What Kansas Jayhawks basketball’s loss to TCU Horned Frogs means — and what it doesn’t

Kansas coach Bill Self stood in front of a make-shift Jayhawks background just outside his team’s locker room, ready to discuss his biggest disappointment from KU’s 74-64 road loss to TCU on Tuesday.

Self’s team had lost its second straight contest, but he wanted to separate Saturday’s loss to Baylor from this result; it’s tough, after all, to win road games against top-10 teams.

“Sometimes that happens,” Self said.

The real bummer for Self, on this night, was that his team entered with the highest of stakes while controlling its destiny in the Big 12 race. Yet only one group at Schollmaier Arena played with the fight and scrap of a roster desperate for a win.

And that was Jamie Dixon’s TCU squad.

“It looked like to me they were the quicker, more aggressive team tonight, hands down, and we both had equal things to play for,” Self said. “So that was probably most disappointing.”

It’s a good moment to take a step back, because sports too often can lead us all down a path to being prisoners of the moment.

KU’s loss on Tuesday was not good. It was a flat effort in a critical spot. It made the league race harder and further illuminated defensive flaws that Self’s had difficulty masking even as the calendar flips to March.

The defeat isn’t, though, a reason to believe KU is doomed to a second-round NCAA Tournament loss. Or a signal that the Jayhawks are fatally flawed without any path ahead for potential success.

Take a step back, and this team is basically a statistical doppelganger of the 2018 team.

And that one — warts and all — was able to cut down its share of nets while making its way to the Final Four.

Look, this isn’t a prediction of that happening. Anyone claiming perfect knowledge of what will transpire in a one-and-done tournament immediately should have their expertise questioned.

But seriously ... this KU team is a lot like 2018. While that’s no guarantee for success, it’s also a valid reason not to be over-dramatic and write the Jayhawks off completely.

So here’s the comparison. Via Ken Pomeroy’s stats, here are the efficiency numbers for this year’s KU team compared to 2018.

I get it. To the victors go the spoils. KU’s 2017-18 team is remembered fondly — and rightfully so — for putting everything together at the right time to make a run to the Final Four in San Antonio.

But that team was not better defensively than this KU squad. And offensively, the two have a similar knack for being able to outscore a majority of their problems, spreading the floor four-around-one while making it tough on defenses with frenetic body and ball movement.

Bart Torvik’s advanced numbers give us another look. His site allows us to compare KU’s adjusted offensive and defensive numbers to similar teams in the past while seeing how those close matches did.

Here are the results:

You’ll notice 2018 KU makes the list ... but is far from the only team of this mold to make an NCAA Tourney run. Three more made the Final Four, while a fourth — Dayton — was set to be a No. 1 seed before COVID canceled the 2020 postseason.

Only two squads — Kentucky in 2016 and Duke in 2017 — failed to make the second weekend.

Again, there are no assurances in the NCAA Tournament. But the company KU is keeping here isn’t exactly garbage either.

There can be nuance. KU fans can be frustrated that this team doesn’t appear to be hitting the ceiling once projected; the Jayhawks were ranked No. 3 in the preseason poll, and following Tuesday’s result, they are probably currently somewhere closer to the 8-10 range. KU isn’t the elite of the elite like 2020, nor is it a juggernaut like 2008.

The Jayhawks, though, remain in the game. They can still accomplish every goal of this season ahead, whether that’s claiming a share of the Big 12 regular-season championship or coming together after this result to play their best basketball in the Big Dance.

Tuesday wasn’t encouraging. And it won’t give anyone more confidence that KU can find a magic level moving forward.

It shouldn’t be a time for overreaction, though. One regular-season game does not a season make, and many NCAA teams have been near KU’s position at this point.

More often than not, those replicas have succeeded in the season’s most crucial stretch.

KU’s 29-game sample, at the very least, should carry more weight than a lousy 40 minutes.

And those numbers say it’d be foolish to count out any team that’s performing like this year’s Jayhawks.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 11:28 PM.

Jesse Newell

The Kansas City Star

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Jesse Newell covered the Chiefs for The Star until August 2025. He won an EPPY for best sports blog and previously was named top beat writer in his circulation by AP’s Sports Editors. His interest in sports analytics comes from his math teacher father, who handed out rulers to Trick-or-Treaters each year.