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Kentucky is college basketball's all-time wins leader after Kansas vacates 15 wins

Editor's note: This story was originally published Wednesday, Oct. 11. It has been updated with games that have taken place up till the 2023 Champions Classic.

Kentucky is once again the all-time winningest program in men’s college basketball history — a distinction earned this week not on the court, but in an NCAA ruling.

In a ruling made Wednesday by the Independent Resolution Panel, Kansas was placed on a three-year probation and will have to vacate 15 wins from the 2017-18 season, including its Final Four appearance, following an investigation into five Level I violations stemming from what the NCAA alleged to be an unfair recruiting advantage the program had due to its relationship with Adidas.

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Without those 15 victories, Kansas is now in second place for most all-time wins, with 2,370. The Jayhawks trail only Kentucky's 2,377 wins.

Three years ago, Kentucky was the sport’s leader in victories. But following a 9-16 record in the COVID-19-impacted 2020-21 season and a 26-8 mark the following year, the Wildcats fell behind Kansas, which has racked up 83 wins since the start of the 2020-21 season (compared to 57 for Kentucky).

With the IARP’s decision, the all-time wins list now looks like this:

  • 1. Kentucky: 2,379 wins

  • 2. Kansas: 2,372 wins

  • 3. North Carolina: 2,345 wins

  • 4. Duke: 2,274 wins

  • 5. UCLA: 1,989 wins

Kansas infractions and sanctions, explained

The Jayhawks were stripped of the 15 wins because of the participation of forward Silvio De Sousa, a former top-50 recruit who played for Kansas in the 2017-18 and 2019-20 seasons before transferring to Chattanooga. Coach Bill Self’s program was among those implicated in the FBI and Justice Department’s probe into corruption in college basketball. The investigation found, among other things, that former Adidas executive James Gatto agreed to pay $20,000 to Fenny Falmagne, De Sousa's guardian.

De Sousa played in 20 games in 2017-18 for Kansas, including the Jayhawks’ Elite Eight win against Duke and their Final Four loss to Villanova.

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In addition to the probation and vacated wins, the IARP found that the school committed two Level II violations and two Level III violations, assistant coach Curtis Townsend committed one Level II violation and one Level III violation, and Self committed one Level III violation. Self and Townsend faced no additional penalties, though the pair had to miss the first four games of the 2022-23 season as part of Kansas’ self-imposed sanctions.

The Kansas ruling will be the final one for the IARP, which was created in 2019 as an alternative to the NCAA’s traditional investigative and enforcement mechanisms. The panel’s previous cases involved Louisville, LSU, Arizona and NC State.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Kentucky surpasses Kansas as all-time college basketball wins leader