Stewart, on early hot streak, back for more in Cali

Tony Stewart's probably having a decent week. Smoke, of course, is off to one of his best career starts to a season and returning to the site of his last victory.

He also dabbled in working as a zookeeper this week at the Oakland Zoo, where he got face-to-face with an 11,000-pound elephant. (Stewart is no newbie to the animal kingdom — he once owned a patas monkey that he later donated to the Louisville Zoo.)

But zoo stories aside, Stewart's got a race this weekend at Auto Club Speedway and 42 other helmeted elephants to deal with — and his preview of it doesn't gloss much over.

"I've just been terrible there," the two-time Sprint Cup champion said. "We've had times when we've been good, but I've really struggled as a driver there over the course of 12 years."

Stewart's relationship with the southern California track has been so personally murky that even a win there last October didn't seem to sway his opinion. In terms of average finish, Stewart has just three tracks on the Sprint Cup Series circuit where he typically is worse at — Bristol, Daytona and Talladega.

The victory was Stewart's first in 18 tries at the track, and it was the culmination of a decided improvement for Stewart at the two-mile oval. In the past six seasons, Stewart has been the sixth-best Cup driver under the near-Hollywood lights.

Such improvement has been also evident in his first four cracks at the 2011 season. Stewart is third in points, just 12 markers back of leader Kurt Busch, thanks to an average finish of 10th and 222 laps led.

For perspective, Stewart has long been known to improve as the season wears on and the summer sun starts to turn the paved race tracks a little more like the Turns 1 and 2 at his self-owned dirt track, Eldora Speedway. The numbers don't hide it: Stewart's 222 laps led so far this season far outpace his last two.

In 2009, Stewart needed 18 races to lead that many laps and in 2010 it took 25 races of the 36-race schedule. Stewart's finishing position is also two spots better through the season's first four races than a year ago.

"This year, with the new nose, we took another step toward that and spent a lot of time in the wind tunnel," Stewart's crew chief Darian Grubb said. "I feel like we had a pretty good baseline going into this year. We've had three chances to win on a speedway, a one-mile and a mile-and-a-half, so we feel pretty good about our program right now."

Does that guarantee Stewart will be California dreamin' come Sunday? Certainly not. But it does strike a pretty ominous chord for drivers used to dealing with Smoke mostly when the mercury begins to rise.

Related: Kurt Busch, Tony Stewart, Michael Waltrip

View the original article here

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

View the original article here