Posts Tagged ‘Basketball’

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Kansas basketball players involved in fighting with Jayhawks football players apologized Thursday, saying they embarrassed themselves and the school.

During an impromptu news conference, basketball coach Bill Self called the fighting bad for the entire university. He and a few of his players met with reporters Thursday for the first time since fighting erupted Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning at two different sites on the normally peaceful campus.

Basketball guard Tyshawn Taylor injured his finger and will be sidelined for up to a month. He was apparently one of the main instigators and posted on his Facebook page that he had injured his finger “throwing a punch.”

Taylor’s account also included several suggestive and vulgar passages which may have been the lyrics of rap songs. The posting was later taken down. Thursday, Taylor called his actions “stupid.”

“I’m embarrassed because of the situation,” he said. “It’s a situation that none of us should have gotten into. We embarrassed our campus, our university, both teams, and it’s just a situation that shouldn’t have happened. Looking back at it, it was just really stupid. I wish I could take it back.”

Self said he was stern and unyielding when he met with his team Wednesday night.

“We don’t act like this,” Self said. “To me, somebody asked me how did Tyshawn dislocate his thumb? My reply was: I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference to me. The fact is that it happened. The reason it happened was because a really small group of individuals put selfish motives ahead of what was really important.”

Self and senior guard Sherron Collins came to Taylor’s defense.

“It’s not just Tyshawn,” Collins said. “It was a group of individuals from both sides that let egos and pride get involved in something that could have been resolved. We let something small become something big. We as a team, we accept this all together. Not everyone had something to do with it, but we are all together as a team.”

The Kansas football team is unbeaten in three games and ranked No. 20. Self’s basketball team could be ranked as high as No. 1 in the preseason poll.

The incidents, possibly the continuation of bad blood that had been simmering between the two groups for more than a year, drew quick condemnation from school administrators. Self was out of town on a recruiting trip and did not get back in time for a hurried meeting of basketball and football players that athletic director Lew Perkins called Wednesday evening.

“It’s very disturbing to me,” Self said. “I’ve coached a lot of great kids, and Tyshawn Taylor definitely fits that bill. His judgment in what he posted on his Facebook is totally inexcusable and it was done in very poor taste. So even though they may not be his words and they may be words of lyrics to songs he listens to and likes, it’s still something that isn’t to be put out there like that. I do think it’s offensive.”

But Self also said for Taylor “to be portrayed as anything other than a good kid that really made an ignorant play on doing that with his Facebook would be totally inaccurate.”

Two fights in two days between Kansas football and basketball players sent one basketball star to the hospital and left officials on this normally placid Midwestern campus red-faced with embarrassment.

Tyshawn Taylor, a sophomore guard on the basketball team which could be ranked as high as No. 1 in the preseason polls, was taken to a hospital Tuesday night for treatment of a hand injury that could sideline him up to a month.

Otherwise, there were no known injuries in the two incidents other than to the pride of this venerable institution, which boasts about the fact there was no vandalism and no arrests following all-night street celebrations of their 2008 NCAA basketball championship.

As of late Wednesday afternoon, there had been no arrests or charges.

“We’re hoping they get themselves together and act like adults, like they’re supposed to be,” campus police captain Schuyler Bailey said. “We’re hoping that this is done.”

The first fight broke out about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday outside Burge Union, the building where athletes take their meals. Police reports quoted witnesses as saying football and basketball players had been “baiting each other,” and that “there was a big mob of people outside the building and several people were fighting each other.”

Then, about 10 a.m. Wednesday on another part of campus, things got even uglier. Witnesses reported some players hurling racial insults and a basketball player shoving a football player down a few stairs.

The Kansas student newspaper said on its website that basketball players Marcus and Markieff Morris, Mario Little, Sherron Collins and Taylor were at the scene. The site also had a video of several basketball players, including Collins and the Morris twins, ushered into a van by associate athletics director Sean Lester.

Two football players, Chris Harris and all-Big 12 wide receiver Dezmon Briscoe, were seen talking to police.

Bailey said no police report had been issued on the second incident because no one had brought a complaint. A student, Richard Rockel, said he arrived after the fighting and saw four campus policemen talking to witnesses.

Taylor, the third-leading scorer for Kansas last year, said in a Facebook comment he later took down that he dislocated his finger “from throwing a punch.”

Taylor’s mother, Jeanell Taylor, refused to speak with reporters Wednesday as she walked out of the building that houses the Kansas coaches’ offices.

Bailey was seen walking into a meeting with athletics department officials, including Lew Perkins, late Wednesday afternoon.

Neither police nor school officials said they knew what started the fights.