If KU falls out of the top 25...

If KU falls from the top 25, it will be only the 6th time in 1216 AP Polls since 1949 that neither North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky nor Duke were in the AP Poll. It happened 1 week in the 1960-61 season, 1 week in 1959-60 season and 3 weeks in the 1952-53 season.

As a weird factoid of the AP Poll, it started on January 18, 1949 as the AP top 20. It remained the AP top 20 until 12/27/1960. Then, in 1961 they switched to the Top 10 for reasons that I cannot find. It remained a top 10 through the 1963-64 season when it went back to the top 20. It was increased to the top 25 at the beginning of the 1989-90 season.

CorpusJayhawk wrote: If KU falls from the top 25, it will be only the 6th time in 1216 AP Polls since 1949 that neither North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky nor Duke were in the AP Poll. It happened 1 week in the 1960-61 season, 1 week in 1959-60 season and 3 weeks in the 1952-53 season.

As a weird factoid of the AP Poll, it started on January 18, 1949 as the AP top 20. It remained the AP top 20 until 12/27/1960. Then, in 1961 they switched to the Top 10 for reasons that I cannot find. It remained a top 10 through the 1963-64 season when it went back to the top 20. It was increased to the top 25 at the beginning of the 1989-90 season.

Sadly, I believe, it is not a matter of "IF", but "WHEN".

It's official...

"The beauty of Kansas is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!"






RC

Been a rough weekend for KU/KC fans-

The following schools (in order of most AP appearances) are at this time not ranked in AP top 25

UNC
KY
Duke
KS
UCLA
Louisville
Indiana
AZ
Syracuse
Mich St.

Well, hopefully KU can have a repeat of the 1952-53 results - were 19-6 and lost the NC game by 1 point to Indiana.
RCJHKU

Another poster on another board is killing the kids on this team, saying they "own" this debacle and need to rectify the end of the "streak".

That's BS. This is on a lot of things going on at KU, but not on these current players. They are less skilled than we've come to expect, but I appreciate these kids committing to play at KU when others won't touch us with the NCAA cloud hanging over us.

Whatever "this" is this year, is a result of the program and coaches paying the price for past transgressions that the current players had absolutely nothing to do with, exacerbated by covid and a new way of life for young men living in a bubble. I'm disappointed in our entire coaching staff over the past couple years, but won't take that out on the players.

I was reviewing this list again, and thought, within the past few years:

UNC - major NCAA investigation
KY - Squid antics for years
Duke - Coach K is golden boy, but the zion thing tarnished the chalice a little
KS - major NCAA investigation and ugly shoe company lawsuits
UCLA - no details come to mind, but didn't Ben Howland do something bad?
Louisville - Pitino debacle
Indiana - nothing that I can remember
AZ - major NCAA investigation and self imposed penalties
Syracuse - NCAA sanctions with wins vacated a few years ago
Mich St. - nothing that I can remember

The NCAA represents all schools, not just the bluebloods, so perhaps we're seeing the NCAA behave as the vast majority of other schools desire them to behave. Culling the herd, evening the playing field, etc.???

AZ, there is a major flaw in your presumption that the NCAA tribulations is a significant factor in the demise of the blue bloods. If you look at the current rosters of all the DIv 1 teams and rank the players by their High School rankings, you will find that Duke, UNC, Michigan St., and Kansas are among the top 12 in garnering high school recruits. Heck, Duke and Kentucky are No. 2 and No. 3 while UNC is 6th and Michigan St. is 8th. There is no doubt that Kansas is down in recruiting but we still rank 12th in Div 1 for HS recruits on our roster. It seems to me that a there are several issues surrounding recruiting.

1. HS ranking systems are a crapshoot beyond the top 5-10. Players that excel in HS are not guaranteed to excel in college. It seems more and more that players ranked 50 or lower and even 100 and lower are more and more becoming high quality college players.

2. Related to point 1 is that the difference between the player ranked 15th and the player ranked 150th and even 250th is not as big as it used to be,

3. Player development has always been a key. I think with technology more available to more programs because of lower costs, there is far more parity on player development then there used to be.

4. More and more, roster management is related to transfers as much HS recruiting.

5. Finding the diamonds in the rough is always a key. Teams like Loyola (Chi), BYU, Utah St have built nice programs with minimal HS talent.

Corpus, I never quibble with your stats - primarily because I’m lost most of the time (the only D in my life was my business stats class taken in Wescoe Hall). I always lean toward the psychological components of a situation - looking for the intangibles that support or infringe on sports teams.

I get what the numbers say about blue bloods still getting the top players, but there has to be a trend there somewhere correlating coaches who’ve been around for decades, who’ve “benefitted” from the shoe companies “directing” players to top schools, the lawsuits and resulting NCAA investigations, and the vortex that has occurred with all blue bloods stinking this year.

Are the coaches tired of the AAU and recruiting system after so many years? have they been mailing it in for a while on player development (what does that really mean for a one and done) but their recruiting covered that up? are they finally out of touch with these young players, especially as they’re all stuck in covid bubbles? Is the pressure of NCAA penalties getting to the entire program, including how much players pay attention to the coaches? Is player pride in their school lessened by the crap they’re hearing every day about how dirty their team is?

There’s something there, and the common theme I found is that they’ve all (mostly) been outed and accused of bad stuff over the past 3-5 years, and the anvil is hanging over their collective heads.