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2013-14 Preview: Kansas Jayhawks

Kansas Jayhawks

2012-13: 31-6 (14-4)
In-conference offense: 1.06 points per possession (4th)
In-conference defense: 0.92 points per possession (1st)

While Bill Self deservedly gets praise for his ability to produce championships while dealing with a large amount of roster turnover, it's a bit of a misconception that he continually does this with young players. Kansas started four seniors last season. The two seasons prior to that, the Jayhawks' regular starting lineups were comprised solely of juniors and seniors. You have to go back to the 2008-09 season to find a starting lineup that contained multiple freshmen, and even then, four of the top five minutes-earners were sophomores or juniors because of the Morris twins' frequent foul trouble.

In Self's decade-long run in Lawrence, there isn't a situation analogous to this season, where freshmen are expected to carry the bulk of the team's production. In some ways that makes prognosticating the season ahead more challenging, even though the overall quality of the team shouldn't be that difficult to predict. Between Andrew Wiggins, Wayne Selden Jr. and Joel Embiid, Kansas has three of the top 14 prospects in the class of 2013 according to the ESPN 100.