Kansas Mass Exodus?

Kansas won their Final Four game tonight and will play for the championship on Monday. But does this mean goodbye?

KU has six seniors on their roster. Case, Stewart, and Witherspoon were not huge factors. But Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun, and Russell Robinson are all key players that would be hard to replace under any circumstance.

Then KU has potentially three more players that could go pro. Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, and Mario Chalmers. In most mock drafts, Arthur is projected to be drafted in the middle of the first round and both Rush and Chalmers are projected for the end of the first or early in the second round. There's a lot of temptation here.

Worst case scenario: nine Jayhawks leave this team with half of them going to the NBA. In that case, the seniors will be Brennan Bechard and Matt Kleinmann, two bench players. The only future junior who has played significant time will be Sherron Collins. Cole Aldrich will be the ONLY other player on the team with experience.

So that's more than half of the team and all of the starters gone, with only two members of the current rotation (of nine) returning. UGH! To top it off, Bill Self could leave to coach at his alma mater, Oklahoma State.

Fortunately, conventional wisdom has Self and Chalmers returning (Mario's dad is on the coaching staff at KU) and you never know about Rush and Arthur. Rush was going pro last year and blew out his knee in a pickup game, delaying him for a year. Anything can happen (we hope).

Besides, KU has recruited six quality players including: a pair of twins, forwards Markieff and Marcus Morris, local star shooting guard Travis Releford, forward Quintrell Thomas, and "a couple of junior-college studs" forward Mario Little and guard Tyrone Appleton.

It may be a few years before KU is back in the Final Four, but it'll be okay. It's not like we will sink as low as Missouri (knock on wood).