Brandon Rush kept flipping the fancy wooden jewelry box open and looking down at what was inside of it.
He couldn’t help it. Rush had just received his national championship ring Friday night at a private ceremony held in the Naismith Room at Allen Fieldhouse. He stopped on the way out to his limousine to speak with reporters and continually glanced down at the blue ‘KU’ imprinted in the middle of a bed of diamonds.
“They’re kind of beautiful as you can see,” Rush said.
Fourteen of the 17 players on last year’s championship roster were in Lawrence to attend the ceremony. Russell Robinson and Sasha Kaun missed it because they are overseas playing professional basketball. Darrell Arthur couldn’t make it because he had a team function with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Older former Jayhawks also came to watch the team receive their rings including current NBA players Kirk Hinrich, Nick Collison and Jacque Vaughn.
“It wasn’t a pep-rally by any means,” coach Bill Self said. “It was a very appreciative group of people tonight who were able to get their rings.”
Rush is clearly a better ball-handler than ring-handler. The former Jayhawk guard and current Indiana Pacer dropped his ring to the hard Allen Fieldhouse concourse floor twice in less than a minute after the ceremony.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why he doesn’t plan on keeping it for very long.
“I’m going to give it to my grandma,” Rush said. “My grandma has all my rings framed in glass so she’s going to put it up there.”
Darnell Jackson, who currently plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, is keeping his ring. He isn’t going to wear it, but figures it would be safer under his own control.
Jackson said he feared what might happen if he followed Rush’s lead and gave it to his family.
“I can’t give it to my mom, she’ll lose it,” Jackson said. “She’ll carry it around in her purse and leave her purse somewhere and somebody will take it out of there.”
Self used the same word as Jackson and Rush to describe the silver ring — “beautiful.”
But that doesn’t mean the national championship coach is going to wear it around. Well, at least not most of the time.
“I doubt I’ll wear it much,” Self said. “I may wear it on recruiting visits, though.”
Three top recruits were in town this weekend and went to the ring ceremony as part of their visit. John Wall, the No. 1 high school player in the nation according to Rivals.com, watched the Jayhawks receive their rings along with No. 18 Thomas Robinson and No. 22 Daniel Orton.
Jackson hopes to see the younger Jayhawks win another national championship at some point. He said they would just need to learn it takes time and hard work.
For now, Jackson is content reflecting on this year’s championship.
“A lot of guys put hard work into this,” Jackson said. “Even the older guys who were before us. They tried to go after the same thing but couldn’t pull it off. I guess it was just our turn.”
Source :http://www.kansan.com/stories/2008/sep/22/champs_rings/?sports