LAWRENCE Kansas coach Bill Self knows a bit about winning conference championships.</p><p>His previous seven Jayhawks teams either won the Big 12 regular-season title outright or tied for first. His first two Illinois teams tied for first in the Big Ten, and his last two Tulsa teams shared a first-place finish in the Western Athletic Conference and won another title outright.</p><p>Winning the league speaks to Self&#x92;s core belief.</p><p>&#x93;If you were to ask any coach in a league, they would say that your conference race is so important because that&#x92;s who you have to beat every year,&#x94; Self said.</p><p>No program in college basketball has accomplished that for a longer stretch than Kansas.</p><p>Saturday, if the Jayhawks defeat Texas Tech, Kansas will claim conference victory No. 1,000 according to school records, and is believed to major college basketball&#x92;s leader in this category.</p><p>Among the top 10 leaders in all-time victories, nobody has more conference triumphs than the Jayhawks&#x92; 999.</p><p>Kentucky, No. 1 on the all-time victory list, has won 961 conference games. North Carolina, which joins the Wildcats and Kansas as the only programs with at least 2,000 overall triumphs, has won 907 in league play.</p><p>Kansas had a head start on both programs.</p><p>The inaugural Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference season was 1907-08. At the time, only the conferences we know today as the Big Ten and Ivy League were in business.</p><p>Kentucky and North Carolina were charters members of the Southern Conference in 1922. Both had spent time as members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, an organization that started in 1895 but didn&#x92;t keep a basketball standing.</p><p>Among Big Ten schools, Illinois has the most conference triumphs with 885. Purdue with 883 and Indiana 860 are next.</p><p>In the Ivy, Pennsylvania stands at 785 league victories.</p><p>Current and traditional powers in the east such as Syracuse, Georgetown and St. John&#x92;s operated as independents until the Big East was launched in 1979.</p><p>The Jayhawks have had more time than most to amass its total and the results hang from the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas owns 54 conference titles, more than another major college program.</p><p>Kansas finds itself in another battle for conference supremacy, and this time the battle is with Border War rival Missouri. Both own 11-2 conference records, giving them a two-game lead on third-place Baylor, and they meet for the second time this season a week from Saturday in Lawrence.</p><p>Self said the conference race is a daily subject with his team and encourages his guys to check the Big 12 standings.</p><p>&#x93;We take great pride in looking at that stuff,&#x94; Self said.</p><p>And Self can separate the conference race from the postseason. Even with the 2008 national championship he said he &#x93;totally agrees that we&#x92;ve underachieved in the (NCAA) tournament.&#x94;</p><p>Losses like last year&#x92;s regional final setback to VCU, and the second-round bounce out to Northern Iowa in 2010 attest to that idea. But the Jayhawks will address those concerns when the circumstance presents itself.</p><p>For now, there&#x92;s a 1,000th lifetime conference victory opportunity that will be important to Self because it means Kansas will start next week no worse than tied for first in the Big 12.</p><p>&#x93;Playing really well over the course of 21/2 months carries a lot of value,&#x94; Self said.