TRob only unanimous All American Selection.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...l-america-team

Kansas forward Thomas Robinson has even more in common with Blake Griffin now. Not everything, though.

Robinson, who played through personal tragedy as a sophomore reserve, capped his junior season by being a unanimous selection to The Associated Press' All-America team Monday, a day after leading the Jayhawks to the Final Four.

The 6-foot-10 Robinson averaged 17.9 points and 11.8 rebounds this season and he was a first-team pick by all 65 members of the national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25.

The last unanimous pick was Griffin in 2009.

"It's a blessing to be named even in the same category as Blake Griffin," Robinson said. "For that to happen, I'm glad all the hard work is paying off."
Robinson did find some similarities between them besides being Big 12 Player of the Year.

"That man jumps out the gym. He looks like a superhero when he takes off," Robinson said. "But we both try to be aggressive. He knows what he does well. I feel the same way. I know what I do well."

Joining Robinson on the first team were Jared Sullinger of Ohio State, the first repeat All-America in three years, freshman Anthony Davis of Kentucky, Draymond Green of Michigan State and Doug McDermott of Creighton.

Davis received 63 first-team votes while Green, the lone senior on the team, got 53. Sullinger had 30, one more than McDermott. The voting was done before the NCAA tournament.

Robinson received nationwide support as a sophomore when he lost his mother, grandmother and grandfather in a three-week period. He not only became a starter this season, he became a star.

"It's an unbelievable honor for a kid that came as a semi-highly recruited guy, played seven minutes as a freshman, 10 minutes as a sophomore, endured the tragedies he's had and then somehow made so many sacrifices, not only for the betterment of himself but the betterment of all of us," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "To be unanimous, it's just something that blows me away."

Robinson is Kansas' first All-America since Wayne Simien in 2005.

The 6-9 Sullinger, who was selected East Regional as he led the Buckeyes to the Final Four, is the first repeat All-America since North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough in 2009.

"It means a lot when your name is with Tyler Hansbrough, Psycho T. He was a great basketball player," Sullinger said with a big smile as he used Hansbrough's nickname. "It means a lot. I think it's a credit to my teammates."

Sullinger, the first player to repeat as a freshman and sophomore since Chris Jackson of LSU in 1989 and 1990, averaged 17.6 points and 9.3 rebounds while shooting 53.9 percent from the field. He is the fourth Ohio State player to repeat joining Jerry Lucas, Robin Freeman and Garry Bradds. Buckeyes coach Thad Matta said it's no surprise Sullinger has already sealed a place in the history of the program.

"I think that's one of what was important to us when Jared came here," Matta said. "We knew he was going to be a special player. And to see him get these accolades he has received and won at the level he's won at speaks volumes to the player he is and that select category and only being a sophomore let's you know what a great player he is."

Davis burst onto the national scene as part of the Wildcats team that spent most of the season ranked No. 1 in the poll and then entered the NCAA tournament as the overall No. 1 seed. The 6-10 Davis was chosen the Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year after averaging 14.3 points, 10 rebounds and 4.6 blocks while shooting 64.2 percent from the field.

The last Wildcats to be first-team selections were freshmen John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins in 2010. At least one freshman has been on the first team five of the last six years.

"It means a lot, especially for a freshman," Davis said before admitting he surprised himself this season. "I thought I would just come in here and hit a couple of shots, block a couple of shots, get a couple of dunks. I never thought I would be this successful in college."

He said he has been successful because of opportunities.

"My teammates have been doing a great job of giving me the ball," he said. "And basically, all the teams that were driving inside, giving me a chance to get blocks. We're just out there having fun."

The 6-7 Green averaged 16.1 points, 10.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.5 steals while doing everything the Spartans needed on the way to sharing the Big Ten regular season title, winning the conference tournament and being a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

He is Michigan State's fourth first-team selection joining Magic Johnson, Shawn Respert and Mateen Cleaves.

"It's an honor because those are the guys who I looked up to, paved the way for me, starting with Magic and going to Respert and Cleaves," Green said. "Those guys, every time I walk into the gym I see their names up in the rafters and that's a goal that everyone has who's playing. Just being mentioned in the same sentence with those guys means a lot. All of them are winners, all of them are great players and all of them are successful and great people."

McDermott is Creighton's first All-America and he joins three-time selection Pete Maravich of LSU as All-Americas coached by their fathers.

The 6-7 sophomore was third in Division I in scoring with a 23.2 average. He averaged 8.2 rebounds and shot 61 percent from the field, including 49.5 percent from 3-point range.

"It's really special. It really hasn't hit me yet. Later down the road it will," McDermott said of his selection. "It's something real cool to be in the company of some of those names. Creighton never had one. It's really cool to be able to be the first, especially with all the great players who have been at Creighton over the years."

Coaching a son who is the star of the team did bring about a different problem for Greg McDermott.

"It could be a situation where if your son was a borderline player that your fans get upset if you put him in the game," he said. "Our fans get upset if I take him out."

Junior guard Isaiah Canaan of Murray State was joined on the second team by seniors Marcus Denmon of Missouri, Tyler Zeller of North Carolina, Jae Crowder of Marquette and Kevin Jones of West Virginia.

Sullinger was the only member of the preseason All-America team to make any of the postseason teams. Harrison Barnes of North Carolina, Jeremy Lamb of Connecticut and Jordan Taylor of Wisconsin were honorable mentions. Terrence Jones of Kentucky was the fifth member of the preseason team.

South Carolina.

Their AD just blew up that program.

Wow. So he's a cock now.

KU players know it pays to listen to Bill Self
 

By Tom Keegan


St. Louis — Not a single McDonald’s all-American on the roster, a first for Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self since he left Tulsa. Just one returning starter on a team that lost two lottery picks and another NBA draft choice. The two top recruits declared academically ineligible for the season.


The only chance this team had of getting to the Final Four was to bum a ride to St. Louis and from there catch a boat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

That’s what most of us thought back when football season overlapped with basketball. That’s not what the players who banded together Sunday in the Edward Jones Dome to defeat North Carolina, 80-67, earning an all-expenses-paid trip to New Orleans, ever believed.

“The beginning,” Travis Releford said when asked when he first thought this could be a Final Four team. “Coach probably didn’t agree with it, but we all came together outside of the gym and just were talking and told ourselves that we’re coming together this year. And listen to coach and listen to the things he wants us to do and play the way he wants us to play, then we can get there. And we buckled down and we just listened.”
Not all the time, but far more often than most college-age young men listen to authority figures.


“I don’t know if overachieved is ever a true expression because it means you had it in you the whole time,” Self said. “I’d say that this team’s probably played as close to a ceiling as any team that I’ve had.”


Self started the year with modest goals and they grew when his team did.
“I felt like we had to beat Ohio State back in December to put us in a position to have a quality win to get in the NCAA Tournament,” Self said. “That was my mindset. We have gotten so much better. We’re like 8-3, lose to Davidson, and you know, no chemistry whatsoever. I mean, just bad.”


No coach as demanding as Self could attain as much success as he is if he cared what players said about him behind his back. How was he supposed to know that what they were saying behind his back was to listen to him and to do what he says. That could be why he never saw this coming. He underestimated how unified they were determined to be, how trusting of their coach.


“The guys kind of woke up once conference play started,” Self said of a 16-2 regular-season championship. “But this team has played as close to a ceiling as it possibly could. I don’t think you can give 110 percent. I think all you can give is a hundred. And then I think this team has given as close to a hundred as any team that I’ve probably coached.”


Successful teams are a reflection of their coach. Self is a confident, intense, thick-skinned, combative, relentless competitor. His players were the same in outlasting an injury-torn-but-still potent North Carolina team.
The Tar Heels (32-6) were the leading rebounding team in the nation, and Kansas (31-6) beat them on the boards, 41-35. Carolina’s two top ball handlers, injured McDonald’s All-Americans Kendall Marshall and Dexter Strickland, didn’t play, but five other McDonald’s All-Americans did.
The Heels outscored KU’s bench, 23-4, but Kevin Young by himself outrebounded the UNC bench, 8-7.


All five Kansas starters scored in double figures and all made big plays in the decisive moments, when North Carolina made one of its final 14 shots and missed its last seven.


Withey knew he had to establish himself as a game-changing force and he did with two huge blocks at the end. Nobody played better in St. Louis than Withey. Releford knew he had to be a defensive pest, and he was with two steals and multiple deflections. Elijah Johnson knew he was the most equipped to hit the big shot, and he did, nailing a three that ended a scoring drought that lasted longer than five minutes. Tyshawn Taylor knew he had to figure out a way to turn being the fastest player on the court into buckets and he did, running out ahead of the defense in transition. Robinson carried the team to a 47-47 stalemate with 14 first-half points.
“These guys, nothing fazes them,” Self said. “No matter what the situation is, they just think that they’re going to figure it out. And certainly they figured it out tonight.”


What they seem to have figured out a long time ago is that combined will means more than individual skill.


“I don’t know if I ever enjoyed coaching a team more than this one,” Self said. “I love them. We fight. It’s combative sometimes. All those things. But I love coaching these guys. They have done so much as far as their work habits and representing our school in a way that has given us a chance.”


The combination of ladders and scissors on nylon always puts a coach in a good mood, but this time it had a little extra meaning to the coach who doesn’t need a ladder to stand eye-to-eye with college basketball coaching giants, past and present.


“It is just remarkable to me to see them cutting down the nets out here,” Self said. “Because this would not be the year that anybody would have thought we would do it. It’s a pretty cool feeling.”


Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sweet

Really?

**** he made KSU a decent team.

Hopefully they land a better one.
Posted via Mobile Device

Davis wasn't a unanimous all-american? I wonder if that was only because he was a freshman, or if Robinson actually has a chance at NPOY.

Yeah, I find that odd. How could anyone not vote for him? Let alone 2 people.

Withey can't rebound or score well enough to be a lottery pick. He needs to develop a lot more and get bigger.

Feels like '88
 

I love you guys.

Self has shaped the Jayhawks into muscle

By SAM MELLINGER

The Kansas City Star


ST. LOUIS -- Bill Self took this job only after his father called him soft. There is so much of the coach in this story. Nine years ago, with Roy Williams’ shadow still very much engulfing Kansas basketball, Self was unsure he wanted to deal with all of that.


“Probably not,” his father says, “if you’re scared.”
Those are fighting words to Self, so he decided right then to take the job. And nobody could’ve expected what’s happened in less than a decade since.


That’s easier to see now in the glow of the proudest season he’s had at KU, isn’t it? Self’s Jayhawks beat their old coach’s North Carolina team 80-67 on Sunday for a spot in the Final Four — KU’s 14th, and second with the coach who has kept the program at an absurdly high level while remaking it under his hard-cuss attitude.


The running Jayhawks are now the flexing Jayhawks, the pretty program now the one that likes nothing more than winning with muscle.


None of Self’s eight other teams had embraced that more than this one, symbolized most by Thomas Robinson’s rise from 2.5 points per game as a freshman to a possible national player of the year as a junior, an inspiring journey through heartbreaking tragedy in between.


Maybe now you understand why Self, the locker room doors enclosing that perfect mix of relief and joy, told his guys he’s never enjoyed coaching a team more than this one. He told them how proud he was, how far they’ve come, this team that exceeded his expectations more than any he’s ever had.


And then he told them the line that best embodies everything he believes and everything he’s turned KU basketball into.


We’ll get to that in a minute.


<hr>

Maybe it sounds silly for kids at the program with the second-most victories in college basketball history to talk as though nobody believed in them.


In some real ways, that storyline is drastically exaggerated. Robinson could’ve been a first-round NBA draft pick last year, Taylor has rare gifts and four years as a starting point guard under his belt, and these are pretty good pieces to build a team around.


But it’s also true that a referee at one of KU’s preseason scrimmages thought the best player on the court that day was a former walk-on who happened to be there, and that when the Jayhawks beat Ohio State in December, Self’s first thought was that he had a quality win that would help his team just get into the NCAA Tournament.


Before the season, this looked like the least-talented team Self has had at KU. The coach stood in front of a room full of reporters and TV cameras and said that for this group to be any good, Robinson had to play like an All-American and Taylor had to be as skilled as any guard in the country.
Truth is, he didn’t fully believe either of those things would happen, but that’s because he had no way of knowing this group would take on a critical quality best illustrated by an eight-minute stretch against North Carolina.


<hr>

One-point game, midway through the second half, the pressure of what has become the NCAA Tournament’s life-altering round — Final Four or bust — gaining momentum.


The gasps from more than 20,000 fans are growing louder and louder when, over two possessions, Robinson misses a hook shot, Kevin Young misses two shots and Taylor misses a layup. Robinson misses again; Taylor bricks a three-pointer, and then gets the ball back, drives the baseline, and tries a layup that hangs on the rim for what seems like forever before finally dropping through.


Phew. Then Taylor stole it from John Henson, one of the Tar Heels’ future millionaires, and sprinted down for a dunk. Later, people from St. Louis will say this is the loudest they’ve heard their dome in quite some time.


The next few minutes illustrate exactly what this KU team is. They include a putback by Jeff Withey, a terrible decision by Taylor to take a three-pointer — Self looked like his dog walked into traffic — and hard defense by every Jayhawk on the floor.


The Tar Heels managed just six points during those eight minutes.
From there, it was Taylor’s fifth steal, Elijah Johnson hitting the biggest three-pointer of the game, and blocks by Withey leading directly to a layup for Taylor and a dunk for Travis Releford.


That’s about when Withey and Robinson made eye contact, ran at each other like children, and did what might be the happiest and highest flying hip bump in college basketball this season.


“These guys,” Self said, “nothing fazes them. No matter what the situation is, they just think they they’re going to figure it out.”


<hr>

Kansas needed this. Self needed this. Robinson and Taylor and the rest of them, they needed this, too. If you’re a KU fan, you needed this.


You didn’t need this to be proud or to consider this season a success, of course. KU won another conference title, with unmistakable highs like the comeback against Missouri in Allen Fieldhouse and Robinson earning a spot in the rafters.


It’s just that for every win and every conference title, there are people who expected more. Coaches and players who expected more. Fans, too. And media. The Jayhawks were ranked second in the nation going into last year’s tournament and first the year before that, and all anyone ever talks about from those teams are NCAA Tournament losses to lesser programs. Sometimes, Self admits, that’s the first thing he thinks about, too.


That’s part of the story today. Part of the joy. This is a blueblood basketball power able to celebrate like a midmajor, a team with modest preseason expectations wearing the road blues while beating a roster full of pros who know their season is a disappointment without making the Final Four.


So, yeah, it felt especially good for the Jayhawks to hear about the guys playing for the other powerhouse muttering things like “so physical” and “so tough” when describing an opponent.


Choosing to coach or play at Kansas usually means choosing to never be able to overachieve expectations. This is that rare exception, a team that Self says has played “closer to its ceiling” than any he’s had in Lawrence. That its crowning achievement came at the expense of the very personification of old March letdowns makes it at least a little sweeter.
Which brings us back to what Self said.


<hr>

The Jayhawks just got back to their locker room and nobody knows quite how to act. Niko Roberts is nudging Jordan Juenemann and saying, over and over and over, “We’re going to the Final Four, man!”


This is the feeling they came to Kansas for, and it probably feels even better after hearing words from their coach that they’ll tell in stories the rest of their lives.


Self is looking them in the eyes and saying he’s never been more proud of a team. He tells them how much fun he’s had, that he hopes they feel the same way. He talks a little about how good North Carolina’s players are, how eight of them are McDonald’s All-Americans.


And then come the words that best define everything Self believes about basketball — and so much of what he’s built at Kansas.



The players scream when he’s finished.


“The guys in this locker room,” he says, “are better than the guys in their locker room.”




To reach Sam Mellinger, call 816-234-4365, send email to smellinger@kcstar.com or follow twitter.com/mellinger.
Posted on Sun, Mar. 25, 2012 11:25 PM



Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/25...#storylink=cpy

I also heard somewhere today that when Self was considering the KU job, Dick Vitale told him he should not take it. That the expectations would be astronomical after Roy Williams. All the more reason for me to hate Dick Vitale. :cuss: Glad Self made the right decision.

Good stuff
 

Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports says Self shouldn't have to answer questions about Roy. Roy should have to answer questions about why he gets out coached by Bill. :D

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketb...sas_win_032512

National media starting to pick up on what KU fans have known since 2008 – KU ended up with the better coach. (and the more times we play UNC, it will only become more apparent)