The Kansas basketball team suffered one of its worst defeats of the campaign with an uninspiring performance in the Sunflower Showdown. K-State defeated the Jayhawks 81-73 in Bramlage Coliseum on Saturday, marking the third straight year that the Wildcats split the season series with their in-state rivals.
Jerome Tang has yet to lose at home when coaching against KU's Bill Self. Many fans haven’t been pleased with Self’s postgame press conference comments this season, but he was as candid as he could be following the loss. The Hall of Fame coach admitted that while the squad is still actively trying to improve, he has his sights set on the postseason.
Kansas basketball will not be Big 12 champions for the second consecutive year
"I’ll pay attention to the race. We’re not in it to win it. We’ve got five losses now. So even if we were to win out, I don’t think you’re going to have two teams lose four times. So, no, I, I’m not looking at it like that... So what we need to do is get better over the next month, and then hopefully play our best when the postseason comes around."Bill Self
Self was brutally honest after KU’s road loss, admitting the Jayhawks are far out of the Big 12 title race. At 7-5 in conference play, tied for fifth with Baylor and four games behind Houston and Arizona, he knows even winning out likely would not be enough.
It is a rare situation for a coach who won 14 straight regular-season Big 12 titles. Instead of focusing on an impossible climb, he is shifting his attention to improvement over the next month and hoping his team peaks in March. We can't blame him.
Realistically, Kansas dropped out of the Big 12 title race when it inexplicably blew the game against Houston. Kansas was 5-2 in league play before the contest and would have handed UH its first conference loss of the season. But after one of the worst collapses in school history in the second half and overtime, the writing was on the wall for the Jayhawks.
The Jayhawks can still right the ship and garner some momentum heading into March Madness with back-to-back-to-back ranked matchups next month. That slate contains home games vs. Texas Tech and Arizona and an away game at Houston. Their performance in those games could largely determine whether KU is a true contender in the Big Dance.