Friday, March 28, 2008
Year of coincidences?.
It was March 27, 1988 when No. 6 seed Kansas defeated No. 4 seed Kansas State 71-58 advancing to the Final Four. The game was held in the Pontiac Silverdome, located in the suburbs of Detroit, in front of 31,632 fans. A crowd of that size at the time was one of the highest attended NCAA regional games.
Eight days later, Danny Manning and the Miracles would go on to defeat No. 1 seed Oklahoma 83-79, giving Kansas its first national championship since 1952.
Coincidentally, Kansas will play its first NCAA tournament game in the Motor City since 1988 tonight. Though this season’s Jayhawks are 33-3 and the 1988 National Championship team was 23-11 going into the Sweet Sixteen, there are a number of coincidences between these two teams. Whether you are the superstitious type, the gambling type or just like useless trivia, there are too many coincidences to go unnoticed.
Aside from playing in Michigan, the Jayhawks will also be playing in a dome tonight in front of a record crowd. With 55,000 of 72,818 tickets sold as of Sunday for the Midwest Regional games this weekend, the previous record of 42,519 has already been broken.
Like the 1988 team, Kansas had to play in the state of Nebraska in the first weekend of the tournament. The Jayhawks defeated No. 11 seed Xavier 85-72 in the first round and No. 14 Murray State 61-58 in the second round in Lincoln 20 years ago. Prior to this year’s tournament, the 1988 team was the only Jayhawk team to travel to both Nebraska and Michigan in the same regional.
As witnessed this past weekend, the Midwest Regional had five higher seeds upset by lower seeds. In 1988, a lower seeded team defeated a higher seeded team five times in the Midwest Regional including the upset of No. 2 seed Pittsburg, the Big East’s highest seeded team. This past Sunday, the Big East’s highest seeded team, No. 2 Georgetown, lost.
Another coincidence that some Jayhawk fans may have overlooked is Baylor’s tournament appearance. In 1988 Baylor made the tournament as a No. 8 seed. Until this year Baylor has not made another tournament appearance.
In 1988, Larry Brown was in his fifth year of coaching. Though the Jayhawks struggled throughout the regular season that season, this was solely Larry Brown’s team. Brown did not have as balanced a team as Bill Self does this season, he had then senior Danny Manning and a recruiting class of his own working together to win a string of six games in the tournament. Similarly, Bill Self is in his fifth year of coaching and has his own recruiting class playing just the way he wants them to going into this weekend.
Lastly, though the 2007-2008 Jayhawks do not have Danny Manning in their lineup averaging 24.8 points and 9 rebounds per game as he did in the 1987-1988 season, Manning is again with the team. In his first year as an assistant coach, Manning has helped with the improvement of Kansas’ big men. Senior forward Darnell Jackson has become a star for Kansas, while sophomore Darrell Arthur has turned into Kansas’ leading scorer.
Every year, fans and media will question whether this year will be the big year. Based on similarities between 1988 and 2008, this would certainly seem to be the year. All things aside, these coincidences obviously have no impact on what happens on the court this weekend. With the Jayhawks in Michigan just as they were 20 years ago, Kansas fans are hoping for one more coincidence: a national championship.
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