Kansas basketball: 5 most painful NCAA Tournament losses in Bill Self era

1. 2011, Elite Eight, VCU (11 seed)

Falling to Virginia Commonwealth in 2011 was the worst loss of Bill Self’s career. Realistically, it should have been the easiest Final Four run a school has ever had.

Let’s look at Kansas’ path to a national championship if they had beaten VCU:

• Boston (16 seed)
• Illinois (9 seed)
• Richmond (12 seed)
• VCU (11 seed)
• Butler (8 seed)

That quite literally would have been the weakest NCAA Tournament schedule a team has ever had to face. What went wrong? Tyrel Reed’s worst shooting game of his collegiate career? The fact that Kansas went 2-21 from the three-point range? It was a disgusting performance that still haunts the Phog.

Instead of removing the bad taste Kansas left in our mouth from their 2010 loss to UNI, they made it even worse. Self was yet again unable to take down an inferior mid-major school. In just his eighth year at Kansas, he had lost to VCU, UNI, Bradley, and Bucknell.

This loss makes No. 1 on the list because of when it happened. Although fans were not completely writing off VCU, this game was looked at as an automatic bid to the Final Four. Whereas KU simply got bounced early the year before, they had made it this far, and then suffered an even more disappointing loss.

Just thinking about this loss makes the loss to Arkansas a few days ago seem frivolous. As time has passed, Bill Self has improved as a coach and won the state of Kansas a national championship again. We all forgive him for the painful tourney losses the Jayhawks had to endure to get here.