It’s not quite “death and taxes,” but Kansas basketball winning at least a share of the Big 12 regular season championship has certainly entered the “Meryl Streep nominated for a major acting award” realm of certainties.
Kansas proves it’s still king of the Big 12 with 89-76 win over Iowa State
The more things change in the Big 12, the more Kansas always wins the regular season championship.
Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Every summer it seems like we're flooded with a handful of fresh reasons why this season is going to be different. The latest dose of denial came in the form of the Big 12 being atypically strong in the middle and at the bottom, and the Jayhawks having to cope with the losses of No. 1 pick Andrew Wiggins and No. 3 pick Joel Embiid.
Instead, here we are again.
After Monday night’s 89-76 win over Iowa State, Kansas now has two more league victories than every other team in the Big 12. They’ve already split the season series with the team widely believed to be their biggest challenger, and they’ve taken the first of their two meetings with four other conference foes that were nationally ranked at the time.
Even though we’re only halfway home, it certainly seems more likely than not that KU is going to be securing its 11th straight Big 12 title at some point between now and March 7.
Eleventh straight.
To put things in perspective, the last time KU’s name didn’t end up on the Big 12 championship trophy, Louisville and Cincinnati were members of Conference USA, LeBron James was in the middle of his rookie season in the NBA, and SB Nation did not exist.
Just two programs have dominated their conference in this fashion before: UCLA, which won the Pac-12 for 13 straight seasons (1967-79), and Gonzaga, which saw its 11-year run atop the West Coast Conference end in 2011. John Wooden was only in Westwood for the first nine of those Bruin championships, which means Bill Self is just a pair of Big 12 titles away from becoming the first coach ever to win 12 straight.
It certainly seems as though No. 11 is a matter of weeks away.
While this KU team lacks the elite inside presence (although Cliff Alexander is still showing flashes) that has defined the bulk of the Self era, the Jayhawks seem to possess a larger level of toughness than some of the more talented groups that have come before it. Unquantifiable assessments always seem either reckless or lazy, but watch this group play for 40 minutes against anyone and there's an unchartable gall that should be easily apparent. It's the same type of resilience that allowed the group to not waver after embarrassing non-conference losses to Kentucky and Temple, and instead roll through the first half of Big 12 play with their only loss being a narrow defeat inside the unforgiving walls of Hilton Coliseum.
It shouldn't be this easy when you're still adjusting to life without two of the top three picks from the most recent NBA Draft, but it feels like we say that every February.
Reloading has become a staple of the Self era in Lawrence, which has seen 19 Jayhawks selected in the NBA Draft since 2005, 13 of whom left school at least one year early. Darrell Arthur has become Marcus Morris who's become Thomas Robinson who's become Andrew Wiggins who's become Kelly Oubre, and so on and so on.
Despite the influx of next-level talent, Kansas has continued to win by doing things the Self way, which, ironically, requires each future professional to put team before self. Just once in the past decade (Wayne Simien in 2004-05) has a Jayhawk player averaged more than 20.0 points per game. It's a recipe that has resulted in a pair of Final Four appearances, a national championship, five No. 1 seeds in the last eight years, and an NCAA Tournament seeding of four or better for the past 11 years.
With a pair of All-American candidates returning and yet another high-profile transfer joining the fold, this was supposed to be defending Big 12 Tournament champ Iowa State's big shot at the throne. They haven't been bashful about discussing it, mainly because people won't stop talking to them about it.
Over the summer, preseason All-American Georges Niang was at the LeBron James Skills Academy when ESPN analyst Jay Bilas called him and a group of the other Big 12 players attending the camp into a huddle.
“He brought us in the huddle,” Niang said, “and he was saying something about that’s embarrassing for the Big 12 that Kansas can go out and win 10 (conference championships) in a row.
“All the Kansas guys were obviously grinning ear to ear, and I was sort of like putting my head down and looking away.”
The Jayhawks are halfway to having that Lawrence envy permeating throughout Ames and the rest of the Midwest for yet another offseason.
See More:
