NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Kansans Will Go to Kansas City : Jayhawks Roll Over Vanderbilt; Wildcats Upset Purdue

Some things only take a couple of minutes. Eggs. A Kentucky Derby. An Indy time trial. Andy Rooney. Olympic 800-meter runs. Most of Mike Tyson’s fights. Most of Andy Rooney’s books. A couple of minutes and they’re done.

Some basketball games are like that, too.

Friday night’s Kansas game was over in a hurry. It was over before it was over. Kansas led, 5-0, then, 18-4, and bang, zoom, came a 77-64 victory over Vanderbilt in a bore of a ballgame at the NCAA Midwest Regional.

Friday night’s Kansas State game was something else. It wasn’t over until it was over. K-State fell behind, 10-0, then, 43-34, at halftime but came back to upset Purdue in a beauty of a ballgame, 73-70.

So, Kansas can do. It’ll be Kansas (24-11) vs. Kansas State (25-8) in Sunday’s regional final here, for the right to go to the Final Four at . . . Kansas City. Kansas City, here they come.

“The regional final takes precedent over the fact that it’s a rivalry,” Kansas State Coach Lon Kruger said. “But, it’s a rivalry as good as any.

“We’re proud of the basketball we play. Our conference is very competitive, and we feel that it prepares you for anything. We feel it’s as good as any in the country.”

This success was particularly sweet for Kansas State, which was beaten by Purdue, 101-72, earlier this season. The Boilermakers, coached by Kansas State alumnus Gene Keady and top-seeded in this regional, ended the season with a record of 29-4.

In that vein, never let it be said the Big Ten is two better than the Big Eight. Three teams from the Big Eight Conference--Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma--are among the NCAA tournament’s eight survivors, but the poor old Big Ten--with Purdue, Iowa and Michigan all falling Friday night--has been wiped out.

Kansas, with All-American forward Danny Manning needing only 29 minutes to get his 38 points, made a microwave meal out of Vanderbilt in the dinner-hour game of the doubleheader. The win gave Kansas a chance to qualify for the Final Four for the second time in three years.

Although the Pontiac Silverdome nightcap wouldn’t end until after midnight, Michigan time, most of the 31,309 in the house stuck around, hoping that this game would be better. More interesting. Longer lasting.

It was.

It was good to the last drop. Three last-minute mistakes by senior guard Everette Stephens of Purdue--with his anxious mother, Mattie, shielding her eyes with her souvenir program most of the second half, too nervous to look--sent the third-ranked Boilermakers to their doom.

Stephens threw a bounce pass with his team trailing, 69-67, that was intercepted by Kansas State’s Charles Bledsoe with 26 seconds remaining. After Bledsoe blew a free throw, Stephens hurried downcourt and dribbled the ball off his knee, out of bounds, with 19 seconds left.

“I was either supposed to go behind a screen and take a jumper or go to the baseline,” Stephens said later. “The ball just brushed the side of my knee and went out of bounds. I guess that’s the breaks.”

The breaks got worse. With no timeouts left, three seconds to play and desperate Purdue three points down, Stephens held onto the ball too long before launching the last shot of the game--after time had expired. It missed, anyway.

Stephens led his team for the evening with 20 points and 9 assists, and it was his three-pointer with 1:26 to play that had cut Kansas State’s advantage to 69-67.

Guard partner Troy Lewis helped out with 19 points, but it was K-State’s hotshot forward, Mitch Richmond, who stole the show, getting 27 points and 11 rebounds. Sunday’s shootout between Richmond and Manning should match two of the next National Basketball Assn. college draft’s most wanted players.

For a fast couple of minutes there--literally--the Kansas State game wasn’t much to look at. It was a Xerox of Kansas-Vandy. Purdue shot out in front, 10-0, with the game 111 seconds old, and Wildcat Coach Lon Kruger called a timeout even before CBS did, a college basketball rarity.

In the huddle, Kruger gently reminded his players that Purdue had pounded them three months ago by 29 points, and that if they didn’t start doing better, that December game was going to look like a nail-biter.

The K-Staters got the message. They scrambled back to score the next five points, got within 21-19 at the nine-minute mark and kept the Boilermakers in their sights for the rest of the half, although a late splurge put Purdue up by a nice margin again at halftime, 43-34.

“When it was 10-0, coach called time, and we regrouped,” Richmond said. “Everyone got together and said we had to fight. We came back and knew right then that we could play with them.”

The K-kids kept coming. They finally grabbed the lead, 46-44, on consecutive three-point bombs by guard William Scott. And a little while later came a three-pointer that put the handwriting on the Silverdome wall--one by Richmond that banked off the glass. That gave K-State a 64-57 lead with 7:50 left.

“Right then and there, I felt that if it was close, we were going to win the game,” said Richmond, who has made a habit of taking charge of the final minutes of big games. “We haven’t been losing any close ones lately. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, we’re going to win the game. I don’t care what the score is.”

The score got to be 66-57, but Purdue fought back to 66-62. Todd Mitchell messed up two free throws, but Stephens soon made up for him with the three-pointer that made it 69-67.

Then came Stephens’ mistakes, and Kansas State’s Steve Henson, the NCAA’s top free-throw shooter at 94%, sank a pair with 17 seconds remaining for a safe 72-67 lead. Henson finished the game with only 5 points but contributed 12 assists.

Keady was depressed with the outcome but impressed by his alma mater.

“My hat’s off to Kansas State. The kids did a great job, and the coaching staff has turned what could have been a bad season into a great one,” Keady said. “Even though we had a great season, Kansas State peaked and played better than we did.

“When Kansas State went on an 11-1 run, I saw doubt in my players’ eyes. They didn’t know Kansas State and its coaching staff like I did. You tell ‘em and tell ‘em, but . . . “

Now, Kansas State’s coaches must tell their players something: How to stop Danny Manning. The 6-foot 10-inch Kansas senior scored 25 points in the first half against Vanderbilt, making 12 of 17 shots. For the game, he wound up 16 of 29 for 38 points, and he got 11 minutes of rest because the game was so easy.

“Manning’s performance was one of the best I’ve seen,” Vandy Coach C.M. Newton said. “Virtually unstoppable. A great player having a great night, that’s a bad thing to have happen to you.”

Will Perdue, Vanderbilt’s 7-foot center, had only 16 points and fouled out. Leading the Commodores (20-11) was guard Barry Booker, whose 22 points included six three-point shots.