As sports writers tend to do, Tom Keegan and I recently found ourselves talking sports on a road trip to Ames, Iowa, in mid-January.
A good chunk of the KU topics we cover during these moments find their way into our work somewhere along the way, be it a column, a blog, a podcast or even coverage from an actual game.
But the topic of choice that day had yet to find a home.
To help kill time on the 4-hour drive and prepare for the Big Monday showdown with the Cyclones, which Kansas won 76-72, we were discussing this Kansas basketball season and trying, for the lives of us, to identify Kansas’ second best victory of the season.
The Champions Classic win over then-No. 1 Duke in New York City in November was the team’s obvious best victory (Duke playing severely shorthanded then the way KU is now notwithstanding) but after that things got tough.
At that point in the season, there weren’t many road games to look at, which, for my money, is always the best place to start when you’re looking for a team’s best wins. At the time, KU had true road wins over just three teams — UNLV, TCU and Oklahoma — and those were not the kind of victories that you write home about.
After that KU had a couple of wins at Sprint Center over decent teams — Davidson and Georgia — that were worthy of discussion, but neither of those victories got more than 15-20 seconds of consideration. And, of course, with winning at Allen Fieldhouse nearly automatic, KU’s nine home wins to date were barely worth mentioning.
There was actual thought given to KU’s win over K-State, which ended in controversial fashion, being KU’s second best win of the season to that point.
Boy, how things have changed today.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still tough to identify KU’s second best win of the season. But it’s no longer because there aren’t options.
In the last 6 days alone, Kansas has notched victories over No. 4 Kentucky at their place and No. 2 Baylor at Allen Fieldhouse. Both were terrific games against terrific teams. Both required some serious soul-searching and 100-percent effort and intensity. Both were sealed when KU closed better down the stretch.
And both likely kicked the win over Duke down to No. 3 on the list.
Regardless of how you rank them, consider this one fact for just a brief second: Kansas now boasts victories over No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 this season. How many teams have been able to say that throughout the years? (And if you’re going to bother looking, start in the ACC and go from there).
These two most recent victories — which easily could have gone the other way and left Kansas on the wrong end of a three-game losing streak — more than erased the pain that came from dropping a game in Morgantown. In fact, even though that loss was never considered a bad one in the first place, given the talent possessed by WVU, a case could be made that even the loss played to KU’s advantage, refocusing them and forcing them to realize what type of effort will be required moving forward.
With a one-game lead in the Big 12 race and just nine games remaining in the regular season, Kansas is well on its way to achieving everything it hoped to achieve this season — Big 12 champs, No. 1 seed, becoming a national title contender.
The resume is in place.
The biggest question now is can this group of Jayhawks, which head coach Bill Self said as recently as Monday was still searching for its identity, continue to deliver night after night, with a short bench, limited front court depth and little to no margin for error?
A couple of weeks ago, when KU’s second-best win of the season may actually have been a Sprint-Center victory over Davidson at the Jayhawks’ home away from home, the answer to that question might have been tough to spit out.
Today? You won’t find me betting against them.
