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Closer Look Kansas power forward put Arizona in Graves dangerPosted: Sunday March 30, 2003 12:37 AMUpdated: Sunday March 30, 2003 1:27 AM
By Stewart Mandel, SI.com ANAHEIM, Calif. -- For most of the season, the first place to look for Jeff Graves during the key moments of a big game was the bench. Saturday, in Kansas’ 78-75 Elite Eight upset of Arizona, he was everywhere else. With 3:15 remaining and the Jayhawks clinging to a 70-69 lead, he was right under the basket, ready to put back a huge offensive rebound when Kirk Hinrich’s 3-point attempt misfired. With the lead back down to one, 74-73, with 1:30 remaining, he was standing in the perfect spot after Arizona’s Channing Frye blocked Keith Langford’s jumper to retrieve the ball and feed it to Nick Collison for a big layup. In fact, Graves was in the right place so often Saturday he wound up with a staggering 13 points and 15 rebounds, all the while staying on the court for 32 minutes, the longest stint for the normally foul-prone junior since the Jayhawks’ last game against Arizona back on Jan. 25.
In that game, a 91-74 Kansas defeat, Graves was largely a non-factor. But in this game, besides Hinrich’s 28 points, no one on the floor gave a more valuable effort. "That’s about as well as he’s played for us," Collison said. "He’s come so far from when he got here." When he got there last fall, Graves, a 6-foot-9 transfer from Iowa Western junior college, was 43 pounds over his playing weight of 250. And he suffered a concussion in a Sept. 8 car accident that set back his conditioning. Graves was so far in Roy Williams’ doghouse by Midnight Madness that the coach declared him "not officially a member of our team yet" after he failed to pass two mandatory running tests. "I’ve been on Jeff Graves’ tail all year long," Williams said Saturday. "I don’t know if I’ve ever been more mad at a player for a longer period of time." Graves compounded that anger once the season began by getting into constant foul trouble, particularly during Big 12 play, when the Jayhawks needed him most due to starting center Wayne Simien’s shoulder injury. A season’s worth of Williams' prodding paid off tenfold Saturday. Defensively, he helped limit Arizona’s Frye -- who came in averaging 17.8 points and 11.3 rebounds in four postseason games -- to six points and five rebounds. And offensively, with Arizona’s 1-3-1 zone effectively taking Collison out of the game, Graves stepped in as KU’s dominant inside presence, hitting all six field-goal attempts. Perhaps none was bigger than his tip-in of the Hinrich shot, a hustle play that typified the way he played all night and helped keep Arizona at bay when it appeared it might pull off yet another come-from-behind on the Jayhawks. "On the tip, I was just trying to do my job," said Graves. "The coaches said, 'Crash the boards and we can pull this off.' I was trying to play my role in the game." Of course, the only reason he was able to do it was that he was able to stay on the floor, a minor detail for some players but a huge accomplishment for Graves. When asked if, after managing just 21.3 minutes per game in 16 Big 12 contests -- 15 of which he started -- he ever imagined Graves would be out there for 32 in an Elite Eight game, a sarcastic Williams said, "I don’t know if I thought he could play 32 minutes in a game where there weren’t referees." "I told him before the game we needed him to stay in the game," said teammate Aaron Miles, "because we know what he’s able to do if he was able to stay out there." Now the rest of the country does, too. Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com. |
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