Immortals See A Win At Kansas Great Jayhawks Athletic Stars Mingle At Game With Missouri

If Roy Williams’ Kansas players had come down with a bad case of nervous jitters, could anybody have blamed them?

That was more than just a national television audience watching them beat Missouri 80-70 on Sunday. In the audience helping celebrate 100 years of Jayhawks basketball were almost 300 former players and coaches.

Men in their 80s were there, as well as current NBA players - the men who made Kansas one of the great reservoirs of college basketball tradition.

They included Dean Smith, who played on Kansas’ 1952 NCAA championship team and then coached North Carolina to 879 victories; Larry Brown, who coached Kansas’ 1988 NCAA champions, and Danny Manning, the star of that ‘88 team and perhaps the greatest Jayhawk of all time next to Wilt Chamberlain.

Toss in NFL hall-of-famer Gale Sayers, an All-America running back in the mid-60s who was sitting in the sixth row, and Allen Fieldhouse was packed with celebrity. One who was missing was Chamberlain, who recently was in Allen Fieldhouse when his jersey was retired.

“We wanted to show them that we’re carrying on the tradition,” said point guard Ryan Robertson, who helped hold everything together while the Jayhawks beat Missouri to cap a gala weekend’s celebration.

“It was amazing,” said center T.J. Pugh. “Those are some really great figures of the history of this place. Seeing all those people up close that you’ve always heard about, getting to meet them - it just gave me chills.”

Paul Pierce scored 29 points and Raef LaFrentz had 22 as the Jayhawks extend their home-court winning streak to 58 games.

“It was really tough to block it out,” Pierce said. “I tried not to look in the stands, but while I was stretching before the game, I caught myself looking up and seeing all these guys that you only see pictures of on the walls around here. I couldn’t stop myself from looking.”

The Jayhawks (26-3, 10-1 Big 12) built a big lead in the first half, but Missouri (13-10, 5-5) had a 15-2 run early in the second half to get back into the game.

Missouri, which had beaten Kansas 74-73 in Columbia Jan. 19, was the last team to win at Kansas before the Jayhawks went on the winning streak that dates back to February 1994.

The former coaches and players, many of whom took part Saturday in a “Kansas Legends” game that sold out the 16,300-seat Allen Fieldhouse, were paraded onto the court and introduced during timeouts and halftime of the game.