ESPN Men's Basketball

SAN ANTONIO -- The Kansas Jayhawks are not in this tournament to win the sportsmanship trophy. They’re not here to go along and get along. They’re not terribly interested in playing nice.

They made that perfectly clear before and during their Sweet 16 stomping of Richmond on Friday night, a 77-57 beating that was Kansas at its best. And cockiest. And most intimidating.

The Jayhawks shoved their way inside the Spiders’ heads more than 24 hours before the game and never left, not until the final horn sounded. When Kansas star forward Marcus Morris encountered a couple of Richmond players in the hallway between media interviews Thursday, he issued a verbal warning: “You better be ready.”

Then, while the Spiders were huddling in the tunnel before coming out onto the court for tipoff, the Jayhawks barged through. A shoving match ensued between the teams.

“We were trying to run out,” Kansas guard Josh Selby said. “They stood right there, and we just tried to run through it.”

“It got a little chippity,” Morris said. “We had a little battle to get out the tunnel first.”

Said Richmond’s Kevin Smith: “They tried to run through there, and they ran into some walls. It’s a man thing. Would you let a man walk through you? They thought they were playing with some boys with that one.”

No offense to Mr. Smith and the Spiders, but this was a men-against-boys game. Top-seeded Kansas had its way with the No. 12 seed, bursting out to a 31-9 lead and never giving any upset hopes a chance to grow in the Kansas-dominated Alamodome.

Given the way both teams started the game, it’s fair to wonder whether the pregame fracas had a motivational effect on Kansas and an unsettling effect on Richmond. The Spiders say it did not, but the Jayhawks generally disagreed.

Richmond point guard Kevin Anderson said the altercation was not an issue after tipoff but that “I never got my team settled down.”

If Richmond was unsettled, Kansas was unbridled.

“I think it might have been a little bit [of a motivator],” Kansas guard Brady Morningstar said.

The more you mix it up with the Jayhawks, the better they seem to do. Whatever chance there was that they wouldn’t start the game dialed in probably disappeared in that tunnel exchange.

“Maybe they didn’t think we were ready to go,” Morris surmised. “But the first 11 minutes were probably the best we’ve played all year.”

Kansas was indeed brilliant early. The Jayhawks moved the ball precisely and hit their perimeter shots. They extended their defense to disrupt Richmond’s rhythm and force it away from the basket. They predictably hammered the smaller Spiders on the glass. They were good in transition, good in the half court, good everywhere and in every way.

“They are truly a great team,” Richmond coach Chris Mooney said. “They were kind of able to dictate the game, unfortunately, in every way.”

Nobody played better early than Morningstar, who had 12 first-half points and finished with a team-high 18. The senior has a reputation as something of a provocateur. Marcus and twin brother Markieff Morris have been known to keep their elbows cocked and ready, whereas Morningstar is more apt to annoy opponents with his mouth.

He got under the skin of Texas’ Jordan Hamilton in Lawrence earlier this season, prompting Hamilton to cuss at him and draw a technical foul. This time, Morningstar and Smith got into it during one dead ball, and the officials brought both together for a lecture. Not long thereafter, Morningstar buried his fourth 3-pointer of the game and woofed at Smith. He was quickly hit with a T.

“Some kind of noise,” Smith said of whatever came out of Morningstar’s mouth. “He said it running away. ... You can put that in there if you want to.”

Said Morningstar: “I got ahead of myself, and I’m not good enough to run my mouth after I make a shot.”

Morningstar said something else funny postgame. Namely, that he couldn’t understand why Richmond might have been intimidated by the Jayhawks.

Take a look at the thick bodies and unsmiling faces in your own locker room, Brady. If the Morris twins and Thomas Robinson (12 points and 14 rebounds Friday) aren’t a bit scary to look at, nobody is in college basketball.

Richmond was going to be up against it in this game no matter what. But after all the pregame posturing, the Spiders were really in trouble. It didn’t take long for Kansas to exert its dominance and make Louisville coach-turned-temporary ESPN analyst Rick Pitino’s upset pick turn on its head.

“No disrespect to Pitino,” Markieff Morris said, “but we still playing.”

And still talking.

While Kentucky coach John Calipari was anticipating for the past month that he might lose his fence-sitters in the draft, he also knew he could still withstand the blow by recruiting at an elite level.

North Carolina State and Richmond are two programs that couldn't afford a setback.

On the surface, there is no reason to believe NC State's Tracy Smith or Richmond's Kevin Anderson would stay in the draft. Neither had much buzz about them, but this is an era where just having someone mention you might be a first-round pick, or even a second-rounder, can entice a player to say goodbye to school.

NC State is a program that should be on the rise. With the return of Smith, the team's leading scorer (16.5) and rebounder (7.3) last season, the Wolfpack may finally turn the corner under Sidney Lowe after four subpar years. The Pack haven't won more than six ACC games under Lowe and won five last season. But NC State won six of its last nine games overall and the recruiting has finally reached a national level.

"We've definitely got momentum," Lowe said. "We finished strong and with quality players coming back and the young talent coming in we're going in the right direction.''

The Wolfpack signed up one of the top perimeters in the fall with guards Ryan Harrow and Lorenzo Brown. Then in late April, they snagged the highly coveted hometown forward C.J. Leslie of Raleigh. If Smith had departed early, the momentum would have been stunted.

"That would have been a tremendous blow to our team,'' Lowe said. "I wasn't worried, but someone got in his ear and told him that it won't hurt to throw your name in. It was all of a sudden. He did tell me that he would come back."

Lowe signed Leslie amid rumors that he was going to be fired (not true) and the athletic director who hired him was going to be out (which turned out to be correct when Lee Fowler resigned last week, effective June 30).

"We got C.J. during a tough time of change," Lowe said. "Lee was good to me. A good man. It was a tough deal."

Now the Wolfpack have the veteran presence in Smith and the high-level talent coming in with Harrow, Brown and Leslie.

"That's what we've been waiting for," Lowe said. "When you look at the top programs that's what they do, year in and year out. This is the group that we've been able to recruit when they were young. We've got guys coming back with some five-star, high-quality players to mix it in."

Programs trying to move upward can't afford to lose talent early to the draft if there isn't a backfill immediately behind them.

Richmond made the NCAAs for the first time under Chris Mooney this past season. The Spiders won nine games in the A-10 in each of the previous two seasons and then last season won 13 and 26 overall before losing to Saint Mary's in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The backcourt of A-10 player of the year Anderson and David Gonzalvez wasn't going to be reunited with Gonzalvez a senior. But had the Spiders also lost Anderson, keeping up with Temple, Xavier and Dayton would have been a chore.

Like Smith, Anderson just wanted to see if he could get a bite. With the short window of opportunity, he did not and returned.

Gonzalvez ate up a lot of minutes last season and Darien Brothers, who played sparingly, Kevin Smith and Greg Robbins -- the latter two more wings than traditional guards -- will share minutes in place of Gonzalvez. Take Anderson out of the equation and there goes Richmond's marquee player, its go-to guy and a veteran presence to ease in these players.

"That would have been difficult to overcome," Mooney said. "We've finished in the top five three straight years in the A-10 and we're on line to finish high again. That would have been a setback. We're building the program to where we want it to be.''