The No. 10-ranked Kansas Jayhawks were supposed to just cruise on into their conference schedule on an 11-game win streak. They weren’t supposed to hit a tremendous roadblock only a week before the 2015 rolls around, bringing Big 12 play along with it.
Kansas wasn’t expecting to get completely exposed by a then 7-4 Temple team in Philadelphia, but they did and their 25-point blowout loss on the road brings some cause for concern with conference play only days away.
Keep in mind; Kansas didn’t come up short on the road in a hostile atmosphere against a formidable opponent. Rather, they were completely dominated by a mid-major program Monday night in terms of effort, execution, and plain old willingness to win.
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From a sheer talent standpoint, there’s no reasonable excuse for a roster littered with former McDonald’s All-Americans and future NBA players to be shown up on national television by an Owls team that clearly is inferior across the board.
But the eyes of the Big 12 were upon these Jayhawks as they were down by 30 points with one minute remaining and with a conference that features six ranked teams besides Kansas, that massive target on the backs of a team looking for their 11th straight Big 12 title just got a little bit easier to prepare for and attack.
Sure. We could chalk this up to one bad game and move on. But games this bad aren’t ones that teams with the aspirations that Kansas has this season go through.
You won’t see teams like Kentucky, Duke, Arizona, and even the biggest threat to their conference title defense, Texas, fall victim in such convincing fashion, regardless of who their opponent is.
But Kansas, on the other hand, saw some of its early-season struggles taken full advantage of on the road and it never allowed the Jayhawks to realistically set their sights on a victory.
From the jump, Kansas had difficulties protecting the ball, which ultimately led to 17 turnovers. Their lack of true size in the paint also allowed them to be outrebounded by a not-so-large Temple club 32-29.
And then some key contributors such as Perry Ellis, Wayne Selden Jr. and Cliff Alexander shot a combined 3-19 from the field for only 13 points. The only guy who really made a significant impact at all was Frank Mason III with 20 points on 8-15 shooting, but the majority of those points came when the game was already out of hand.
Kansas didn’t really have a go-to-scorer down the stretch, which is normally Ellis in the paint, and their mediocre size down low is something that simply isn’t going to change.
It’s highly unlikely that Kansas drops either one of their final two remaining non-conference games, which are against Kent State and UNLV.
But after these two, the games really start to matter in college basketball’s toughest conference, and with a mixture of unsolved struggles from some individuals and impossible fixes such as size down low, Kansas could see things get out of hand quickly.
They open up Big 12 play with No. 22 Baylor on the road, and after some expected wins against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, the Jayhawks will see four straight ranked opponents in Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas and TCU. The only home game of the four will be against the Sooners.
Within the first seven games of conference play, Kansas will see five teams that could very easily top them unless they correct their handful of issues thus far. In a Big 12 race that will likely come down to only a game or two, this could be an early stretch that provides an early elimination to the Jayhawks’ hopes of 11 straight Big 12 regular season titles.
Only time will tell if these struggles will become their downfall, but Kansas’ margin for error is running out quickly and with some of their biggest flaws being exposed in what became their second blowout loss of the season, the room for improvement is narrowing just as quick for the once top-five ranked Jayhawks.