Friday, November 14, 2008
Three Jayhawks walked through the side doors of Allen Fieldhouse after soccer practice on Tuesday without showering.
No, poor hygiene habits are not to blame. Instead, point the metaphorical finger at the Emporia State basketball players occupying the locker room before their game later that night against Bill Self and Kansas.
Luckily, it’s the only rejection the Jayhawks experienced this week. On Monday, members of the soccer team gathered around a TV in the Naismith Auditorium and watched as Kansas was one of 64 teams selected to play in the NCAA Soccer Tournament.
“We know we deserve to be in this tournament. We have the ability to do so much,” senior Missy Geha said. “I guess I’m relieved that somebody finally gave us a chance to prove ourselves to the country.”
Geha and the rest of the Kansas seniors are quite familiar with the hardships brought on by the tournament selection show. During Geha’s freshman and sophomore years, the Jayhawks finished with 11-win seasons and appeared poised to make the tournament.
Both times, however, Kansas didn’t hear its name called.
“We knew we had a pretty good chance,” senior Jessica Bush said, “but you just never know.”
Now, Kansas is headed to Palo Alto, Calif., to face Denver (19-2-2) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
But the Jayhawks’ road to this point has been marred with inconsistencies. One game Kansas knocked off a ranked Central Florida team, the next it lost to Loyola Chicago.
“You have to show up to play every day,” Geha said. “Some days, we weren’t there and we weren’t all on the same page.”
That trend continued up until the end of the season. In its regular season finale, Kansas suffered its worst loss since 1999 when Missouri crushed the Jayhawks 6-0.
Then, in the first round of the Big 12 championship, Kansas topped eighth-ranked Texas A&M — a win that seemingly sealed KU’s spot in the NCAA tournament.
“Now, it’s just about the games we have ahead of us,” junior Shannon McCabe said. “I think we’re playing some of our best soccer at the end of the season.”
That means more practice for the Jayhawks heading into cold-weather season. And the conditions for Tuesday’s practice were anything but ideal: rainy, slippery and windy.
But with a long-awaited berth in the NCAA tournament, the Jayhawks seemed more than pleased to take on all of the elements.
“We’re playing outside and it’s awful,” Bush said. “But I think we’ll really appreciate California’s weather when we’re playing in the heat.”
— — Edited by Brieun Scott
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