and would finish last in the league, Self made national headlines when he called his team worse than James Naismith's teams that lost to the Topeka YMCA. KU recovered from its 3-game skid and went on to share the Big 12 championship with Kansas State, and then won the Big 12 Tournament by beating KSU 70–54 in the title game. The team earned a 1-seed for the NCAA Tournament's South Region and picked up wins against Western Kentucky and North Carolina to reach the Sweet 16 for the fourth straight year. However, the team's tournament run was cut short when Kansas blew a 14-point lead in the final minutes and lost to eventual national runner-up Michigan in overtime, finishing the year 31–6. With star freshmen Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid on the roster, Kansas entered the season as the #5 team in the country. They started off well with five straight wins, including a victory over Duke in the Champions' Classic. However, the team went 4–4 over its next eight games, including back-to-back losses to Colorado and Florida and an ugly home loss to San Diego State. The team recovered from this rough stretch and began Big 12 play with seven straight wins, ultimately finishing 14–4 to win its 10th consecutive Big 12 title. A back injury to Joel Embiid, however, left the Jayhawks vulnerable on their interior defense, and they fizzled out at season's end with four losses in their final seven games, including a loss to Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament semifinals in Kansas City and an NCAA Tournament Round of 32 loss to Stanford to end the year. Kansas concluded the year 25–10, the first ten-loss season for Kansas since Roy Williams' 1999–2000 Jayhawks went 24–10. As usual, Kansas signed another highly regarded recruiting class, adding Kelly Oubre, Jr. and Cliff Alexander to its roster, and the Jayhawks began the campaign as the #5 team in the country for the second straight year. KU stumbled out of the gate with a humbling 32-point defeat at the hands of #1 Kentucky in its second game, and then also suffered an embarrassing 25-point loss on the road at Temple in late December. Once Big 12 play rolled around, however, the Jayhawks regained momentum, winning eight of their first nine league contests, ultimately capturing their 11th consecutive Big 12 title. However, success in the NCAA Tournament would not