Loss of players factored into end of KU’s streak
One of the more impressive streaks in college sports has ended.
Kansas’ 81-68 loss Tuesday to Oklahoma officially stopped the Jayhawks’ 14-year reign over the Big 12, with one of coach Bill Self ’s teams winning at least a share of the regular-season title in every season since finishing second in 2004.
How did this Kansas team, a preseason No. 1 in the coaches poll and a national title favorite in November, fail to do what so many teams did before it?
The Big 12 was always too good
Perhaps the most impressive part of Kansas’ record streak, and one that casual fans hardly could grasp, is how good the Big 12 has been during the last decade and a half. The conference is leading the NCAA’s new metric, the NET, this year by a landslide. And it was the country’s best conference in every season since a once-mighty Big East disbanded into the American Athletic and a revamped Big East in 2013.
This season was as much a strong conference showing its colors as much as it was circumstance and vulnerabilities sinking Kansas’ title chances. Texas Tech and Kansas State, the two fighting for the Big 12 title, are well-coached teams coming off Elite Eight finishes. Road losses to both those teams hurt. But Kansas’ demise likely happened in February when it lost at West Virginia by one point. WVU was the worst team in the conference this year.
Huge losses of key players
Kansas’ national title hopes started to unravel when Udoka Azubuike, an All-American-caliber 7-footer who bypassed the NBA draft, suffered a season-ending injury. It didn’t make matters better in KU’s frontcourt when 6-9 forward Silvio De Sousa was ruled ineligible for the season. After playing last season with four guards and just one big guy, Self finally was supposed to have a frontcourt to be reckoned with since Memphis transfer Dedric Lawson, a Big 12 player of the year candidate, was eligible. The whole team DNA was revamped with that loss and instead of Lawson and Azubuike forming a 1-2 punch, Lawson has been harnessed with doing too much this season.
In early February, Self announced that Lagerald Vick, the team’s secondleading scorer and key veteran, was taking a leave of absence. Self was again forced to re-establish an identity for a team when most other teams had already found theirs.
Backcourt youth, inconsistency
Freshman Quentin Grimes was ranked as high on some recruiting boards as Duke’s Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett. But Grimes has not lived up to the hype. He is still playing a crucial 27 minutes per game and is starting to come along on both ends but is averaging 7.8 points per game.
Charlie Moore, a transfer from California, also didn’t really make an impact as expected. He’s playing 13.7 minutes and averaging 3.2 points. Freshman Devon Dotson won the point guard spot, and he’s been a pleasant surprise. But in the last two games, with Vick out and his role in the backcourt more vital, Dotson has shot 4-for-17 from the floor.
A Kansas program that usually has stellar 3-point shooting ranks in the bottom half nationally. And defensively, the Jayhawks allow 70.1 points per game.