October93

Kansas guards fight to keep streak alive

Brady Morningstar, the elder statesman of the Kansas team who will turn 25 this season, remembers what it feels like. He knows how quiet Allen Fieldhouse and the Kansas locker room can be when the Jayhawks lose in their home building. He was on the bench more than three years ago when Kansas lost to Texas A&M, and he doesn’t want to feel that again. He won’t even bring it up with his teammates.

“Nobody knows what it feels like, you know what I’m saying?” Morningstar said. “They don’t want to know what it feels like.”

A victory tonight would stretch the Jayhawks’ home winning streak to a school-record 63 games.

And so the 15 other Jayhawks that share the locker room with Kansas’ only fifth-year senior remain blissfully unaware of that sensation. Not that they’re complaining.

“That wouldn’t be fun,” Tyrel Reed said of losing a game in the Fieldhouse. “I’ve been here three years, and the senior class hasn’t lost here yet and it’s just a big thing for us and we want to keep it going.”

To keep it going the Jayhawks will look for reliable play from its deep stable of guards to complement the always reliable Morris twins inside. Six guards — seniors Mario Little, Morningstar and Reed, junior Tyshawn Taylor, and sophomores Elijah Johnson and Travis Releford — are already competing for at most five spots in what will be the Jayhawks traditional eight-man rotation. And that is without ultra-talented freshman Josh Selby, who isn’t cleared to play until Dec. 18 against USC.

“He’s going to be a great player for us,” Reed said. “I think he just brings something different; an element of toughness, an element of ‘I’m not going to lose, I’m going to go do whatever it takes to win.’ I think it’s really going to help our team. Sherron had that a little bit.”

Reed said the toughness of Selby was something you could just see, even though they haven’t played in a game together.

“He just doesn’t want to lose at anything,” Reed said. “He just takes everything whether it be basketball, or — I mean, if you were playing a game of tiddlywinks I think he’d take it personal.”

Selby’s one of the lucky ones in that he’s all but guaranteed a spot in the Kansas rotation (Self said Friday when Selby was cleared that he would have a “big role” in the Jayhawks season). Tyshawn Taylor, too, is guaranteed the spot, and Tyrel Reed and Brady Morningstar bring too much to the table as the only four-or-more year players getting legitimate playing time for Self to dismiss them entirely. That leaves Johnson, Releford and Little battling for one spot, but Little said the competition for minutes doesn’t bother him.

“Coach deals the deck,” Little said. “That’s his job. That’s what we came here for: to fight and to play for our position. That’s why we came here.”