By now, most area college sports fans know Kansas State won the Big 12 conference title in baseball Saturday. It is the first time the Cats have won the conference regular season baseball championship since 1933. That would be noteworthy enough, but for the fact that this was also the same school year in which K-State won (or shared) the conference regular season title in football and basketball. A baseball title… big deal. A title in all three… priceless. Read more
Archive for Kansas
Kansas State does the unimaginable!
KU Recruiting 2013, Part IV: Who is the best recruit?
With Andrew Wiggins now a member of the “family”, it’s time to take a look at the recruits during Self’s tenure. I’ve already exhausted the “classes” and determined that KU’s class in 2013 is easily the best – not only under Self, but under Williams and Brown as well. And… it was the best even before Wiggins decided to take his talents to Lawrence. What I thought would be interesting now is to look at the best recruits on an individual basis. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part !!! – WIGGINS!
Over the last two days, I’ve been discussing basketball recruiting – both in 2013 as well as all the way back to 1983. This is the first time I’ve been able to do historical research on recruiting before 2002 and I wanted to know what was the best recruiting class ever regardless of team. #1 recruit Andrew Wiggins chose to become a Jayhawk today and that pretty well sews up the recruiting process. By going to Kansas, it is an historic recruiting class! Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part II
NEWS FLASH: Andrew Wiggins to make decision Tuesday. Yesterday, I outlined the methodology for determining how good a team’s recruiting was in any given year. I also took a close look at 2013 in particular and came to the objective conclusion that Kansas had the second best recruiting class – behind Kentucky – with or without #1 recruit Andrew Wiggins. But, I also mentioned that I had the ability to go back to 1983 now, whereas in the past, I only could go back to 2002 or so. Thus, instead of 12 years to measure, I can measure 31. For this article, I’m going to look at KU’s recruiting over those 31 seasons and rank each. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013 – With or without Wiggins
As all Kansas fans know, KU has five basketball recruits coming into Lawrence next season. It will be a welcome relief having lost all five starters. Most so-called experts will say that Kansas could be a ranked team, but nobody should expect much beyond that. That may be accurate, but Self tends to outperform expectations every time KU isn’t considered a national power. And, no matter what the expectations are today, they will change considerably if #1 ranked recruit Andrew Wiggins ends up picking Kansas over Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida State. Read more
Final thoughts on KU/Duke and Computer Tournament
I’m sure everyone reading this is doing so with bated breath as to which of the computers won the tournament. The one thing I can tell you categorically is that I (and the RPI) stunk to the highest of heavens. And, once again, my excuse is that I picked tons of upsets, largely based upon regional bias. RPI has no excuse and therefore, the committee has no excuse for relying so heavily upon it. As to KU and Duke, thanks to Mike I have some new information. Read more
Title Game Preview: KU versus Duke… huh?
I’ll get to the KU versus Duke angle, but first… Obviously, I wanted Wichita State to beat Louisville and when the Shockers led by 12 with 13:40 to go, I let myself dream a little. Incredibly, WSU had four turnovers early in the game and then went 27 minutes without another one against Louisville’s press… but I guess that’s what separates the great from the good. Eventually Louisville wore down the Shockers and they committed six turnovers in the closing minutes while the Cardinals came back to win 72-68. As to the other game, I only wanted Michigan because I’ve never forgiven Syracuse for 2003! Read more
Yet another way to look at all-time wins
When I did yesterday’s post on how teams compared by way of All-Americans and total victories, I discovered Kansas had three more wins than Duke (853-850) since Larry Brown first came to Lawrence in 1983-84. I usually only look at total victories since the arrival of Roy Williams and/or the arrival of Bill Self at Kansas. I just hadn’t looked at it since 1984 for awhile and it wasn’t until last year’s NCAA tournament that KU finally had more wins than Duke since 1984. And… that got me to thinking. Read more
The Best Basketball Ratings Ever
I’m not going to try to argue that Sagarin is better than Pomeroy or that the BPI is better than TeamRankings. Without years of analysis which I have not done, they are all equivalent IMO. Even the human polls (AP, USA Today) aren’t necessarily that bad during the regular season. The only one that is fundamentally flawed is the RPI (New Mexico #2, ha!). On the other hand, the only one that is great – and I’ll tell you why – is Massey. Read more
Doing MORE with LESS?
Despite getting upset in the tournament again, there is some good news. As you probably know, Ben McLemore was named second team All-American. Jeff Withey was named to the third team. I thought it would be interesting to research just how much correlation there is between All-Americans and school victories. My assumption before I began was kinda right and kinda wrong. Read more
An Amazing Final Four… and what it tells us.
Despite the fact Kansas University is not in the Final Four and no other Big 12 teams are either, this is still a very unique and special group and it’s probably because of something you never thought about. Of course, having Wichita State in it makes it special all by itself, but that’s not the primary reason it is so unique. Read more
Last word on KU upsets
Besides this, I have two other Kansas posts completed. I was hoping to run those this week while Kansas waited for the Final Four, but the best laid plans. I will still run them, however. I just suspect fewer people will be interested. Oh well. In the meantime I thought I would take another look at upsets. Read more
Picking Up The Pieces
I’m starting to wonder if the letters KU will eventually stand for Kansas Upset. Of course, this is nothing more than the Monday morning blues which followed the Sunday morning blues which followed the Saturday morning blues. But, after three days, I’ve just about risen from the dead. BTW: Happy belated Easter. Read more
Miracles Never Cease
If you want to see a miracle or two or three or 63, just tune into the NCAA tournament from start to finish. I’m never ceased to be amazed at some of the things that happen. Last night’s Kansas loss to Michigan was no exception. It was, instead, the rule. Fortunately for me, I have learned to live vicariously through the opposition. Imagine how incredibly excited are those Michigan players and their fans! Plus, we Kansans can always root for Wichita State. Imagine… beat a 2-seed and it’s the Final Four. Read more
There goes the bracket!
Oh, and then that minor little issue of Kansas being squashed at the end of the game thus, ending its season! KU lost 87-85 in overtime. If you wonder how Michigan could have scored 87 points on KU’s defense, I’m not completely sure I have an answer. In any event, it was a game in which Kansas blew a big lead which also meant the end of a number of streaks. Read more
College Basketball Myth
A couple years ago I did a study on whether two teams with the same seed, but yet significantly different strengths of schedules, would have different results in the tournament. The myth being the more difficult the schedule, even if two teams appear equivalent by the Selection Committee, that the team with the toughest road would be… tougher… and that toughness would show up with a better tournament. This is once again an issue because Michigan has had a more difficult schedule than Kansas. Read more
Kansas – Michigan preview
Kansas is favored over Michigan by two points as I type this. That’s roughly a 55% probability of winning – not that great. The other 1-seed versus 4-seed has Indiana favored by six over Syracuse. So, either the Jayhawks aren’t up to the Hoosiers’ level (EDIT: Uh Oh!) or the Wolverines are considerably better than the Orangemen. Either way, at least according to Vegas, Kansas is a lot less likely to make the Elite Eight than Indiana, despite the fact that KU was supposedly the second highest seed overall – just behind Louisville. Read more
Will Kansas ever catch Kentucky? Update:
Timing is everything when writing stories and since Kansas could lose tomorrow and the season could come to an end, it’s time to reflect once again on where Kansas stands with respect to all-time wins in college basketball. This is the holy grail to me and something I’ve watched closely my entire life. Amazingly, Kansas is on the cusp of becoming the winningest team in history. Read more
A quick and dirty on mid-major losses
At this point, it is highly unlikely Kansas will lose to a mid-major team in this tournament. A lot would have to happen for that to be the case. Still, KU theoretically could face FGCU (barely a mid-major) in the Elite Eight or Wichita State/La Salle in the National Title game. So, as I say… a long shot. Still, I thought I would do an analysis on this issue because, frankly, other than bitch and moan about Kansas losing to the likes of VCU and Northern Iowa, I really haven’t looked to see what other programs have done. Read more
Top-10 reasons Andrew Wiggins should pick Kansas…
…over Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida State. This is, of course, 100% unbiased. It’s not like I have a vested interest in Kansas over the other three. Everyone knows that! So, just in case Andrew is reading this, he should realize this is as objective as it gets! Andrew Wiggins is, as most know, is the #1 player in the nation coming out of high school as per Rivals and some argue the best HS player since LeBron James! What does Kansas have to offer the #1 player? Read more
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