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Kansas does what championship caliber teams should do

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It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t very interesting, and it wasn’t really that fun to watch, but Kansas’ sound beatdown of the Richmond Spiders confirmed to everyone that this Jayhawk club is not screwing around, taking care of business with a 77-57 victory.

The optimist in me thought that maybe, just maybe, Richmond’s trio of seniors would challenge KU and find a way to control pace for spurts of the game as a way to keep this game close. But that didn’t happen. Instead the Spiders found themselves down 31-9 mid-way through the first half, and felt completely out of whack.

Kansas thrives off missed shots, and down for the entire game the Spiders hurt their cause by attempting 26 three pointers, and converting on only four of them. Long rebound after long rebound, the Jayhawks took full advantage of Richmond’s desperation offense, and got easy buckets to help maintain their large lead heading into halftime.

In the second half, they just sort of chilled, looked bored, and held a firm double digit lead.

It was a formality well before the final buzzer sounded.

I’ve learned that good teams often allow inferior competition hang with them, while great don’t send mixed signals. Sure KU was expected to win this game, but they showed me plenty be simply TKOB and preventing any shred of doubt from entering our minds that they’re not capable of cutting down the nets in Houston. It’s not their fault the region’s No. 2, 3, and 4 seeds couldn’t advance to the second weekend of the tournament and serve up a more exciting round of 16 for this region.

If Kansas does win the Southwest, there’s no need to argue that they’ll be unprepared for not playing a team seeded higher than nine. This is the most professional team remaining in the tournament, focused on not screwing up a grand opportunity to win the school’s second national championship in four seasons.