Hoops News and Notes: KU - Washburn

News and notes while wondering how many of the 16,300 people in Allen Field House tomorrow night will say, “Who?”, at some point during the starting line-ups.

• The defending national champion Kansas Jayhawks – and that’s just fun to type, believe me – opens up their 111th season of college basketball by meeting the  Washburn Ichabods in an exhibition game that will tip-off at 7 p.m. in Allen Field House. Jayhawk TV will broadcast the festivities.
• KU won their 51st conference title in 2008 – the most in NCAA Division I.
• Kansas won’t be the only team with youngsters in the floor: Washburn has just three returning starters and 10 newcomers this season. They have two other D1 opponents on their schedule: Kansas State (Nov. 9) and UNLV (Nov. 11).
• Believe it or not, KU and Washburn will face off for the 37th time Tuesday night. KU has won eight straight dating back to 1944, and they lead the series, 34-3.
• A KU win would extend KU’s exhibition win streak to 32 games, going back to 1995, when they lost to Lisbonne Benfica in Stausbourg, France.
• Kansas has won 29 straight exhibitions at home. They last lost, 93-82, to an Australian national team in 1993. KU is 40-5 all-time in exhibitions at Allen Field House and 49-8 overall in exhibitions.
• KU head coach Bill Self is 18-0 in exhibition games while at Kansas.
• Self has guided his teams to 10 straight 20-win seasons, including four straight at Kansas. He has won eight conference titles in the last eight years.
• He has a 71.8% winning percentage as a head coach, and he is the winningest coach in D1, winning 81.6% of his games in his five years in charge of the Jayhawks. Kansas has won a combined 70 games the past two seasons.
• He has a 22-9 NCAA tournament record and is one of just four coaches to get three different schools (Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas) to the Elite Eight.
• In the last 18 years, KU has entered a season unranked just once (2005).
• November 4th in KU basketball history… sophomore F Wayne Simien scored 26 points to lead the Jayhawks to a 111-94 win over the EA Sports All-Stars (2003). Senior G Kirk Hinrich added 20 and F Nick Collison had 18 points and 11 rebounds. KU alum Adonis Jordan scored nine and dropped three assists for the All-Stars.