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 they’d exit with a 3-5 record. Instead, they’re exiting with a 6-2 record featuring a victory over Tennessee. As a result, the Jayhawks are up to No. 14 in Thursday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
Tennessee is down to No. 15.
And if you’re looking for an explanation for the movement in the middle of the Top 25 And 1, here it is: I jumped North Carolina from No. 19 to No. 13, even though the Tar Heels didn’t play Wednesday, and that’s because UNC is 6-0 with a win over the previously mentioned Kansas team that just beat Tennessee. So I wanted to keep UNC ahead of the Kansas team it beat, but also get Kansas ahead of the Tennessee team it just beat, while also keeping Tennessee ahead of the Houston team it defeated a day earlier, and the best way to do all of that was to just jump North Carolina ahead of all of them, which caused Houston, Michigan State, Texas Tech and Arkansas to be pushed down one spot each, no fault of their own.
As you’ll see if you keep scrolling, Arizona remains No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1 for the eighth consecutive day. The Wildcats are 6-0 with three wins over teams that were ranked in the top 15 of the preseason AP poll — specifically Florida, UConn and UCLA. That’s the best resume in the sport. Tommy Lloyd’s team will return to the court Saturday, when they play Norfolk State inside the McKale Center.
