47 Days Until Kansas Basketball: Boot Camp In Full Swing

Maybe the only thing more indicative of Kansas basketball approaching than our preview is boot camp. KU players rise and shine at 6 AM and head over to Allen Fieldhouse for a series of conditioning drills that by all accounts is the worst thing imaginable. Jeremy Case, now the video coordinator, remembers sleeping in the locker room some nights during his first boot camp.

The official KU twitter account posted some video of boot camp work on Thursday, and it certainly doesn't look much fun to do that for an hour a day, especially early in the morning. It also looks like it keeps the Jayhawks mentally sharp, as senior forward Landen Lucas said there are consequences for screwing up:

"We usually start off with some stretching, some jump ropes, light warm-ups. You get tired after warm-ups," Lucas said. "And then you go to some stations and do some other drills and, really, if you can get through a day with no mistakes, it goes pretty quick. Where you hurt yourself is mess-ups and having to do stuff over again. Once you kind of get into a bad groove, it’s just a downhill spiral. You just try to make it through."

Perhaps the emphasis on getting things right, especially defensively, is why Kansas has ranked in the top 11 defensively nationally for 10 of the previous 11 seasons.