College basketball needed a PR boost and it was two seniors who played their high school basketball in Wichita who gave it one Monday night.
Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield and Kansas’ Perry Ellis, once summer AAU teammates, helped put on the show of shows during KU’s 109-106 triple-overtime win at Allen Fieldhouse amidst a roar that could have awoken James Naismith.
Too often, the best players treat college as a rest stop on the way to, they hope and dream, the riches of the NBA. But Hield (Sunrise Christian) and Ellis (Heights) stayed for the long haul. They’re four-year players in an age in which being a four-year player carries with it a negative connotation.