By the time Kansas wraps up its regular season Saturday at Texas A&M, the team will have traveled 11,002 miles.

Sure, a trip every once in a while can be fun, but the Jayhawks’ adventures outside of Lawrence haven’t been all fun and games. The road has been tough on Kansas and the rest of its Big 12 Conference brethren.

Only two Big 12 teams, Kansas and Texas, have won more than half of their in-conference road contests. Iowa State and Colorado have yet to notch a Big 12 road victory. As a whole, visitors have won just 31 percent of the time in conference play.

Compare that figure to the road winning percentage in the Atlantic Coast Conference, a league revered for its feisty fans and unforgiving venues. In the ACC, teams win 40 percent of the time on the road.

What about the deepest conference in America, the Pac-10? Forty-five percent.

Big East travelers have triumphed in 36 percent of their games and Big Ten road teams skate by 38 percent of the time. The SEC (33 percent) comes closest to the Big 12 in terms of road woes, but Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia drag its figure down with their combined 0-21 road record.

So what’s to blame for all the losing Big 12 teams are doing away from home?

Last week, Kansas coach Bill Self turned to biology in an attempt to explain the difficulty of adjusting to new and foreign surroundings.

“There’s been books actually written on all different types of species — how they act in their own environment and when you take them out of their environment,” Self said. “Whether it be ants, whether it be lions, whether it be birds, whether it be basketball players, whether it be whatever.

“It’s amazing — you take a group of fire ants and move them into a totally different environment, and you put four sticks around the environment, all of them are scared to cross the stick. In their own environment, you put the four sticks there, and they go wherever they want to go.”

All references to the movement patterns of ants aside, the animal kingdom example makes perfect sense. Think back to late January. Kansas was rolling unmercifully through its schedule, trouncing Nebraska by 35 points and Iowa State by 24.

But Kansas State and its raucous fans put an end to all that on Jan. 30. Kansas entered Bramlage Coliseum a perfect 20-0 and the talk of the nation. When the Jayhawks took the court under a steady downpour of unprintable verbal barbs, they looked like visitors often do — impatient, out-of-sorts and intimidated.

Since the disaster in Manhattan, the Jayhawks have split their four road games, falling to Texas and Oklahoma State in one-possession games and defeating Colorado and Iowa State by thinner-than-expected margins.

The Jayhawks’ road-initiated funk lasted through February, but the start of March brought things full-circle. The same Kansas State Wildcats who impressively dispatched the Jayhawks at Bramlage visited Allen Fieldhouse last weekend and the tables turned in a big way. The Kansas student section offered Kansas State an ear-shattering reminder of how difficult leaving home in the Big 12 can be, as the Jayhawks rode the electric atmosphere to a 14-point victory.

What’s puzzling is that even arenas without the tradition or reputation of Allen Fieldhouse have been tough on visitors. Nebraska is better than .500 on the not-so-hallowed court of the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Texas Tech draws bigger crowds to United Spirit Arena for women’s games than for men’s, but the Red Raiders are 6-1 against conference foes at home.

“Who knows why people are just more comfortable at home? Crowd, energy, I have no idea,” Self said. “I don’t think it’s just college basketball, I think it’s life in general. The best teams figure that out and find a way to get it done away from home.”

At 4-3 in road conference games and 7-3 away from Lawrence overall, it seems Kansas might be one of the few teams in the Big 12 that knows how to compete on the road. Problem is, if Kansas falls once the NCAA tournament rolls around, there won’t be another home game to fall back on.

— Edited by Mandy Earles