Another KU senior, Keith Langford, probably will earn second-team All-Big 12 Conference honors. Heck, Langford might even have to settle for a third-team berth.

Who is more valuable to the Jayhawks? On the surface, it’s Simien. Yet the Jayhawks won four games while Simien was in drydock because of a thumb injury, and all four were against quality teams — notably Kentucky, and in Rupp Arena at that.

Yet with Langford sidelined after the first three minutes Sunday, the Jayhawks struggled mightily against a .500 team than went into its last home game as the lowest-scoring and worst-shooting club in the Big 12.

“That was a big load for Kansas,” guard Jimmy McKinney said about KU’s losing Langford after Mizzou claimed a 72-68 victory. “They didn’t really have a playmaker. I think Langford would have taken a load off their back.”

We’ll never know if Kansas would have been able to subdue the Tigers with Langford’s left ankle healthy, but it was as clear as the Tiger logo at midcourt of the new Mizzou Arena that the Jayhawks missed their senior slasher desperately in the late going.

“He’s their big-time shot-maker,” MU coach Quin Snyder said, “but I think they reacted well to losing him. (Aaron) Miles stepped up for them.”

That’s Snyder’s opinion. I don’t think the Jayhawks reacted well to losing Langford at all.

Miles did step it up, but when it came time to do what Langford does best — drive to the basket and score amid falling bodies — Miles was a stranger in a strange land. Twice in the last two minutes, the senior point guard — so proficient as a passer and a defender — tried to create under the basket. The first time he was too far underneath and threw up a corkscrew that clunked the bottom of the backboard. The second time the ball slipped out of Miles’ hands.

Kansas was able to crawl back from a 15-point deficit and forge a 64-all tie with 3 1/2 minutes remaining without Langford, but when the Jayhawks needed a money man at nitty-gritty time, they sorely missed Langford.

Remember how Langford took over late in the 70-68 overtime victory over Georgia Tech? Remember how the senior southpaw hit a runner to force overtime against Texas Tech? Remember how he sent the Iowa State game into OT with a floater from the lane?

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Then again, if the Jayhawks had had Langford in the first half, they might not even have needed him in the late going. When he departed limping, KU was leading 11-3 and playing loosey-goosey. Four minutes later, the game was deadlocked at 13, and the Jayhawks looked lost on offense.

Meanwhile, Missouri couldn’t seem to miss from three-point range, drilling an uncharacteristic eight of 10 from beyond the arc, further eroding the Jayhawks’ confidence, already fragile sans Langford. The law of averages caught up in the second half, when MU missed all eight of its three-point attempts to help open the door for the Jayhawks’ comeback.

Even without Langford, the Jayhawks probably would have won if Thomas Gardner and Jimmie McKinney — of all people — hadn’t picked Sunday to match their career-highs with 23 and 21 points respectively. No one ever has mentioned Gardner or McKinney in the same sentence with the words All and Big and 12.

Where do the Jayhawks go from here? They’ve dropped four of their last six, their second-leading scorer has a bad ankle, and they’re several notches below their normal swagger.

KU’s first preseason goal was to win the Big 12 regular-season championship. They settled for a tie, which isn’t bad, but that’s a lot like kissing your sister when the outright title was there for the taking.

Now comes the Big 12 tournament. Normally, the league tourney doesn’t mean that much in the big picture, and the truth is the Big 12 postseason meet might not really matter in terms of NCAA seeding.

Yet it goes without saying the Jayhawks don’t want to go into the NCAA Tournament the way they ended the regular season. Right now, Kansas is a team that needs to rediscover its stinger.