The Jayhawks sealed their impressive conference play with a Big 12 Tournament championship on Saturday night, downing the West Virginia Mountaineers 81-71.
Devonte’ Graham led the Jayhawks in scoring, putting up 27 points while backcourt teammate Wayne Selden Jr. also dropped 21 points. Devin Williams was the high man for the Mountaineers scoring 31 points in the losing effort and shooting an efficient 9-12 from the field and 13-15 from the charity stripe.
Graham finally got some recognition for his tremendous play, as the sophomore point guard was named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. Graham scored 52 points and had 19 assists in three games.
The Jayhawk winning streak is now sitting at 14 games, and the KU faithful are keeping their fingers crossed that it will reach 20 when it’s all said and done.
After all, six more wins are all it will take to bring a national championship back to Lawrence, and after running through the Big 12 Tournament the Jayhawks have locked up the number one overall seed in the big dance.
Finally I get to say this and truly believe it, the Kansas Jayhawks are the best basketball team in the country.
Yes, attending the university has the potential to have you make picks with ingrained bias, so to appease the masses, here is exactly why KU should be your champion on your brackets:
By the way, I’m not even going to take a cut from your bracket pool winnings, just shoot a nice thank you tweet to @MJ_Maicke once the Jayhawks are cutting down nets in Houston.
This is the most collegiately-talented team Bill Self has had in the last five years. Way too many people don’t understand that NBA talent cannot excel to its true potential in a slow, hand check-tainted, zone-infested college game.
I don’t want to hear about the Andrew Wiggins team that didn’t reach the Sweet 16. Yes there was a lot of talent there, but it was NBA talent, not collegiate talent. There is an enormous difference between the two.
Backcourts win championships, just ask Kemba Walker, or Shabazz Napier for that matter, and Kansas has the best backcourt in the country.
With upperclassmen in Frank Mason and Selden on the wing, and an emerging star in Devonte’ Graham running the point, the Jayhawks have the experience that is needed to handle high-pressure late game situations.
Oh, and by the way, they have a nice little bonus with senior leader Perry Ellis on the block.
The team’s free throw percentage is slightly over 70 percent, not bad considering how Selden is boasting an unexplainable mark of 58 percent from the free throw line, dragging the overall statistic down.
KU also shoots an impressive 49 percent from the field and 42.6 percent from beyond the arc. What I’m trying to say is the team can score.
The one issue is the 13 turnovers per game, however everything slows down in the tournament, and as of late the turnovers haven’t been an issue.
So I’ll take the team with four upperclassmen starting. I’ll take the team that doesn’t need to rely on speed or pressing or three-point shots. I’ll take the team that can methodically break an opponent down in a half court set.
I’ll take Kansas.