KJ Adams says hostile crowd can motivate Kansas vs. Gonzaga: ‘Chip on our shoulder’
Kansas forward KJ Adams relishes the idea of a crowd rooting against the Jayhawks.
In KU’s first-round NCAA Tournament win over Samford, the crowd in the Delta Center was decisively pro-Samford. Adams doesn’t expect that to change in Kansas’ matchup against No. 5 Gonzaga on Saturday.
“They have a lot of fans in there, so it’s going to be good to play in kind of an away atmosphere,” Adams told The Star. “I think that helps us kind of in the tournament. Everybody was going against us in the Samford game, so that puts a little chip on our shoulder.
“Everybody wants us to lose, but I think that comes into our advantage because we’re playing with a free mind whenever we play.”
Adams believes this team is playing more relaxed than it was in the regular season. He says compared to former Kansas teams that were the No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, this squad plays a lot looser.
However, he admits that isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes, the Jayhawks play too relaxed — KU had 18 turnovers against Samford. The Jayhawks also went 3-7 in true road games this season (2-7 Big 12), though they were much better in a neutral-court setting, defeating Kentucky and Tennessee.
Regardless, Adams feels like playing loose can help this KU team, one that has felt the outside pressure at times.
In fact, according to KU guard Elmarko Jackson, he and the team don’t feel any extra pressure in March Madness.
“As a team, we’ve dealt with pressure all year,” he said. “So it’s kind of just normal for us. We’re very tight-knit, where we don’t really listen to a lot of outside noise. We just ... stay as tight-knit as possible. I feel that’s a reason for our success.”
For the Jayhawks, it’ll be an uphill battle facing Gonzaga.
The Zags are red hot, having won 10 of their last 11 games. Gonzaga also ranks No. 7 in effective field goal percentage (56.8) and No. 7 in 2-point percentage (58.1%). The Bulldogs are led by big man Graham Ike, averaging a team-leading 16.5 points and 7.2 rebounds.
Gonzaga has certainly caught coach Bill Self’s attention.
“It seems like to me since about the Kentucky game ... that’s the Gonzaga team of the past playing,” Self said. “... I mean, we’ve talked about that today. Can you believe there was actually talk that they may not get in a month ago? It’s ridiculous. And now they’re playing fantastic.”
Self continued: “That’s how good they’ve been in the last month. And I think they’ve tweaked some personnel changes and stuff like that, but the bottom line is they’re just playing like Gonzaga is known to play this time of year.”
Kansas, meanwhile, must figure out a way to shake off a regular season in which the results did not improve as the year went along. In fact, KU has won no more than two games consecutively since the calendar turned to 2024.
“I’m going to choose to believe that we’re on a roll,” Self said. “We’ve won one in a row. We’re on a hot streak. We’ve won the exact same amount of games in a row that Gonzaga’s won. So I’ll just spin it like that.”
