just win the next game, and that’s all you can do. Hopefully we’re not the team to lose it,” Robinson said.
— Edited by Jared Duncan
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