KU hoops players saw goalposts get tossed in lake Saturday. Monday’s their own opener
Kansas sophomore point guard Bobby Pettiford and some of his KU basketball teammates made the short walk from Booth Memorial Stadium up Campanile Hill and over to Potter Lake after KU’s 37-16 football victory over Oklahoma State on Saturday afternoon.
“It was crazy,” Pettiford said Sunday, referring to first watching more than 1,000 students rip down the south end zone goal posts after the final horn, then observing them carry the posts to the campus lake, where members of the student body dumped the posts in the water.
“Me, J. Will and Kev … I was going to go home; they said, ‘You’ve got to stay and see it,’’’ Pettiford added of teammates Jalen Wilson and Kevin McCullar. “I didn’t think it was going to be that. It was fun to see.”
Asked if he jumped in the lake with some of his fellow KU students, Pettiford said with a grin: “No. It was too cold. I couldn’t do that.”
The 6-foot-1 Durham, North Carolina native played wide receiver in football until his freshman year of high school.
“I love football. I wish I stayed in it,” Pettiford said. “I have a little more love for basketball.”
Pettiford on Thursday appeared completely healed from a hamstring injury that slowed him during the summer into early fall, dishing five assists with four steals and a basket in a 94-63 exhibition victory over Pittsburg State.
“I feel good, the best I have in two years,” Pettiford said. “My adrenaline was there. I feel a lot better.”
He figures to come off the bench as a backup to junior point guard Dajuan Harris in KU’s regular-season opener against Omaha, set for a 7 p.m. tipoff Monday in Allen Fieldhouse. KU coach Bill Self went with a lineup of Harris, Wilson, McCullar, KJ Adams and Ernest Udeh against Pitt State.
Acting head coach Norm Roberts, who will sub in for Self through the first four games of the season as Self serves a four-game, school-imposed suspension, didn’t reveal the Jayhawks’ starting lineup for the opener during a news conference Sunday.
“Coach (Self) is setting it. It’s not me setting anything,” Roberts said, referring to Self deciding on the starters for Monday night’s game. “We haven’t decided that (lineup) yet. We’re just trying to get our team better. We’re trying to see what would be best lineups for us.”
Of Self’s reasoning behind the exhibition lineup the Jayhawks played against Pitt State, Roberts said: “I think (it was) familiarity, the guys (who started aside from Udeh and McCullar) have been here a while. KJ brings a ton of energy. Like coach said, Gradey (Dick, sixth man vs. Pitt State) is a starter. We’ve got six starters or whatever it may be.”
Self, who is allowed to coach the team at practice up until game day for each of the four games that he and likewise-suspended assistant coach Kurtis Townsend will miss, said Thursday he’d be letting Roberts know which players to bring off the bench as KU’s first subs into the game.
Roberts, a full-time KU assistant the past 10 seasons, said he’d be joined on the bench for the opener by full-time assistant Jeremy Case, as well as staff members Joe Dooley and Fred Quartlebaum.
“When you are filling the shoes of a Hall of Fame coach, it’s not easy by any means,” said Roberts, who was head coach at St. John’s for six years. Dooley was the head coach at East Carolina for eight years and Florida Gulf Coast for four years.
“We’re going to do it together as a staff,” Roberts said. “It’s not just one guy out there. Our guys know it’s about making plays and playing the right way.
“We’ve got guys like Jalen, Juan, Kevin who are older guys, experienced guys. They know it’s about us bonding. It’s our culture. We bond together and look out for each other. Our guys know they have to come out and play at a certain level Our coaching staff is excited about starting the season off. We’re ready.”
As far as whether the results of the first four games will go on Self’s all-time record or Roberts’ record, Roberts said smiling: “Bill’s going to definitely say it goes on mine.”
Since it’s a self-imposed suspension on the part of the university, KU coach Self can decide which coach is credited with the results of the four contests.
Roberts said he’s received a multiple texts from coaches elsewhere in the business since it was announced on Wednesday that he’d be KU’s acting head coach during Self’s suspension.
“Yeah I’ve gotten quite a few, joking around, messing with me, as well as wishing us luck and those things, hoping we do well and everything,” Roberts said. “I’ve been in he business so long I’ve got to have a couple friends, so it’s been good.”
This story was originally published November 6, 2022 at 5:00 PM with the headline "KU hoops players saw goalposts get tossed in lake Saturday. Monday’s their own opener."
