
hannah baker short hair
The affection of Kansas-Wichita State starts in Scott City, a wisp of a boondocks on the western Kansas prairie, aloof two hours from the Kansas-Colorado border.
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It’s about a little blond-haired kid who grows up in that boondocks of 3,880. It starts about the time he got a basketball, at age 3, and what he remembers about that moment.
“I was a KU fan,” he says.
He’s got the Jayhawk logo everywhere in his room. He’s got a affiche of his hero Kirk Hinrich on his door.
“Everywhere I go, if I go besom my teeth, he’s there,” the kid says.
The kid grows up absent of arena for the Jayhawks in Allen Fieldhouse.
But this adventurous Sunday happens, in part, because the kid never fabricated it to Allen. Ron Baker became a Wichita State Shocker instead.
The how and why that happened is a account drifter than fiction.
It’s why recruiting is a adventurous of fate and luck and timing, why it makes coaches lose their beard and booty on ulcers.
Baker grew up to be the tough-as-nails bouncer who any drillmaster in the country would adulation to have. He slipped through the cracks of KU history and into the Wichita State almanac books.
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On Saturday Kansas drillmaster Bill Self said he fabricated a aberration not recruiting Baker. But this aberration of fate wasn’t Self’s fault. It was WSU drillmaster Gregg Marshall’s fortune.
Who knew Baker would abound up to be this guy? Nobody.
The kid was consistently short. He was 5-foot-6 by his apprentice year. Then, he sprouted to 6-3 by his inferior year.
Baker could play, but there was no AAU brawl in western Kansas. He additionally played football and baseball. He wasn’t on a lot of bandage radars.
In fact, South Dakota State and Arkansas-Little Rock were his alone two academy basketball offers.
Late in the bounce of Baker’s chief year, he anchored a adventitious to flat with the KU aggregation in Lawrence, Kansas, in advanced of some Kansas coaches. Actuality was a chance.
But Baker had aloof appear aback from an official appointment to South Dakota State. He had played a auto adventurous there and was rusty. He was in the average of baseball season.
He absitively to canyon on the cruise to Lawrence.
Instead, he acclimated that weekend to appointment Wichita State.
["845.84"]“The acumen I didn’t go was because I wasn’t arena basketball at the time,” Baker said in the WSU locker allowance on Saturday. “I wasn’t in basketball shape. I hadn’t affected a basketball in two months. I candidly didn’t appetite to go bottomward there and abash myself. Truthfully.
“When I say I hadn’t affected a brawl in two months, I absolutely beggarly that. I had affected a baseball. I’d been arena baseball for two months with my dad.
“I mean, it would accept been a abundant befalling for me if I went. It’s not that I didn’t appetite to go.
“I bethink my dad cogent me, ‘Let’s go, try, whatever.’ He’s like, ‘This is one of your dreams.’
“And I was like, yeah, but for some reason, I’m not kidding, we went to Wichita State and the KU abstraction was not alike brought up on the way home. So I assumption I was led bottomward the appropriate adit and concluded up here.”
It’s adamantine to accusation Self. Baker was a backward bloomer. Marshall was absorbed but was already full. He appropriate Baker go to a basic academy or inferior academy first.
Baker’s parents came up with the abstraction for him to airing on at WSU while they paid his way the aboriginal year.
“You know, bodies accomplish recruiting mistakes all the time, and bodies get advantageous recruiting and get unlucky,” Self said. “I would say there’s a lot of bodies that fabricated a aberration on Ron and we would absolutely be one of them that fabricated a mistake, because we were not acquainted of him in the way I ambition we would accept been acquainted of him.
“Because acutely anybody would adulation to accept him in their uniform.”
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Self told the adventure about activity to a basketball clash three years ago in Indianapolis and falling for a point guard. He alleged his agents and asked them about the kid.
They told him Fred VanVleet had aloof committed to Wichita State aftermost week.
Fate. Timing. Can you brainstorm VanVleet and Baker in KU uniforms?
“I’m aloof animated he did,” Marshall said back told Self said he’d fabricated a aberration not recruiting Baker. “He’s got affluence of acceptable players. I’m not abiding if I fabricated a aberration in not recruiting his guys, because I don’t anticipate I could accept gotten them anyway.
“You can’t accept ’em all.”
Exactly. The art of avaricious the ones who can comedy from beneath the big boys is how you body Wichita State into the affectionate of affairs that goes to a Final Four and looks KU beeline in the eye activity into an acute NCAA clash scrum.
Baker is all of 6-4, 220 pounds now, adamant and fearless, albino and bold. He blew into Wichita like a tumbleweed and fabricated himself into a amateur with an NBA future.
And he became the affectionate of amateur who ends up on posters on the walls of Kansas bedrooms, for kids who abound up absent to comedy for Wichita State. Or wherever fate leads them.
Baker’s aisle led him to the bend of 10th and Capitol, area Sunday his adolescence dream meets his alarming reality. Who’d thunk?
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“I’m a Kansas kid,” Baker said. “For me, there’s annihilation better.”
Video: Kansas-Wichita State preview
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