Kansas Basketball can’t fool me - Part 1
I grew up in Kansas. Part of growing up in Kansas is picking sides between Kansas State and the University of Kansas. My mom got her Bachelor’s degree from Kansas State so obviously I became a KU fan out of pure adolescent spite.
It’s been the source of more than one household argument, especially considering the fact that her dad (one of the major influences on my love of sports) is a lifelong diehard KU fan.
She still won’t let the KU-Kstate fight go. She keeps reminding me about how “KU started a fight in a game they were winning by 20”, which is weird to me because KU won that goddamn fight. You don’t get the longer suspension for losing a fight.
That’s all just to say that I love KU. If I hadn’t moved to South Carolina, I am almost positive that I would’ve gone to Kansas. Instead I went to (College Football’s three-time national champion) Clemson University, but I never stopped rooting for KU.
And you know what?
It’s the worst of both worlds.
KU never gets the general basketball watching public’s support as an underdog because they’re a Blue Blood. They’re always a top-seed. Fine. All of those other plebe programs can keep their peasant teams and fans. I don’t need them because I get to root for a winning team every year.
EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THEY LOSE IN THE TOURNAMENT EVERY YEAR.
As a proud Kansan, I remind people all the time that basketball as we know it is thanks to James Naismith’s tenure as athletic director at KU. That Wilt Chamberlain, the most singularly dominant force in the sport’s history went to Kansas. That every coaching tree, if you follow it long enough, roots back to Kansas.
I consider Kansas to have perhaps the bluest blood of any of the “Blue Blood '' programs like Kentucky, Duke and UNC. I also consider Kansas to be perhaps the least successful Blue Blood over the last 10+ years.
They won the 2008 championship against Derrick Rose’s Memphis team with the help of one of the greatest college basketball shots of all time. I was 12.
Since then they’ve made a little more than a half-dozen Sweet Sixteen appearances, a handful of Elite Eights, a pair of Final Fours, and got beaten pretty convincingly in the 2012 Championship game by Anthony Davis’ Kentucky Wildcats.
And it’s not like Kansas hasn’t had the players to do something with.
Future #1 pick Andrew Wiggins and #3 pick Joel Embiid on the same team?
Second round loss to Stanford.
(Yes I know Embiid didn’t play in the tournament, but you try telling that to my friends when they make fun of me :(
The Morris Twins’ final season before they were picked 13th and 14th overall?
Lost to 11-seed VCU.
#7 overall pick Ben McLemore?
Sweet Sixteen loss to Michigan State.
In overtime.
And my favorite Kansas team ever: the 2016-17 team. They had National Player of the Year Frank Mason, future Big 12 Player of the Year Devonte Graham, 3rd overall pick Josh Jackson, freshman Udoka Azubuike, and senior big man Landen Lucas.
They were the number two team in the country and overdue for a championship. I was 100% in on that team.
Lost to Oregon in the Elite Eight.
And now they’re back. They’re the number one team in the country and seem to be cementing that fact with every passing week. They’ve beaten top-10 teams like it’s nothing, and if they have a successful run in the big 12 tournament, they could go into the tournament poised to win it all.
But they can’t fool me.
It would be one thing to lose in the tournament every year (which is something KU’s gotten pretty good at), but it’s another to keep getting beaten in ways that make me want to sell my eyes on the black market so I don’t have to watch them any more.
Even the Final Four run two years ago which ended Grayson Allen’s collegiate career (you’re welcome) crescendoed in a capital-A Asskicking against Villanova. ‘Nova tied the record for most 3’s in a Final Four game in the first half. They won by 16. It was disgusting.
Trust me, I do hear the pomp of entitlement in what I’m saying. I’m lamenting a program that has made a Tournament appearance every year I’ve been alive. They’ve had incredible games, wonderful players, and rooting for them is a delight more often than it’s a pain. I’m complaining about having not won a title in just over 10 years.
Most programs have never won a title, or have waited several generations for another shot.
I know all of that.
And I don’t give a freakin’ heck.
(my grandparents read these sometimes)
I mean, what am I supposed to do? Do I renounce my fandom as a Jayhawk? Do I become a fan of another team and become just another peasant?
Do I start rooting for Clemson basketball, where a tournament appearance is a win in-and-of itself? I had a wonderful time rooting for the 2018 team that made it to the Sweet Sixteen. It felt like every win was playing with house money and hitting a straight-flush.
But guess what?
I rooted for KU against Clemson when they played. I was glad Clemson lost. I can’t go back on that. I chiseled Clemson in as my backseat team right then and there. So they’re out.
Do I root for Wichita State? I have a legitimate amount of rooting interest there. I grew up in Wichita and the Shockers can seize on some of that underdog, cinderella energy that’s so unique and exciting to college basketball.
At this point though, making the tournament is a pretty regular thing for them to do. They’ve joined the AAC and field generally competetive teams every year. I’d be sacrificing the championship ceiling of a team like Kansas in order to alleviate the pressure and disappointment of a season without a ring. I don’t know if I can do that.
I’m not a fake fan, so I’ll of course continue to root for Kansas, for better or for worse. But that means possibly having to go with the “maybe next year” mentality until they finally do win it again.
And if the NCAA has anything to say about that, it might be a while until they do...
(I’ll conclude this bitching and rambling about a team you probably don’t care about next week in Part 2)