The No. 4 seed Kansas Jayhawks will open their NCAA tournament play on Thursday against Northeastern. It’s been a long time since Kansas entered an NCAA tournament without a reasonable expectation to cut down the nets in April.
But let’s put Kansas’ NCAA tournament history into perspective with the following stats.
30 straight
The Jayhawks have the longest active streak of making the NCAA tournament at 30 straight tournaments. Kansas has reached the NCAA tournament in every season since 1990, and the next-longest active streak is Duke at 24.
A No. 4 seed?
Kansas entered the season as the preseason No. 1 team in the country, but a season-ending injury to Udoka Azubuike, late-season departure of Lagerald Vick and Silvio De Sousa’s ineligibility helped put the Jayhawks in an usual position. This will be the first time since 2009 that Kansas didn’t get a top-2 seed in the tournament — a run of 9 straight years.
Bill Self’s consistency
Kansas coach Bill Self suffered two first-round upsets early in his Kansas tenure, losing to Bucknell and Bradley in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The Jayhawks have not lost in the first round since and have won a national title and reached three Final Fours. Since then, Mike Krzyzewski (3) and Tom Izzo (2) have both lost in the first round multiple times.
107 all-time tournament wins
Kansas has won 107 NCAA tournament games as a program. The only schools with more are Kentucky, North Carolina and Duke.
A loaded schedule
Kansas has played 20 games this season against teams currently in the NCAA tournament. Duke is just behind with 18. The Jayhawks started the season with wins over tourney teams Michigan State, Vermont, Marquette, Tennessee, Wofford, Villanova and New Mexico State before Azubuike’s injury. The team is battle-tested for tournament play.
