KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Last year, it happened on a bus ride from Ames, Iowa, back to campus in Lawrence, Kansas, and Landen Lucas remembers it vividly because it's an event as annual and as inevitable as Kansas winning the Big 12's regular-season basketball championship.
"Every year there's some point when you think, 'Oh, crap, this might be the time,' " the senior forward said.
And every year, Kansas denies its demise and goes on to raise another banner. The Jayhawks have won 12 straight regular-season conference titles and often seem teetering on the end of the streak.
"And it sucks," Lucas said. "You're thinking, 'What did I get myself into? We've got to get this corrected.' "
No one wants to be on the team that sees the string of titles snap. Everyone else in the conference wants to be on the team that interrupts the row of championships. Last week, the Big 12 coaches unanimously named Kansas the preseason favorite, though for just the fifth straight season.
Still, there are already whispers this might be another year when no one can replace the Jayhawks and coach Bill Self on the top of the standings.
"This is my 14th year," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "Coach Self and I came in together, and I can't remember a year more competitive Nos. 2-10. I think Kansas is a clear favorite, but other than that, it's a crapshoot."
Kansas lost its top two scorers from last season, and there's a similar situation around the league. The entire first-team All-Big 12 team from last season is gone, as are three players from the second and third teams. The 2016 player of the year, defensive player of the year, coach of the year and sixth man of the year are all gone, too.
"With our teams in the league, you lost a lot of valuable members of teams, some of the greatest players in the history of Big 12 basketball, from Buddy Hield to Georges Niang to Perry Ellis, and I think if you look at teams, they seem to have parts back, but you're not sure about all the other people," Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said. "So I think you could make a case for a lot of teams."
That conversation must begin the Jayhawks. Back from last season's team, which won the conference regular-season and tournament titles and lost to eventual national champion Villanova in the Elite Eight, are three starters, four of the top six scorers and seven lettermen.
Kansas boasts first-team preseason all-conference guards Devonte' Graham and Frank Mason and also welcomes 6-foot-8 freshman Josh Jackson, regarded as the nation's top recruit and already named the Big 12's preseason newcomer of the year.
"I really do like our guys," Self said. "I like the players that obviously returned from last year off a pretty good team. Certainly we have some newcomers that I think have a chance to impact our program in a very positive way.
"So I feel excited and still anxious and a little nervous going into the season, because we don't know how things are going to progress and how pieces are going to fit. But certainly we're very optimistic."
Leading the pack of contenders is West Virginia, which was the No. 2 team in the preseason poll, as well as in the Big 12 tournament and regular-season standings last season.
"It means a little bit, because we were picked No. 2, but it's a bittersweet thing," senior guard Tarik Phillip said.
Bittersweet because WVU is again behind the Jayhawks. The Mountaineers have beaten the Jayhawks at the Coliseum each of the past three seasons but have lost the other four games either at Kansas or here in the conference tournament.
Kansas has won 40 straight games at Allen Fieldhouse and sold out the past 243 home games.
WVU led by 18 at Kansas in 2015 and lost in overtime. The road game last year was tight, and a win would have given the Mountaineers a two-game lead in the standings over the Jayhawks, who started 3-3 in the Big 12 after jeopardizing their streak with a 13-point loss at Iowa State.
They won their final 10 Big 12 games in the regular season and then ended Iowa State's two-year run as the tournament champion by beating the Mountaineers in another close game.
"We've got to beat them at home," Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins said of the rest of the Big 12. "People have to go into Allen Fieldhouse and win once in a while, because the rest of us all lose at home, and I think if you look at it, that's without question the difference."
If they win it again this season, the Jayhawks will match John Wooden's UCLA teams for the longest streak in college basketball history. What that means for the image of the Big 12 remains to be determined, never mind its standing as the No. 1 RPI conference for three straight seasons.
"I don't know why that would taint anything, because they've been one of the top three or four teams in the country for how many years, and that's not going to change," Huggins said. "They can be in whatever league you want to put them in and they're still going to be."
Contact Mike Casazza at 304-319-1142 or mikec@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mikecasazza and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/wvu/.