Kansas is Crowned...Again

With last night's 83-75 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners in the famed Allen Fieldhouse, Bill Self and his Kansas Jayhawks clinched at least a share of the 2013-2014 Big 12 regular season championship. "Kansas" and "Big 12 champions" have now become synonymous with each other as this is the tenth straight year the Jayhawks have achieved the honor. The crazy thing about this accomplishment is that three of these titles have come on years where Bill Self has not had a starter return from the previous year. This is one of those years as the core of the team is composed of freshman, headlined by future lottery picks Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid.

Smiles have been easy to come by for Self

So now, with Kansas' recent yet prolonged success, the question has to be raised: is Kansas the most dominant program of the 2000s? With their stretch of ten straight conference titles they join John Wooden's UCLA teams from 1967-1979 and Mark Few's Gonzaga Bulldogs from 2001-2011 as the only programs to win ten or more consecutive conference championships. While these three programs enjoyed long-term success, Gonzaga never captured an NCAA championship in the midst of their run, and Kansas has only snagged one. UCLA on the other hand had the most dominant run of any program in the history of the game in which they won eight national championships throughout their thirteen year Pac-10 reign.

While Gonzaga's run also took place in the 2000s, they are nowhere near the postseason success that Kansas has had, which is why the Jayhawks are making a case to be the most dominant team of the new millennium. In the grand scheme of things, though, how successful has Kansas REALLY been? They won it all in 2008 when I saw them play in San Antonio, but other than that they have been to just two Final Fours since 2004 (2008, 2012) despite being a number one seed five of the past ten years and never being seeded lower than a four. They have made the Elite Eight three times but have also been eliminated before the Sweet Sixteen the same amount of times. So while they have dominated their conference, have they really dominated the NCAA Tournament?

Wiggins and Embiid hope to lead Kansas to Dallas

Bill Self has worked wonders at Kansas (though a bitter Illinois fan such as myself would hate to admit it). He has the program on the highest pedestal and they are a perennial contender. Yet when it comes to the Big Dance, Kansas rarely seems to live up to expectations. Lawrence, Kansas has truly played host to perhaps the most dominant regular season team as the Jayhawks have not had a double-digit number in the loss column since Self took over in 2003-2004. But the dominance in the NCAA Tournament has not been there as teams like UCLA, North Carolina, Michigan State, and Louisville have all reached more Final Fours than the Jayhawks have in the past ten years. With that in mind it would be nearly impossible to truly pinpoint the most dominant program of the 2000s as there are plenty of schools that have made numerous trips to the Final Four, but for Kansas to be the most dominant team in the Big 12 the past ten years? Well there's simply no doubt about that. Another exciting season of basketball is under way in Lawrence but time will tell if the Jayhawks' latest Big 12 regular season championship will translate into success in March.