Toss(y)-Turvy Victory for Kansas

In the span of about 15 frantic seconds, Kansas Coach Roy Williams went from being angry with Drew Gooden to being furious with the officials to being disgusted with himself.

No. 3-ranked Kansas survived all of that for an 82-66 victory over Texas Saturday.

With six minutes remaining in the game, Gooden was called for his fourth foul as Texas’ Chris Owens drove past him to the basket.

Williams angrily threw his suit coat several rows into the stands behind the Kansas bench and then got really steamed when referee Scott Thornley gave him a technical.

“It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Williams. “I had no complaint with the call [on Gooden]. I had a lot of complaints with Drew. It was stupid on my part.”

Owens missed both free throws and Jeff Boschee followed with his fourth three-point basket to give Kansas, 18-2 overall and 7-1 in the Big 12, a 70-55 lead.

“Coach got mad at me for not sliding my feet,” Gooden explained. “That’s like his pet peeve. He wasn’t mad at the ref. He was mad at me.”

When Williams was told after the game that a technical was automatic for throwing something into the stands, he got angry again and said that wasn’t true. He went to the officials’ locker room to talk to Thornley, but the officials had left.

“It was just Coach being passionate about the game,” said senior forward Kenny Gregory of the incident. “We’re used to it.”

Gooden’s gaffe was one of only a few in the second half for both player and team. Gooden made six of seven shots in the second half to finish with 19 points and Kansas, after having its lead cut to 37-36, showed defensive intensity as Texas (16-6, 5-3) missed 14 of its next 17 shots.