By ARNE GREEN

Salina Journal

LAWRENCE -- When Jacob Pullen made his first visit last year to Allen Fieldhouse, he had every reason to feel confident.

Roughly a month earlier, as a freshman backup, he had help school a veteran Kansas team, scoring 20 points and dishing out four assists as Kansas State scored a historic 84-75 victory over the Jayhawks in Manhattan.

But that hardly prepared him for the return match, in Lawrence, where 16,300 Jayhawks fans seemingly were right on top of him from the moment he stepped on the floor.

"It's something you can't even explain," said Pullen, now a sophomore and K-State's leading scorer at 14.3 points a game. "Nobody was able to explain to me how different and how difficult the games were going to be at KU and at home.

"You have to be there. From warming up, you couldn't hear somebody calling you and telling you to change stretches, that's how loud it was."

It figures to be plenty loud again when KU and K-State meet at 7 tonight in Allen Fieldhouse for the 264th edition of the Sunflower Showdown. There are still state bragging rights on the line, not to mention the early impact on the Big 12 standings.

But unlike most other years, neither team is ranked and both are relatively young. KU, 11-4 and playing its conference opener, lost seven players from its 2008 national championship team. K-State, also 11-4 but 0-1 in the Big 12 after falling Saturday to No. 6 Oklahoma, said goodbye to a pair of senior starters and watched freshmen Michael Beasley and Bill Walker head to the NBA.

"Since I've been here, there's been a lot of veteran guys," said K-State starting forward Darren Kent, the lone senior on either team likely to see significant playing time. "Especially last year with KU.

"I know it's a different look, so it's kind of strange how many different players they have. With them having such a young team, this is a good time to go in there and try to get a win."

K-State's last victory in Allen Fieldhouse came during Kent's freshman year - with a veteran team.

Even now, though the Wildcats have several players back from a year ago, only Pullen (11 minutes), sophomore wing Dominique Sutton (21), sophomore forward Ron Anderson (10) and Kent (17) logged double-digit minutes in their 88-74 loss in Lawrence. Pullen, so brilliant in Manhattan, scored three points with two assists at Allen.

"To a certain extent (the youth factor) has some validity to it, because as a player and as a coach, until you're a part of one of these games, you don't understand the rivalry that exists among the fans, the crowd, the people, the alums," K-State coach Frank Martin said. "When you walk into that gym and you feel the passion that comes from the stands, it kind of lets you understand how important this game is for your school."

You don't have to tell that to KU, which lost all five starters and all but two significant contributors from a year ago. Junior guard Sherron Collins, a backup his first two seasons, still averaged 15 points and 29 minutes in the two meetings last year.

Center Cole Aldridge, who played just six minutes in KU's victory at Allen, has blossomed as a sophomore, ranking second on the team in scoring at 15.3 a game (Collins leads at 18.1) and first in rebounding with a 9.9 average.

"Over the course of the next few years it's going to be that much harder to win because we've both got teams that have lost drastic talent from last year's teams, with them losing those two guys and us losing our seven guys," Aldrich said. "It's going to build over the next few years."

Guards Tyshawn Taylor, one of two freshmen starters for KU, said he's still learning about the rivalry. So far, he has no reason to hate the Wildcats.

"Not me," he said. "It just means I go to Kansas, they go to K-State. I guess that's reason enough.

"I hear it was a big rivalry and I heard we are leading in wins right now, that these are two teams that don't really like each other."

K-State junior guard Denis Clemente has heard all about Allen Fieldhouse and is not impressed. He sat out last year as a transfer from Miami and did not make the trip to Lawrence, but he knows a thing or two about rivalries and hostile environments, having played in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

"There's not pressure and I'm not nervous," he said. "I've been in that situation before when I played Duke my freshman year, and North Carolina.

"It's going to be the same. It will be loud, but when I play on the court, I don't hear anybody."

That might be easier said than done.

"You can talk to kids until you're blue in the face about that," Martin said. "The bottom line is, that's why you have to go on the road and play.

"Last year we had some real good players that went in there and we got caught up in the moment of the atmosphere and that program. That's what happens with inexperience and youth."

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