🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Since it's boxing day, it's acceptable to return the gifts we don't like. As a Jayhawks fanatic, here's a few returns, past and present I'd like to return. No cash required, just erase it from the memory bank.

Michigan. Good Friday. 2013. Do I have to explain why I'm returning this?

Syracuse NC game, my all time most painful Jayhawk loss.

The announcement a couple of days later.

All football memories except the Orange Bowl year.

Arizona in '97. In my opinion the best Jayhawk team of my lifetime.

Duke '86. Actually, return the refs who called 26 fouls on us and 14 on them and fouled out Danny, Cedric, Greg, and nearly Ron.

Since we're on Duke, the 91 championship game as well.

All of the high seeded early exits, UTEP, UCLA, the killer B's, the directional Iowa school, and even a bunch of #1 seeds losing decent teams we still should have beat like Virginia.

There's a few players I'd like to mention, but that might ruin the holiday mood, and who knows, one of you might be JR Giddens.

Regular season embarrassments against Oral Roberts, Richmond, TCU, and even this years Florida game.

The demise of KUSports.com.

The relative 'drought' of the late 1990's and early 2000's when only the most diehard Jayhawk fan wrote down KU in the final four on their brackets. (I'm one of them although I knew better)

The first 38 minutes of the Memphis game.

The first 39 minutes and 59 seconds of the Davidson game that same season.

Any loss to Kentucky and Missouri.

Billy Tubbs and Norm Stewart.

KState in '88. The first time I had seen us lose in person in my three years on campus. Subsequently OU and Duke. Although I guess we returned those in March and April that year.

Missouri leaving. THEY ruined a great rivalry. It is kind of funny to think though that all of these bad memories of ours and they're thinking it'd sure be nice to play in the final four!

I've lost the receipts for these memories, so I may just have to keep them.

@wissoxfan83 great post! I just mentioned the Syracuse free throws yesterday. 86 dook loss I blame the red uniforms. Zona '97 really hurt and UTEP was also a bad memory. Did we really lose to Michigan last year, I swear we made the final 4? Yes, I've picked KU to win title on my bracket EVERY year (tiebreaker 83-79) bc I REALLY believe we're gonna win. Ironically, I got 3rd place in 08 when my wife won. She's an Indiana grad so it still warms my heart she picked us!

I'm returning this pain.
[

An electric candle.

A pear-shaped basketball.

A battery-powered battery charger (battery not included).

A Bruce Weber inflatable love doll.

Two pairs of toes socks.

A taser that shorts.

Cyanide-cured smokeless tobacco.

Radioactive Japanese tuner car parts.

A year's subscription to "Subscription Free Living."

A group-on for putting out a contract on my neighbor's cat.

An incomplete anthology of "The Complete Book of Collecting."

An outdoor basketball goal that shatters below 32F.

A hearing aid programmed only to pick up silence.

A heart monitor an amoeba.

Barack Obama's new book: "Ten Helpful Hints on How to Close Torture Prisons."

Bill Self's book on "How to Maintain Eye Contact with Courtside Reporters."

Jerrance Howard's book entitled: "My Life Without Snacks as told to Tiny Gallon."

A crotchless business suit.

A case of Mexican coke made in Juarez with high fructose corn syrup for Americans.

A trick pistol that shoots backwards.

A book of quotations by Harpo Marx.

Matt Lauer's Guide to Hair Retention.

A cell phone ring of Neville Chamberlain's "Peace in Our Time" speech.

A reversible travel belt with a microchip that shouts "You're FAT!!!" if you eat too much at Il Latini in Fiorenze.

But I'm keeping the thigh/calve augmenters that allow me to jump like I could when I was 19.

(Note: All fiction. No malice.)

@jaybate 1.0 LOL Nice one! Great to have you back Jaybate!

@VailHawk I do the same thing, the tiebreak score 83-79! Maybe I got the idea from you somehow!

@wissoxfan83 and @jaybate This is a great thread! Thx.

@wrwlumpy - Thanks for the video. I positively guarantee you that coming out of a timeout, we could have run something better than "let EJ make something happen" at the end of OT. Maybe even something that involved a screen or two. Unhealed scars. Time for the new year.

@wissoxfan83 I'm flattered but I assume buried deep down in the recesses of your brain past all the bad memories mentioned above you remember the final score of the '88 championship game?

Losing to Maryland in the final four in 2002. That team was so good. Gooden and Collison averaging 35+ points and 20 rebounds per game. Wayne Simien coming off of the bench. Hinrich, Boschee, Miles, Langford in the backcourt.

Remember Steve Blake using his off arm to create space at the top of the key and KU getting whistled for the foul? I do, it was garbage.

@jaybate can I have the group-on for putting a hit out on the neighbor's cat? I seeded my backyard this year in one barren part of the lawn and now that is the nicest grass in the yard... and its where the neighbor's cat goes to poop (it must be every single time it poops) -- so much for the kids rolling around in that part of the lawn.

Man... I'm glad you are back, JB!

...and a great job, wissox!

My all-time biggest throw backs would include the Syracuse loss, and all losses to Mizzou (both football and basketball). Especially hated that Mizzou rained on our football parade and prevented us from playing for a NC.

The two most disappointing losses for me were Michigan and VCU. In the Michigan game, all they had to do was not turn the ball over and make free throws, both of which they didn't do. I know that EJ did a lot of good things for us, but Tharpe should have been in the game. If he would have been in the game, I am convinced that they would have made it to the final four. The Syracuse game was disappointing because of all the missed free throws, but they were ahead of Michigan for a long period of time and were very careless at the end when Michigan was making a comeback, which to me makes it all the more disappointing.

@drgnslayr Thanks Dragon and everyone else for the love!
@DinarHawk, the problem with the Syracuse game for me was we were a much better team than Syracuse. Best of seven we win in 5 games probably.
@KirkHinrich, That year didn't sting as much to me even though you bring up excellent points. The 'glad to be there' syndrome applied for me that year. We had 'struggled' for a few years with a bunch of early exits and that year just felt like the monkey was off our backs.
I guess how good that team was the annihilation of Oregon to get to the Final Four. What a beatdown that was, seemed like every point was an alley oop, or Keith slashing dunk or Jeff three ball. Amazing team performance!

@drgnslayr: it's good to be back. Thx. But u and HEM, you're da men now. I can fake Father Time for short stretches, but not long. Still I'll give what help is in the tank. Dang it's a great game!

@approxinfinity it's yours. :-)

@DinarHawk Thank you kindly, Dinar.

If you return all the bad memories how would you know how good the better ones are?
For example if KU wouldn't have lost to MU in Columbia in their last year in the conference (thanks refs), the win at AFH in the return game would not have felt sooooo gooood!!!

It is the bad memories that make the good ones that much better.

"It is the bad memories that make the good ones that much better."

Spot on, @JayHawkFanToo !

That's a big part of what it takes to build a rivalry. That's why I've been pushing for us to hookup with WSU. The pain would be phenomenal at times... but the rest of the time would be pure joy, crushing the boys down south!

@drgnslayr I would take no joy in beating WSU until they have beaten KU a few times. So maybe in a couple decades I would look forward to the annual trouncing KU will give WSU, but this series was boring in the early 90s and would get that way again rather quickly. Outside of the 4 years in 20 that WSU is good this game would be very one sided.

For personal reasons I'd like to see the game in Wichita happen (it's only a 3.5 hr drive instead of 6.5), but I doubt the scariest gets renewed anytime soon.

@wissoxfan83 Arizona in 97. I'm still hurting.

@Careful you +1

My memory goes back to the 70s. The '97 loss hurt the most and remains #1 in my book to this day. Vaughn, Pollard, LaFrenz, Haase and Pierce... sigh

Second on the list of most painful exits from the tournament would be 85-86 loss to Duke. Indelibly etched in my memory is Archie Marshall's injury...

After that, it gets murkier.. It's too easy to forget about the '92 loss to UTEP and the '98 loss to Rhode Island in favor of the more recent "B's" or the debacles of Northern Iowa and VCU.

If I were to rank them for shock value, I would say Northern Iowa would be #3.

Bucknell #4, Rhode Island #5.. and I don't care to think much past that. It's a dismal exercise.

If we look at the full history, however, we have to bump everything down and put the epic '57 loss (quadruple OT to UNC --w/ Wilt Chamberlain) at the #1 spot.

@approxinfinity-PHOF! I once accompanied my neighbors' cat on about a 2 mile road trip, only to awaken days later with him impatiently perched on the deck awaiting the garage door to open for a taste of fresh rubbish. His preferred diet must have been homing pigeon. Personally I prefer cats in the barn with the mice, as the fierce & cunning hunters they instinctively are, & not on my rag top Chevy.

@wissoxfan83 May I return the 2 OT 66' loss to Texas Western & all the anger it created for a teenager searching for the meaning of life? I far was too young to be that angry when NC tripped the Big Dipper in the 3 OT NC game in 57', but if you don't mind I'll include that also? I can even still remember Dad celebrating in 52' when Clyde & the Hawks won the NC so will gladly retain that one. Sorry, that's as far as I go back men, but there have been many more through the past few decades that sting quite badly also, several of which have afore been mentioned.

@globaljaybird I left out the Texas Western/UTEP loss of '66 because it was a travesty.

Curious about the '57 loss because I thought it was a 3OT loss (as you mentioned) but the KU media guide has it listed as a 4OT loss.

@bskeet
The loss to UTEP was indeed a travesty, and the movie Glory Road made it worse with all the inaccuracies. It made it look like UTEP was the first team to include black players when in reality teams such as San Francisco on the mid 50's won two NCAA titles starting 4 black players, including Bill Russell and Casey Jones, same with Cincinnati on the early 60s. In fact, UTEP started 4 black players against KU who started 3 black players...I could go on...

As far as the '57 game against UNC, it was indeed a 3 OT game. I don't know why the KU Media Guide would have it any other way,

@wissox: great post! I did like the first half of the Memphis game, where we almost blanked D.Rose, & RussRob swatted his shot attempt out of bounds. I think we went into halftime UP by 7? We just missed shots in the 2nd half to create the deficit that KU had to overcome the last 2min...

Yes, 2003 was painful.

2012 was painful also, as maybe nobody believed those kids could get there, and what a nice story if we could have pulled it off vs. Kentucky.

Losing to VCU as an overall #1 seed was painful. I thought we had the swagger to wear the Overall#1Crown...but only Tyshawn and Marcus gave consistent tournament performances, including even in that VCU loss.

My son and I were in the Dome in '03 and although the NC loss was painful, especially to lose it at the FT line, we did experience one light hearted moment during the semi against Marquette. There was a kid about 12 yrs old a few rows below us wearing a Marquette shirt. Once the route was on he removed the shirt and had a KU shirt under it. He got a cheer from surrounding KU fans. (beer)

@brooksmd
Smart kid. He is probably serving in Congress now :)