Dallas ? Kansas once met Kansas State in basketball in Detroit — that was in the NCAA Tournament back in 1988 — so I guess it isn’t really all that incongruous for Kansas to play Missouri in Dallas.

Still, it does take some getting used to. The Border War in Big D? After all these decades of the Jayhawks and Tigers meeting in either Lawrence, Columbia or Kansas City?

When Kansas and Missouri meet at 1 p.m. today in the semifinals of the Big 12 Conference tournament, it quite likely will be the most neutral atmosphere ever to surround a KU-MU game.

All those years the Tigers and Jayhawks met in Kansas City, whether at Municipal Auditorium or later in Kemper Arena, KU and MU fans were in the majority. They won’t be today. Most of the folks who fill the seats at the posh new American Airlines Center are Texans who don’t give a road-killed armadillo about those two northern bastions of student-athleticism up on I-70.

Oh, Kansas and Missouri have fans in Dallas, all right. It’s just that they aren’t here in the quantity they were in K.C.

Who will the Texans root for in today’s KU-MU semifinal? Probably Missouri. The Tigers are the lower seed and, while Texans like to think they’re different from everybody else, they’ll pull for the underdog — particularly if the Tigers fall behind early.

Everybody expects Mizzou will dig an early hole, too, because of the fatigue factor. MU coach Quin Snyder’s bench is as thin as his pate is thick. Snyder had five players. The other two or three are just out there eating minutes, and not many at that.

With the dreaded No. 5 seed — one seed away from a first-round bye — Missouri had to play in Thursday’s first round, falling behind by 18 points before rallying to knock off nowhere Nebraska, 70-61. Then Friday, MU’s players expended a bundle of energy in their last-second 60-58 win over No. 4 seed Oklahoma State.

How much fuel can Missouri’s players possibly have remaining in their tanks today?

“I don’t think our kids are aware of it, but I am,” Snyder said, asked about the fatigue factor. “We’re going to have to replace what we don’t have in physical energy with emotional energy. You just have to tell yourself you can’t be tired.”

Kansas, in the meantime, didn’t go through the motions in Friday’s 89-74 victory over Iowa State, but the Jayhawks didn’t leave it all on the floor, either.

Friday’s game was KU’s first since Sunday’s 79-74 outright title-clinching victory over Missouri in Columbia, and the Jayhawks looked fresh — notably Jeff Graves, who scored a career-high 16 points against the Cyclones.

Graves still has to prove he can do it against quality big men. No offense to Jackson Vroman and Jared Homan, but ISU’s two front-liners aren’t exactly Shaq and the Mailman.

Graves scored only two points in 20 foul-plagued minutes Sunday in Columbia, and he had only eight points in 22 minutes when the Tigers visited Lawrence Feb. 3.

In other words, Graves will be a player in the spotlight when the Jayhawks play one of their most meaningful games of the season today.

If the Jayhawks knock off Mizzou today, they appear to be a lock for a No. 1 seed when the NCAA announces its 65-team tournament bracket Sunday night. If Kansas loses, a top seed is not a certainty, merely a possibility.

If Kansas does reach Sunday’s tourney championship game, it’s likely the outcome will be meaningless, much like last year when Oklahoma drilled the Jayhawks in the title game at Kemper Arena … and KU earned a No. 1 seed anyway.

By the time Sunday’s Big 12 championship contest is over — only about an hour before the bracket is announced — the NCAA committee pretty much will have all of its hay in the barn.

Nevertheless, while the committee bases most of its evaluation on RPI numbers, its members also are affected by what you’ve done for them lately, and the MU game will be their most recent recollection of Kansas.