Kansas head coach Bill Self has never lost at home to Oklahoma in basketball.
The Jayhawks are the only team to have an all-time winning record over the Sooners in basketball. And that dominance is at its best when the two teams play at KU’s Allen Fieldhouse, where OU has won just 16 times in 90 tries. The Sooners are now 0-9 there with Self as the Jayhawks’ head coach.
Lon Kruger has beaten Self and Kansas twice in nine games in his five seasons at the helm of Oklahoma men’s basketball, but both of those victories came at Lloyd Noble Center, including a 75-73 decision last year.
On Monday night, however, No. 1 Kansas faced another No. 1 team in Oklahoma in a rare matchup of top-ranked teams in competing national polls. Kansas held the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press poll made up of media voters, while the Sooners are the top choice this week of a national panel of head coaches who make up the USA Today weekly poll.
The game was so good that it took three overtime sessions before a winner could be declared. At this stage of a college basketball season, the rankings are somewhat superfluous in that the real competitive balance doesn’t take effect until teams begin conference play, which is a much better measure of how good a team is and how its season ultimately will play out.
Kansas is a team considered to be one of the blue bloods of college basketball. When Jayhawk fans and alums casually say, “We’re a basketball school,” they do so in the full knowledge that Kansas is not only where the inventor of the game of basketball is from, but the Jayhawks are among the top four schools all-time in the college game.
You don’t win an incredible 11 consecutive conference championships, as Kansas has been able to do, in a league as consistently competitive as the Big 12 (No. 1 in RPI among major conferences for the last several seasons without the ability every season to put a championship-caliber team on the court.
All of this to say that when Bill Self has as many complimentary things to say about a competing program as he did about Oklahoma after last night’s epic, three-overtime battle in which both Kansas and Oklahoma left everything they had on the court, it is worth taking note.
Here is what Self had to say postgame about Lon Kruger, the Oklahoma team and Buddy Hield:
"“That game was fantastic. Probably the best game I have ever been a part of in the regular season, maybe ever. This game changed as the game went on. I looked down at their bench and the coaches are just smiling and laughing at me, and I’m laughing at them because it was ridiculous how good both teams were and ridiculous how many hard shots both teams made, especially them.“There whole program is first class. Lon (Kruger) is great. Our guys certainly respect what they have done. All we did was win at home. But if it’s going to be like this just to win at home, just think about when we’re on the road.”"
Bill Self on Buddy Hield:
"“I was going to put Devonte (Graham) on him (Hield) to start the second half, and then Frank (Mason) comes to me and says to me, ‘No, let me have him. I will play underneath him.’ And Frank guarded the heck out of him, and of course he went for 24 (in the second half). He’s (Hield) great, and such a class act.”"