Kansas Makes Statement vs. Baylor, but Another Big 12 Title Will Be Challenging

Watching Kansas play Baylor at Allen Fieldhouse on Saturday, you may have yawned once or twice. We had all seen this movie before. Maybe you flipped over to whatever meaningless bowl game graced the airwaves at the time. It could have been that you looked ahead to the Jayhawks’ remaining schedule.

That would have been entirely apropos.

Saturday’s game was little much of one. Kansas dominated the Bears in a 102-74 win. The win looked like many other games Kansas has played amid a run of 11 straight Big 12 regular-season championships under coach Bill Self, making it appear a 12th straight was imminent.

While I believe Kansas and its roster laden with upperclassmen will bring a 12th conference title to Lawrence, this season might prove among the more difficult in Self’s 13-year tenure at Kansas. National championship contenders Oklahoma and Iowa State—the Sooners beat the Cyclones 87-83 on Saturday—are as equipped as any team has been over the past decade to challenge the Jayhawks.

After Saturday night, we can officially eliminate No. 23 Baylor, a distant fourth in the Big 12 race, from that conversation. The Jayhawks made a mockery of Baylor’s defense, shooting 53.7 percent from the field and 57.9 percent from three-point range.

Senior Perry Ellis and junior Wayne Selden Jr., the Jayhawks’ two leading scorers, combined for 41 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. Ellis was saddled with two fouls in the first half, but he responded to score 17 points Saturday.

Ellis’ performance reinforced the maturity he has gained playing four years in Lawrence. Along with its veteran leadership, rare among college basketball’s top teams today, Kansas will rely heavily on its depth to win this season and, eventually, make a run in the NCAA tournament.

On Saturday, seven Kansas players took at least four shots. Ellis (12) and Selden (16) were the only players with double-digit field-goal attempts. Four of five Jayhawks starters grabbed at least five rebounds.

The team’s constant movement on offense opened up three-point shots and cuts to the basket, stretching Baylor’s zone defense like it was taffy.

“It was an unbelievable start,” Self, who has lost just nine games at Allen Fieldhouse in 13 seasons at Kansas, told CBS after the game. “We made everything we looked at there early and defended them pretty well.

“We share it. We’re pretty unselfish, and we’ve got several guys who can make shots, and so basically the open man is the go-to man and guys buy into that.”

Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

Saturday’s game, though, was a preamble to what could be college basketball’s game of the year on Monday.

Kansas, which should move up to the top spot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll and the No. 2 spot in the USA Today Coaches Poll after top-ranked Michigan State lost to Iowa on Wednesday, plays Oklahoma at home Monday. With a win over the Cyclones on Saturday, the Sooners likely will be ranked second in the AP poll and first in the coaches poll. Yahoo Sports' Jeff Eisenberg noted the upcoming Kansas-Oklahoma matchup:

The undefeated Sooners, who ranked sixth in the country in points per game (87.0) before Saturday's games, have the offensive firepower to stick with the Jayhawks. In a conference seasoned with upperclassmen—TCU sophomore Vladimir Brodziansky is the only underclassman in the top 15 in scoring in the conference at 13.9 points per game—Oklahoma may have the best of them.

Sooners senior Buddy Hield, the conference’s reigning player of the year, is averaging 24.6 points per game. He is multi-dimensional with the ability to score off the dribble and via the three. Hield can single-handedly carry Oklahoma, while Kansas relies on a much more balanced approach.

The Jayhawks have four players—Ellis, Selden, Frank Mason III and Devonte’ Graham—who average in double figures. That same group scored in double figures on Saturday. Foul trouble for any of those four, the aforementioned case for Ellis on Saturday, weakens Kansas’ greatest asset: forcing teams to guard all five players.

So it puts pressure on the Jayhawks quartet to play smart defensively. Self noted in that same CBS postgame interview that his team fouled Baylor instead of guarding the Bears for a period of time, indicating that needed to be corrected.

That could become an issue against an Iowa State team that’s similarly comprised. While Cyclones senior forward Georges Niang averaged 19.6 points per game, Iowa State’s offense boasts six players averaging in double digits.

The Cyclones play a frenetic pace that suggests the team doesn’t mind playing games that creep into the 90s. That will challenge Kansas to play much more disciplined on the defensive end than it did Saturday.

None of this suggests Kansas is no longer the favorite after dominating the conference the past 11 seasons. It’s only to say it may get a little bit harder this year.

The best part?

For us it won’t be as boring as it was Saturday.

Seth Gruen covers a number of sports for Bleacher Report. He previously covered the Big Ten for the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow Seth on Twitter @SethGruen.