Monday Morning Wheaties

It’s a track and field-heavy week of Monday Morning Wheaties, after the Jayhawks delivered four Big 12 champions and a little bonus at the conference’s outdoor championship meet over the weekend.

As a team, the Jayhawks took 6th place on the men’s side with 66.5 points and 10th on the women’s side with 40 points.

But the headlines were all about individual awesomeness for a handful of Jayhawks, and all of that, and more, will be celebrated in this week’s episode of Monday Morning Wheaties.

You’ve seen the tomahawks on the back of the Florida State helmets, the buckeye tree leaves on the Ohio State helmets and the paw prints on the back of the Clemson helmets.

Each Monday, we take one last look back at the week that was and hand out different amounts of the iconic breakfast cereal to the Jayhawks’ top performers.

So, be sure to come get your Monday Morning Wheaties and feel free to hit up the comments section — subscribers only for now — with any players you feel we might’ve missed.

Picture on the box

• Decathlon winner Alexander Jung – Jung took the gold in the men’s decathlon with a season- and personal-best total of 7,706 total points. But the junior from Germany got the nod here over his fellow Big 12 champion Jayhawks because his point total set a school record, as well — breaking the old mark of 7,702 points by Mike Evers that had stood for nearly 30 years. This was Jung’s first career Big 12 title and now gives him the school record in the outdoor decathlon and indoor heptathlon, set back in 2023 at the Big 12 championships.

A full bowl

• High jumper Devin Loudermilk – The Howard, Kansas native completed the season sweep in his signature event with a monster effort at the high jump pit. After winning the 2024 Big 12 Indoor Championship title earlier this year, Loudermilk took home first place in the same event at the outdoor meet this weekend. He also set a new outdoor best mark of 2.24 meters, topping his previous season best of 2.16 meters.

• Throws champ Dimitrios Pavlidis – Pavlidis, a junior from Greece, emerged as your champion from a field full of talented discus throwers. His best mark of the meet was 61.52 meters, which delivered his first career Big 12 title.

• Pole vault champion Anthony Meacham — On a team loaded with talent, chalk full of a handful of different vaulters who can win any meet, Meacham claimed his first career Big 12 title in a stacked men’s pole vault field by clearing 5.4 meters. The sophomore from Woodsboro, Texas was joined on the podium by teammates Ashton Barkdull (second, 5.3), Clayton Simms (fifth, 5.3) and Andrew Saloga (sixth, 5.3).

Nighttime snack

• KU closer Hunter Cranton – After dropping the first game in a gotta-have-it series against Houston at Hoglund Ballpark, the Jayhawks found a way to win the next two, taking the series two games to one and keeping alive their hopes of a postseason berth. While there were doubles and homers and defensive gems and solid middle relief efforts, the performance by Cranton was significant. In Game 2, Cranton entered with an 11-9 lead and slammed the door with three straight strikeouts to pick up his sixth save of the season. In Game 3, Cranton did not enter the game in a save situation, but still managed to slam the door, giving up just one hit and striking out two in his lone inning of work.

• Junior golfer Lily Hirst – Hirst, a native of Huddersfield, United Kingdom, led the Jayhawks with a three-round score of +5 at last week’s NCAA Regional, which put her in a tie for 13th place on the individual leaderboard. It marked her seventh Top-20 finish this season and was the third-best finish by a KU women's golfer at an NCAA Regional in program history.

• Softball shortstop Hailey Cripe – It wasn’t the ending the Jayhawks were hoping for, but they did make a little history nonetheless, when Cripe tied the Big 12 tourney’s single-game record with 5 RBIs. The sophomore from Royal Center, Indiana, went 2-for-3 during the Jayhawks’ opening-round win over Houston, with a two-run home run — her team-leading seventh of the season — and a three-run double.

Drink the milk

• KU graduates – Sunday was graduation day at the University of Kansas, where dozens of KU athletes made the walk down the held and celebrated years worth of work on and off the field with one final celebration in their caps and gowns. It was a perfect day for the festivities and the powers that be at KU made sure that the commencement ceremony went off without a hitch in the traditional spot at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium despite ongoing construction at the venue as crews work to build the new and reimagined home of KU’s football program, which is slated to be ready in time for the 2025 season.