But it's not what you think.

This one is about the Kansas Jayhawks, not Wichita State. And it's not about their run of 10 consecutive Big 12 championships, although that is a factor.

This is about the possibility KU will earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament with a record that could make the team unique in the modern "expanded bracket" era.

Since the NCAA expanded the field to 64 teams in 1985, there have been 116 No. 1 seeds. Only three teams during all that time earned No. 1 seeds with as many as seven losses. Not one got there with eight defeats. After losing Saturday at Oklahoma State, the Jayhawks are 22-7 but own the outright Big 12 title, which was clinched as the result of Iowa State's loss at Kansas State and Texas' loss to Oklahoma.

Kansas still is No. 2 in the CBS Sports RPI rankings, behind Arizona. The Jayhawks have won 12 games against the RPI top 50, seven against the top 25, and no one in Division I is all that close to matching either figure. CBS bracket analyst Jerry Palm has said that Kansas's schedule is the most difficult in the two decades or so he has been tracking the data. To get an idea of how great the difference is, consider that KU's schedule rating is .648, whereas No. 2 Wisconsin is .610 and no other team is even over .600.

Kansas has two games left in the regular season, home against Texas Tech and on the road at West Virginia. It's fairly obvious KU could not afford a loss to either team, neither of which remains an at-large candidate, and still be in the 1 seed conversation.

However, if the Jayhawks were to reach the finals of the Big 12 tournament and lose, their case would remain powerful. The relative strength would depend upon others' performance, but no one outside of Arizona is likely to get to 12-14 top-50 wins.

Over the past five seasons, only two teams that earned No. 1 seeds got as many as the 12 top-50 wins the Jayhawks already own. Interestingly, the predecessors were both KU teams: last year's squad won 13, and the 2010 team got 12.

After KU lost Saturday night at OK State, the talk was more about how poorly the Jayhawks played in allowing the Marcus Smart-led comeback.

"I thought they did a good job guarding us, don't get me wrong, but most of our turnovers I think were more self-inflicted than them pressuring us into making mistakes," coach Bill Self said.

It wasn't really the time to talk NCAA seeding.

This is another day, though, and starts the final week of the college basketball regular season. As Selection Sunday nears, the NCAA men's basketball committee will have two teams from Kansas that will make their seeding debates intriguing.


Spartans' only solution for Appling: Wait and hope


Back in the summer, as he was scouting players he hoped would become Michigan State Spartans, Tom Izzo talked about the most important member of his current team: senior guard Keith Appling.

Izzo told Sporting News he'd issued a challenge to Appling: Become a point guard, or there's a very real chance you'll become a spectator.

Appling listened. He worked absurdly hard to meet his coach's challenge. He worked on his ballhandling, he polished his jump shot, he watched film to gain an understanding of how a point guard should think.

When the 2013-14 season began, Appling emerged not only as a true point guard, but as one of the best in Division I. He had 22 points, 8 assists and 8 rebounds against Kentucky. He scored 27 against Oklahoma and 20 against Ohio State. He earned 16 free throws against Minnesota and made 15 of them.

As the Big Ten Conference season progressed, though, Appling fell victim to pain in right wrist. He sat out three games in early February, but it didn't help. And now that he is back, he isn't. Not really.

And there's not much anyone can do about it except hope.

Following Feb. 23's loss to Michigan, Izzo said it was fruitless to hope for Appling in particular or the team in general to be normal.

"Normality is not going to hit our team," he said. "I still think we have enough to do it without being normal."

They do not have enough to do it, though, without Appling being better. In the four games since his return, he has attempted 12 shots. He scored 14 points. He earned eight free throws and made two. And Michigan State lost three of the four.

It's not unreasonable to suggest that Appling's struggle to use his hands for steals, deflections and whatever contact he might get away with contributed to opponents' 45.5 percent shooting in that stretch.

There inevitably will be suggestions that the Spartans are better off without Appling, using Travis Trice and just moving on. It's not inconceivable the Spartans might perform better in the short term. This is not professional sports, though, however important it may be. That is not how you treat a player in Appling's circumstance.

Appling has been a wonderful player for four seasons, winning a Big Ten regular-season title as starting point guard in 2012 and a Big Ten Tournament in 2013. He has struggled at times as a point guard, but never with the responsibilities of being an excellent teammate. He earned the chance to play through what is ailing him and to achieve whatever is possible under the circumstances.

In the best scenario, Appling begins to feel better and begins to play more like Keith Appling. There's no telling whether that day arrives before the end of March, or the end of the Spartans' season. The only just course is to give him the chance.


Billion ways wrong


In 1995, well before Mark Cuban made his first billion and bought the Dallas Mavericks, the National Basketball Association instituted a salary scale for players who entered the league through its annual draft and fractured the talent development process that had served it so well for decades.

Franchises once were hungry once for players such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to join their teams. Then as the money needed to satisfy the likes of Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber and Glenn Robinson began to escalate, the panicked owners instituted a ceiling on early-career salaries that diminished the incentive for players to enter the league as prepared as possible to be drafted in prime position. Now, teams settle mostly for underdeveloped players who aren’t prepared to contribute in any meaningful way.

At fault for all of this, of course, is the NCAA.

We know this because Mark Cuban told us so.

Speaking to ESPNDallas, Cuban said the NBA should encourage young players to enter the Development League on the way to the draft rather than go through college. Like some random poster on a message board, he said “If the colleges don’t change from the 'one-and-done,' we’ll go after the one.”

The colleges? The 19-year age limit instituted for the 2007 draft is not an NCAA rule. If the NCAA had the power to install such a rule, we can safely wager its membership would vote for a 22-year age limit that would assure most top prospects spend all four years of their available eligibility. No, this is an NBA rule negotiated with the NBA Players Association.

It is Mark Cuban’s rule, whether he wants to own it or not.

Although it's been an enormous upgrade in the development aspect over sending high school players into the league and merely hoping they’d catch on, the whole 'one-and-done' concept appears to be pleasing few. NCAA president Mark Emmert is on record as saying he hates the rule. Former commissioner David Stern wanted it to be a 20-year limit, and his successor Adam Silver recently has argued for the same. Which would again be an upgrade and, perhaps, solve more of the problems with how basketball players progress toward the professional ranks.

Cuban instead chose to aim his dagger at the colleges, which he accused of hypocrisy for accepting players who quite possibly — in some cases quite likely — will not remain for more than a year before entering the draft. He did not address the fact that many personnel executives in his league encourage players who clearly are not prepared for pro ball to enter the draft merely so they can gamble a late-first round pick on them.

In his rant, Cuban talked about his desire to have the NBA promote to high schoolers that they should join the NBA D-League rather than college on their way to the draft. It is important that players have this option if they decide that college or college basketball is not for them, but it’s patently absurd to suggest it could be, for most players or the league itself, a superior course.

The coaches who Cuban suggests talented players should avoid have developed the likes of Grant Hill, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Danny Manning, Chris Webber, Anthony Davis, David West and Lance Stephenson for the league. There are three active Hall of Fame coaches in the ACC alone. They and their colleagues have years of experience with training players who often have minimal introductions to team defense and offensive structure and turning them into presentable teams. NCAA rules have been changed substantially in recent years to allow these coaches to do more work in developing the skills of their players.

What high school players has the D-League sent to the draft? Latavious Williams, who has played in Spain, Germany and the Dominican Republic. (But never the NBA).

What Cuban neglects, in addition to the extraordinary history of talent development the colleges have achieved, is the marketing job they have done on behalf of the league, turning barely-known high school basketball players into household names. More stars will be minted by the end of this month, in the way that Gordon Hayward became known in 2010, or Derrick Rose in 2008, or Dwyane Wade in 2003.

The colleges get no money from the NBA for this service. Mostly, they get criticism.

“I’m not trying to jump to conclusions and say I’ve analyzed this whole thing out,” Cuban said during his interview.

That might have been the only thing he got right.

MORE: When is Selection Sunday? Date, NCAA Tournament plan

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