Michael O'Donnell was driving in Wichita on Sunday afternoon when the state of Kansas shook loose from the ground and rocketed into the atmosphere. Or maybe that's just what it felt like.
O'Donnell, a Kansas state senator, was steering his car down Kellogg Avenue when it happened. He was driving a little angrily, actually, because he had just heard on the radio that his beloved Wichita State Shockers had received a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament. Too low, he thought. Not fair.
That's when O'Donnell's best buddy, David, who was riding shotgun and furiously updating Twitter, offered up the following nugget of information: If Wichita State wins, he said, we play KU in the third round.
Sen. O'Donnell may or may not have swerved. He may or may not have screamed.
He definitely gave David a high-five and yelled, "We're going to Omaha, bro!" He definitely started receiving texts, dozens of texts, that included the following characters: "LOL" and "!!!" and "$%&@@!*%"
"If this game happens, it's the biggest game of my lifetime," O'Donnell said this week. "It's the biggest game Omaha has ever seen."
He pauses, struggling to explain this to an outsider. It's a pause I heard a lot this week, when I called Wichita State boosters, athletes and season-ticket holders and asked them to explain the importance of Sunday's potential Wichita State-KU matchup. "Really," O'Donnell says finally, "in some way, it's larger than a game."
Now, if you want to get all literal about it, yes, Wichita State vs. KU would be merely a basketball game, in the sense that they will use basketballs, and the rims will be 10 feet from the floor, and the Jayhawks and Shockers will generally receive points when they place said ball into said basket, just as Dr. James Naismith so intended.
But this is no basketball game, not in the larger cosmic sense. Not to the Shocker die-hards of Wichita, Kansas.
KU-Wichita State would be a phenomenon, an event that hasn't occurred since Bill Clinton was a new president, Boyz II Men was a new band and everyone - moms, dads, the entire cast of "Full House" - was wearing mom jeans.
It would be a clichéd clash of cultures: Staunchly Republican Wichita vs. Staunchly Democratic Lawrence; country vs. indie rock; metallic-tasting Folgers vs. that $4 cappuccino made with fair-trade organic beans sourced from Burundi.
And it's something even more important than all that, Wichitans say. It's a chance to take decades of frustration - decades of feeling like a second-class citizen in more ways than one - and toss it into a CenturyLink Center trash can.
It's the chance for Wichita State to take KU's smugness and Wichita State's own inferiority complex and two-hand tomahawk dunk it into oblivion.
"There are people at the University of Kansas that see us as knuckle-draggers, as Neanderthals," says O'Donnell.
"We feel like we get treated unfairly," says Spike Anderson, a former Wichita State baseball player and booster. "We feel like Kansas is the kid on Christmas morning that gets all the good stuff."
"Big brother vs. little brother," says Sheryl Wohlford, a member of Wichita State University's board of trustees. "That's how it feels."
A brief history: Back in the '80s, KU and Wichita State played every year, like you'd expect from two in-state teams separated by 160 miles. KU generally romped, winning eight of the last nine meetings by an average score of 83-61.
The series ended in 1993, after KU hung 103 points on the Shockers during an obscene 49-point win. It would be fair to point out, as many KU faithful do, that Wichita State fans weren't exactly sad to see the annual game go.
…Bill Self, KU's esteemed coach, has repeatedly said his team has everything to lose and nothing to gain from restarting the series. University leaders have ignored the public outcry for a game and shrugged off a widely publicized legislative push led by Sen. O'Donnell to force Kansas' in-state schools to play annually. Self and KU have fair points, valid points, but it doesn't much matter.[/I]
Because this is what Shocker Nation hears: We think we're too good for you.
"KU doesn't think we deserve to be on the same court with them," says Anderson, the former Shocker baseball player. "And, yes, that is very frustrating."
…It's like Big Brother pummeled Little Brother for years. Little Brother didn't like it. He started training. He pumped iron. He worked on his jumper. He waited, begged, for another chance to face Big Brother.[/I]
And now, after years of waiting, Big Brother finally has to step back on the court.
It's breathtaking. It's exhilarating. It's ... terrifying.
Because, if you haven't noticed, Big Brother can play. And the specter of waiting 22 years and then getting hammered by KU falls somewhere on the devastation scale between "beloved pet's death" and "Armageddon."
"I'm telling people 'Be careful what you wish for,' " says O'Donnell. "Because if we beat them, the drumbeat will get louder for them to play us every year. But if we lose to them ... embarrassment."
So, yes, this would be a basketball game. It would be a basketball game like "The Last Supper" is a painting of a meal. It would be a basketball game like the Statue of Liberty is a tall thing made out of steel and copper.
"It's bigger than the Final Four appearance," Anderson says of Sunday's potential dream matchup. "I don't know how to say it ..."
He pauses, like they all pause.
"The ultimate," he says finally. "The ultimate."
Omaha World Herald
This post was edited on 3/21 9:20 AM by kcjcjhawk
http://www.omaha.com/columnists/hansen/hansen-ulti
O'Donnell, a Kansas state senator, was steering his car down Kellogg Avenue when it happened. He was driving a little angrily, actually, because he had just heard on the radio that his beloved Wichita State Shockers had received a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament. Too low, he thought. Not fair.
That's when O'Donnell's best buddy, David, who was riding shotgun and furiously updating Twitter, offered up the following nugget of information: If Wichita State wins, he said, we play KU in the third round.
Sen. O'Donnell may or may not have swerved. He may or may not have screamed.
He definitely gave David a high-five and yelled, "We're going to Omaha, bro!" He definitely started receiving texts, dozens of texts, that included the following characters: "LOL" and "!!!" and "$%&@@!*%"
"If this game happens, it's the biggest game of my lifetime," O'Donnell said this week. "It's the biggest game Omaha has ever seen."
He pauses, struggling to explain this to an outsider. It's a pause I heard a lot this week, when I called Wichita State boosters, athletes and season-ticket holders and asked them to explain the importance of Sunday's potential Wichita State-KU matchup. "Really," O'Donnell says finally, "in some way, it's larger than a game."
Now, if you want to get all literal about it, yes, Wichita State vs. KU would be merely a basketball game, in the sense that they will use basketballs, and the rims will be 10 feet from the floor, and the Jayhawks and Shockers will generally receive points when they place said ball into said basket, just as Dr. James Naismith so intended.
But this is no basketball game, not in the larger cosmic sense. Not to the Shocker die-hards of Wichita, Kansas.
KU-Wichita State would be a phenomenon, an event that hasn't occurred since Bill Clinton was a new president, Boyz II Men was a new band and everyone - moms, dads, the entire cast of "Full House" - was wearing mom jeans.
It would be a clichéd clash of cultures: Staunchly Republican Wichita vs. Staunchly Democratic Lawrence; country vs. indie rock; metallic-tasting Folgers vs. that $4 cappuccino made with fair-trade organic beans sourced from Burundi.
And it's something even more important than all that, Wichitans say. It's a chance to take decades of frustration - decades of feeling like a second-class citizen in more ways than one - and toss it into a CenturyLink Center trash can.
It's the chance for Wichita State to take KU's smugness and Wichita State's own inferiority complex and two-hand tomahawk dunk it into oblivion.
"There are people at the University of Kansas that see us as knuckle-draggers, as Neanderthals," says O'Donnell.
"We feel like we get treated unfairly," says Spike Anderson, a former Wichita State baseball player and booster. "We feel like Kansas is the kid on Christmas morning that gets all the good stuff."
"Big brother vs. little brother," says Sheryl Wohlford, a member of Wichita State University's board of trustees. "That's how it feels."
A brief history: Back in the '80s, KU and Wichita State played every year, like you'd expect from two in-state teams separated by 160 miles. KU generally romped, winning eight of the last nine meetings by an average score of 83-61.
The series ended in 1993, after KU hung 103 points on the Shockers during an obscene 49-point win. It would be fair to point out, as many KU faithful do, that Wichita State fans weren't exactly sad to see the annual game go.
…Bill Self, KU's esteemed coach, has repeatedly said his team has everything to lose and nothing to gain from restarting the series. University leaders have ignored the public outcry for a game and shrugged off a widely publicized legislative push led by Sen. O'Donnell to force Kansas' in-state schools to play annually. Self and KU have fair points, valid points, but it doesn't much matter.[/I]
Because this is what Shocker Nation hears: We think we're too good for you.
"KU doesn't think we deserve to be on the same court with them," says Anderson, the former Shocker baseball player. "And, yes, that is very frustrating."
…It's like Big Brother pummeled Little Brother for years. Little Brother didn't like it. He started training. He pumped iron. He worked on his jumper. He waited, begged, for another chance to face Big Brother.[/I]
And now, after years of waiting, Big Brother finally has to step back on the court.
It's breathtaking. It's exhilarating. It's ... terrifying.
Because, if you haven't noticed, Big Brother can play. And the specter of waiting 22 years and then getting hammered by KU falls somewhere on the devastation scale between "beloved pet's death" and "Armageddon."
"I'm telling people 'Be careful what you wish for,' " says O'Donnell. "Because if we beat them, the drumbeat will get louder for them to play us every year. But if we lose to them ... embarrassment."
So, yes, this would be a basketball game. It would be a basketball game like "The Last Supper" is a painting of a meal. It would be a basketball game like the Statue of Liberty is a tall thing made out of steel and copper.
"It's bigger than the Final Four appearance," Anderson says of Sunday's potential dream matchup. "I don't know how to say it ..."
He pauses, like they all pause.
"The ultimate," he says finally. "The ultimate."
Omaha World Herald
This post was edited on 3/21 9:20 AM by kcjcjhawk
http://www.omaha.com/columnists/hansen/hansen-ulti
