Following pregame tunnel altercation, Kansas punishes Richmond

In hindsight, Richmond should have probably let it go right away.

On the other side, Kansas should have probably waited a little longer.

Before taking the floor Friday night in San Antonio, the Spiders huddled in the tunnel as part of their pregame ritual. Meanwhile, the top-seeded Jayhawks attempted to exit the tunnel by squeezing around them on both sides.

In the middle of it, with the bodies getting a bit close, and just like that, the shouting and shoving began.

Pinning fault squarely on one side is a bit tough. It certainly appeared that Richmond was the first side to resort to shoving, but the conspiracy theorist might argue that Kansas ran out prematurely with the goal of getting into the Spiders' heads.

Kansas technically got the mind games started on Thursday, when players from both sides crossed paths in the Alamodome between practices and media sessions. During a brief exchange, Marcus Morris coldly said "You boys better be ready."

After Richmond's Kevin Anderson and Kansas's Brady Morningstar both deflected questions in the postgame press conferences about the spat, KU coach Bill Self tried to shoot down the notion that bad blood was ever even there.

"That's not true," he began. "Our media made a big deal out of nothing yesterday. But that's not true, at all. Today what happened was that, you know, I don't know if you guys know this, but both teams walk down the same hallway. So both teams came out at the same time to go on the court. So, typical stuff, but it wasn't anything. And I didn't think there was any trash talking at all."

Uh, right.

Judging by the Jayhawks' reactions during the mini-altercation on Friday, the favorite to emerge from the Southwest regional clearly hadn't lost any of that edge.

After trailing 5-4 in the early moments, KU ripped off a 27-4 run, essentially burying Richmond by the time the game was 14 minutes old. The Jayhawks led by 19 at the half, and the only drama that remained was waiting to see if TBS would unearth video of the pregame incident.

In a halftime interview with Craig Sager, KU coach Bill Self said he'd made his players wait to exit the floor for the locker room until Richmond's players had cleared the tunnel, leading viewers to assume he was trying to avoid another dust-up.

Coincidentally, the footage was finally shown three minutes into the second half as Anderson was shooting a pair of technical free throws, after Morningstar was whistled for unsportsmanlike behavior upon drilling his third 3-pointer of the game.

He hit the shot, then the refs took control, as Kansas was still yapping excessively, even with a comfortable double-digit lead. It was the final moment of even moderate intrigue in a 77-57 rout.

After the bracket crumbled around Kansas in the first weekend — No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 3 Purdue, No. 4 Louisville and No. 5 Vanderbilt all got axed early — Self's club, in turn, likely faced more pressure than any regional favorite entering the Sweet Sixteen. The Southwest was the only region without three of its top four seeds remaining in the second weekend.

The Jayhawks took that pressure and, after the Spiders threw some excess gas on the flames, responded in the right way.

KU out-rebounded Richmond 40-33, held the Spiders to 22-of-65 shooting and 4-of-26 accuracy from long range. They also forced 11 Richmond turnovers, converting most of them into easy buckets. Chris Mooney's Princeton-style offense was rendered completely ineffective in the first half, as KU clogged lanes, dominated the glass and forced an up-and-down, hurried pace right from jump.

The Morris twins only had to combine for 18 points and 13 rebounds in the effort. Backup forward Thomas Robinson had 12 and 14, respectively, while Morningstar poured in 18 points off of 7-of-11 shooting. The Jayhawks had assists on 22 of their 30 field goals — including 10 from erratic junior Tyshawn Taylor — and only committed nine turnovers.

It was clean and dominant, and you can argue that a good portion of it was provoked by Richmond.

If that edge carries over into Sunday for Kansas, a trip to Houston will be all but a certainty.

Ryan Greene also covers UNLV and the Mountain West Conference for the Las Vegas Sun. Read his Rebels coverage and follow him on Twitter.

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Hot streak for Kansas hits new peak in romp of Missouri

The downside to Kansas's 103-86 slicing of rival Missouri on Monday night is that some people might remember it all to well.

The Jayhawks were as close to perfect as a team can expect to be on the offensive end, and just about anything they do moving forward runs the risk of being compared to this performance.

It looks eye-popping on the surface alone, as the nation's second-ranked club shot 60.7 percent from the floor and was 11-of-19 from 3-point range. They compiled a shade under a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio, and were incredibly efficient in their execution, with only four of those 103 points coming via the fast break.

Quick, accurate and sharp ball movement in the half-court led to open shots from everywhere, and every one of them seemed to fall.

The only notable offensive blemish Kansas had on the night was an 18-of-28 showing at the free throw line.

Oh well. There's not much difference between scoring 103 and 108 points in only 40 minutes.

But it's a closer look at some of the individual efforts that shows just how well Bill Self's machine is running right now.

It goes far beyond the Morris twins, who combined to turn in a ho-hum 38-point, 15-rebound night.

• Junior point guard Tyshawn Taylor was not wild and out of control, which he has a tendency to be at the wrong times. He was the only KU player to have what you'd consider a poor shooting night (4-of-14), but had only two turnovers in 35 minutes, which Self will take any night from him.

• In his second game replacing the injured Josh Selby in the starting lineup, senior Brady Morningstar had eight points, seven assists and no turnovers in a game-high 38 minutes. This came after scoring a career-high 19 points on Saturday at Nebraska. The fact that Selby didn't play — but probably will again soon — was a mere afterthought.

• Also helping absorb the blow from the brief loss of Selby are senior swingman Mario Little and sophomore guard Travis Releford. Little scored a career-best 17 points against Mizzou, including a 3-of-3 night from beyond the arc. Releford is just rounding back into form after an ankle sprain, tallied 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting in 16 minutes.

Monday's shellacking was simply the peak of a wild run that Kansas has enjoyed since suffering its lone loss of the season to Texas on Jan. 22.

The Jayhawks aren't necessarily stifling opponents on the defensive end, which Self always prefers, but are instead overwhelming them with offense.

In the five games since the setback, KU is out-scoring opponents by an average margin of 16.8 points, hasn't shot worse than 50.9 percent and is a combined 47-of-97 from the outside.

They're also finishing opponents off much more emphatically after letting a handful big leads vanish in the second half several times earlier this season.

The chances of them keeping it at least near the recent mean look good, too, with five upcoming games against unranked opponents before finishing the regular season at home against No. 22 Texas A&M and on the road in the rematch with No. 19 Mizzou.

They've simply looked like a different team since the Texas loss, which came roughly 12 hours after sophomore forward Thomas Robinson's mother passed.

On the Friday night before that game, after the news was delivered to Robinson by his younger sister, the team was with him in his on-campus apartment into the wee hours of the morning. That next week, they traveled to the funeral in Washington, D.C., to be by his side.

During the current run, it's had the look like a closer team.

It's showing on paper, too.

Ryan Greene covers UNLV and the Mountain West Conference for the Las Vegas Sun. Read his Rebels coverage and follow him on Twitter.

Related: Kansas Jayhawks

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