Posted on Sat, Apr. 12, 2008

LAWRENCE | Are the 2007-08 Jayhawks the greatest in the program’s 110 years?

Hard to say.

Bill Self is more certain.

At the team’s celebration Tuesday at Memorial Stadium, he announced, “These gentlemen behind me are the best team to ever lace them up for the Jayhawks.”

That’s saying plenty, and Self would be part of any panel to rate these things. He was on the staff in 1986, helping coach a team some think ranks with the best in school history.

Those who closely followed the 1997 Jayhawks say the same thing. They grabbed the No. 1 ranking after the first week and never let it go. That Kansas team stood 34-1 before falling in the Sweet 16.

Four starters — Raef LaFrentz, Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughn and Scot Pollard — would be first-round NBA picks. All of them continue as pros, and for years Pierce has been moving up the list of best KU players at the next level.

Others look at the 2002 team, the one with three point guards in the starting lineup. Kirk Hinrich, Jeff Boschee and Aaron Miles joined Nick Collison and Drew Gooden. Future All-American Wayne Simien came off the bench.

But none of those teams played for the national championship. Roy Williams will tell you that his 1991 and 2003 teams that lost in the final packed dynamic chemistry and played their best ball in March. Same for his 1993 Final Four team.

Oh, and the 1957 bunch led by Wilt Chamberlain wasn’t too shabby.

But if the first measure of greatness is an NCAA championship, only three teams can be part of the discussion: The 1952 team of Clyde Lovellette, Danny Manning’s 1988 team and the fellows who just brought home the trophy.

The best way to do this is not some silly position-by-position comparison, but a look at how that team stacked up against the others at the time. Were they powerful all season, or did they catch a wave at the right moment? Once they got to the tournament, did they beat the best, or was the bracket cleared out?

The 1952 team in many ways symbolizes the Kansas tradition with Phog Allen as its coach, Lovellette its All-American and Dean Smith its reserve guard. Sitting in the Hoch Auditorium stands to watch were players from the 1920s, such as Paul Endacott, the star of the 1922 and 1923 national champion teams.

This team was destined to win the championships. Four years earlier, Allen and assistant Dick Harp recruited on the premise of winning a championship and representing the United States in the 1952 Olympic Games. It worked. The Jayhawks won the Big Seven, whipped Santa Clara and St. John’s in the first tournament that brought four finalists to one site, and finished 28-3. Half the team then went to Helsinki, Finland, along with Allen and brought home the gold.

The 1988 Jayhawks may have been the most unlikely national champion of the last 30 years. At one point they stood 12-8, were having roster problems and stumbled into NCAA play off a 15-point loss to Kansas State in the Big Eight semifinals.

Then it all marvelously came together. Manning delivered a March for the ages, and everybody else played their roles. The only thing that Kansas, which finished third in the Big Eight, won that year was the national championship.

Which brings us to the guys standing behind Self on Tuesday — the first national-title team that didn’t include a first-team All-American. There was even confusion about whom to honor on the all-conference team, and the Associated Press team didn’t carry one Jayhawk.

The team’s leading scorer, Brandon Rush, averaged 13.3 points. Only once in the last 35 years has a Kansas leader had a lower average.

But that remarkable balance defined the Jayhawks until the end. In the victory over Memphis, Kansas outscored the Tigers 12-5 in overtime. Those 12 points came from Rush, Darnell Jackson, Mario Chalmers, Darrell Arthur and Sherron Collins.

Throw in the school-record 37 victories, co-champion of the nation’s best conference, an 18-point triumph over the nation’s top-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels in the national semifinals, and you find yourself nodding with Self.

This is KU’s best team.

---

| Blair Kerkhoff, bkerkhoff@kcstar.com