Monday, March 5, 2007
There is something much fairer about a regular-season championship.
You can’t win one with a buzzer-beating shot or a week-long hot streak. Winners have proven their excellence through the course of 16 games, at least one against every team.
That lack of theatrics is why they’ve been overlooked for the glitzier March Madness, but winning a regular-season title remains the best way to measure a team’s greatness. And nobody does it better than Kansas.
A 90-86 victory against Texas meant an explosion of big, round numbers. It was the team’s 1,900th victory, which was third most in the country. It was also its 50th conference title, more than any other school in the U.S.
“It felt pretty good to be in our own home and cut down the nets,” sophomore forward Brandon Rush said. “The crowd was going crazy. Everybody else was going crazy. It was a special day.”
For the players it was also the completion of a goal they set the 6 a.m. fall practices. After a loss to Texas A&M meant they would need help to accomplish that goal, they started watching for it. In the final weeks, they followed the Big 12 race wherever they went, keeping tabs on scores with the TV, Internet and cell phones.
Ultimately it came down to Saturday’s match-up against Texas, which proved to be a championship-caliber game.
The Longhorns scored 54 first-half points, almost half of those by freshman phenom Kevin Durant. When Durant leaned back and made a scrape-the-ceiling three over Julian Wright, it didn’t silence the crowd. Instead, 16,300 people reacted with a collective groan. They were watching greatness, but it was wearing the wrong uniform.
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The fans kept yelling at an ear-splitting volume, though, and were given plenty to yell about in the second half as the Jayhawks pushed, prodded and elbowed their way to a Big 12 title.
The fans kept yelling at an ear-splitting volume, though, and were given plenty to yell about in the second half as the Jayhawks pushed, prodded and elbowed their way to a Big 12 title.
“This was a big one for us,” sophomore guard Mario Chalmers said. “We wanted to win the regular season outright.”
Even without the victory, Kansas was still guaranteed to set the record for most conference championships by a school. Kentucky has 49, but this year the Wildcats are stuck in fourth place in the Southeastern Conference East division.
It’s a record that doesn’t get much play, probably because conference championships are given out at a very inconvenient time.
Attention spans are short in March, and before the last bits of newspaper confetti could hit the ground attention was already turning to this week’s Big 12 tournament and next week’s NCAA tournament. At Kansas, there’s not a lot of time to enjoy the achievement that other schools spend years chasing.
That’s why while Lew Perkins was chewing on a cigar and the players were watching the commemorative video, coach Bill Self sat behind them with something else on his mind.
Sure, he said he was happy. He smiled while waving the nets to the crowd. But he couldn’t bring himself to fully enjoy a conference title. Not on March 3, at least.
“That’s just not how it is with me,” Self said. “Now the real work begins.”
Kansan senior sportswriter Michael Phillips can be contacted at mphillips@kansan.com.
— Edited by James Pinick
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