The wheels have officially come off for Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks over the last few weeks. We had KU as among the three teams ranked too highly in last week's AP Top 25 poll, and they responded by getting blasted by 34 points on the road at BYU on Tuesday. While a home blowout of Oklahoma State over the weekend at least stopped the bleeding for a moment, a win over a Big 12 bottom-feeder will hardly ease the anxiety brewing in Lawrence right now: The Jayhawks have lost five of their last nine games, and are just 11-9 overall since the start of December.
This team has been leaking oil for a while now, and on Monday afternoon, rock-bottom finally arrived. Kansas finds itself unranked in the latest AP poll, a historic feat for a program that rightfully considers elite basketball a birthright. It's been a long, long time since the Jayhawks found themselves here, and while there's still plenty of season left to turn things around, Self clearly has his work cut out for him.
When was the last time Kansas was unranked in the AP Top 25 poll?
It's been almost exactly four years — 1,477 days, to be precise — since Kansas last found itself without an AP ranking next to its name. That was the second-longest active poll streak in the country, dating back to Feb. 8, 2021.
Behind Ochai Agbaji, David McCormack and Christian Braun, Kansas climbed as high as No. 3 in the country that season, notching three top-10 wins over Gonzaga, Creighton and West Virginia before the start of the new year. Just after Thanksgiving, they were AP poll for the 223rd consecutive week, breaking UCLA's previous record of 222 from 1966 to 1980.
From there, things started to fall apart. The Jayhawks lost four of five to fall all the way to No. 23 in the AP poll by the start of February. On Saturday, Feb. 6, they made it five of seven, this time on the road to a ranked West Virginia squad which dropped them out of the rankings entirely.
If you're looking for some optimism, Self did manage to right the ship a bit, winning five in a row and seven of eight to earn a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. If you're looking for some pessimism, the Jayhawks fell flat in March, only beating 14-seed Eastern Washington by nine before a record-setting 85-51 loss to No. 6 USC in the second round — their third-worst loss in program history, and their lowest point total in a tournament game since the advent of the shot clock.
Can Bill Self turn Kansas around before NCAA Tournament?
If Self wants to avoid a similar fate this season, he'll have his work cut out for him. Kansas isn't at risk of missing the NCAA Tournament entirely; most projections still have them as a six-seed, and they do have wins over Michigan State, Duke and Iowa State to fall back on.
But we haven't seen that sort of ceiling from this team in a long time now. Hunter Dickinson remains a force on the interior, but Kansas doesn't have enough firepower around him to make teams pay for swarming its star big man. Zeke Mayo and Dajuan Harris have been far too inconsistent on the perimeter, which has led to some truly ugly needs on offense.
And their closing schedule will do them no favors. After a trip to last-place Colorado to start the week, Kansas closes vs. Texas Tech, at Houston and vs. Arizona — arguably the three best teams in the conference right now. At this point, it's more likely than not that the team will miss out on a double-bye for the Big 12 Tournament, meaning they'll have to survive a first-round matchup against a desperate bubble team before going through three straight very strong opponents to hoist the trophy.
More likely, the Jayhawks will flame out before then, limping into the tourney as a sixth or seventh seed. It's hard to imagine the team we've watched over the last few weeks getting to the second weekend, which would be the sixth time in seven years that's happened to one of the most storied programs in the country. Of course, the lone exception resulted in a national title, but Self will still be facing some tough questions unless he finds answers soon.