Last night, with a win over the Oklahoma Sooners, my beloved Kansas Jayhawks clinched {at least} a share of the Big 12 regular season men's basketball conference title for the TENTH.YEAR.IN.A.ROW!
Take a moment to wrap
your head around that: a true decade of dominance!
In my unbiased opinion, "Decade of
Dominance" might be the understatement of the century. Kansas has been
amongst the top-tier dominating programs in college basketball since...well, pretty
much FOR-EV-ER. These statistics1 {as of February 25, 2014}
are proof:
- All-time
win-loss record is 2,123-818 (W-L%: 0.722)
- Kansas
is 2nd (behind Kentucky) for # of all-time wins.
- 57
Conference Titles
- Kansas
leads all Division I schools for # of regular season conference titles.
- 42
Tournament Appearances
- Kansas
is 4th (behind Kentucky, UCLA and North Carolina) for # of
NCAA tournament appearances.
- 14
Final Fours
- Kansas
is 5th (behind UCLA, North Carolina, Kentucky and Duke) for #
of Final Four appearances.
- 3
National Championships {excludes Helms National Championships won in 1921-22
& 1922-23 seasons}
- Kansas
is 6th (behind UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana and
Duke) for # of National Championships.
Sidenote: I had all the
above data in a neat little table, but I was afraid you might realize
think I’m a total number-crunching nerd if I included it. My calculations are
legit, I promise...and the data source is noted at the bottom of this post in
case you don’t trust me. {I told you transparency is my middle name!}
Anyway, since I’ve clarified that I believe
Jayhawk Basketball is actually better/stronger/more than this “Decade of
Dominance” phrase indicates, we can now get back to the topic at hand:
Below are a few of the tweets and quotes from
news articles that I came across after last night’s win:
- “Three of KU's ten straight Big 12 titles
were won without a single returning starter from the prior year. Wow.” Tweet
from ESPN's Jay Bilas
- “Only
five teams in history have won ten straight league titles. UCLA, UConn,
UNLV, and now, Kansas. Amazing accomplishment.” Tweet from ESPN's Jay
Bilas
- “Since
the Big 12 has existed (1997 season), KU has won (shared or outright) 14
of the 18 possible regular season men’s basketball titles.” Tweet from
Kansas-Sports.com
- “The
streak is long enough that Mario Chalmers wasn't here for the beginning of
it, but now has his jersey hanging from the rafters.” The Kansas City Star
- “Bill
Self has more conference titles than losses in Allen Fieldhouse.” The Kansas City Star

Let’s talk about Bill Self
for a moment. You can’t have a conversation with my brother about Coach Self
without the phrase “Class Act” being said. He represents the University of
Kansas well, there’s no question about that. And it just so happens that he’s
accomplished quite a lot during his tenure in Lawrence:
- John Wooden was only in Westwood for the first
nine of the Bruin championships, which means Bill Self is the first coach from
a major conference to win its regular season title for an entire decade.
- Big 12 Coach of the Year {four times}
- Sporting News National Coach of the Year {two times @ KU, once before}
- Naismith National Coach of the Year
- Adolph Rupp National Coach of the Year
- AP National Coach of the Year
- ESPN.com National Coach of the Year
- 17 players from Self’s recruiting classes have
played in the NBA {15 drafted + Russell
Robinson and Sherron Collins}
And he’s just a good guy {a real 'Class Act'}:
The main point of this post
was to congratulate the Kansas Jayhawk men’s basketball team for TEN.CONSECUTIVE.YEARS of
regular season conference titles. {Sorry
for straying off on my statistical tangent!} It sure does make it easy to be a
Jayhawk fan! ROCK CHALK!