KU’s NCAA Tournament Paths Throughout the Years

The difficulty of winning 6 games in March/April and reaching the pinnacle of the sport can differ on the year. For a team to maximize its chances of cutting down the nets, it is helpful to have a high seed but also to get some breaks along the way with upsets and good matchups in the bracket.

Since 2004 and the beginning of the Bill Self era, Kansas has been to 4 Final Fours and won 2 National Championships. Thinking back on the past 22 tournaments, fans will tend to rue the missed opportunities such as 2011’s Elite 8 loss but often ignore breaks such as the 2022 path (which saw easier-than-expected games at each level along the way). What we want to analyze is exactly how many Final 4 appearances and National Championships KU fans should have reasonably expected during this period and compare to what was actually achieved.

To do so, we mapped out each of KU’s paths from the 2004 tournament through 2026. Now obviously KU didn’t appear in all of the games or face all of these opponents. But, had they continued to win, we looked at who their opponent would have been in that round. From here, we estimate KU’s chances of winning by using the final KenPom adjusted efficiency marks for both teams and historic winning percentages. In years where there is chalk–favorites winning along the path–KU’s odds of making the Final Four let alone winning the Title are much smaller.

KU Throughout the Years

Kansas has an estimated 4.44 Final Fours over this period, indicating the team has underachieved slightly (4 actual Final Fours). The odds the team makes the final weekend range from as low as 1.3% (2024) to 68.3% (2008). The table below lists each season in reverse chronological order.

An “x” marks the years KU earned a 1-seed, years that should presumably be easier paths to the Final Four. Of the 10 seasons that KU has gotten a top seed, the Jayhawks have an expected 3.31 Final Fours (with 3 actual trips to the F4 as 1’s). Color-coding makes things really stand out. Whereas the program had a run of more green/yellow from around 2007 – 2018, since that time the program hasn’t had favorable paths to the Final Four. The last three years in particular have been mostly helpless. KU had only 0.05 expected F4’s over this span.

One thing to note is that these paths are heavily dependent on KU’s relative strength as a team. The ’08 team didn’t just face a favorable path to San Antonio, it was also the best Kansas team in the KenPom era (according to KP). In order to isolate which paths were most favorable independent of KU’s own relative strength, we changed the odds to reflect a KenPom rating of 30.00 instead of whatever KU’s rating was that season. This changes up the numbers a bit, allowing us to isolate which paths were truly easiest or most difficult based on opponent quality.

Historically, a 30-rated KP team is usually a 1-seed and has some of the best odds to cut down the nets in April of anyone that year. Given KU’s paths, we can see that such a team has as high of odds as 61.9% and as low as odd as 8.5% regarding making the Final Four. Of any of the seasons KU actually did make the Final Four, the odds of a KP30 team doing so were at least 29.1% (2018). So KU’s actual success in March has been helped by favorable paths in those seasons. We can also see that benefit to being a 1-seed with the average odds for a KP30 team with a 1-seed in KU’s paths being 37.9% (keeping with historic F4 odds for 1’s) while for non-1-seed paths the average odds of a Final Four drops to 24.0%.

Looking again at just the three most-recent seasons, a KP30 team in KU’s spots in the brackets would have been expected to make just 0.35 Final Fours¹. KU’s success, or lack thereof in recent NCAA Tournaments isn’t solely due to them having down seasons; its also due to more-difficult paths, though this is in part due to them playing tougher paths because of worser seeds. But KU also had 4-seeds in 2004 (47.8%) and 2006 (26.5%) with far more-favorable paths than what they’ve seen recently.

The next thing we will examine is KU’s likelihood of winning a National Championship. Same exercise as before, but now we are factoring in the odds KU also wins the final two games of its would-be NCAA Tournament paths.

KU has had four real chances to win a title and converted on two of them. If we add all of the odds together, KU is expected 1.31 National Championships over this span. I don’t think enough fans recognize how solid 2 NC’s over this period has been. It’s difficult to win 6 games in a row in this tournament. Again, KU’s paths have been more achievable win the team earns a 1-seed. The only two seasons where a non-1-seed Kansas team had a better than 2% chance of winning the Title was 2014 and 2012.

If we strip away KU’s actual strength and look at the paths to the Title from a KP30 team, we see the easiest paths of 2022 and 2011 still only result in a national championship less than 30% of the time. It pays to be a 1-seed, but not all 1-seed paths are equal. 2013 was especially difficult with 4-seed Michigan (#4 overall on KP) and potentially 3-seeded Florida (#2 overall) along the way.

2025 and 2026 were the hardest seasons for a KP30 team, not just because KU was in tougher spots in the bracket as a 7-seed and a 4-seed, but also because of how much better elite teams have gotten. Just reaching the level of 30.00 no longer guarantees a team a 1-seed (2025 saw a record-tying 6 teams with an adjusted efficiency of 30.00 and 2026 will have 8 or perhaps 9 teams reach this mark).

Looking at a few other seasons, the 2014 one stands out as a potentially-doable run given a few breaks (this was the season where 7-seed UConn beat 8-seed Kentucky for the National Championship). With a healthy Embiid, perhaps Kansas makes more noise. Considering KU was a 2-seed in the same exact spot just a year later, the 2.4% probability of 2015 shows just how much things can differ season-to-season. 2008 slips quite a bit when we compare it to other seasons, proving that the strength of that Jayhawk team really helped it secure the title. 2023 was the last time KU had a real chance, with difficult games in the regional (UConn/Gonzaga) being counteracted by potentially easier games in the F4 and CG rounds (Miami FL/San Diego St.).

In closing, a KenPom team rated 30.00 and given KU’s path in each of the last 22 brackets would be expected to win 2.21 NC’s and go to 6.68 F4’s. In order to arrive at the actual NC’s KU has won in the Self era (2), a hypothetical replacement team with the same KP rating each season would need to be +29.47. For 4 Final Fours, this number is lower (+25.57) but still very good overall.

1. This works out to a 32% chance of at least one Final Four. ↩︎