What started out as a hopeful season with national championship expectations for this preseason No. 1-ranked Kansas basketball team, has turned into a full-blown disaster.
After suffering a 91-57 loss to BYU on Tuesday – tied for the largest defeat in the Bill Self-coached KU era – the Jayhawks have now lost four straight road games to unranked opponents. The team now sits at 17-9 overall and 8-7 in Big 12 play.
With a remaining schedule that features two road games and three top 25 matchups, they’re on pace to have a losing Big 12 record and the most conference losses ever under Self (eight being the most). They will also almost certainly be ranked outside of the Associated Press Top 25 Poll next week for the first time in four years, and they could very well receive their lowest NCAA Tournament seeding since being named an 8-seed in 2000.
What’s perhaps more concerning than the record or rankings, is the fact that this KU team – coaches included – appears to have quit on themselves and each other.
It’s one thing to lose, but to lose like this team has over the past two months is so uncharacteristic for a Self-coached team that typically prides itself on toughness, if nothing else.
Any time this team gets down, especially on the road, you can see the defeat on their faces and with their body language. You can sense it with their head coach as well.
Gone are the days of heated Self exchanges with his players on the bench or spicy postgame interviews. Instead, we now see a perplexed coach who can’t figure out the best starting lineup with just two weeks left in the regular season, a coach who isn’t making the necessary adjustments, and a coach whose team reeks of dysfunction.
After the BYU loss Self said: “We need to get away from each other. I’ll tell you that point blank. I thought this would be a great opportunity to be a team bonding situation, but it hasn’t been.”
That’s a startling thing for a coach to say, particularly with the postseason just a few weeks away.
On top of this, Self has repeatedly said throughout the season that the team has lacked consistency and energy. That reared its ugly head once again against BYU and Self talked about that during the postgame as well.
“Right now, our intangibles are not where they need to be, which leads to looking a step slow, which leads to being on an island, which leads to poor communication, which leads to a lot of different things,” Self said speaking with Greg Gurley on postgame radio.
If you’re having to be concerned about intangibles (things you can’t coach), in late February, versus correcting some mistakes or better executing, that says you don’t have the right guys on your roster. And with how much money KU has spent on NIL for these players and the resources this coaching staff (with its Hall of Fame head coach and six assistants) has, that’s a serious concern.
For the majority of our lives, KU fans have been lucky to see some remarkable moments with Kansas basketball thanks to many remarkable players and remarkable coaches. We’ve been spoiled to see more highs than lows.
But this now feels like the lowest this program has been since Self arrived on campus nearly 22 years ago.