There have been 290 Sunflower Showdown men’s basketball games between Kansas and Kansas State over the years, and it’s hard to come up with many that were bigger [than the 291st edition that will take place at 8 p.m. tonight in Allen Fieldhouse.][1]
There are a couple that, at least at the seemed as big as tonight’s meeting, of course. And these two teams are hardly strangers to playing games with some kind of significant streak on the line, which, for all intents and purposes, is the case tonight.
The first and biggest of all of those previous 290 KU-KSU clashes that comes to mind, at least to me, took place in 1988, in Pontiac, Mich., where the 6th-seeded Jayhawks and 4th-seeded Wildcats met in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the right to go to the Final Four in Kansas City, Mo.
Danny Manning and Kansas won that meeting, of course, and added two more and a national title the following weekend. So it’s hard to imagine any single Sunflower State meeting being bigger than that.
Postseason trumps regular season every time because it’s do or die at that point.
There have been, however, a few regular season classics, too, but most of them were memorable simply because of what K-State gained, missed out on or was playing for.
That same season, in January 1988, it was the Wildcats who ended KU’s 55-game home-court winning streak — the nation’s longest at the time — with a stunning 72-61 victory that gave Kansas its first Allen Fieldhouse loss in nearly 4 full years.
More recently, the Michael Beasley/Bill Walker K-State win that finally ended KU’s dominance at Bramlage Coliseum was huge for the Wildcats and is still celebrated to this day.
That game, an 84-75 KSU win in Manhattan that snapped KU’s 24-game winning streak at the place known by many as Allen Fieldhouse West, was a matchup between No. 2 KU and No. 22 K-State.
But it also took place in late January, and, oh by the way, came during the same season that Bill Self and the Jayhawks got the last laugh on everybody by winning a national title.
Big? Oh yeah. Bigger than tonight? I’m not so sure.
In looking back at our coverage of that game, I came across a Self quote that might very well be recycled if things don’t go well for the Jayhawks tonight.
“I’ll be real honest with you,” Self began, following that loss to Beasley and company in 2008. “It doesn’t sting because of the streak. It stings because it’s our rival. I could care less about the streak.”
Never one to put any type of individual achievements above the bottom line of winning the game in front of him, there’s little doubt that, if KU were to lose to night, it would be the individual loss — at home, no less — and not the end of KU’s amazing conference title streak — that would bother Self the most.
Two games behind the Wildcats in the Big 12 race with four games to play, the Jayhawks are in an absolute must-win situation tonight and there’s not a soul alive who doesn’t know it.
With a win, the Jayhawks keep alive their chances of pushing their NCAA-record conference title streak of 14 straight to 15 by season’s end. They still would have some work to do and would need help, but they’d at least still be in the running.
With a loss, the Jayhawks would be three games back with three to play and the streak would be all but dead.
On the surface, that doesn’t sound all that different than what was on the line entering that game in 1988 that ended KU’s home winning streak or the K-State win 20 years later that stopped the bleeding in Bramlage.
But sound and feel are two different things and tonight’s game sure feels different.
Maybe it’s because it’s been a rough season for the Jayhawks — at least by Kansas standards — with injuries, absences and issues on the road all putting the streak in jeopardy.
Or maybe it’s because Kansas fans are saying their prayers and holding their breaths for something to change the current course the Big 12 race is on.
After all, if the streak is going to end — and, let’s face it, it has to end sometime — I’m sure KU fans would much rather see it end at the hands of any of the eight other teams in the Big 12. Not K-State.
In many ways, this streak has been the one constant thing that Kansas has had over Kansas State year in and year out for the past decade and a half.
Sure, the Jayhawks have won 126 more games than the Wildcats during the past 14 seasons. And, yeah, Kansas owns a 29-6 head-to-head record against K-State during the streak and also has been a perennial national title contender for much of that time.
But 11 of the 14 seasons that came before this one ended in the same place for the Jayhawks and Wildcats when you’re looking at it from the perspective of Final Four or bust.
Tonight, though, is different. Tonight means more. It means more to Kansas fans. It means more to the Jayhawks themselves. It means everything to Kansas State and would never, ever, ever be forgotten by the entire K-State community.
It’s one thing to beat KU. It’s another to take something from the Jayhawks in the process. And the Wildcats have the chance to do just that with a win tonight.
There’s no doubt that the KSU athletic department would hang a banner in Bramlage Coliseum honoring Kansas State’s 2018-19 Big 12 title if the Wildcats are able to hold on to their lead during the next two weeks. As well they should.
But there’s the real possibility that somewhere near that banner would be another one, perhaps slightly smaller, that simply reads, “2018-19 Kansas State Men’s Basketball – The Team That Ended KU’s Streak. In Allen Fieldhouse.”
All of that, and so much more, is on the line at Allen Fieldhouse tonight. And the atmosphere should be as good as any we’ve seen in years.
[1]: http://www2.kusports.com/news/2019/feb/24/game-day-breakdown-sunflower-showdown-part-ii-kans/#comments
