Kansas traveled to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival with a 3-2 record featuring two double-digit losses, no good wins and lots of questions considering the Jayhawks were about to play three games in three days without their best player, Darryn Peterson.
None of this was ideal.
There were reasons for KU fans to be concerned — and there still are on some level, I guess. But what could’ve been a really rough week that, worst-case scenario, would’ve sent Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach Bill Self into December with a losing record for the first time since he started 0-2 at Oral Roberts in 1994 actually went really well.
KU went 3-0 in the Players Era Festival.
So the Jayhawks won it?
No, silly.
I realize it’s confusing and nonsensical. But the Players Era Festival was an 18-team tournament in which it was possible to go undefeated but still not win the trophy. Kansas and Iowa State both did it — with the Jayhawks finishing third and the Cyclones finishing fifth. Why the event’s organizers didn’t anticipate that their goofy format would overshadow the fun matchups they produced is a mystery to me — but they clearly didn’t. So, hopefully, in advance of next year, they’ll remember that no American sport is more closely associated with brackets than college basketball, and that any college basketball “tournament” without a bracket isn’t really a tournament. And, even if they claim it is, college basketball fans will never embrace it the way they’re conditioned to embrace tournaments with brackets — some as big as 68 teams, some as small as four.
Anyway …
Kansas went 3-0 in Las Vegas with wins over Notre Dame, Syracuse and Tennessee. Obviously, the last of those three was the best. It was an 81-76 victory over a UT team that entered with a 7-0 record highlighted by a neutral-court win over Houston. So, yeah, the worst-case scenario for the Jayhawks when they entered Las Vegas was that…
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