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Rush makes strong return as Kansas blasts Washburn

Nov 16, 2007 - 6:13 AM LAWRENCE, Kansas (Ticker) -- Not that they missed him all that much this season, but Kansas was sure happy to get Brandon Rush back into action again.

Rush scored seven points in his season debut as the the No. 4 Jayhawks beat Washburn, 92-60, on Thursday in the round-robin Jayhawk Invitational.

In securing 20-plus point victories over Louisiana-Monroe and Missouri-Kansas City to open the season, Kansas was able to withstand the absence of Rush, who has been the team's leading scorer in each of his first two seasons but had sat out the early part of the schedule after completing his recovery from ACL surgery.

"I thought he (Rush) played really well," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "They told me he was done at the four-minute timeout, but I tried to get a few more minutes out of him. We just wanted to see how he feels. He had a couple of shots, got knocked down a few times and went to the hole hard.

"I thought he did a nice job, maybe even our best player tonight to be honest with you."

Not expected back until December, Rush returned early and finished 3-for-5 from the field in 12 minutes.

"I was not stiff at all," Rush said. "They told me that I could not play in the second half, so I just sat down and chilled out. I would like to play a lot more. The trainers and doctors said that I could only play 12 to 15 minutes, and I used all of those up in the first half."

After James Williams hit a jumper to trim the Ichabods' deficit to 15-13 midway through the first half, Rush scored five points to spark a 19-5 run over the last 9:16 of the first half to push the Jayhawks' lead to 34-18 heading into intermission.

Kansas (3-0) continued to extend the advantage throughout the second half, taking as much as an 87-53 lead with 2:23 remaining.

"KU teams of the last 20 years have been pretty comparable, but they are good," Washburn coach Bob Chipman said. "This team has guards that are very explosive. I always think that a team is as good as their guards and they have some special guards in this group. We didn't even get to see Sherron (Collins) tonight. The guard play here is a 'wow', with a big 'w'."

Darrell Arthur scored 16 points to lead four players in double figures for the Jayhawks, who will meet Northern Arizona on next Wednesday.

Williams and Angel Santiago each scored 11 points to lead Washburn (0-2).

"They were so, so good offensively catching the ball deep and finishing," Chipman said. "It was overwhelming. We kept playing and we got a lot out of the game even thought they got away from us a bit. I was pleased that we kept playing and trying. It was a good outing for us."