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‘The pinnacle’: Kansas City players raised the stakes for 2012 MU-KU basketball games

Seeds for the wildest — and final for a decade — chapters for the Border War men’s basketball series between Kansas and Missouri were planted six years earlier.

The Kansas City Star’s All-Metro boys basketball selections told the story.

The 2006 and 2007 first teams included Rockhurst’s Conner Teahan. Travis Releford of Bishop Miege made the first team in 2007 and attended Kansas.

Releford and future Missouri star Marcus Denmon of Hogan Prep made the 2008 team. Mizzou’s Truman’s Steve Moore was on the second team. Lee Summit West’s Michael Dixon was a first-team choice in 2009. Jarrett Sutton was an All-Northland guard at Oak Park.

Rarely had that much Kansas City talent took the short route to Lawrence and Columbia and most played major roles in the two games that brought houses down and the series to an end, the regular-season triumph by Mizzou in Columbia and the revenge victory for KU at Lawrence in overtime.

KU and Mizzou already knew each well, understood the rivalry was coming to an end with the Tigers joining the SEC, and played with the hearts as much as any games in the college careers.

“When you come from Kansas City, you understand how big the rivalry is,” Teahan said. “We knew each other very well. We all played in the same AAU (program).”

And against each other on the high school floors, crossing over the state line in regular season tournaments.

After a decade of dormancy, except for a 2017 exhibition game, the Border War returns with a Dec. 11 game at Allen FIeldhouse. The game begins a six-year contract with two games in Lawrence, two in Columbia and two in Kansas City.

They’ll be nonconference games with Kansas remaining in the Big 12 and Missouri in the SEC. The Tigers’ departure was the basis stopping the series. KU coach Bill Self was among the most vocal opponents to end athletic relationships between the schools.

The decade freeze is over. It would have ended last year but the pandemic caused a delay in the resumption. The rosters on this season’s teams don’t carry the strong flavor of Kansas City talent as in 2012. Kansas’ leading scorer, Ochai Agbaji, attended Oak Park. KU’s Chrisitian Braun went to Blue Valley Northwest and Chris Teahan — Conner’s younger brother — went to Rockhurst.

Missouri has three in-state players on the roster but none are from Kansas City.

A decade ago, the Border War games might as well have been a Kansas City Invitational. The locals grew up watching high level Big 12 basketball, like Kansas’ Final Four teams of Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrick, and the Quin Snyder Missouri teams of Clarence Gilbert, Rickey Paulding and Arthur Johnson. The Rush brothers spiced the rivalry with older Kareem at Mizzou and a few years later Brandon at Kansas.

Sutton goes back even further, watching Raef LaFrentz and Paul Pierce at KU and Keyon Dooling lead the Tigers.

“I mean, that was like my childhood,” Sutton said. When you grew up in Kansas City, the Mizzou-Kansas rivalry was huge.”

Sutton’s first Border War was in in 2004, the final game at Hearnes Center. He was hooked.

“I had been to college basketball games,” Sutton said. “I had gone to a Mizzou game, a KU game, but never had I been to Mizzou-Kansas and it was just a totally, totally different atmosphere. I sat up in the student section taking it all in. The pinnacle for me watching any sporting event when I was a kid was Mizzou-Kansas.”