Red jerseys from here on out
In the 1986 Final Four, the Jayhawks wore red. Though the ‘88 team will always be the most legendary Danny Manning-led team—that’s what banners do—the ‘86 team was the best Jayhawk team of the Larry Brown era. The combination of Manning, Ron Kellogg and Calvin Thompson led the Jayhawks to 31-4 record (13-1 in the Big Eight). For the national semifinal game against Duke, who handed the Jayhawks a loss earlier in the year, KU did something unusual—they wore red for the first time. When KU lost that game, the red became cursed to entire generation of Jayhawk fans.
Since then, red-dominant uniforms have only been employed in special situations or very low-stakes ones. (“I’m not a fan of the red at all,” Self has said). When the ‘08 football team came out of the tunnel at the Orange Bowl, they surprised everyone by wearing the red; what happened next was the greatest single victory in Jayhawk football history. It was the perfect time to do it, as the Jayhawks came in as huge underdogs to a Virginia Tech team that was almost in the BCS title game. Simply put, the Jayhawks need to break out the red more often—1986 was a long-ass time ago.
So when KU dropped that they’d be wearing read against an undefeated Baylor, I loved it. LOVED it.
First of all—not only are these the best jerseys of the season, these are the best jerseys of the adidas era. They’re so clean and punchy. We’ve seen this design in white, but the red really pops. Busting these out against Baylor set the tone—even though Kansas was a rare home underdog, they’d come out swinging. The Jayhawks only rarely get the opportunity to play the spoiler role, and they weren’t about to sell that opportunity short.
Outside of a late meltdown against Texas, the last seven games have shown the Jayhawks coalesce around this team’s identity—a fiendish defensive team that can get buckets late, despite the still-spotty shooting and playmaking. This team never got anywhere close to their offensive ceiling or ever found a compelling second unit, outside of the small-ball outfit that Self seemingly refuses to play. It’s a team full of specialists, and we never optimized. Finding a working lineup reminds me of the LSAT’s analytic reasoning section—if you can’t play Mack and Lightfoot together, and you can’t play Harris and Garrett together, and you can’t play five guards, who can you play? This team never got the reps to find out.
But the home stretch has seen them play to their level of athleticism on defense. McCormack has been an efficiency machine on offense, and Jalen Wilson has sneakily emerged as a dominant rebounder. Bryce Thompson has come back from injury with some verve; Christian Braun still disappears on the perimeter from time to time but is all over the floor elsewhere. Bench units have survived, and Dajuan Harris hit a three yesterday.
Kansas will likely enter the tournament field as a three-seed, which strikes me as an ideal position for this team; they might look like a lower seed to the eye test, but they’ll be given a better bracket than a lower seed. While I’ll never actually believe that KU fans can effectively lower NCAA tournament expectations—this is who we are and I think we should embrace that—I’m liking where things stand after yesterday’s exciting, validating and earned victory.
Now, let’s see those red unis the rest of the way. RCJH.