Every year in college basketball, there’s bound to be at least one team that massively underachieves. A team that falls well short of expectations for a variety of reasons. I’m sorry Kansas Jayhawks, you are that team for the 2023-24 campaign, and it’s not particularly close.
KU was ousted from the NCAA Tournament on Saturday in brutal fashion, getting shown the door in a 89-68 second-round blowout loss to Gonzaga. The Jayhawks were thoroughly outclassed in the second half, and the gap between them and the Bulldogs continued to widen with each passing minute. It marked the second straight season where Bill Self’s crew failed to make it out of the first weekend of the Big Dance and it’s a far cry from where many projected them to finish back in October.
Kansas entered the year ranked No. 1 in the pre-season AP poll and were the pre-season odds favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook to win the national championship. There was good reason to assume that the Jayhawks would at least return to the Final Four as they entered the season with a loaded roster. The lineup included sixth-year veteran Kevin McCullar Jr., 2023 Big 12 Most Improved K.J. Adams Jr., and the top transfer portal prospect in former Michigan center Hunter Dickinson. Everything was even seemingly going according to plan early, as a 13-1 start included a victory over defending national champion UConn.
However KU began to slide once it got deep into Big 12 play, and could not put together any more than a two-game win streak in league play. It ultimately finished sixth in the regular season standings and was immediately thrown out of the Big 12 Tournament in a 20-point loss to Cincinnati. The Jayhawks managed to survive an upset scare against Samford in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament, but the rent came due in Saturday’s blowout loss against Gonzaga, ending the year with a 23-11 record.
So what happened to the Jayhawks this season? Why wasn’t this group able to live up to preseason expectations. The answer is simple: Injuries.
McCullar suffered a knee injury in late January and was not right for the rest of the year, only playing six games from February 3 onward. He led the team in scoring with 18.3 points per game, and his absence down the stretch and into tournament season dramatically hindered KU’s title hopes.
This only put pressure on Dickinson, who had to do a bunch of heavy lifting down the stretch, and still managed to earn Second Team All-American honors for the second time in his career. However he’d suffer a shoulder injury ahead of the Big 12 Tournament, eviscerating KU’s hopes of cutting down the nets in Kansas City. By the time the NCAA Tournament came around, you had a squad that had ran out of gas and quite frankly, looked like they wanted the season to end. Self himself confirmed after the Gonzaga loss that he had already been looking forward to next year.
There were some positives for Kansas this year as Adams once again put up solid numbers, and freshman Johnny Furphy had a good enough year to be considered a potential lottery pick in the 2024 NBA Draft. Given their status as a blue blood, Kansas will be considered in the mix of contenders next year once preseason polls come out this fall. With a few roster tweaks and some injury luck next spring, Self’s crew could very well live up to expectations that time around.