Thursday, November 6, 2008
Coach Bill Self promised it would take time. He warned Jayhawk fans that it was impossible to replace five NBA draft picks overnight and that the seven newcomers to this year’s squad would suffer some growing pains early in the season.
Self may not be a fortune teller, but he sure looked the part during Tuesday’s 98-79 exhibition victory against Washburn. The six newcomers who played struggled to find any kind of rhythm and looked out of sync for most of the game.
“Other than Quintrell, the freshmen weren’t factors at all tonight,” Self said. “They’ve played better than that.”
Sophomore guard Brady Morningstar and freshman center Markieff Morris battle Washburn's Logan Stutz for a rebound during Tuesday's game.
Quintrell Thomas had 10 points and six rebounds, easily the best stat-line of all the newcomers. He was the lowest-rated prospect of all of the freshmen coming out of high school, but seemed the most comfortable in his 16 minutes of action.
“I was nervous all day because I thought I was going to come out and, like, airball a layup or something,” Thomas said. “It was fun because you normally see all of the videos and stuff and it just felt good to actually be out there.”
Though Thomas had waited for this day, it took him less than 30 seconds to realize that the speed of the college game was much different than that of high school.
“I realized that I’m not in as a good of shape as I need to be,” Thomas said. “I was in there for like 30 seconds and that first wind killed me.”
Fans hoping to figure out which Morris twin was which on Tuesday didn’t get any help when they both entered the game just three minutes in. Only fitting, the two brothers who do nearly everything together made their Jayhawk debuts at the same time.
“I was a little nervous,” said Markieff. “I had to get the nervousness out of me so I took a couple of shots.”
Neither of the twins’ performances will get their numbers hung in the Allen Fieldhouse rafters just yet. Markieff had five points and three turnovers and Marcus had two points and fouled out after seven minutes of action.
“I said ‘You only played seven minutes and fouled out? You only played two more minutes than you had fouls,’” Markieff said. “We fouled way too much. Against good teams, we’re going to need to be on the floor a lot. We need to work on that in practice.”
Freshman Tyshawn Taylor had seven points but committed a team-high five turnovers. And fellow freshman Travis Releford had three points and three rebounds in 14 minutes of work.
Tyrone Appleton, who just returned to practice Thursday after missing three weeks with a sore hip, played six minutes but had six points.
The only newcomer not to play was Mario Little, the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year, who didn’t dress and will miss a couple of weeks with a stress fracture in his left leg.
Combined, the six Jayhawk newcomers scored 33 points and had 12 turnovers.
“This was a great experience for our first game,” Markieff said. “Now that we got used to the college level, we can just stop fouling and keep playing hard.”
— — Edited by Jennifer Torline
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