duke and kansas struggling late

Duke and Kansas have been sitting on the 3-seed line for the past month and a half or so, and were both riding a lot of momentum coming into this month. But, the preseason AP #1 and #2 teams have been trending in the wrong direction over the last couple weeks of the regular season, and are probably both going to slip into the #4 seed group.

The Jayhawks have been one of the most interesting teams to watch all season, coming in as the AP #1 team in the country. All season it’s had the same issue, depth. Outside of All-American candidates Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar, star point guard DaJuan Harris, and stud forward KJ Adams, it has had little to no scoring whatsoever.

We saw freshman Johnny Furphy start to rise to the occasion when he was implemented into the starting lineup at the start of the new year.

He’s played over 30 minutes a contest since late January, and averaged around 16 points per game along with 8 rebounds in his first six games playing those minutes. It seemed like Furphy was emerging into that next guy up for Bill Self, as Kansas beat then #4 Houston and then #13 Baylor in that span. 

We also saw Nick Timberlake start to improve late in the season, showing flashes of his shooting capability, which was much needed on this Jayhawks team, in a few games late.

But towards the end of the season, the injury bug has completely derailed Kansas as it looks like a team that will be battling to make it to the second weekend.

After its loss at home to BYU, handing Bill Self a loss at Allen Fieldhouse for only the 16th time in his over 20-year tenure at Kansas, it has completely fallen off.

It followed this game with a loss at Baylor then a win at Kansas State, but a Dickinson injury at Houston was the breaking point.

With McCullar being on and off all season with injuries, this was the last thing this program needed.

Kansas went on to get throttled in Houston 76-46, then news came out where Dickinson and McCullar would miss the Big 12 Tournament due to injuries. There were now questions whether the Jayhawks had any chance to win the conference tournament, but it got much uglier than most thought.

In its first conference game against the 11-seed Cincinnati Bearcats, Kansas was again pummeled 72-52. Not only was this a loss to one of the worst teams in the Big 12, but proved the Jayhawks have nowhere to go without two, let alone one, of its four key guys.

With the health of McCullar and Dickinson in question, Kansas will be an early upset candidate heading to the big dance.

Duke has also been one of the more inconsistent and confusing teams all season. The AP #2 preseason team started off the season on the wrong foot with a 5-3 record, with two ugly losses to Arkansas and Georgia Tech. Following these two, it picked up a huge win against then #10 Baylor at Madison Square Garden en route to an 8-game winning streak.

Towards the second half of the season, Jon Scheyer and the Blue Devils were starting to look like a national championship contender, but it too has started to trend in the wrong direction as of late.

It got handled easily at North Carolina 93-84, then lost at home to the Heels to close out the regular season 84-79.

Duke had been on a tear leading up to its season finale against Carolina, and it probably would’ve picked up the win if not for a stellar 31-point outing from Cormac Ryan.

Picking up the #2 seed in the ACC Tournament, it had the opportunity to face North Carolina again in the ACC Tournament Championship to put one more Quad 1 win on its resume to possibly bump itself to the 2-seed line.

Instead, it lost its first conference tournament game to 10-seed NC State, and will too probably drop to the 4-seeds.

This Duke team relies a lot more on shooting from the outside than most Duke teams have in the recent past, and it was ice cold from beyond the arc against NC State, going 5-20. It is the best 3 point shooting team in the ACC, but really struggles to control the paint when shots from the outside aren’t falling.

This is also the least physical Blue Devils team I’ve ever watched, and it just doesn’t seem like they want it bad enough on the court.

Sometimes it’s just that simple, and when this team goes down in a game, it rarely ever looks like it has he fight to get back in it.

Not to mention, no team has ever won the national championship after losing its first conference tournament game, which the Jayhawks and Blue Devils just did.

We’ll see if Bill Self and Jon Scheyer can change things around before the NCAA Tournament, but Duke and Kansas are on the wrong side of the momentum chain as the postseason gets underway.

*all statistics taken from espn.com*