It is no secret that Kansas has slightly burned pundits across the nation as of late. Last season, the Jayhawks were voted as the best team in the nation heading into the season and quickly unraveled with a 21-13 record. Those 13 losses were the most since the 1982-83 season, when Kansas was a member of the Big 8; that season was still a whole Larry Brown stint away from Roy Williams joining the program in 1988.
This season, the public media sphere has learned from its past mistakes and touted Kansas as the nation’s 19th-best team, according to the Associated Press.
“...Nothing against last year's team, but this team's more athletic, and we're a little bit deeper, and you know, we have a guy that, you know, on any given night, hopefully, he can run bad offense and come away with points still,” quoted Kansas head coach Bill Self during his media availability earlier this week.
Of course, the second half of that quote is pinned around Darryn Peterson. Peterson is the nation’s No.1 recruit, and 247Sports has Peterson notched as the third-best recruit to ever join the Jayhawks, behind just Josh Jackson and Andre Wiggins.
According to 247Sports, Peterson tags along with fellow top-100 recruits Kohl Rosario and Samis Calderson, who were ranked 72nd and 84th in the country, respectively, prior to their arrival.
“...We knew we weren't preseason [number] one last year when that came out. I mean, now, did we play to that level? We did a couple of times.”
Last season, Kansas snatched a win against the No.9 UNC Tar Heels in early November before a massive 75-72 win against Duke later that month, which Self would continue to talk about on Monday. Yet that was the highest the season ever really got for the Jayhawks as a 14-11 stretch capped off the Jayhawks’ season before a quarterfinal 88-77 loss to Arizona, and a first round 79-72 loss to the Kentucky Wildcats finished off the season.
“...But it doesn't bother me at all what preseason is…but I do know this: there's a lot of good teams out there on our schedule. And we're gonna have to play to a top-five, top 10 type level in order to compete with the best teams on our schedule, for sure.”
This season, Kansas will be taking on UNC, Duke, and UConn all before conference play gets started.
Earlier today, the Big 12 preseason polls were released, and Kansas was slotted as the 6th-best team in the conference, behind Houston, BYU, Texas Tech, Arizona, and Iowa State.
KenPom ranked Kansas as the nation’s 21st-best team according to its all-encompassing net rating stat, where Kansas slots in at a +21.46.
Peterson was named to the Preseason All-Big 12 Team, and of the 10 players selected, Peterson was one of four to be selected unanimously, while also being touted as the conference’s Preseason Freshman of the Year.
When conference play gets started, Kansas will have its usual cycle of ups and downs in terms of quality of opposition. A favorable thing for Kansas this season is the fact that they only face Houston one time, and it is at Allen Fieldhouse.
The same goes for BYU, which will only face the Jayhawks one time, at the Fieldhouse.
The only slightly harrowing fact is that Kansas will face Texas Tech just once, and it will be in Lubbock.
Overall, a slightly favorable Big 12 slate, which will be a massive reprieve following the onslaught of non-conference games Kansas will have to bear this season.
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