the baron, dean, mark and a couple of dubyas

I’m wondering this morning whether Mrs. Elizabeth (T.D.) Lawson is still with us. I remember when I was living in Lawrence, KS, the local newspaper would interview her every spring—usually sometime in mid-March. I’m confident she didn’t have game, but she had a story. It was always about watching her brother shoot baskets at the family homestead in Halstead, KS, sometime early during the second decade of the twentieth century. Many of us remember the twentieth century, but few remember where we were in 1911. Mrs. Lawson did. Her brother, Adolph Rupp, went on to play four years for Phog Allen at the University of Kansas. While there he played on the 1923 national championship team. Later, he coached the University of Kentucky, where he was known as “The Baron of the Bluegrass,” and retired as the winningest college basketball coach of all time. John Wooden and Dean Smith have since passed him, but it is still in the family as Dean Smith is also a KU grad and played on the 1952 national championship team.

Halstead is just North of Wichita, and yesterday, in Baton Rouge, LA, the Wichita State Shockers upset six-ranked LSU in basketball. The shockers are coached by former KU player and coach, Mark Turgeon. That was about the most exciting thing that happened in Kansas basketball yesterday. That is only because when the University of Kansas knocked off number one Florida, it was actually Sunday morning here. Kansas played Florida in a city that the Associated Press referred to as Lawrence, Nevada. It is a city that just happens to be my home away from home, but I prefer to call it by its real name, Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was an exciting game, late last night and in the wee hours of the morning, here, but I am reminded how basketball is a game that is determined by a hot hand, and the best team doesn’t always win. I’m not sure if Kansas is really better than Florida. After all, Florida had an open look at a three-ball as time expired. The shot was short and the game was over, but it was one of those fifty-fifty chances and it could have gone either way.

It’s a lot more fun, though, when your team wins, even if it requires that one stays up past his bedtime.

Rock chalk.

At least, that’s what we say in Jimbo’s world.