Kansas Basketball won’t have long run in 2019 NCAA Tournament

In a season that has been full of disappointments, Kansas basketball doesn’t seem poised to make a deep run in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

It’s been an odd season for Kansas basketball. Obviously the weirdest aspect was not being the Big 12 conference champions, the first time that’s happened since Bill Self’s FIRST year in Lawrence. The streak ended at 14 straight titles, still impressive no matter how you swing it, but it had to end sometime, right?

Kansas managed to make it to the championship game in the Big 12 Tournament, but a lot of that could be due to Texas Tech losing to West Virginia. That gave the Jayhawks a much easier match-up and had they played the Red Raiders in the second round, it might not have been as much of a cakewalk for KU.

This season hasn’t been a stereotypical Kansas basketball season and it won’t be shocking in the least bit if this team has an early exit from March Madness, set to tip off this Thursday.

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We don’t know where KU will be seeded or who they’ll be playing, but the Jayhawks are not the same teams fans have enjoyed watching over the years. They struggled immensely against Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament title game and their shooting was awful.

KU shot 39.4% and were just three of 18 on 3-point shots. That’s right, the Jayhawks made just THREE 3-pointers. That is not good and definitely played a huge part in why this team fell to the Cyclones on Saturday in Kansas City.

All in all, this season hasn’t felt like KU’s year from the start.

There were the sanctions against Silvio De Sousa, which took him out of the action early on. He later was suspended, but that came right around the time that big man Udoka Azubuike was lost for the season and Lagerald Vick announced he’d be leaving the team.

Those three players were all big contributors for the team last year and played a huge hand in getting the 2017-2018 Jayhawks to the Final Four. Without those guys, it was Dedric Lawson or bust for KU.

Yes, Ochai Agbaji has been a nice player, but he had just five points vs Iowa State. Lawson led the Jayhawks with 18 and he has to have a nice game or else his teammates have shown in past games that they can’t pick up the slack.

Kansas won’t be a one or two seed in the tournament, so a first round exit is entirely possible for the Jayhawks. They haven’t played well away from Allen Fieldhouse and even in Sprint Center, which is less than an hour from Lawrence, they struggled against a good team in Iowa State.

How far do you think the Kansas Jayhawks will go in the NCAA Tournament?