Over the past 24 hours, the decision seemed increasingly inevitable. On Thursday, it happened.
NCAA president Mark Emmert announced that the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments — in addition to all winter and spring championships — would be canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
That means no brackets, no March Madness, no Cinderellas and no national championship game. But should it also mean no champion at all?
This NCAA tournament looked to be as wide open as any tournament in recent memory, but one team had certainly separated itself from the rest of the pack over the past couple months. And that was Kansas.
The Jayhawks, winners of 16 straight games and a Big 12 regular season title, went into the week as the unanimous No. 1 team in every major poll. In fact, Kansas was such a lock as the No. 1 overall seed that ESPN’s bracket guru Joe Lunardi said that Kansas could have skipped the Big 12 tournament entirely (welp) and still get the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament.
If there ever was a team that could go full UCF and claim a championship this season, it’s Kansas.
When you’re looking at the criteria that the NCAA tournament committee uses for its selections — NET, ESPN strength of record, BPI, KPI, KenPom, Sagarin — Kansas came in at No. 1 in every one of those. The Jayhawks will end the season as the unanimous No. 1 in both the Associated Press and USA TODAY Coaches Polls.
It won’t be a popular move from every non-Kansas fan, but should Kansas go ahead and hang a banner in Allen Fieldhouse, it would be justifiable given the circumstances. After all, college football spent roughly 125 years of deciding its champion with polls. This wouldn’t be any different.
Kansas — just as South Carolina did on the women’s side with Dawn Staley — has the body of work to back up a championship. Whether the NCAA decides to recognize a champion this way remains to be seen, but Kansas should go ahead and do it anyway — especially given the looming cloud of NCAA sanctions.
That idea is already being floated around amongst college basketball fans.
The season won’t have its One Shining Moment, but it absolutely should have a champion.
