Kansas Basketball: Ranking the last 29 NCAA Tournament teams
23. 1991-92 (27-5) (11-3 Big 8)
The Jayhawks entered the 1991-92 season as the No. 12 team in the AP Poll under head coach Roy Williams. Rex Walters led the team in scoring with 16.0 points per game, to go along with 3.9 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals per contest. Behind him, Adonis Jordan put up 12.8 points, 4.4 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game.
An 11-3 record in Big 8 play in 1991-92 was good enough to push the Jayhawks to first in the conference standings. They lost three conference games to the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Iowa State Cyclones, but in second and third place, the Cowboys and Tigers were both 8-6. It wasn’t the toughest competition for conference supremacy that year, making Kansas an easy No. 1 seed during the NCAA Tournament selection process.
The Jayhawks won all three games in the conference tournament en route to the Big 8 Conference Tournament championship, beating Oklahoma State 66-57 in the final. The Jayhawks’ conquest through the regular season made them the team to beat entering and in the opening round, they delivered against the No. 16-seeded Howard Bison.
Kansas won their first-round contest 100-67 over the Bison behind 16 points from Greg Ostertag off the bench, 15 points and six assists from Adonis Jordan and 32 assists as a team. They shot 60.9 percent from the floor, despite going 0-of-6 from the 3-point line.
In the second round, things got dicey for the Jayhawks against the No. 9-seeded UTEP Miners. Kansas only dished out 15 assists in this one, as the Miners pulled off an upset after 18 points from Johnny Melvin, 14 points from Marlon Maxey and 12 points from Ralph Davis. Maxey would go on to play two years in the NBA.
The Jayhawks fell as the No. 1 seed in the second round, the third time it’s happened in their last 29 trips to the NCAA Tournament. It’s never good losing as a top seed, even worse losing before the final weekend. The team had its weaknesses but still had quite the journey in making the NCAA Tournament field.