Morris twins power KU over UCLA

Kansas center Cole Aldrich (45) and UCLA guard Michael Roll (20) go up for a rebound as UCLA forward Reeves Nelson (11) looks on in the first half of their NCAA college basketball game in Los Angeles on Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009.

In Markieff Morris' mind, he did not score a career-high 19 points in Kansas' 73-61 victory over UCLA on Sunday night because he is a highly-talented basketball player and it just happened to be his time to show it. No, inevitably there was a deeper reason for his performance, and if you're familiar with the Morris yarn, it should not be a shock to hear that it involved KU coach Bill Self screaming at him and brother Marcus at a recent practice.

Marcus and Markieff have differing narratives of the incident, which is only to be expected from the bards from Philly, who refuse to let details get in the way of a good story. Basically, the twins may or may not have been joking around together near the end of practice, and Marcus may or may not have stopped on a play after a teammate grabbed his arm while he was going for a rebound. The only thing both twins agreed upon was how the story ended.

"On the line," Self yelled at them.

The story often ends that way for the Morris twins, who have battled chronic laziness since arriving in Lawrence. As they've done hundreds of times, they went to the baseline and completed a string of "22s," which requires them to run down the floor and back twice in 22 seconds.

Listening to Self and the top-ranked Jayhawks talk about the twins this season, it seemed that they may have conquered the lazy bug.

They worked their tails off in the offseason, putting on good weight, and they have been widely cited as the most-improved players on the team. But there they were again, racing against time and their own laid-back nature while their teammates continued practice without them.