Final KU/MU regular season game

Yesterday afternoon was the final regular season matchup between Kansas and Missouri. Missouri is leaving the Big 12 and 105 years of tradition for the SEC. Missouri threatened to leave a few years ago for the Big 10 and basically created the current environment of instability in college sports, where longstanding rivalries have been broken up and everybody's fighting for the most dollars they can get. So like most Kansas fans, I don't ever want to play Missouri again for nearly destroying our league and I'm tired of the toxic rivalry. And really, if MU's not in the league any more, why play them? It's lose/lose for Kansas. We're the blueblood program that draws television eyeballs, and if we want a good out-of-conference draw, we'd be better to play Duke again than MU. We're generally expected to beat MU, so if we win, we're supposed to, and if we lose, it's a huge upset. So let Missouri go. They won't be able to market the KU game to their fans any more, and it's hilarious to me that they think they'll be able to rebuild this rivalry with the likes of Kentucky. Nope, this is the end of the road for Kansas/Missouri.

A couple of weeks ago KU lost to MU in Columbia. Yesterday KU was ranked #5 and MU #3, and so beating them on our home court was not going to be easy in any way. Missouri got 19 points up on KU in the second half and I was so angry. Who does MU think they are to come in our house and do that to us? But KU finally woke up and started chipping away at the lead. Finally, KU tied the game and in the final seconds, this amazing Thomas Robinson block happened:



and it prevented MU from winning the game and sent it to overtime. Thank God.

KU ended up squeaking by with a one-point win, and Missouri almost pulled out the win for themselves. I'll give MU credit, they weren't fazed by the insane KU atmosphere, which registered a 127 decibel reading, a record for a college basketball game (louder than an airplane taking off from 100 yards away).

But honestly, I didn't enjoy the game at all. There was so much pressure on KU to win since MU already won the first one, and since it was on KU's home court, KU was generally expected to win as well. But MU didn't care, they had the gall to think they could beat us on our home court (where we've gone 90-1 in our last 92 games) and if Missouri would have won, they'd have tied us for first in the league. So ultimately winning was more of a relief than it was jubilation. It would have been awful if MU would have swept us in their final season in the Big 12 and won the crown, because it wouldn't matter to Missouri fans that KU has nearly doubled its all-time wins against MU (172-95 in KU's favor); all we would have ever heard was that they swept us their final year and they'd just plug their ears if we brought up doubling them up over 105 years in a nearly 2-1 margin.

Instead, thankfully we did win. And we won the Big 12 for the 8th straight year by doing so. It was one of the greatest college basketball games I ever watched, and I was miserable the entire time.

One cool thing I noticed during the game was the debut of our new mascot that they're calling "C. Jay," short for Centennial Jayhawk. It's the blue mascot that's modeled after the KU logo from 1912. Really cool--I hope it's a permanent sidekick to Big Jay. Looks so good.





Give Missouri credit, they did everything they possibly could to beat us. They've got a great team and could do really well in the tournament this year. But since they're leaving the conference next year, I'm glad we won't be playing them any more. Good riddance, S-E-C ya. We'll continue being a blueblood basketball school that wins national championships without you, hope you can find a new school to validate your Final Four-less seasons.

P.S. Patrick Murphy--nothing but love for you buddy, I like to pretend you didn't go there :)