Eight’s not great
May 23, 2006
By Tom Keegan
KU again struggled to hold its own vs. Big 12 opponents in 2005-06
Kansas University shared the Big 12 Conference men’s basketball title with Texas. The Jayhawks did not win any other conference titles. If you care more about the first sentence than the second, don’t feel bad. You no doubt have plenty of company in that regard.
Although some crazed men’s basketball fans might not care, KU does compete in 16 other Big 12 championship sports.
Now that Big 12 regular-season competition is over, it’s time to look at how the schools stacked up in the mythical all-sports rankings compiled by the Journal-World.
Not surprisingly, Texas won by a landslide with 194 points, and KU remained a second-division finisher with 104 points, good for eighth place. Texas either won outright or had a share in 11 titles. No other school had more than two conference championships to its name.
The Longhorns compete in nine men’s sports and finished first or second in every one of them, amassing 105 points to second-place Oklahoma’s 72 and third-place Nebraska’s 70.5 in men’s sports. Nebraska was the leader in women’s sports with 103.5 points, finishing ahead of Texas A&M (93) and Texas (89).
The eighth-place finish qualifies as modest progress by KU, which placed ninth a year ago and 11th two years ago.
The Jayhawks’ strongest finishes outside of men’s basketball came in women’s soccer, where they placed in a four-way tie for second, and men’s cross country, where they finished in third place.
