kansascity
The Kansas Jayhawks will welcome Middle Tennessee to Allen Fieldhouse on Friday at 8 p.m. for a single game with no return trip to Murfreesboro, Tenn. This one-time guarantee contest reflects the standard scheduling approach for high-major programs facing mid-major opponents.
Such arrangements were not always the case. In 1999, then-Kansas coach Roy Williams took his team to Murfreesboro, a city 35 miles from Nashville, as part of a three-year, 2-for-1 series. High-major teams now commonly schedule mid-majors like MTSU for single nonconference home games. A road win over a mid-major yields minimal benefit in the NET rankings or strength-of-schedule metrics, while a loss in a hostile environment could be costly. Additionally, a home game in a sold-out 15,300-seat Allen Fieldhouse generates essential revenue for the athletic department.
Consequently, Kansas is not required to play a return game at the Blue Raiders' 11,500-seat Murphy Center. However, basketball historians and longtime KU fans might remember a notable exception from the Williams era. In December 1999, Williams brought the Jayhawks to Murfreesboro to face Middle Tennessee, then a member of the Ohio Valley Conference (now in Conference USA). The trip was part of a three-year, 2-for-1 series arranged between Williams and then-MTSU coach Randy Wiel, both of whom had served as assistants under legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith.
To generate interest in Wiel's program, North Carolina the previous year and Kansas in 1999 agreed to play at the Murphy Center, which typically drew crowds of only about 3,000. On Sunday, Dec. 5, 1999, a crowd of 7,897 watched the No. 6-ranked Jayhawks defeat MTSU 97-77. Kansas also won the two games in the series at Allen Fieldhouse, prevailing 103-68 on Dec. 13, 1997, and 92-66 on Nov. 27, 2000.
The Murfreesboro game belonged to KU's Kenny Gregory, who led the Jayhawks with 22 points on 11-of-14 shooting after making his first 10 shots. Eric Chenowith added 16 points on 6-of-6 shooting, while Nick Bradford and Jeff Boschee scored 10 apiece. Kansas led 49-34 at halftime, shot 65% from the field, and outrebounded MTSU 41-31. However, the Jayhawks were outscored 23-12 at the free-throw line. Ron McKnight led the Blue Raiders with 19 points. MTSU twice cut the deficit to 11 in the second half, the last time at 76-65 with 6:25 remaining, but that was as close as the Blue Raiders would get. Kansas's 97 points surpassed the total North Carolina had scored in its 75-54 victory at Murphy Center the previous year.
"We're playing sort of un-Kansas-like," Williams said afterward. The victory improved Kansas to 16-0 against Ohio Valley Conference opponents. But Williams wasn't entirely pleased with what he saw. "We've always been a team that's been intelligent, playing smart basketball and just playing with a lot of savvy and a lot of poise," he said. "Right now we're getting by on talent. We're definitely not getting by on coaching, and we're definitely not getting by playing intelligently." Williams may have been trying to sharpen his team's focus before a game against Michigan State two days later in Chicago. Kansas lost that one 66-54.
Wiel, meanwhile, came away impressed with the Jayhawks. "To me, Kansas this early in the season is playing the best. They're deep and talented. They don't have anybody that you would say, 'Hey, this guy is a lottery pick.' But they have 10 guys that each one of them is a basketball player and he (Williams) plays them all."
Former KU player Chenowith recalled in a phone interview with The Star that the Jayhawks didn't consider it unusual to play MTSU in the Blue Raiders' building. "Coach Williams said we'd play any team anywhere. We always had the same mentality. We treated every game the same whether it was Middle Tennessee State or Missouri or Kentucky. We wanted to win the game," Chenowith said. "That trip I think we stayed in Nashville and drove over. Southern hospitality. I remember we won the game. I think I was 6-for-6. It was a good trip. We won."
Williams scheduled other interesting road matchups during his 15 seasons in Lawrence, often for reasons involving his players. He continued a practice he had learned under Smith: arranging games in players' hometowns or nearby areas so they could perform in front of family and friends. "It's something we look forward to doing," Williams told ESPN in 2012. "It means more to different kids. People they grew up with, people in their families, friends – you can't always get tickets for everybody that you want, not even for home games. So I think playing it on the road and taking it into their area gives people that are close to them a much better chance of getting to the game. It's always been important to me."
One planned trip never happened. Williams had scheduled a game in Oakland against Oregon so Drew Gooden could play near home, but Gooden left early for the NBA. Other arrangements did materialize. Kansas played a home-and-home series with Princeton and won both games. In 2001 the Jayhawks traveled to Grand Forks, North Dakota, to play North Dakota for North Dakota native Jeff Boschee. The Jayhawks won 108-77 before 13,280 fans at Engelstad Arena then endured a blizzard-plagued bus ride home. Williams also took the team to Tulsa in 2002 and opened the 1990-91 season with consecutive games in Arizona, losing at Arizona State before beating Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. He scheduled a November 1998 game against Penn at Philadelphia's Palestra for legendary KU broadcaster Max Falkenstien, who had always wanted to call a game in the historic arena where Wilt Chamberlain once played. Kansas won 61-56.
Chenowith remembered the Grand Forks experience as a great thing for Jeff (Boschee). "I think he got a loud standing ovation from people in his home state. Coach Williams did that for me too. We played Pepperdine at the Honda Center in Anaheim in the John Wooden Classic. It gave him a good opportunity to recruit kids out west, too," said Chenowith, who is from Orange, California.
Current head coach Bill Self's first Kansas team also honored a road commitment arranged during the Williams era. In 2003, the Jayhawks played two games in Reno, Nevada, winning against UC Santa Barbara and losing to fellow mid-major Nevada. The trip had been arranged for KU freshman David Padgett, a Reno native.
Kansas's memorable road trips against mid-majors weren't limited to the Williams era. During the 1987-88 national championship season, Larry Brown's Jayhawks traveled to Cullowhee, North Carolina, and defeated Western Carolina 68-63 on Dec. 3, 1987. The game was the return leg of a 2-for-1 series; Western Carolina had lost 79-62 and 101-79 in earlier visits to Lawrence. Kansas originally was scheduled to make the return trip a season earlier to help open Western Carolina's new arena, but the game was postponed for a year. Brown's team wore yellow uniforms for the game, which was not televised. When photographs later surfaced, some KU fans loudly objected to the color choice. The game, which drew about 4,600 fans, came after Kansas went 1-2 at the Maui Invitational and returned home to defeat Pomona-Pitzer 94-38. The Jayhawks then headed to Cullowhee, an unincorporated village near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for the game two days later. Brown was born in New York but played and was an assistant coach at North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Kansas wanted to move around its schedule for TV. "We already were playing Florida State and North Carolina State at home, so we moved it a year," Western Carolina athletic department official Steve White said of the decision to delay the trip.
Mid-major coaches seeking quality competition to strengthen their NCAA Tournament resumes have long wanted power-conference programs to visit their arenas. As noted, such games rarely take place. The Kansas-Middle Tennessee, Kansas-Western Carolina, and KU-Northern Arizona games serve as reminders that the Jayhawks, on more than one occasion, were willing to buck that trend. Middle Tennessee will make the trip to Lawrence on Friday. Twenty-seven years ago, Kansas was the team making the trip to Murfreesboro.
Originally reported by kansascity.