Say that in 28 years as Kansas University’s women’s basketball coach she has never taken the Jayhawks to the Final Four.

Say that Washington has ruffled more than a few feathers with a perceived arrogant attitude toward fellow coaches, administrators, boosters and the media.

Say she is overpaid in earning the same base salary as men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and football coach Terry Allen.

If those are the things you say about Marian Washington, then you must be gloating as the Jayhawks struggle this winter on the way to what looks more and more like her first losing season in a dozen years.

Yet those who gloat do not take into consideration how successful Washington has been during nearly three decades on Mount Oread. Under Washington, Kansas has had 17 seasons of 20-plus victories. Thirteen of those have come in the last 14 years, including the last 11.

Kansas will NOT win 20 games in 2000-2001. The Jayhawks, now 8-11, will be lucky to win 12 with eight regular-season games remaining four at home and four on the road and at least one Big 12 Conference tournament contest.

In the preseason, no one expected a nosedive of this magnitude. Last year’s top two scorers Lynn Pride and Suzi Raymant graduated, but Washington had three talented seniors returning in Jaclyn Johnson, Brooke Reves and Jennifer Jackson.

Little did anyone realize those three seniors were all she had.

It was no secret Washington had a punchless bench during last year’s 20-10 season, but the addition of three junior college transfers and the impending eligibility of soph Sharonnpencer was reason enough for optimism.

Then Spencer suffered a season-ending knee injury in practice. Oh well, the optimists said, the juco transfers will take up the slack. Only they didn’t. And we know now they won’t. One, Brazil native Fernanda Bosi, apparently departed for home this week.

Washington has had a knack over the years of attracting some of the nation’s best high school players. Lynette Woodard, Adrian Mitchell, Angela Aycock, Vickie Adkins, Tamecka Dixon, Charisse Sampson and Pride were the most memorable of that group.

Washington’s three current seniors are quality players, scrappers who squeeze the most out of their ability, but they don’t belong in that higher firmament. Nevertheless, Washington feels terrible for the trio, feeling she has let them down by her failure to recruit players who could help them win.

“Trust me,” Washington told the media following Wednesday night’s home loss to Nebraska, “as difficult as it is, you can’t imagine what it’s like in that locker room.”

Johnson, Reves and Jackson resemble zombies after defeats. On Wednesday night, they didn’t look like they would ever smile again.

“I’m trying to focus on the three seniors who continue to battle,” Washington said. “Hopefully, they’ll continue to battle.”

If they don’t, Kansas has no hope.

And that brings us to next season’s prospects which can be summed up in one word: Ohmigoodness.

Washington signed two players in November Blair Waltz, a 6-foot-2 guard from Blue Valley North, and Chelsey Thompson, a 5-10 guard from Louisville, Ky. Yet even if Waltz and Thompson are Woodard II and Pride Jr. respectively, they won’t be enough.

Injuries and injudicious recruiting have brought Kansas women’s basketball to perhaps its lowest point in a quarter century. In Washington’s second season as KU head coach in 1974-75, the Jayhawks finished with a 7-17 record.

That was so long ago the scores of those games are listed in the media guide as “unavailable.”