Print edition: 
AMES, Iowa — You don’t forget games like the one Fred Hoiberg had against Kansas, even 17 years later.
“Everything I threw up there went in,” Hoiberg said. “It was one of those games you dream about.”
That January day in 1995, Hoiberg scored 32 points, but the damage to KU was the timing as much as the total. At one point, Hoiberg scored 17 straight for the Cyclones, personally erasing a six-point deficit in the final four minutes of Iowa State’s 69-65 victory over the third-ranked Jayhawks.
Hilton Coliseum may never have been louder, and today, Coach Hoiberg looks for the same type of atmosphere when fifth-ranked Kansas visits.
But if recent history is an indicator, it may not matter.
The Jayhawks have been the Big 12’s ultimate road warriors.
With a 7-0 conference record and three of those away from Lawrence, KU is the only Big 12 team with a perfect road mark.
This is no recent phenomenon. In each of the past seven years, when the Jayhawks have won outright or shared the Big 12 regular-season championship, they’ve had the best league road record — by themselves or shared — in each season.
Kansas won more than half of its road games all of those seven years. The rest of the Big 12 combined has a total of eight winning records in conference road contests.
Entering this season, the Jayhawks were 43-13 on the road during their seven-year run. The next best record belonged to Texas at 30-26.
The buzz phrase among the Jayhawks for this success was “tight huddle.”
“It takes a tight huddle and having everybody on the same page out there understanding their responsibilities and taking care of them,” said top reserve Conner Teahan.
Coach Bill Self added “foxhole” mentality and “blinders on” to “tight huddle … those things are very important when going away from home.”
Oh, and it helps to be good.
Self also knows that beginning today, Kansas’ next four road games are against the teams in the upper half of the standings. Next Saturday, the Jayhawks travel to No. 2 Missouri. Four days later they’re at No. 6 Baylor, then a trip to No. 22 Kansas State on Feb. 13.
“I don’t think there’s any question that this is the toughest stretch of our season starting out right now,” Self said.
What Self would like to see is more of the same defense Kansas has played in victories at Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Texas. The Jayhawks held those three to a combined 34.6 percent shooting and 57.7 points. In four home victories, opponents are shooting 38.7 percent and averaging 62.5 points.
“We’ve done some good things on the road,” Self said. “But I don’t think we’ve had a performance on the road that would guarantee us winning at any of those (top) four places yet.”
Expectations for Kansas at Hilton Coliseum would differ by generation. Young KU fans have witnessed some close encounters but haven’t seen a loss there since 2004.
Older Jayhawks can quote chapter and verse on the Jayhawks’ woes in Ames and got plenty tired of hearing about “Hilton Magic,” that supposedly brought doom to visiting favorites. They can tell you that Danny Manning, now a Kansas assistant, went 0-4 in Hilton, and that his coach, Larry Brown, was 0-5.
Wilt Chamberlain didn’t win in Ames, and it was Iowa State’s victory there in 1957 that knocked the Jayhawks from No. 1, and they never returned to the top in the Big Dipper’s two varsity seasons.
Perhaps it will take a top individual performance to drop Kansas. If it happens, chances are Royce White will be that player. White, the 6-8, 270-pound forward who often brings the ball up the floor for Iowa State, had 18 points and 17 rebounds against the Jayhawks in KU’s 82-73 victory at Lawrence two weeks ago.
As Craig Brackins proved with his 42 points in an Iowa State home loss to Kansas in 2009, big games don’t always mean victory. But it did in 1995, in one of the most dazzling performance in Hilton history.
“When we went to Allen Fieldhouse in those years we weren’t very good,” Hoiberg said. “But we did seem to play them well at home. Those games fun to be part of.”
Especially that day.
