No fan base feels more dread upon receiving a preseason No. 1 ranking from the Associated Press than Kansas’.
For plenty of teams, the consensus of the AP’s pool of writers that they are the class of college basketball before any games have been played means little. At best it can even be a harbinger of good fortune. According to a recent article published by the NCAA, since the tournament expanded to 64 teams with the 1984-85 season, 18 preseason No. 1 teams have reached the Final Four, with 14 making the title game and six of them winning it.
None of the KU teams to receive that top early ranking — all of which have come during the Bill Self era — have been anywhere near as fortunate. In fact, the majority have undertaken some of Self’s worst seasons by wins and losses, and none of them have made it out of the first weekend of the tournament come March as several have suffered some of the most ignominious losses in recent program history.
This year’s squad, which earned the No. 1 spot largely on the strength of offseason transfer acquisitions that have panned out to inconsistent degrees, will look to buck that trend.
(If you’re wondering which rankings are lucky for the Jayhawks, Nos. 3 and 4 should provide cause for optimism in future years. The 2021-22 national title team and its 2019-20 predecessor, which was No. 1 entering the Big 12 tournament before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the season, both began the year at No. 3. The 2007-08 title team and 2017-18 now-vacated Final Four team, one of the Jayhawks’ most talented in recent years, started at No. 4. One outlier: the 2011-12 national runners-up were a mere 13th at the start of their campaign.)
Kansas forward Marcus Morris covers his head after the Jayhawks’ 69-67 loss to Northern Iowa Friday, March 20, 2010 at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.
Bad precedent
The first KU team to receive the title of preseason No. 1 was the 2004-05 team, Self’s second with the Jayhawks. For a while that group, led by seniors Keith Langford and Wayne Simien, lived up to billing as it won 20 of its first 21 games, including victories over top-10 foes in Georgia Tech and Kentucky. The Jayhawks then proceeded to lose six of their final nine games, including, as a No. 3 seed in the tournament, a stunning 64-63 upset against Bucknell in Oklahoma City as Simien’s last-second shot hit the front of the rim.
The 2004-05 Jayhawks don’t have the worst result ever for a preseason No. 1 team — that would be 2022-23 North Carolina, which after losing to KU in the title game the previous year missed the tournament altogether — but no preseason No. 1 team has suffered a first-round exit since. That would have been good news for the Jayhawks of the prior two decades, except that all three pertinent KU teams in that period lost in the second round. (And by the way, the only other preseason No. 1 team to do so in the same time period is 2016-17 Duke.)
Much like its predecessor, the 2009-10 team, with Sherron Collins, Cole Aldrich and Xavier Henry, met expectations for a while; in fact, its final win percentage of .917 is the third-highest mark for a single season in Self’s career.
It could have been higher if the No. 1 overall seed had made it past Ali Farokhmanesh and Northern Iowa (also in Oklahoma City). The Jayhawks, who trailed by 12 midway through the second half, managed to use full-court pressure to get their deficit down to one point at 63-62 in the final minute before Farokhmanesh’s right-wing dagger 3 in transition against the press did KU in.
In recent years, the KU teams who started at No. 1 have had far worse regular-season results. That trend began with the 2018-19 season, as a team depleted by Udoka Azubuike’s season-ending injury and Lagerald Vick’s leave of absence ended up starting four freshmen around Dedric Lawson by the end of the year. Ranked No. 17 nationally entering the tournament after going just 12-6 in Big 12 play, the Jayhawks beat Northeastern but got blitzed by Auburn in the second round. The Tigers led 51-25 by halftime and scored 13 3-pointers in what turned into an 89-75 rout in Salt Lake City.
The final preseason No. 1 team prior to this year also met its end in Salt Lake City. That would be last season’s squad, which managed to earn the AP’s top spot largely on the strength of adding center Hunter Dickinson, who somewhat infamously told ESPN of the ranking before the year started, “I like it. I like people knowing it because I want them to know we’re better than them.”
As it turned out, largely due to a lack of depth caused by underwhelming freshmen and transfers and a brutal late-season injury to top scorer Kevin McCullar Jr., KU was not better than many of the teams it played against. Despite the rise of eventual one-and-done NBA Draft pick Johnny Furphy and an All-American season from Dickinson, the Jayhawks finished the year with 11 losses, at the time the most since the 1988-89 campaign, and got pushed to the brink by Samford in the first round before flatlining in the second half against Gonzaga in an 89-68 loss two days later.
This year’s team didn’t exactly carve out a place in the history books with its own regular-season performance, but has a chance to do so now with a run through the tournament. It certainly doesn’t have a very high bar to clear compared to the other preseason No. 1 teams that preceded it.
Kansas guard Johnny Furphy (10) looks up at the scoreboard after being pulled from the game with several other starters late in the second half on Saturday, March 23, 2024 in Salt Lake City. Photo by Nick Krug
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Nick Krug
Nick Krug
