Barbee Wins Kansas Invitational

KU Junior and South Dakota native Nate Barbee earned his first career win as a member of the Jayhawk golf team. He came from a stroke down to narrowly edge Missouri's Jace Long. Barbee also led Kansas to a 2nd place finish in the team portion of the tournament. The Hawks came from 7 strokes down, but finished two strokes back of Oklahoma. Missouri and Lousisiana-Lafayette also tied for 2nd.

Freshman Chris Gilbert finished in a tie for 14th. It was his 2nd top 20 in his first three career tournaments.

Football Team Good; Not That Good

So KU is 4-0 again and with games coming up against Iowa State and Colorado, we could be 6-0 heading into a showdown with Oklahoma. Todd has completed 2/3 of his passes, thrown for 9 TDs and has over a 150 QB rating. Toben Opurum has 6 TD runs, and he and Jake Sharp are averaging 4.6 and 5.7 yards respectively. Kerry Meier and Jake Sharp each have 3 TD catches. Kansas is 4th in the league in scoring, and 2nd in the Big 12 in rushing, which is amazing.

The defense has put up good numbers, but there are some questions. The secondary outside of Darrell Stuckey and Daymond  Patterson has been very average. Even more troubling: the play of the offensive line. Starting a redshirt freshman at left tackle probably doesn't help, but Tanner Hawkinson hasn't been that bad. Jeff Spikes has not been very good and the other offensive linemen have, in my opinion, not protected Reesing like they will need to to win some shootouts in the Big 12.

With the defense giving up 18 points to Southern Miss, one can only imagine how many points the offense will need to put up to have a chance against Texas.

BBall-Football Kerfluffle

When I woke up in the morning and saw on The Big Lead that the basketball team and football teams had fought with eachother, the first words out of my mouth were "oh fuck."

Then I read some dumb stuff. Jason Whitlock of the KC Star talked about the influence of rap music on the fight, saying that Tyshawn Taylor behaved like a gang member because of it. Please. Saying this stuff is like saying that Columbine got shot up cause of Marilyn Manson.

Whitlock also cited lyrics T2 put on his Facebook page prior to the brawl. Every person I know has had music lyrics as his or her Facebook status at one point. Just because these kids listen to Lil Wayne or 50 Cent doesn't mean that they should be the scapegoat when something like this happens.

As to who was truly at fault? Who knows. I sure don't know, and I doubt I will ever know. The job that Mark Mangino has done on campus the past few years has been amazing. He has turned basically a 1-AA team into one of the best teams in the country. But, as much as I love him and Dezmon Briscoe, the basketball team is what made me a KU fan in the first place, so if Briscoe has to be suspended, or hell even kicked off the team, to appease Bill Self, so be it.

Fortunately for everyone involved, it seems that the three men leading the programs (Mangino, Self, AD Lew Perkins) are much more mature than the kids they look after.