March Madness: Ranking the remaining teams in the Midwest Region

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 08: Grayson Allen #3 celebrates with Marvin Bagley III #35 of the Duke Blue Devils after making a three point shot in the first half during the quarterfinals of the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament at Barclays Center on March 8, 2018 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images) /

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WICHITA, KS – MARCH 17: Devonte’ Graham /

2. Kansas Jayhawks (1 seed)

Strength: Elite offense

One concern with this team has been their overall depth, but their regular-season and conference champions in the Big 12 showed that to be a non-issue. That’s because of their starting lineup, which may be only a couple of rivals can compare to.

Big 12 Player of the Year Devonte’ Graham is one of the absolute best players in the country, but he didn’t even have to do much so far for the Jayhawks. That’s because of the emergence of Malik Newman, who is averaging 22 ppg since the start of the conference tournament. Add sharpshooter Svi Mykhailiuk and big man Udoka Azubuike and you have a deadly group of scorers.

Weakness: Guarding big men

Azubuike is back but still isn’t 100%, coming off the bench so far in the tournament. Opposing bigs have had recent success, including a huge 24 point and 23 rebound performance from Angel Delgado. Kansas as a whole isn’t a great defensive team, and can particularly be vulnerable down low.

This is sort of a preview towards a possible Elite Eight matchup with Duke, but they have a couple of post players with the offensive talent the Big 12 just doesn’t have. How they’ll deal with that will be the key to going to the Final Four.

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