He never looked better than he looked Monday, and he wasn’t going to let his team lose. At times, he’s taken too much upon himself and hasn’t looked like the same player.
Pullen has put so much on his back in this season of K-State underachieving a year after it overachieved all the way to the Elite Eight. Pullen, intent on paying back Tyshawn Taylor for out-playing him in Lawrence, would have won this game even if Markieff hadn’t played just eight minutes in the first half, even if Marcus weren’t forced back into the game to play the rest of the half with two fouls because to do otherwise would have been to dig a deeper ditch. It’s on the players to strike the proper balance and play intense, physical basketball without letting that spill into non-basketball plays that bring unnecessary whistles. “I don’t believe that will be the case at all.” “I really believe we’re not going to have any more issues with that moving forward,” Self said. Self expressed confidence the message had been absorbed. “We’ve had different things to try to help them understand the importance of playing smart and that stuff all the time.” “We’ve addressed it consistently all year,” Self said then. He mentioned referees think of them as a tandem, and when one twin does something foolish, both get branded as trouble-makers. That responsibility falls on the Morris twins, terrific players on most nights, the nights they don’t get in their own way.īack during the nonconference portion of the schedule, it was Marcus Morris who unleashed a high elbow and got tossed from a road victory against California.ĭays after Markieff’s loss of composure against Missouri, his coach, Bill Self, talked about how the twins are marked men and have to be aware of that. And he’s not counted on to lead this team. Oh well, at least he led the team with five rebounds.
On a night Kansas was in too big a hurry all game, nobody hurried more than Little. That chore went to Jeff Withey, who couldn’t cut it defensively, and Mario Little, who was hell-bent on shooting Kansas back into it and kept firing blanks. Thomas Robinson, recovering from knee surgery, wasn’t there to bail them out. Markieff’s second foul, the intentional one, gave him a seat next to his brother. Against K-State, Markieff’s arm made contact with Jacob Pullen’s face, which didn’t slow the senior guard from Chicago enough to keep him from torching KU with 38 points.īy that point in the game, Markieff’s twin, Marcus, had been whistled for two fouls. It didn’t hurt his team when Markieff Morris got called for one against Missouri’s Justin Safford. That, of course, would be the penchant for one of the Morris twins to act impulsively and get whistled for an intentional foul. It’s the threat of a recurring, self-defeating trait resurfacing at another inopportune time, the annoying sub-plot of an otherwise successful season, that could undermine KU’s attempt to get to Houston, site of the Final Four.
The memory of a sea of purple spilling onto the court will create an edge, always a good thing to bring into March Madness. 1 anymore, and the stink of such an awful performance ought to linger long enough to carry them into the postseason with enough sense to know if they don’t bring their best every night, they won’t last long. KU won’t have that problem again, after getting bullied, 84-68, Monday night in Bramlage Coliseum by a Kansas State team that rode its star to a season-saving victory. Manhattan If it merely had been a case of the Kansas University basketball team not having the humility to handle the prosperity of holding the No. Kansas players Tyrel Reed and Mario Little talk to reporters following the Jayhawks' 84-68 loss to Kansas State on Feb. Podcast episode Press Conferences & Post-Game Interviews KU players Tyrel Reed and Mario Little