Would a Big 12 Tournament title in KC guarantee the Kansas Jayhawks a No. 1 NCAA seed?
The No. 6-ranked Kansas Jayhawks have a lot to play for at the upcoming Big 12 men’s basketball tournament at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City.
“If we win it we’re going to be a 1 seed,” KU coach Bill Self said Monday night on his weekly Hawk Talk radio show.
“Now if we don’t win it, there probably have to be some things happen to other people to help us stay that high.”
The Jayhawks (25-6, 14-4), who tied No. 3-ranked Baylor (26-5, 14-4) for the Big 12 regular-season league title, will play the winner of Wednesday’s 6 p.m. Kansas State-West Virginia game in Thursday’s 2 p.m. quarterfinals. KU landed the tourney’s No. 1 seed courtesy of the tiebreaker (KU was 1-1 and Baylor 0-2 vs. Texas Tech, the league’s third-place team).
If KU wins the quarterfinal against K-State or WVU, it’d be matched against Texas or TCU in Friday’s 6 p.m. semifinals.
Teams in the running for No. 1 or 2 seeds at this time include the top 10 teams in the AP poll: Gonzaga, Arizona, Baylor, Auburn, Kentucky, KU, Duke, Villanova, Purdue and Tennessee, among others.
“I do think college basketball this year has been so weird,” Self said Monday. “Nebraska wins at Wisconsin yesterday when Wisconsin was playing on Senior Day and playing for the Big Ten outright. Illinois wins a one-possession game against Iowa that got it (league) tied there. There have been so many games you’d think could be minor upsets, and so even though the TCU game really hurt us, I don’t know that it hurt us nationally as much as some people may have perceived because other people had their struggles as well.”
Self was referring to KU’s 74-64 loss to TCU on March 1 in Fort Worth, Texas. KU came back to beat TCU, 72-68, in an immediate rematch two days later at Allen Fieldhouse. Then the Jayhawks closed with a 70-63 overtime win over Texas on Saturday at home.
“I don’t think we are a favorite to be a 1 seed. I’m not even hinting at that. I do think if we were to do really well this weekend we could be a 1 seed. I really do think that,” Self said.
Self noted that “being a high seed doesn’t guarantee success at all (in NCAAs). It’s more about matchups and that kind of stuff. People can kind of get hung up on certain things. Being a high seed means you’ve had a heck of a season.”
Of Thursday’s Big 12 Tournament game in KC, Self said: “Everybody plays desperate this time of year. There’s nothing to lose, at least for some teams that need to do well in the tournament to have a chance to get in (NCAAs). Whoever we play, trust me it’ll be a hard game. It always is. It’ll be a hard game.”
KU enters the postseason after playing four games in eight days. Self has set up a schedule this week designed to rest the team.
“We took yesterday (Sunday) off. Today we had some donors in … they came to practice. We went today. We didn’t go long and certainly didn’t go hard. We’ll basically take tomorrow (Tuesday) off again. We’ll practice short Wednesday and play Thursday. It’s more a maintenance type week for us because we need to get our legs underneath us,” Self said.
KU’s coach noted that senior guard Ochai Agbaji, who on Sunday was named Big 12 player of the year by the league coaches and Monday was named first-team All-American by The Sporting News, is “tired.”
“I think we have ridden ‘Och’ pretty hard this year,” Self said. “I do think he’s tired, not tired to the point where he needs to take several days off or anything like that. The fatigue doesn’t just come from the physical stuff but it comes from the mental stuff as well, He’s been pretty intense for a long time. That does catch up to you to an extent.”
Self repeated what he said after Saturday’s win over Texas. Agbaji as a first-team All-American and league player of the year will have his jersey hung in the south rafters of the fieldhouse at some point in time.
“Yes it will (be placed in rafters) and deservedly so,” Self said. “I hope you guys have enjoyed watching him play as much as I’ve enjoyed watching him.”
Self said another player who can use some rest is senior big man David McCormack, who was named third-team all-league by the coaches on Sunday. McCormack’s surgically repaired right foot has been bothering him at times this season.
“What a lot of people don’t understand,” Self said, “are the things he has to do most days just to prepare to practice or to be out there because he is not 100% healthy.
“He can play, don’t get me wrong. But he’s playing on one leg a lot of times. He never complains, never says anything, that anything bothers him. He is a stud.”
Self said senior guard Remy Martin “hasn’t been the same since (he hurt his knee earlier this season).”
But the good news regarding Martin, who has been hobbled by a bone bruise in his right knee is he had a great practice Monday.
“People who were in the audience today (at practice) would probably say he looked closer to himself today than he has maybe all year long. Hopefully that’ll be positive moving forward,” Self said.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 8:36 PM.
