Mike Jones, The Battle of New Orleans hero, rooting to see Shox dance with KU -- again
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The night before The Shot, Mike Jones went for The Jog.
In a parking lot. In the middle of the night. With ankle weights on. For an hour.
"Just wanted to get my legs ready," the former Wichita State guard tells FOXSportsKansasCity.com. "Running with my ankle weights on, you just feel so much lighter (on the court).... It's going to get you in shape.
"And just knowing that I might be called upon that next day, I just couldn't rest. I couldn't sleep."
Wait a minute. What about curfew?
"Curfew was only if you were going to chase girls," Jones chuckles. "You were all right. They were never going to (cuss) you out over working out."
And with that, the ex-Shockers off-guard laughs again. He's been doing a lot of smiling, as you might imagine, since Sunday night. That's when the NCAA tournament bracket went up to reveal his alma mater, the seventh seed in the Midwest Region, would be just a victory over Indiana away from a potential meeting with second-seeded Kansas, a neighboring school that it last met at the Big Dance in 1981 -- when Jones was in the Shockers' backcourt, delivering a blow heard 'round the Turnpike.
"I think it's honestly great for the state," Jones says. "It really is. I always felt that Kansas and Wichita State and Kansas State, those teams need to play each other through the years. You need to lay everything down and just play each other. It would be awesome, just awesome, for the state, just to bring the state together."
Sunday in Omaha, if it comes to pass, would be awesome, too. The Jayhawks (26-8) and Shockers (28-4) haven't met on a basketball court since 1993, and insiders will tell you that KU coach Bill Self and Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall are not exactly what you'd call Facebook friends. Marshall has never minded tweaking KU, the basketball kingpin of a basketball-crazy state, occasionally twisting the knife. Self says nice things about Wichita basketball and then changes the subject. Shocker fans demand respect; Jayhawk fans generally pretend that school to the south doesn't exist or, if it does, it's as some radical, bubble cult in a far-off corner of the state.
And yet it's Yalta compared to the icy thaw of '81. Before the Midwest regional semifinals that March, before "The Battle of New Orleans," KU and Wichita hadn't played since 1955. The schools had met just four times prior to that, and the Jayhawks had rocked all four, winning by an average margin of 21.3 points. (The returns, though, were rapidly diminishing over time: in 1908, KU won by 50; in 1955, the Jayhawks escaped by one point.)
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But the Big Dance often makes for strange bedfellows, and the Jayhawks and Shockers locked horns at the Superdome on March 20, 1981, in a regional semifinal, with the winner drawing LSU. The Jayhawks (24-7) were led by guards Darnell Valentine and Tony Guy; the Shockers (25-8) had a pair of future NBA standouts in the frontcourt, the "Bookends" combo of Cliff Levingston and Antoine "Big Dog" Carr. Jones was a role player, a supporting piece -- he'd averaged 4.5 points and 3.2 rebounds that winter -- but one who was about to become an integral part of Sunflower State folklore.
The Shot was actually the second in about a minute for Jones, from almost the same spot along the left elbow. The first, a 24-footer with about 46 seconds left, had trimmed the KU lead to 65-64. Valentine missed a bunny on the other end, and with five seconds left, Jones again had the ball in his hands and space to fire.
"The first option was to go inside to Cliff or Antoine," Jones recalls, but the Bookends were both smothered. "The second option would be to go to Randy Smithson, because Randy was a great set shooter; if he was open he could shoot it, (but) if someone closed in on him, he didn't have the lift in his jump shot."
Kansas coach Ted Owens knew this, and sagged to clog up the lane. Jones called for Smithson to come free around the corner, but he came with a Jayhawk defender trailing close behind.
"So when he reversed (the ball)," Jones says. "I knew I had to take a shot."
The rest is history. Or bloody infamy, depending on which side of the fence you happen to sit. The Shot, a 25-foot laser, swished home, and the Shockers danced away with a 66-65 victory.
"Every kid's practiced that shot," Jones says. "You practice that day-in, day-out, before you leave the court. 'Let me make this shot before I leave the court ... two seconds left, one second left ...'"
And that Valentine and Jones would become central figures in the narrative was more than a little ironic, considering the two often worked out together over the summer down in Wichita, running stadium steps, pushing the other guy to keep up.
"Darnell was a workaholic," Jones recalls. "So to be around him, you learned something about physical fitness.... Even though he was a big-time college player, you wouldn't know it from him speaking about it.
"But still, as a competitor, you want to play well, especially against your friends. In (this) state, everyone knew Darnell Valentine. And to me, it was always about that opportunity. So when that opportunity came, I wanted to step up."
The Big Dance often makes for strange, unlikely heroes, too.
"Not being from Kansas," says Jones, who hails from the Chicago suburb of Joliet, Illinois, "I didn't really understand the magnitude of it until probably the next day or two after the game. I felt from the people the importance of that game and just talking to people, I've come to understand how that game affected them. From the mayor on down, everybody wanted to talk to me. The mayor was trying to get me to stay in Wichita; I was being offered jobs in the city. They made me Mayor For a Day. Yeah, it was crazy. Really, really crazy."
Billboards went up. T-shirts were printed by the thousands. The numbers "66-65" were everywhere around Wichita, that little corner of the state finally able to claim bragging rights after so many decades.
And the Cold War cooled after that, too, at least for a bit; between 1984 and 1993, the Shockers and Jayhawks would play nine more times, with KU winning eight, and the series shifting from Lawrence (four games) to Kansas City (twice) to Wichita (three games). Jones would move to North Carolina, then to Grayson, Georgia, where he works as a heath and safety coordinator with Avita Community Partners, a resource center that assists those battling mental illness, addictive diseases or developmental disorders.
"Nothing's left me," Jones says, chortling, never missing a chance to razz his old teammates. "I can still shoot my shot. I haven't gotten like Cliff, old and fat. I still run. I still play. I still enjoy the game. I really love watching these (Shockers). I really do love watching them. And anytime they're on television, we're sitting here watching them."
If Jones does have a gripe, it's with the present selection committee, guilty of sticking it to the Shockers now, in some way or another, for three straight brackets.
"I don't understand who's setting up these brackets," Jones laments. "It's just unbelievable. No respect whatsoever. And it's a shame that every year they have to be dealing with something like this."
In 2013, the Missouri Valley regular-season and tourney runners-up were handed a 9 seed, and had to knock out a 1 (Gonzaga) to propel their stunning ride to the Final Four in Atlanta. (Jones was out of town on business that weekend, he says, much to his regret.) Last spring, the Shockers were unbeaten in the regular season to earn a 1 seed, only to find themselves on a path that included under-seeded Kentucky (then an 8) and Louisville (a 4) around the bend. The Wildcats knocked off the Shockers in St. Louis, 78-76, a Round-of-32 contest that everybody in the building -- and at home -- pegged as feeling more like a regional final. UK would roll all the way to the championship game against Connecticut and has used last March as a springboard to a 34-0 regular season in '14-15. And now the Shockers are the 7 in the region in which Big Blue Nation looms as the top seed.
"But I think this is the year they're going to do something special," Jones says.
"I'm hoping Fred (VanVleet) and Ron Baker, they're going to get together. They've got to become leaders and move this team on. If they just work together and run this team, they can do something special. They really can. Baker's got to be a little more outspoken and Fred, he and (Ron) just really need to work together and push those kids along.... In order to be successful throughout the tournament, Baker's got to be a little bit more assertive."
Because you never know when your Shot is going to come along. Or how long it'll live on, a link in the chain of local legend.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
