Here’s KC Roos coach Marvin Menzies’ take on the KU Jayhawks basketball team
No. 2-ranked Kansas, which entered as 26.5-point favorites over the Kansas City Roos, led the Summit League team by just eight points with 3:52 left in Tuesday’s nonconference men’s basketball clash at Allen Fieldhouse.
The Roos — who were led by guards Khristion Courseault (18 points), Cameron Faas (18 points) and Anderson Kopp (15 points) — definitely made the Jayhawks sweat for 40 minutes in KU’s hard-earned 88-69 victory.
“My guys really are competitors. They fought. They came in (and) probably nobody expected us to win except them,” second-year Kansas City coach Marvin Menzies said of his Roos, who fell to 3-6 on the season. KU improved to 8-1. “They gave themselves a chance there at the end. We imploded in the last four minutes. We’ll fix that. There are a lot of great lessons in that.”
The Roos have also dropped games at Baylor (99-61) and Colorado State (84-61) this nonconference season.
“They’ve got potentially a Final Four team,” Menzies said of the Jayhawks. “To be able to compete and not give up and continue to fight to the end and have Bill (Self, KU coach) call a couple timeouts felt good. At the end of the day we grew, and that’s what it’s about.”
KU coach Self elected to call a timeout after Courseault drilled Kansas City’s eighth and final 3 of the game with 3:52 to play and the Roos down 75-67. KU outscored Kansas City 13-2 the rest of the way.
“I thought they played really well. And they’ve got a couple of guys that can flat-out shoot,” Self said of the Roos.
“No. 30 (Faas, who was 5-of-7 from 3) shoots as well as anybody that we will play all year long. We told our guys him at 30 feet is exactly the same shot as him shooting at 20 (feet). It makes no difference,” Self added. “He’s got such great range. And No, 13 (Courseault who hit 7-of-12 shots; 2-for-3 from 3) had such a fabulous game and got the best of us. We executed when we needed to and did the things we needed to do to win and pull ahead at the end. So there were some positive takeaways from it, but we got to be a heck of a lot better than we were tonight.”
Menzies was asked to pinpoint the biggest difference between the two programs.
“There’s a lot of differences. The biggest probably NIL money,” Menzies said with a smile in his postgame interview outside the visitors locker room. “I am not sure. They’ve got a great program. We’ve got a great program. We’re just at different levels. We’re building and they’ve been built.”
Of the atmosphere, Menzies, who has been head coach at New Mexico State and UNLV in prior stops to Kansas City, said: “I am used to it; I thought my players handled it well. We played at Baylor. We played at Colorado State. Now we played at Kansas. They have a good feel for the necessary connectivity that you need when you have a loud crowd. I barely have my voice left. That’s largely due to the raucous crowd they have. They do an excellent job. You can’t even get play calls in. You’ve got to tip your caps to them.”
Menzies noted that the Summit League “has some really good environments. Getting a taste of this enables us to have a realistic visual of what we’re going to see. They are not Allen Fieldhouse, but we’ve got some environments in the conference close to it. You’ve got a couple college towns where people come out for their games and support their team big-time — the more (there’s) winning the more support (a team gets).
“I think if we can keep representing ourselves and the program basketball-wise on and off the court the right way, we’ll continue to grow our fan base and hopefully we’ll have that type of environment soon, too. It’s the building blocks it takes,” Menzies stated.
What did Menzies think of KU?
He was impressed with junior forward KJ Adams, who had 18 points, seven rebounds, six assists and four steals.
“Physically, he is a very imposing player,” Menzies said. “We have some guys I think are going to be developing into that type of player. (If he) shores up his shooting, he does so many other things as far as his energy, his rebounding, finishing. His mid-range is good. His touch around the basket is good. Not everybody is going to be a shooter, right? Some people are just going to be players. That’s what he is. He is a great piece to an already solid puzzle.”
Menzies noted that “Kansas is really good in the first four minutes of both halves. Their starting lineup, their first six, maybe seven guys, can really guard. When you get into subbing is where sometimes you get a chance to at least run your stuff. It’s hard to even execute our offense against how physical they are and shooting gaps. By them jumping out on us (leading 25-8 early). we had a little reprieve when they went to the bench a little bit. No knock on those subs. They have solid players, but they are different types of players.”
Kansas City will next meet Lindenwood at 3:30 p.m., Saturday, in St. Charles, Missouri. KU will play host to Missouri at 4:15 p.m., Saturday.
