West Virginia Preview

Dear RCC’ers,

Another season another Big 12 tournament championship game. Here is our Big 12 tourney history.

1997 – Champs
1998 – Champs
1999 – Champs
2000 – Lost to Oklahoma St. in the semis
2001 – Lost to Oklahoma in the semis
2002 – Lost to Oklahoma in the championship
2003 – Lost to Mizzou (Quinn Snyder – ouch) in the semis
2004 – Lost to Texas in the semis
2005 – Lost to Oklahoma St. in the semis
2006 – Champs
2007 – Champs
2008 – Champs
2009 – Lost to Baylor in the quarters
2010 – Champs
2011 – Champs
2012 – Lost to Baylor in the semis
2013 – Champs
2014 – Lost to Iowa St. in the Semis
2015 – Lost to Iowa St. in the championship
2016 – Champs (beat Huggins in that game)
2017 – Lost to TCU in the quarters

We have won 10 of 21 Big 12 tournaments. We have only faced West Virginia once in the Big 12 tourney and we beat them. We are 10-2 in Big 12 championship games. As for this game, you can see below I have Kansas as a 2 point underdog with a projected score of 73-75 and a 43% probability of winning. That is all before Udoka went out. But Lightfoot and especially De Sousa have filled the gap nicely. Look for West Virginia to attack the basket often looking to get our only 2 bigs in foul trouble. We need to absolutely cut off the driving lanes with a collapsing defense. Make them shoot it. I would not be surprised to see a fair bit of zone.



West Virginia has notoriously been an erratic team. Their consistency rating is perennially at the bottom of the Big 12 and nation. But they have settled done a little bit. They have absolutely no trend that deviates from the projection.



KU is on a little bit of an uptick, maybe to the tune of 5 points. So averaging that with West Virginia would make this game a toss up.



You can see from the ratings below that Udoka has been very effective against West Virginia in the prior two games. That scares me a little. We are really going to need no weaknesses in the backcourt and De Sousa and Lightfoot playing well as well. The website should be all ready to go for the game today as well as the NCAA tourney. As I said, I will be leaving the day the round of 64 begins and returning on the day of the National Championship. I hope I have wi-fi and access to watch the games in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Oh the things we must endure as Jayhawk fans. Have a great weekend and let’s get our 11th Big 12 Tournament championship.

Don