LIV Golf Achievements

Here is the top 10 in the standings for 2026 through 4 events:

Jon Rahm – 466.00
Bryson DeChambeau – 276.90
Elvis Smylie – 238.56
Anthony Kim – 230.51
Thomas Detry – 166.10
Thomas Pieters – 158.26
Richard T. Lee – 147.05
Peter Uihlein – 140.98
Lucas Herbert – 86.91
Lee Westwood – 86.76

Barely escaping relegation a season ago, Lee Westwood has made an improbable comeback in the league and is currently in the top 10 despite playing in only 2 of the first 4 events. He has sealed his position for 2027 as well.

For the first time ever, LIV is earning OWGR points. Here is the total cumulative OWGR points for the top 10.

Jon Rahm – 54.86
Bryson DeChambeau – 29.98
Elvis Smylie – 25.63
Anthony Kim – 23.13
Thomas Pieters – 17.89
Thomas Detry – 17.02
Peter Uihlein – 15.52
Richard T. Lee – 13.45
Dean Burmester – 9.94
Lucas Herbert – 9.33

Aside from winners, it is tough to really build much OWGR equity only playing LIV events. My guess is that the guys who want to get into the majors will look to supplement their LIV schedules with European Tour events (and the occasional Asian Tour event). Since the OWGR only awards points to the top 10 (and ties), only 30 total guys have earned any OWGR points in LIV over these first four events of 2026.

The points system internal to LIV changed in 2026, so we are now tracking career points in reference to first place that tournament. In other words, for each tournament in LIV, the winner receives 1 point and each subsequent place receives the proportion of actual points in relation to first. Here are the top 10 in terms of total (adjusted) points:

Joaquin Niemann – 14.79
Jon Rahm – 13.86
Bryson DeChambeau – 12.10
Talor Gooch – 11.68
Cameron Smith – 10.92
Dustin Johnson – 10.49
Sergio Garcia – 10.12
Brooks Koepka – 9.95
Patrick Reed – 9.18
Carlos Ortiz – 8.32

So far in 30 career LIV events, Jon Rahm’s average point allocation is 0.47, or half-way between 2nd and 3rd place using 2026 point allocation. Rahm’s career is equivalent to a golfer who alternately finishes 2nd and then 3rd for 29 straight events. Rahm’s actual results include an insane 28/30 on Top 10’s (other two were a W/D injury and T11) with 3 wins.

The Team Standings through four events show the following:

Ripper GC – 80.75
4Aces GC – 78.00
Legion XIII – 39.75
Torque GC – 34.75
Smash GC – 32.00
Southern Guards GC – 25.25
Crushers GC – 21.25
RangeGoats – 19.25
Fireballs GC – 19.25
Cleeks Golf Club – 14.00
Korean Golf Club – 13.75
HyFlyers GC – 12.00
Majesticks Golf Club – 10.00

The new relegation system means that the top 34 golfers are in the Lock Zone (Green) and get their spots in LIV 2027. From 35-46 is the Open Zone (Yellow) meaning they are eligible to play in 2027 if signed by a team. Last off-season there was some confusion surrounding Jinichiro Kozuma, who was eligible to return but never signed. Those in the Open Zone can still qualify back into LIV if not picked up. From 47 on down is the Relegation Zone (Red) which means the player has to leave LIV but can still qualify through the other means (win International Series on Asian Tour or through Qualifying series).

With that in mind, here are some notable storylines surrounding the zones through 23% of the season.

Mixed results for the “Young Guns.” There are 11 golfers on LIV who are 27 or younger, and currently 5 are in the Green Zone, 2 in the Yellow, and 4 in the Red. LIV needs to continue to acquire young talent to stay relevant, so it has vested interest in these guys playing well (being good). The hope is they will be able to compete in majors and bring more credibility to LIV.

On the positive side, Elvis Smylie won in his LIV debut, is third in the league standings, and is tied for 7th in LIV total SG. Joaquin Niemann has started playing better again and is in 11th place, followed by 14th place Matt Wolff, 16th place David Puig, and 24th place Josele Ballester.

Caleb Surratt sits in 35th, the best spot in the Yellow Zone. Just behind him is Legion XIII teammate Tom McKibbin. These two are still relatively safe provided they do not collapse during the back-half of the schedule.

On the negative side, HyFlyers signee Michael La Sasso is in 52nd and 7.87 points outside of the Yellow Zone with finishes of T41, T32, T55, and 55. His average SG is -1.70 per round. As someone who turns 22 next month, it isn’t unexpected he would struggle, but it would be awkward to see him relegated after being rushed into a league he didn’t qualify for. Other 20-somethings in danger of relegation are Minkyu Kim (51st), Luis Masaveu (53rd) and reserve Ben Schmidt (57th).

On the other side of things would be the aging captains. Currently Ian Poulter, the Majesticks co-captain who barely qualified for this season, is in the Red Zone at 49th, 2.49 points below the final Yellow spot. Bubba Watson is in 45th place, safe for now but only by 1.96 points. Martin Kaymer, who missed Adelaide, has only earned 10.40 points and sits 14.25 points below the final Yellow Zone spot. Kaymer’s losing 1.53 strokes per round, indicating that his level of play is not sustainable if he wants to avoid relegation for next year. Lastly, Phil Mickelson has missed all 4 events so far due to a personal family matter, so his status is very much TBD.

Professional Golf

This landing page is for golf entries. The data presented is not likely to be easily found elsewhere. Click on links below for more detail.

Future Major Projections (for 2026)

Future Majors Projections (for 2025)

Future Major Projections (for 2024)

Expected Majors (Based Upon Pre-Tournament Odds)

Expected Majors (Based Upon Actual Play)

Top Major Performers

Masters Winning Scores

Team Golf – Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup

LIV Tour Achievements

Random Jayhawk Player Breakdown 1

This is a new segment for the off-season in which a Kansas player will be randomly selected to have an in-depth statistical breakdown of his career as a Jayhawk. Since 1994, that is the last 30 seasons, there have been 172 players to appear in a regular season game wearing the crimson and blue. In our initial installment, the random player selected is…

Darrell Arthur

Not a bad first random selection! Darrell Arthur played for the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons. For simplicity, we will refer to the former season as ’07 and latter as ’08. Arthur came in as a highly-touted true freshman and left after his sophomore year to enter the NBA draft. He was selected 27^th overall in the 2008 NBA draft and played in 9 seasons for the Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets. He played in 503 NBA games and averaged 6.5 PPG over his NBA career. But this write-up is about his college career, and this is where we will now focus.

2007 season

According to College Basketball Reference’s RSCI Top 100 rankings, Darrell Arthur came in as the #11 prospect in his class. He was in the same incoming class as Sherron Collins and Brady Morningstar. Arthur played in all 38 games and produced the following traditional stats:

Arthur came in and performed right away. In his first collegiate game he scored 12 points with 6 rebounds and 3 blocks. The next game, the upset loss to Oral Roberts, Arthur scored 22 on 10/16 FG’s. He would put up his season high in points the next game, a bounce-back win against Towson, with 26 and 8. He had 19 and 9 in the team’s big win in Vegas against that great defending (and eventual) champion Florida Gators team. And while he struggled some during conference play, he was still a very positive player. His best conference game was against Iowa State where he had 15 and 11.

For a freshman to come in and produce, particularly during a time when KU had Julian Wright, Darnell Jackson, and Sasha Kaun; shows the level of play Arthur brought to the floor. He forced Self to play him by how good he was.

Arthur’s advanced stats, calculated by Basketball Reference, are as follows:

Arthur’s shooting was excellent, scoring efficiently by getting close baskets while having a solid mid-range game. His usage shows that he was a scorer, not someone who shot well only due to shot selection. Frosh Darrell Arthur could score. His rebounding percentage was fine for a freshman. His win share of 4.8 was fourth on the team that season, however his WS/40 was the team’s best. There’s an argument to be made here that he deserved more minutes. All of KU’s four bigs were good enough to start elsewhere, which made it tough to find more playing time.

Arthur’s value stats, which incorporate the most information and are thus the most accurate, show this:

This indicates that Arthur added 2.19 points of value per game above that of a bubble-player, with value added nearly equally between offense and defense. Arthur didn’t get routinely torched on defense (as some underclassmen do), and had active hands to not only grab rebounds but also get steals and force turnovers.

On a per-possession basis, Arthur’s value was the team’s best in ’07 at +6.61 points above bubble per 100 possessions. This is more evidence arguing in favor of Arthur’s playing time. Arthur’s best game of the season, and in fact the best outing of anyone that season, is estimated to be his performance against Towson. He had a +13.52 score, opponent-adjusted.

2008 season

Julian Wright, the team’s starting power forward the year prior, left for the NBA draft, which provided an opportunity for Arthur to start at that position his sophomore year. He would do just that, playing in all 40 games and starting in all but one (senior night). Along with his freshman year, his sophomore campaign’s stats are represented below:

Arthur’s stats increased across the board, aside from small drops on blocks/steals. He was the second-leading scorer behind Brandon Rush and second-leading rebounder behind Darnell Jackson. His shooting and scoring abilities increased as his minutes grew, leading to a more-efficient season that was also much more productive.

Arthur’s season high was 23 against Baylor, the team he almost went to. While he never touched the 26 he scored the season prior, he was a more reliable double-figure scorer, putting up 10+ points in 28 of 40 games. His most important game as a leading-scorer was his 20-point performance against Memphis in the 2008 National Championship game.

“Shady”’s advanced stats show a bump across the board, with a slight decline in usage. His win share increased by a full win, with a slight downtick on the per-40 metric. More minutes mean more concern with foul trouble, fatigue, etc. so this downtick isn’t anything alarming. The manipulation of the numbers indicate that he was heavily relied upon to be a leading player and that he performed.

Next graphic will show Arthur’s value stats.

In playing more minutes yet staying offensively productive and defensively agile, Arthur increased his per game value score to over +3.00. On a per-possession basis, he was second on the team at +7.26 per 100 possessions (Mario Chalmers). He was the team’s MVP for 8 games, including the National Championship game. On an opponent-adjusted score, Arthur’s best game in the 2008 season was against Texas in the Big 12 Tournament championship game, when he was +13.42 against the Longhorns.

As many KU fans know, Arthur was going to commit to Baylor before changing his mind and going with Kansas, due to a dream he had of Kansas winning the national championship. Arthur’s career is highlighted by this game. While Chalmers had the highlight shot to tie it in regulation, Darrell’s play throughout kept Kansas in it and helped lead the comeback charge. He hit an 18’ jump-shot to cut the 9-point lead to 7 with 1:57 left. He had a clutch basket with 1:00 left to cut the deficit to 2. And he added a dunk off a Chalmers feed early in OT to put KU up 4.

Summary

Let’s get to the ultimate question, which is how do we judge Arthur’s career at Kansas when compared to other Jayhawks? This can get tricky as there’s different ways to think about it. College basketball is different than other levels, in that those who are very good will move on sooner and play fewer than 4 seasons. If we take Arthur’s sophomore season: 12.8 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and a +3.08 Adj. PPG +/-; we see a good season that is nevertheless bested by numerous bigs in the Self-era: Perry Ellis, Wayne Simien, Thomas Robinson, Marcus Morris, Markieff Morris, Cole Aldrich, etc. Each of these players, in terms of Wins Above Replacement, had better Kansas careers than Darrell Arthur. For reference, Arthur’s career WAR is calculated to be 8.35. The worst of the above list is Markieff Morris at 9.75. Simien is up at 19.27 WAR.

But most of these names had their breakout seasons as upperclassmen and added their most value later in their careers. Since Arthur wasn’t around for potential junior or senior seasons, we don’t really have an apples-to-apples comparison regarding careers.

If we look only at a player’s freshman and sophomore years, we get a comparison of how good Arthur was while at Kansas compared to other underclass PF’s and C’s.

Here we see Arthur better than the others over their first two seasons. He was better than Williams-era stalwarts as well; namely LaFrentz, Collison, and Gooden.

If we look at all positions, only Devon Dotson (11.51 WAR) tops Arthur when looking at all KU players’ freshman/sophomore years over the past 30 seasons. Arthur’s production as an underclassman is 2^nd best of any Jayhawk over the past 30 seasons. This seems noteworthy for someone who can get overlooked when fans are devising their dream lineups. Incidentally, Devon Dotson is in the same boat when it comes to great KU guards.

Regarding all time seasons and Adj. PPG +/-, Arthur’s 2008 sophomore campaign is 49^th and his 2007 freshman campaign is 80^th (out of 426 player-seasons). These two years were very good but not great seasons when looking at all-time performances. When we look only at sophomore years, Arthur’s season is either 6^th or 7^th best (depending if Simien’s 2003 injury-plagued season is counted) out of 98. His frosh season was 9^th best out of 119.

If one thinks of Darrell Arthur as one of KU’s great power forwards, he isn’t in the wrong. However, if we are just counting what a player did at KU, and recognize that players who stay for 4 years can have more of an impact than those that only play 1 or 2, we’d place Arthur as 33^rd in career WAR out of 172 (81^st percentile). Sandwiched in between Tyshawn Taylor and Travis Releford.

Wins Against Expectation in the 64+ Team Tournament Era

Since 1985, when it expanded to 64 teams, the NCAA Tournament has been held 38 times. In this period, there have been four programs separate themselves from everyone else. Duke (102), North Carolina (96), Kansas (93), and Kentucky (84) lead the others in terms of tournament wins during this period. Michigan State (62) and Connecticut (61) are next in line.

In this period, a 1-seed has won 3.29 games per tournament. A 2-seed is 2.33 games, a 3-seed 1.85 games, and a 4-seed 1.55 games. If we take each program’s collective expected wins each year on Selection Sunday after the brackets have been set, we have these programs as having the most expected wins in the period from 1985-present:

Kansas: 89.9

Duke: 88.9

North Carolina: 77.8

Kentucky: 67.3

Arizona: 63.1

This list can be thought of as showing which programs have had the best (collective) regular seasons since 1985. Kansas and Duke are essentially tied, with North Carolina third but comfortably ahead of the rest before Kentucky and then Arizona round out the top 5. Notice how Arizona is on this list but not the one above. Despite being seeded quite well throughout the years, Arizona has underperformed expectation in the Big Dance. Next, we will examine the top and bottom teams, relative to performance.

There are 10 teams which have won 10 more NCAA Tournament games than they were expected to (given their earned seeds). The list is as follows:

North Carolina: +18.2

Connecticut: +17.9

Kentucky: +16.7

Florida: +14.1

Michigan State: +13.5

Duke: +13.1

Michigan: +12.3

UCLA: +11.2

Louisville: +10.6

Butler: +10.5

It should be mentioned that these results do not take into account vacated wins. Louisville in particular lost numerous tournament wins during the 2014-2017 period because of its NCAA penalties. Other programs on this list have also had vacated win that would affect the totals had this been considered.

Kansas, despite its reputation of underachieving in March, is +3.1 on this list and number 22 (of 303 teams). It is also tops in the Big 12 in this metric.

On the flip side, there are a number of programs that haven’t performed to expectation. Before the list is revealed, can you think who these might be? Which programs seem to have good regular seasons, only to “choke” success away in March? Here is the bottom 10 list, starting with the worst program:

Purdue: -10.8

Pittsburgh: -9.3

Illinois: -8.7

Virginia: -8.4

BYU: -7.8

Missouri: -7.5

Cincinnati: -7.3

Oklahoma: -7.2

Arizona: -7.1

New Mexico: -7.1

One point in defense of these schools. In order to be on this list, a program has to be good enough to make numerous tournaments. Purdue is a perennial NCAA Tournament team, having made the Big Dance 14 of the last 17 years (Matt Painter’s tenure) there was a Tourney. The Boilermakers have had a top-4 seed in 8 of these seasons, showing they’ve played quality basketball in the regular season. But for some reason, March Madness has been more sadness than gladness.

Of the 303 programs which have made an NCAA Tournament since 1985 (i.e. the Round of 64, play-in “First Four” games are excluded in terms of results here), 112 (or 37%) have not won a single game. Many of these programs are low-major types which have only been to the Big Dance at most few times as a 14-seed or worse. By far the most notable program to never win an NCAA Tournament game is Nebraska, which was expected to win 6.1 games during this span. The biggest upset loss for the Cornhuskers was in 1991, when they were upset in the First Round as a 3-seed.

Gonzaga is an interesting case. The Bulldogs’ first NCAA appearance was in 1995, but since 1999 the Zags have been as consistent as anyone. First, they were America’s darlings and the Cinderella which made the Elite 8. Since that time, they’ve developed into a good program, then a great one, and now borderline elite. They’ve earned 5 1-seeds since 2013 (second-most in that span behind Kansas) and finished national runner-up twice. The only thing missing is a National Championship. Because of this, some think Gonzaga has underachieved, but the Zags are actually +6.5 wins better than expected given their seeds. With 45 Tournament victories, they’ve won only 1 fewer game than Villanova (3 titles) has in that time. If we restrict the period to start with 1999, the year Gonzaga made its first Cinderella run, the Zags are tied 6^th (with UConn) in terms of Tourney wins.

We’ll finish with Kansas. Bill Self’s teams have won 45 Tournament games in his tenure (including 2023, when Norm Roberts was the bench coach for the Tournament games due to Self’s health issue). However, his teams have been expected to win 50.1 games, for an underachievement of 5.1 games. Roy Williams’ tenure was marked by 35 wins against 32.5 expected wins, for an overachievement of 2.5 games. It was Larry Brown who did the best, winning 13 games against an expected 7.3 games. This is an overachievement of 5.7 games. In total, this adds up to +3.1 against expectation.

Tournament Runs by Champion since 2010

The 2023 Connecticut Huskies won the NCAA Tournament in dominant fashion. Each win was by 10+ points, and they never seemed to be in any real peril throughout their run. I wanted to examine each champion’s path to the title over the years to see which were the most dominant and which ones were the most stressful.

To quantify this, I settled on three different metrics. Margin of Victory, average score throughout each game, and average lowest winning percentage during each of the 6 games (per KenPom). Because these final two metrics rely on info that has only recently been provided, this list will only go back to 2010. Thus, only the previous 13 champions are included.

Let’s look a bit closer at each metric and see why each was chosen as a way to measure Champion run domination.

Margin of Victory – Simply put, the higher the MOV, the more dominant you were that game. This one is the easiest to calculate and can be applied going back much further than 2010. Since 2010, all but two champions have an average winning margin of +10.0 in their six game spurts.

Average +/- Throughout Game – While MOV tells us quite a bit, it cannot relay another level of dominance/stress, which is the margin during the game. A team which wins by 10 by making a bunch of FT’s at the end of a once-close game was less dominant than a team that coasted to a double-digit lead and held it throughout the second-half, only to give up some late baskets to its opponent once the game was out of reach. Dominant teams control the game throughout, and this is reflected in average margin throughout the game.

Lowest Winning Percentage per Game (averaged) – This metric is made possible by KenPom’s 2010 and later game data. He calculates at which point in the game the winning team’s lowest chances were (per his model). For instance, in the 2022 National Championship game, his model calculated that KU had a 16.7% chance of winning at halftime, the lowest point of the game. By averaging these numbers, we can compare how “comfortable” each champion’s run was relative to one another. The lowest point for any champion during that time was 2019 Virginia’s Final 4 game against Auburn. Down 61-57 with 17 seconds left, Virginia had a 5.5% chance of winning at that point.

Combining the metrics – Lastly, we will combine these metrics and compare them using percentiles. The range of possible values are 0.0000 to 1.0000. The greener the number, the closer to 1. The redder the number, the closer to 0.

2018 Villanova had the most dominant run according to this system, with 2022 UConn coming in second. The least dominant was 2014 UConn, which won as a 7-seed but was projected to lose at some point in each of its 6 games. In fact, it had to comeback just to force overtime to even get out of its R64 game. 2022 Kansas is in the middle, placing 9^th out of 13 but still very close to 0.5000 from a percentile look. That team had some stressful moments, including halftime deficits and close wins, but also some dominant moments as well.

There’s no real formula to success when it comes to being a champion. Sure, you would like to win each game by double-figures and with ease. But there are some teams that aren’t on this list despite having done just that for 4 or 5 games.

Self* Teams and the Round of 32

In the Bill Self era, a common critique is that KU teams struggle in the Round of 32. A similar complaint is that KU teams struggle in the second game of the weekend series in the Tourney, i.e. not just the Round of 32 but also the Elite 8.

Let’s look at Self’s W-L record in the NCAA Tournament by round while at Kansas. *These games include the 2023 Tourney, in which Norm Roberts was the acting coach on the bench as Coach Self was recovering from his health issue.

There is a steady drop-off from the R64 to R32, but this should be expected given that the second round games will be against good teams, not sub-100 KenPom teams as it is most years in the first round. But when KU teams make it to the S16, they do quite well, only to see another steep drop in the E8. The next table compares the records of KU in the first games of the Tourney pods (R64, S16, F4) against the second games of these pods (R32, E8, CG).

This shows quite a contrast. Again, opponent quality is likely at play here. But there does seem to be some indication that KU plays better in its first games (when it has time to rest/prepare) than its second games (which occur with only one day of rest/prep). To test this, we will see how KU did against its projected margin using Vegas odds.

This table recreates the earlier one, with the average Cover Amount column added. This column shows how much better (or worse) KU does in points against its cover amount. For the R64, KU’s average margin is 2.7 points better than what the lines showed. But when we get to the R32, KU is 2.9 points worse than their lines. The last time KU covered a R32 was in 2017 vs. Michigan State. They are 0-5 ATS in this round since. The second weekend games are even more pronounced. KU is +4.5 in the S16 and a shocking -4.9 in the E8. And this was with KU going 2-0 in its last two E8 appearances (2018 vs. Duke, 2022 vs. Miami FL). Before 2018, Self’s teams were 10.28 points worse than expected on average in the E8 round.

For whatever reason, KU teams under Self do better in the NCAA Tourney when they have more time to prepare. Last, we’ll expand the table again to show KU’s best performance (against Vegas expectation) during the Self era.

KU Tournament Paths in the Self-era

The NCAA Tournament also goes by the moniker “March Madness,” reflecting the unpredictability of outcomes. Kansas has been no stranger to this madness, as it has been bounced early on multiple occasions as a highly-favored team but also won the 1988 NCAA Tourney as a 6-seed.

Each path to a possible title is unique. Some years, the bracket can open up for a team as upsets clear the way for a better chance at success. Other years, the bracket goes chalk and difficult opponents are faced. We will explore how varied KU’s possible paths have been down below.

Also at play is the idea of the possible opponent. Had KU defeated Arkansas this year in the R32, its next game would have been against Connecticut in the S16. For fans of any team, viewing potential matchups down the line is commonplace after the brackets are released on Selection Sunday. But after the team loses, the would-be matchups become less intriguing. For this exercise, we will be examining KU’s would-be matchups had they advanced.

We will restrict our study to the Bill Self era. This gives us 19 seasons worth of Tournament data (Self has been the coach at KU for 20 seasons, but 2020 is excluded obviously). For data, we will use KenPom’s final results of that season to serve as a team’s relative strength. We will then match up Kansas against its actual or hypothetical opponents for any given round. For years where KU makes the championship game, these opponents will all be actual opponents. For other years, some opponents will be those KU would have faced had it kept winning. Then, using KenPom’s numbers, KU will be compared to said opponent to get an estimated points spread. Next, these point spreads will be converted to winning percentage estimates using historic data from Team Rankings and a smoothing process. For instance, if a team is 7.7-point favorites (per KenPom), then that team wins the games an estimated 78.0% of the time (using the smoothed historic numbers). It is this 78.0% number that gets used to estimate Final 4 and National Championship odds.

We’ll start with Final 4 odds. Below is a table which calculates KU’s odds of making the Final 4 given the path that occurred.

The seasons with actual F4 appearances are highlighted in green. The average F4 chance for KU in the Self-era is 23.1%, with conditional formatting being set as Red for 1/10 chance, Yellow for 1/4 chance, and Green for a 1/2 chance. There are two factors at play. First is the draw, how the bracket turns out. More upsets in your region means an easier path. The second factor is the strength of the team, and this also turns out to be important. For 2008, KU’s biggest break was in the S16, when it faced 12-seed Villanova. For a S16 game, it was a much weaker opponent than normal. The E8 game, against 10-seed Davidson, was not really a break. Despite the double-digit seed, Davidson was about as strong as the average E8 opponent or potential opponent KU faces/could face.

KU took advantage of 2 of its better chances to make the Final Four in 2008 and 2022. The biggest chances wasted were in 2010 and 2011. KU’s toughest opponent to make it to the F4 (and in fact the NC game) in 2011 was actually its R32 opponent Illinois. For 2010, KU would have been favored by 8.2 and 9.3 points for its would-be S16 and E8 games.

The 2012 path was Self’s fifth-best chance, which he converted by getting to New Orleans. 2018, which was a year in which KU didn’t get any seeding breaks or upsets, was the most-unlikely F4 for Self. Next we look at National Championship chances.

This table will look similar to the Final Four table. Note that the conditional formatting is set at Red for a 1/50 chance, Yellow for a 1/20 chance, and Green for a 1/5 chance. KU’s 2008 and 2022 titles are highlighted.

Self has had four really good chances, given the strength of his team and the draw he received (2008, 2010, 2011, 2022). But “really good” regarding odds of a title in the NCAA Tournament is still far less than even a 30% chance. He cashed in on two of those chances when just one title would have been above expectation. Aside from those four seasons, KU’s best title chance was below 10%. It’s really hard to win 6 games in the Big Dance, especially if you don’t get some breaks.

Removing KU’s team strength from the equation

Above there were 2 variables, the path that played out in that specific bracket and the relative strength of each KU team. As the 2008 squad was KU’s strongest, it isn’t unsurprising that it had better odds than other KU teams. What we will now do is remove the KU-specific component and look at each tournament path assuming a team with a 30.00 KenPom AdjEM is facing it. 30.00 is a very good AdjEM, and most teams that achieve that mark will earn a 1-seed. As good as KU has been in the past 20 seasons, its average AdjEM is 25.82, well below this 30.00 mark. It has only reached an AdjEM of 30.00 in 3 seasons under Self; 2008, 2010 and 2020.

This exercise will serve a dual-purpose. It is this 2020 team that didn’t get a chance to make a run for a title. With an AdjEM of 30.23, it is very close to the 30.00 number. We can plug the 2020 team for other KU teams in other brackets to analyze how successful it would have expected to be. For the first table, we see which paths were the easiest and which were the hardest to get to a Final 4. Later we will look at the National Championship table.

The 2022 path was the easiest, as that KU team faced weak S16 and E8 opponents. Unsurprisingly, 2011 was also a good break. However, none of these paths can remotely be described as a “cake-walk.” Even the 2011 path is expected to miss a F4 nearly half the time. On average, a KenPom team at 30.00 AdjEM (abbreviated from now on as KP30) is only expected to make 33.3% of Final Fours. Looking at the 10 years KU got a 1-seed, this KP30 team makes the F4 37.9% of the time. In the other 9 seasons (either as a 2,3, or 4 seed), this KP30 team makes the F4 only 28.1% of the time. Even the Final Four is flat-out hard to get to.

With National Championship chances, what first stands out is how much 2008 drops once you account for KU’s strength that season. The Final Four was loaded, with all four one-seeds. Having to beat North Carolina and Memphis was not easy. All told, a KP30 team getting KU’s path in 2008 was expected to win only 11.2% of the time. Incidentally, 11.2% was also the average chance of winning a national championship for a KP30 team.

KU’s easiest paths occurred in 2022 and 2011, with KU cashing in 2022. 2014, with teams like 11-seed Dayton, 7-seed UConn, and 8-seed Kentucky in the path; was an underrated good chance at a trophy. KU’s toughest paths have come relatively recently in the Self-tenure. The 2015 path would have been the only time KU had to face a chalk-bracket, as it would have had to have beaten three #1 seeds (including number-1 overall Kentucky) to earn a trophy.

The run of 2016-2018 also feels better in retrospect. While KU got three 1-seeds in this span, they only reached one Final Four and never played for a title in a championship game. But the cumulative expected titles a KP30 team would achieve in total for these three years is only 0.252. They turned out to be tough draws.

To tie this to the 2020 team, that group would have been expected to reach a Final Four, at best, 40% of the time. A National Championship would be 15% at best. Even as a 1-seed with a typical path, KP30 teams are likely to still get beat somewhere along the way. Winning 6 is tough.

Last, to highlight how difficult the tournament is, we’ll look at what AdjEM would be needed to reach certain thresholds. For instance, it would take an AdjEM of 34.72 for a team to reach the Final 4 50% of the time given the draws KU got over the past 19 tournaments. Even if we limit the draws to 1-seed paths only, the AdjEM would have to be 33.36. This is a level of play that only one KU team has reached in the 20-year Self-era. For National Championships, this level is more remarkable. To win a title 20% of the time, you’d need a 32.37 AdjEM. To win it 25% of the time, 34.00. To win it 33.3% of the time, the level of play would have to reach 36.30. To have even odds of winning, the estimated AdjEM would have to be 40.53. This type of performance has only achieved by the 1999 Duke team which was National Runners-up.

Off-Season Filler: Returning Minutes by Season

For 2024, KU’s roster will likely lose the following four players: Jalen Wilson, Kevin McCullar, Cam Martin, Gradey Dick. Of these four, three were starters in 2023 and logged serious minutes. Gradey is the most likely name to return despite having the highest draft potential, but as it sits today, we will project him going to the NBA after one season and leave him off the 2024 roster.

In the past 29 seasons, KU has returned 59% of its minutes played from the prior year. This is calculated by looking at a particular roster (say 2023), and calculating what percentage of possible minutes were logged by this roster in the season prior (which would be 2022 in the example). For 2023, KU returned 2022 starters in Jalen Wilson and Dejuan Harris. It also returned 2022 bench players such as K.J. Adams and Joseph Yesufu among a few others. Adding up these players’ 2022 minutes over total 2022 minutes, we calculate the 2023 roster had 37% of its minutes returning.

There is a small correlation between minutes returning and level of success. The R^2 is 0.2324. Judging success as the average game-score a certain roster produces, the best 5 Jayhawk teams in the past 29 seasons have been above the average returning minutes: 2008 (85% returning), 1997 (91%), 2010 (89%), 2002 (68%), and 2003 (62%). Of all the really-good Kansas teams, only the 2020 team (43% returning minutes) was noticeably below average. But even this is misleading. That 2020 team featured Udoka Azubuike, a senior by class who was injured for most of 2019. If you took Doke’s 2018 minutes played (the season in which he was mostly healthy), the returning minutes goes above 50%.

If we look at the correlation between returning minutes and NCAA success, there is a lower correlation (but still some with an R^2 of 0.0512). Looking at only the six Final 4 teams from this period, the teams had returning minutes of: 2022 (71%), 2018 (47%), 2012 (32%), 2008 (85%), 2003 (68%), 2002 (62%). In average, the Final 4 teams have 61% of returning minutes, slightly higher than non-F4 teams (58%). Again, low correlation here.

The 2024 outlook, as it sits today (3/22/23), would be that KU returns 52% of its minutes. If we project out this number to team success using historic rates over the past three decades, this would produce an average game-score of +9.14 (about a low-1/high-2 seed most years) and an estimated number of NCAA Tournament wins at 2.2. The following table has the data discussed in visual form. For the Factor column, this is the number of possible minutes played by returnees, with the highest possible number being 5.000. This column is divided by 5 to get the % column which gets color-formatted.

It should be mentioned that returning minutes aren’t the only thing used to project team success when CtH publishes preseason expectation numbers in October. Not all returning players are great, and sometimes newcomers add higher value than expected. With the transfer portal changes, a large share of a roster’s newcomers have proven themselves to be valuable college players, something that doesn’t get captured by this exercise. KU having Kevin McCullar in ’23 and Remy Martin in ’22 was valuable.

Kansas 71, Arkansas 72

Jalen Wilson had his 18th team-MVP game of the season in his final college basketball game. He recorded half of KU’s game-MVP’s this season, the highest rate of any Jayhawk since Frank Mason’s 2017 season. His game-score for the Arkansas game was slightly-above his season average. K.J. Adams had a fine game himself despite foul trouble. It was his best outing since the home Baylor game in mid-February. Dejuan Harris was the other Jayhawk starter to produce positive value, although he wasn’t mistake-free (5 turnovers counting the 5 second inbounds and 10 second backcourt violations). Gradey Dick was guarded well by Arkansas, and he missed some chances to have a bigger impact. His defense wasn’t terrible, but he needed to score more than 7 points. Kevin McCullar had some big baskets in the second-half, but his negative-value game was due to his defense. He was assigned to stop Arkansas’s scorers and had a rough second-half on the defensive side of things.

The bench finished the season with the distinction of being Self’s worst in his 20-year tenure. Joe Yesufu hit a ridiculous first-half 3 to finish slightly above zero, and Bobby Pettiford’s steal and layup also catapulted him above bubble-level. The trio of Udeh/Clemence/Ejiofor was not at all productive and may have contributed to the loss as they tried to fill in for K.J. Adams’ foul trouble. There were a lot of factors that went into deciding the outcome.

A questionable foul call on McCullar with 23 ticks left sent Arkansas to the line, where they would take the lead for good. Had the blocking call been a charge, KU would have likely gone to OT at worst.

Kansas 96, Howard 68

Kevin McCullar was KU’s most-valuable player in their Round of 64 win against Howard. The bulk of his value came from stingy defense and solid rebounding, but he also produced a positive offensive outing as well. Jalen Wilson had a quiet 20 points and also played strong defense, whereas Gradey Dick had the Jayhawks’ best offensive performance to overshadow his poor defense. This was also the bench’s first positive-value performance in its last 7 games.

The TEAM score of +15.94 was its third +15 game in the last four.