Southwest Regional
East Regional
Sunday at San Antonio Virginia Commonwealth 71, Kansas 61
Sunday at Newark, N.J. Kentucky 76, North Carolina 69
NCAA SCOREBOARD
Final Four Saturday at Houston Butler (27-9) vs. Virginia Commonwealth (28-11), 5:09 p.m. Kentucky (29-8) vs. Connecticut (309), 40 minutes after first game
National Championship Monday, April 4 Semifinal winners
ELITE EIGHT EDITION
L A W R E N C E
JOURNAL-WORLD
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75 CENTS
MONDAY • MARCH 28 • 2011
Vol.153/No.87 38 pages
LJWorld.com
VCU 71, KANSAS 61
A real tearjerker
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
KANSAS FORWARD MARCUS MORRIS HANGS HIS HEAD in the waning moments of the Jayhawks’ 71-61 Elite Eight loss to Virginia Commonwealth on Sunday in San Antonio.
Rams put end to Jayhawks’ run By Gary Bedore gbedore@ljworld.com
SAN ANTONIO — Marcus Morris, who tried but failed to hold back the tears, sat at his Alamodome locker with his head pointed straight down. Kansas University’s junior forward spoke in a barely audible whisper after the top-seeded Jayhawks’ 71-61 loss to No. 11-seed VCU in Sunday’s Elite Eight shocker, which was witnessed by a tiny crowd of 14,299 spread out in the massive football stadium. “I feel I let everybody down,” Morris said after scoring 20 points off 8-of-19 shooting in what could have been the last game in his three-year KU career. The 6-foot-9, 235-pounder from Philadelphia missed three three-pointers without a make on a day the Jayhawks missed 19 of 21 from beyond the arc. Also, he was 4-of-8 from the free-
On this day, VCU just better
throw line on a day the Jayhawks (35-3) made just 15 of 28 charities. Meanwhile, VCU (28-11) hit 12 of 25 threes and 17 of 22 free throws, making it easy to see why the Rams of the Colonial Athletic Association reached the Final Four over the Jayhawks of the Big 12. “They were the better team,” Marcus Morris said. “We couldn’t get any shots to fall. The lid never came off for us. We’d never Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo played anybody like that all year KANSAS COACH BILL SELF, LEFT, AND THOMAS that could shoot like that, with ROBINSON watch from the bench as the VCU multiple players who stretched Rams jump to an early lead. the defense.” Morris was one of two Jayhawks who needed to be helped off the court by assistant coach Danny Manning after the final ■ For more on Kansas University’s Elite Eight loss to horn sounded. He wept on KU’s Virginia Commonwealth, including audio, video, mesbench along with freshman Josh sage boards, a photo gallery, The Keegan Ratings and Selby, who scored two points off more, please visit KUsports.com. 1-of-5 shooting. Selby went 0-for■ Inside: Selby’s birthday bummer, KU seniors sad3 from three. dened, box score and more: pages 4A-6A
MUCH MORE ONLINE, INSIDE
Please see KANSAS, page 4A
SAN ANTONIO — For the Kansas University basketball team, Selection Sunday had so little sizzle and absolutely no suspense. On a more eventful day, a statement uttered by KU coach Bill Self might have been swallowed in all the March madness buzz, but it hung in the air. It felt as if he knew what he was saying. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a team that barely got in is in the Sweet 16 or even further down the road,” Self said. “I think anybody can be had. All you’ve got to do is get hot at the right time.” He called it. He never wanted to be more wrong about anything in his entire life. The college basketball landscape has changed, with the rich getting slightly poorer, the poor slightly richer. Self knows all about parity, but that didn’t make losing to Virginia Commonwealth University, 71-61, hurt any less
Tom Keegan tkeegan@ljworld.com
Sunday in the Alamodome for the coach or his players. So much for “the bracket opening up.” That doesn’t apply in these times. There are reasons schools from big conferences shy away from scheduling the best teams from the so-called “mid-major” leagues, and one of them is they don’t want to lose. Consequently, it’s difficult to tell how good those schools really are. VCU didn’t look so Please see KEEGAN, page 5A