Kansas must vacate wins and lose Final Four banner; UK retakes all-time wins race lead

All right, let’s do this one last time.

Pat Forde’s report was apparently not the whole story, and, to the shock of many, the Kansas Jayhawks did get hit with a significant punishment.

As it turns out, Kansas will not only vacate wins but also have to take down their 2018 Final Four banner because of Silvio De Sousa, who played in 15 of Kansas’ wins that season, including the Big 12 Tournament they won that year, as well as their NCAA Tournament run, which ended with a loss to Villanova in the Final Four.

“Kansas shall vacate all regular season and conference tournament wins, records, and participation in which men’s basketball student-athlete No. 1 competed while ineligible in the 2017-18 academic year.”

So to recap, Kansas will seemingly have to vacate 15 wins that De Sousa was part of. That would put the Kentucky Wildcats No. 1 in the all-time wins race.

Before today, Kansas (2,385 wins) led the race with Kentucky (2,375 wins) by 10 victories, so Kentucky is, in theory, now ahead by five wins.

Another funny sidenote: Kansas played Duke in the 2018 Elite Eight, but neither managed to get a Final Four banner out of it.

Tragic.

One more note: An earlier version stated Kentucky had 2,377 wins, which is actually on the NCAA’s official website, but Kentucky actually has 2,375 wins, according to KSR.

We finally have a ruling on the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball program.

On Wednesday, the NCAA IARP announced the long-awaited ‘punishment’ for the Jayhawks for their recruiting scandal.

To no surprise, there wasn’t much of a punishment delivered, as there’s no postseason ban, no vacated wins, and no added penalties to head coach Bill Self or assistant coach Kurtis Townsend.

Kansas was put on three years of probation, but that was it, according to Pat Forde. So the Jayhawks will maintain the all-time wins lead over Kentucky.

Kansas had already imposed a four-game suspension for both Self and Townsend at the start of the 2022-23 season.

Again, this was pretty much expected, as the IARP hasn’t done much of anything to the programs it investigated.

As you were.

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