College Basketball

Strong Rebound

After getting off to a terrible start, the precocious Jayhawks have hit their stride and turned their season around

Visiting teams at Kansas's fabled Allen Fieldhouse have long been told to Beware the Phog; this season the Jayhawks' talented freshmen have come to beware the treadmill. The exercise machine, capable of a 4:30-mile pace at a punishingly steep incline, occasionally sits alongside the court at Kansas practices as a motivational tool. "It'll kill you," says coach Bill Self. "It's like running straight up a hill."

Freshman guard Brandon Rush, the Jayhawks' leading scorer, has been dealt numerous 80-second sentences on the treadmill--but not for the kind of transgressions one might expect from a rookie. "We needed him to be more aggressive," Self says, "and if he turns down a shot in practice, he goes to the treadmill. That's helped a lot." Rush, whom Texas A&M coach Billy Gillispie already calls "the best player in the Big 12," has averaged 16.2 points in conference play (14.3 overall) to lead Kansas back from a dismal start to a 18-6 record after Monday night's 64-49 win over Oklahoma State. One mark of how bare the cupboard was after the departure of three 1,000-point scorers from last year's team ( Keith Langford, Aaron Miles and Wayne Simien) is that Rush--with 344 points in 24 games--is now the Jayhawks' career scoring leader among current players. Self has started three freshmen and two sophomores in the last seven games, giving Kansas the greenest team in the AP poll, which the Jayhawks entered this week at No. 23.

In addition to Rush, who declared for the NBA draft out of high school before withdrawing, Self's highly regarded recruiting class included McDonald's All-Americans Mario Chalmers, Micah Downs (who has transferred to Gonzaga) and Julian Wright. But it wasn't precocious enough to keep Kansas from bumbling to a 1-2 record at the Maui Invitational (the lone win coming against Division II Chaminade), and then suffering losses to Nevada and St. Joseph's in the following two weeks. "We weren't the team in November that we thought we were going to be," says Self. "But I told the guys numerous times, 'We're going to be fine. By conference play we'll be tough to deal with.'"

Sure enough, the Jayhawks are now 9-2 in the Big 12, and just one half game behind Texas for first place. So how did Kansas go from left-for-dead in early December to a team no one wants to face just two months later? The obvious answer is a little lineup tinkering. Self started the season with a backcourt of senior Jeff Hawkins at the point and sophomore Russell Robinson at shooting guard, with Chalmers backing up Hawkins. But in early January, Self moved Chalmers, a prolific high school scorer, into the starting lineup at shooting guard and made Robinson his playmaker. "Everything started to click then," says Robinson.

Both players' scoring averages have ballooned: Chalmers's has jumped from 6.8 points per game in nonconference play to 15.3 in the Big 12, and Robinson's has gone from 6.5 to 11.1. But the two have also become a formidable defensive duo; their perimeter pressure is a major reason the Jayhawks lead the nation in field goal percentage defense (36.3%).

In addition to the backcourt switch, Self also began giving more minutes to the wildly athletic, 6'8" Wright as an undersized power forward. But the baby Jayhawks have undergone an equally important psychological makeover as well. "They were thinking too much," Self says of his youngsters. "We needed them to play with reckless abandon."

The freshmen have gotten less tentative with every game. In their improbable rally from a 16-point second-half deficit to beat then No. 19 Oklahoma on Feb. 5, Rush nailed two big threes down the stretch, Wright added a key putback slam, and Chalmers hit the game-winner on a floater in the lane with 20 seconds left. "I looked at Coach, and he wasn't signaling for a timeout," Chalmers says, "so I just took the ball inside." His instincts took over. It was exactly what Self had been waiting for.

BRACKET BUSTERS